You are allowed to enjoy this…

The one thing myself and Verity enjoy is a good stroll around the block. During our walks we looks at plants and keep an eye out for any cats that might cross our paths, prime for stroking. Sometimes a leaf is plucked for further investigation and possible rubbing with paper and crayons back home.

On our new route we noticed one house painted bright yellow and obviously inhabited by an Arsenal fan. Verity has taken to calling this house “The Balamory House”.

Unfortunately, I made the grave mistake of forgetting to ask V if she needed the toilet before our walk and halfway around she makes the announcement that every unprepared parent dreads to hear – “I want a wee!”. Of course, this is exclaimed at the equidistant point of no return. We shuffle onwards, I appeal to her to pick up the pace.

Everything is going well until we come to overtake an elderly gentleman. He turns around and looks concerned as Verity, in a high-pitched voice tinged with alarm, cries “Help me, help me, help me!”

So what kind of picture was painted? A large unshaven fellow seen dragging a distressed 3-year-old girl along the main road, while she cries for help to those who pass.

I feel grateful that I am sitting here typing this rather than being buggered into oblivion on the Nonce Wing at HMP Crowmarsh.

Name, rank and number?

I remember nothing. I am just another stay-at-home parent. My career tossed aside like a used Kleenex. In the great race to secure employment, The Missus won and so I soldier forward under the under appreciated and invisible yoke that is being a parent.

Who am I? I don’t know. One of the invisible people? Just someone with a job to do, a job that no-one sees, a routine that is core to the future of the next generation of this country? Or just another guy with a wet-wipe ready to scrape the faeces from the crease of his son’s bottom? Is this who I am?

It’s not so bad. I get to watch kid’s TV all day. I get to play with crayons and building blocks and deal with shit and piss and puke. What’s not to love about the job?

But when I told people this was the future path many still balk at the idea of a man staying at home to raise his children. I didn’t have to cut off my cock and balls to do this. I am still a man. I still can assemble a flatpack bedroom wardrobe with an allen key in less than an hour. I can still bodge home repairs with nothing more than a kitchen knife and a blob of blu-tack.

The payment comes like this: after managing to set up the TV and getting my daughter’s favourite kid’s TV show on the screen she turns to me, a tremble in her voice and says: “Daddy, I love you….”

That’s my reward.

Boy, have I got stories to tell…

So, dear readers – we left you having very little time to do any packing. Having just an hours sleep between Sunday and Monday, we managed to pull off the impossible. The  removal was done quickly and we were left waiting for the monies to transfer so I could give the keys to our buyer. Eventually, at about 1.30pm, the money had come through and it was just a matter of me handing over the keys.

Of course, the buyer needed to bring the cheque to pay for the stock. The amount had already been argued over with the stocktakers the previous day, so I was expecting trouble. The man arrived, I am friendly, I offer him the keys and ask for the cheque because I really am late and need to go.

He refuses to write me the cheque. He wants to ask questions. Questions he has asked several times before. I say, no time for quyestions, we have completed. He wants to do a visual inspection. I say, fair enough, but I want to call my solicitor to see if I am legally allowed back in the shop. I expect him to want to do a visual inspection of the stock to make sure it is all there before he writes the cheque.

So I let him in, go to the car to get the mobile to phone the solicitor and then his head appears from our upstairs bedroom window. The place is dirty, this is unacceptable. At hearing this I had enough. The “dirt” was just the fluff you find under the bed and the removal men had packed our hoover and brushes. Before he could say anymore, I threw the keys at the floor and told him he’d be hearing from my solicitor.

You see, this was just another delaying tactic. I knew the next lines out of his mouth would be about taking money off the stock amount to pay for the clearing the “dirt”. In the car, I left a message for my solicitor and headed to the new house.

The next day my solicitor calls me. He tells me we need to discuss how to proceed and that I won’t believe the letter he’s received from the buyer’s solicitor. Before he begins, I tell him my side of the story so as we are both reading from the same page as it were.

To cut it short, my buyer has accused me of “trashing the home” and it is going to cost thousands of pounds to put right and this money should come from the stock take amount. This is all lies, I say. Why would I do such a thing. What would it achieve when I’ve fought so hard to rebuild the place?

And so my solicitor is now fighting to get back the money that is owed to me, whilst the owner of my old shop is trading with stock that he has effectively stolen from me. A right laugh, innit?

What to say? What is there to say? I don’t know. An expensive folly? An experiment in wasting time? A way of discovering the things you like and the things you don’t like? I don’t know what to think. The Missus tells me that many people talk about the things they want to do but I am one of the few that actually do it. I did it. Whoopee do!

I’m not going to talk anymore on it here. If you want to know the story then email me and I’ll talk privately, but not here. There’s no point. Whatever I write here can be taken down, bent and moulded into whatever they want it to be. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been silent on my blog over the past three and a bit years.

But it was nice the first day back, to walk out with my daughter and to have no one stare at me, to be anonymous again, to be me again. It is nice.

Now the blog is back on again in full effect. I bet you are all pleased, no?

So I have finally finished “The Luckiest Man in the World” and have done the sleeve design. All I have to do now is get the masters uploaded and produced. Anyway, for those of you who want to see the sleeve ahead of time, here it is:

Lookee – someone has used my music in a short animation piece (mine is from about the 45 second mark). Yes, my stuff does make for good atmospheric film music! The track snippet is from “Descent of the Fallen I” from the “Empty Spaces” CD.