Private Secret Diary

Chicken Four.

2008 - 2008.

Chicken keeping is a fickle mistress.

One minute there are six happy and well chickens. The next minute, one becomes very out of sorts, and Short Tony is forced to dip his finger in olive oil in order to stick it up its jacksy.

“I’ve done the olive-oiled finger thing,” he tells me. I swear that there is an aggrieved tone in his voice, if it is possible to have an aggrieved tone in his voice via SMS message. Clearly, I have picked a good time to visit my parents for the day.

We have a short telephone conversation, mainly about the process and results of him having to stick his finger up its jacksy. My mother and father look on, oddly. “Are you SURE you didn’t try to have sex with it?” asks Short Tony. I look around the living room, and decide that it is best just to reply with a ‘no’.

Booooooo - there is a chicken with chicken problems. We were all excited the previous night, as we thought that it was about to lay an egg. It was sitting down a lot, and then sort of bouncing awkwardly on both legs, as if it were on an invisible chicken spacehopper that was ever so slightly too big for it. However, no egg appeared and now it does not seem to be able to stand or move at all.

“I’ll give Len the Fish a ring,” sighs Short Tony. Len the Fish knows all about farming stuff. He turns up later on, out of the goodness of his heart. Short Tony passes him the olive oil.

There is apparently a condition called an ‘Egg Bound Hen’ which is very rare and unlikely to happen, but involves the egg getting stuck on the way out. Clearly its rarity works proportionately to the fuckwitteddom of the person to which the chicken belongs. I try to envisage what the symptoms would be if I had an egg stuck on the way out, using role play, and it seems to fit the chicken’s behaviour.

I receive another communication. There is definitely no egg up there. I get some advice to feed it some olive oil. Short Tony feeds it some olive oil. Different olive oil.

We are a bit stumped now. The chicken is in the emergency isolation ward (Short Tony’s conservatory) and has been given a hot bath and stuff. It does not seem to be able to walkat all, but also does not seem to be particularly distressed; its eyes are bright and it is pecking at food. I do not think that it is just a lazy chicken, though. Perhaps it has had some form of stroke. It is not bird flu. Poor chicken. Can anybody help?

“Have you ever thought of being on TV?”

I blink at the question, and turn to the Pork Butcher. He blinks also, but I am not sure whether this is due to the question or whether it is because that people blink all the time.

The girl is quite foxy, probably in her twenties, and has sidled up to me. It was definitely a sidle - certainly it was on the sidle side of walking. To be honest, I am a bit flummoxed. I am not used to being chatted up by foxy twenty-something girls, whether in front of Pork Butchers or not, and I appear to have lost the capacity to know what to say. I stare beseechingly at a rolled shoulder for rescue, but it just sits there impassively. That is the problem with meat. It is no help in a situation such as this.

My mind races. If she wants to have sex with me, then the best place would probably be behind the Vegetable Delivery Man (with a beard)’s stall. We get along very well and I am sure he wouldn’t mind nipping off for a coffee for ten minutes as long as she promised that she would not do anything revolting with the jerusalem artichokes. I am pleased with my idea, which I managed all on my own without the counsel of any meat whatsoever. No wonder people just eat it and do not appoint it to advisory bodies.

“It’s ITV’s ‘Britain’s Best Dish,’” she explains, spoiling things a bit. “I’m from ITV. Do you cook at all? I see you’re buying lots of good ingredients.”

Boooooooo - she is not picking me up at all. She wants me to be on her television show. Boooooo, boooooo and triple boooooo. I make vague noises about not really being a reality television type of person.

“Do you have a signature dish at all?” she persists. It is odd. I cannot help but be flattered by her interest. I obviously look quite televisual in her eyes. Obviously it is ITV so they are not looking for cooking ability in the slightest, but want people who will grab the housewives and melt them with a rogueish twinkle of an eye. This might be my thing after all. She then spoils it a bit by mentioning that she’s just asked the elderly Pork Butcher, who has turned her down.

I say that I will think about it, take some details, and don’t. They get you on to these things with a combination of promised stardust and ego-flattery, and I am not falling for it. Later on, I pass the details on to Short Tony and Len the Fish, with some promised stardust and ego-flattery, but they do not fall for it.

I am forced to accept this, as I watch one perching arrogantly on the higher extended escape-proof bit of fence that we constructed. I carefully tip-toe in to talk it down, like the chicken whisperer.

I feel very foolish. ‘Can chickens fly?’ is one of those questions like ‘why are there seasons?’ and ‘how does electricity work?’. You sort of think you know the answer and that it is all simple, but once you try explaining it to people then you realise that you are getting a bit bogged down.

I am not too sure about the options. I really do not want to put a chicken wire roof on, as I suspect it will make what is at present quite a pleasant environment into something a bit guantanamobayey.

And then there is the issue of wing-clipping. I know all the books say that it is what you should do and it doesn’t hurt and it is just like having your toenails cut, but I have a small feeling that it is not like having your toenails cut at all, and more like having a leg removed under general anaesthetic. Essentially, shorter toenails would not change my life materially for better or worse, whereas I suspect that a reduction in leg quantity would.

Short Tony returns from his holidays today, and I have managed a whole week without something bad happening to any of them. None have got worms, I have not trodden on any of them, I have not rented any out to Max Mosley. And we still have a full complement, so even though they can escape in theory, they clearly choose not to.

‘I must do everything in my power to make it a happy environment for them,’ I thought this morning as I went out in my pants to let them out. I do not wish to be a benevolent gaoler; I wish them to stay of their own accord.

I blink in surprise.

There is never a knock on the door these days, let alone at this time in the morning. The weather outside is foul; I have only just woken up the chickens to let them out into their escape-proof run, and am looking forward to a nice cup of hot coffee.

I open the door. It is Mrs Short Tony, announcing that the chickens are escaping.

Being a man, I really am no good whatsoever at multi-tasking (I do not think that it is sexist to say that). Therefore there is some comfort in the fact that I am able to combine my reaction at her news with some much needed practice for next week’s National Face-Falling Championships.

Stomping outside, I find Short Tony grimly banging in nails. The wind howls pitilessly through the trees. The chickens peck around innocently.

“I caught them sitting on this fence,” he explains, indicating a piece of fence that is surely too high for chickens to get up to. I look at the chickens. I look at the fence. To be fair, we had identified it as a Point of Potential Weakness, but had assumed that they would not be able to jump that far.

We spend the next bitterly cold hour raising the height of the fence by two feet.

I am learning all the time about this chicken business. So far, I have hung up a washing line for them to use, and constructed a useful Perchomatic 3000 out of old bits of wood. I do not see why they would wish to go elsewhere, and am a very tiny bit hurt by their attitude.

The lady asks us over her shoulder, heading towards a bunch of sleek, befeathered show-hens.

“No,” we affirm, absent-mindedly.

The lady bypasses the show-hens with a cackle, and veers towards the deepest depths of the shed.

Shortly afterwards, Short Tony and I are speeding back along the A-road, a half-dozen chickens confined to the dogg cage on the back of his truck.

We discuss our new family, thoughtfully.

“We should decide a few things. Are we going to give them names?” he muses.

“I hadn’t really thought about that,” I reply.

“Maybe we should leave that to the kids.”

“Let’s be clear, though,” I say, resolutely. “No comedy names. Like Gregory, or Princess, or Livingstone, or Ganley. And no bloody post irony, like when people call their cats Chairman fucking Miaow.”

“Fair enough. Can you still see them?”

Short Tony is looking at the rear-view mirror in some alarm. I turn to peer through the glazing at the back of the cab. No chickens whatsoever are visible. I undo my seatbelt and strain my neck. There is no sign of chickens. I have a brainwave and remove my phone from my pocket; reaching up as far as I can, I take a picture through the glass into the base of the load area.

The result is inconclusive.

“I’d better pull over,” mutters Short Tony, indicating for a lay-by. We hop out anxiously and hasten round the back. Six chickens peck away at us from the security of the dogg cage. We are relieved. I give a weak smile to a lorry driver who is staring down at us from his parking space.

“Vets?” asks Short Tony as we continue on our way.

We agree that running up a vet’s bill for a chicken is bad economics.

“And no puns,” insists Short Tony. I nod vigorously in agreement. “No ‘oooh, aren’t they egg-citing!’ or ‘This one is egg-strordinary!’ or that sort of stuff.”

We are reassured that we are both singing off the same hymnsheet on that topic, and subsequently also agree that neither of us will attempt sexual intercourse with one.

“How much were they again…?” asks Short Tony as the truck rumbles on.

“Seven pounds fifty each,” I report. “No V.A.T.”

“Forty five quid,” calculates Short Tony. “That’s a poultry amount.”

We continue the journey in silence.

“A letter box?!?” I spit.

“I’ll show you,” offers Big A.

Big A’s new chicken run does, indeed, feature a letter box. I stare at it in some annoyance. He is being ridiculously competitive about his new run. It is not even as big as mine.

“I’ve concreted the posts into the ground,” he mentions casually.

I consider lying about our own post construction, but do not wish to descend to his level. “Some of this wood looks quite rotten,” I point out helpfully, as we return through the garden. He is careful to pull the reclaimed front door shut as he leaves the run.

I bolt off home to look through chicken books. If he is going to build a run with concreted in posts and a reclaimed front door, I am determined that we will have the better chickens. I quite fancy the Transylvanian Naked Necks myself, just because they sound exciting. Either that or an Old English Pheasant Fowl. I can quite see myself owning an Old English Pheasant Fowl, and taking it for walks.

Big A is getting some scraggy old ex-battery hens. My pedegree rare breeds will put them to shame, and it will serve him right. I will be careful not to let them mix, so mine do not get into bad habits. But they can write to each other if they like.

Mrs Short Tony hands over a thick paperback. It transpires that the LTLP has been lured in to joining the Village Women’s Book Group.

I am pleased about this. The LTLP does not get out much, as she is always tired and stressed after her hard day at work. It will be nice for her to have another interest. I sometimes worry that her quite internationally-important and high-level professional role comes at the expense of the social life that she would want.

“When is the next meeting?” I ask.

“Next Thursday.”

I look at her crossly. We are meant to be playing a snooker match on Thursday and this means that I will have to drop out. It is annoying. I have been busting my guts out at home looking after the house and talking to the cleaner and making plans for the chickens whilst the LTLP pisses around with her mates in an office. I take the book and promise to pass it on.

I do not speak to the LTLP for several days, whilst she glues herself to the book. This happened with the last book she read, which was the ‘da Vinci Code’. At one point I try suggesting that she reads a few more books a bit more regularly but a bit less intently, but she tells me to shut up and make her tea and that she might take me up on that, but for men. I stomp off.

It is clear from the odd glance over her shoulder that it is a dreadful book, which has been tightly plotted by a genius and then written by a jobbing spider monkey. The descriptions are all horribly obvious, and the dialogue plumbs the depths of clunkiness.

“There is such clunky dialogue in this book that you are currently reading, which has been selected as this month’s choice for the Village Women’s Book Group,” I complain. But she is lost in her own world.

I am a literary snob. I would not expect Mrs Short Tony, Mrs Eddie, Mrs Len the Fish, Mrs Martin the IT Consultant etc. to go for Shakespeare or whatever, as he was famously no good at giving female characters identities in their own right. I should not be so judgmental. She enjoyed it, and will enjoy the literary and cultural discussion around it, and that’s what counts.

The LTLP arrives home late on Thursday evening, really pissed.

“Here you go,” I offer Short Tony.

I thumb through the book before handing it over. “She has sex here, here and here,” I explain helpfully.

It is bloody weird reading a book about people you know. I would have thought she’d have included our brief and sadly chaste time together in a lavish Brighton hotel room, or the post-pub darts match at Short Tony’s, but Petite Anglaise’s publishers seem to have insisted that she kept it to stuff about Paris an’ that. I have a part so insignificant that you might miss it, but I had to sign something official!!! Presumably so I don’t sue her. It was exciting.

I would imagine that you can get it from all good bookshops, or Amazon.

*

Reader Neil Forsyth also has a book!!! He is the man behind the funny funny Bob Servant stuff that I mentioned ages back. Anyway, this is the paperback edition of ‘Other People’s Money’, which got some great reviews when it was first out in hardback. Whilst you are in the all good bookshops you should give it a good thumbing. I do not think that Neil Forsyth has sex in it much, however.

*

Dan is banging his head against the Foreign Office wall. The pesky ‘emergency evacuation of Iraqi translators who are being systematically murdered for helping British soldiers’ thingy just won’t go away, which is annoying. The government has leapt into action and provided those in hiding with some emergency forms however; it is hoped that, four months after the first ones being hastily completed and returned for Civil Service perusal, some helicopters or whatever might arrive. Dan’s latest post about it is here. No sex is involved.

*

That is the news for now. I am thinking of taking some photographs of the chicken run and putting them on here, in order to lose visitors. Day five and it still stands.

The coop has been up for some weeks; the ‘Keeping Chickens - For Dummies!’ books are well-thumbed. We purchased building materials ages back, taking care to measure carefully and get exactly the right length of wire needed; the ground had been cleared and the chickensdirect websites bookmarked.

It is good to live off the land like this. Once I get a couple of chickens I will practically be Ray Mears.

It is possible that there have been longer building projects - the cathedral thing in Barcelona, perhaps, or the last Olympics. But it is important to get these things right. Plus we had been hinting to Len the Fish for ages that he might come round and ‘give us some advice’ which is code for ‘do all the work for us’. As it is, he agreed to turn up to help for the couple of hours that it would take us.

By day two of construction, I am feeling a bit down. Short Tony has disappeared to buy more wire, and I have been struggling for ages to hammer the same small staple into a piece of wood. Meanwhile, Len the Fish is erecting, wiring, twisting, hammering, digging, measuring and fixing.

“Thanks ever so much for your help again Len,” I mumble. I am embarrassed. “If you ever need some… ummmmm… humorous writing done, then just…”

I tail off lamely. It is shameful. Len the Fish is brilliant at everything practical. What he doesn’t know about practical things isn’t worth knowing. He has given up his entire week to do our fencing for us, and I have cock all that I will ever be able to offer him in return, apart from a pint, which doesn’t count as he will buy me one back. Despite being so powerful, I have about two practical skills in the world: I can use a patent type markup system that sends instructions via a modem to a plant in Watford that then couriers back your typesetting at twice a day intervals if it is before 1991, and I can name the local newspaper that covers each town in the UK, apart from the ones that I have forgotten.

“A pint. Just buy me a pint,” he replies, not asking me about Exeter, or Mansfield, or Leigh-on-Sea, or even giving any indication that he requires humorous writing services. I return to the single post that I have insisted on putting in myself.

“Huge gales forecast for tomorrow,” he says, not entirely reassuringly.

By dusk the run is complete. A happy home for six chickens, that we will probably purchase some time in the year 2163. Mrs Short Tony’s car draws up and she steps out.

Her jaw drops. “It’s a bit… bigger… than you claimed it would be.”

I rest against the garden wall, looking with anxiety at the mass of the trunk. It is amazing how a tiny little apple tree can suddenly appear so solid. I scratch my head and walk thoughtfully away from it into the front garden, clutching the rope in my hand.

As far as I can work it out, things can go one of two ways. Left to its own devices, the tree will fall backwards on to the outbuilding. Whereas if I pull on the rope with all my might, the tree will fall directly towards me into the safe expanse of Short Tony’s front garden. With luck, I will be able to leap out of the way.

“Are you ready?” asks Short Tony.

“What exact definition of the word ‘ready’ do you…” I begin, but my words are drowned out by the chainsaw. He starts cutting a wedge shape into the trunk. This, I reason, should help the tree fall towards me and not backwards towards the building.

I take the strain on the rope.

I don’t know why it is. I am reasonably tall, and I have not had a shave, and I am wearing old clothes that are covered in paint and stuff from where I have done DIY in them, and I am taking the strain on a rope that is tied to a tree that is being felled by a man with a chainsaw. You would think that I would look a bit more rugged. As it is, I can’t help thinking that if a passing photography student captures the scene in order to display a large black-and-white print in a pseudy photography gallery, he may well be tempted to caption it: ‘Nancy Boy Holding A Rope (2008)’.

I do not seem to be able to get a proper grip. My feet are not spaced correctly. The tree appears to be quite heavy. I strain hard. This is not good. The front lawn is all around me – all I need to do is to stop the tree falling backwards. I can feel its weight. Stop it going backwards! Stop it going backwards!

“Almost there,” warns Short Tony.

The chainsaw slices through. I give a huge pull on the rope. The tree falls almost perfectly sideways, taking the top off the wall and coming to rest in a cloud of twigs and masonry across the driveway.

There is a short silence.

“A lot of that cement was loose anyway,” Short Tony offers, tactfully.

“Ummmmm,” I reply in embarrassment.

“Anyway, do you want any more free wood?” he asks.

Free wood!!!

Short Tony is standing in his front garden waving a chainsaw around. I am unenthusiastic about going over to help. There is such a fine line between being ‘a Good Samaritan’ and ‘a statistic’.

“He won’t need my help,” I protest. “Plus if I go and offer, knowing that he won’t need my help, he will just think that I am angling for some free wood.”

“Go on,” she insists, kicking me out of the car with a look.

I amble to Short Tony’s house. He is sizing up a sizeable old apple tree, which has been semi-uprooted and is leaning precariously. Miraculously, it has missed the house and everything else of value. So far.

“Do you need a hand?” I ask.

“I wouldn’t mind, actually,” he replies. “Do you want some free wood?”

Result!

I scuttle back to the Cottage to change into some old trousers. I have recently broken the habit of a lifetime, and bought some trendy new jeans in ‘Gap’ and I would not want these to get muddy. (For those who live in the middle of nowhere and not near a ‘Gap’ shop, the ‘Gap’ is basically a store that is frequented by forty-somethings who are seeking to maintain the heady sartorial excitement of their late thirties). I reappear some time later in my old gardening clothes.

Short Tony hands me a rope and gestures towards the tree. He has a small outbuilding in which he has installed a home gymnasium; the direction in which the tree has half-fallen is towards this. Clearly this is the way it will continue to fall should somebody attack it with a chainsaw - hence the rope. It transpires that my job is to take the strain on the rope, pulling with all my might, so that the tree, when felled, will not demolish the outbuilding.

To be, unfortunately, continued.

“I’ll be about an hour,” I promise.

Four hours later, I am sat hammering out ‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel, whilst Short Tony yells out the words very slightly out of time with the rhythm. The Toddler looks on bemused. My inbox bings with a confirmation from Ebay – a bid of twelve pounds for a ‘Caution - Power Wires’ sign that you affix to the bottom of telegraph poles.

The LTLP is unimpressed.

“You’re not leaving. You’re not leaving,” Short Tony and Eddie had insisted to me as I had attempted to put my coat on at the bar. Fortunately I have always been fairly unsusceptible to peer pressure. Unfortunately, however, I am pathetically weak when it comes to beer pressure, and had stayed for one more pint, a couple of large whisky macs and a test drive of the new barrel of Oyster Stout.

I think Sunday lunchtimes might be the new Friday nights. Or, if I am honest, the Sunday lunchtime Omnibus repeat of Friday nights. There is a nice atmosphere in the Village Pub, and a civilised feeling, and free sausages. I have always resisted lunchtime drinking, in that it tends to eat up the entire day; however when the highlight of the rest of your day entails giving a small child a bath and then watching ‘Lewis’ on ITV there seems to be an argument for screaming and hammering on the pub doors at five minutes to noon.

I do not win my Ebay auction. This is a relief the next morning. Somewhere, somebody out there with a worse hangover than me is clutching their head, looking out upon a telegraph pole and moaning ‘why…?’ Mrs Short Tony arrives at the front door to see if I still have her husband’s shoe.

The LTLP sits upright in bed.

“What was that?” she demands.

“Felt like an earthquake,” I reply.

Despite living in a cottage that has been partially rebuilt by the Methodical Builder, I am not unduly alarmed. The experience is interesting and unusual, but I don’t think that it is the end of the world or the beginnings of a Russian nuclear attack. Everybody knows that the official advice should we be in danger of nuclear annihilation is to grab the nearest woman and make love to her vigorously, and I cannot believe that the Russians would be so heartless as to launch their plans at 1 a.m. when I am in bed with the LTLP.

Nevertheless I am a bit disappointed in the morning when there are not huge great cracks in the road that leads through the Village, and all essential services seem to be working tolerably. The BBC has set up a service whereby people who think it’s important to text that they heard a rumble then perhaps looked outside to see what was happening can do so, their texts being displayed upon a special web page. This seems an excellent idea to stop such people breeding for five minutes or so. But otherwise the country seems to be functioning normally.

As a child I remember being strangely disappointed that Britain did not have earthquakes or floods or hurricanes like in places like South America; clearly as an adult my views have moved on from there. But South America does not have Strategic HR Initiatives or the Jeremy Kyle show, so who is to say which place is worse off?

I plan to walk to the Village Shop shortly; I shall be disappointed if the pork pies have not got through. We have not had such excitement round here for a long time. I will look forward to telling the Village Shop Man that I heard a rumbling noise – I will be annoyed if he trumps my story by having heard the rumbling noise AND looked outside.

I am excited about going to Brighton.

It is one of those vibrant places that makes you feel about ten years younger, plus I will be able to make calls on my mobile there without people poking fun. The breeze draws in off the English Channel. It is bracing and refreshing, just as it is bracing and refreshing to be nailed to an Alp whilst Mary Archer empties a box of Mini Milks down the inside of your teeshirt.

“What do you fancy for lunch?” asks my host. “We should have something that you can’t get in Norfolk. Like something foreign.”

I do not rise to the jibe. Clearly they have not heard that there is a kebab house that now delivers to the Village. I give a long groan of overindulgence.

“Something healthy,” I complain. I have come straight from a few days at the LTLP’s parents. “I feel desperately fat and unhealthy. I’ve been eating and drinking constantly. Roast dinners. Pies. Cider. Wine. Just something healthy. Nothing deep fried, nothing stodgy, nothing in batter, no alcohol.”

I am pointed towards a sushi bar, which I quickly discount. Ten minutes later we are sat in ‘Momma Cherri’s Soul Food Shack,’ ordering plates of fried chicken, ribs, meatballs and jambalaya, to be washed down with bottles Moosehead beer.

Why? Why do I do it? Why?!? Staggering back to the station later on, I find I have to run for the train. This does not go well, and several passengers look at my red and sweating face with alarm.

I still refuse to join Short Tony, Len the Fish etc. at Weightwatchers, although I do like the sound of the fact that they all meet afterwards at the chippy over the road to boast about who has lost the most weight. But I am gradually getting fat. I am eating unhealthily, drinking too much, I have not gone running for months and it is still a couple of months before the bowls season starts.

I need to do something. But where will I find the willpower?

I regret putting a TV in the bedroom.

I pull the duvet over my head, but nothing changes, except that I have a duvet over my head. I turn over and try to ignore the luminous freaks as they dance about making infantile noises.

“David Jason must really be embarrassed by this now,” I mutter, provocatively.

“What? What?” demands the LTLP from the other side of the bed.

“Mmmmphhh,” I reply, closing my eyes once more.

“What did you just say?”

Three minutes later I am left to reflect in bemusement how a woman who is gullible enough to believe that three of the Teletubbies are played by David Jason, Ross Kemp and Sir John Mills can be so shrewd when it comes to, say, accepting my estimate as to when I might be home from the Village Pub.

“The other one’s played by an unknown,” I mumble reassuringly.

I have been watching a lot of children’s television recently. The thing that you come to realise is that it is either very good or very crap. There is a locked find-and-replace template that they use for many shows that goes ‘Previously normal character develops unexpected different character trait’/’Different character trait makes them happy for a while’/’Different character trait makes them unhappy’/’They learn that they should just be happy as they are as everybody likes them and everything is wonderful’. Sometimes you long for, say, Spud the Scarecrow to have an irreversible sex change, or to find work in an administrative capacity and say ‘actually, Bob – the pay’s better and I get to piss around playing solitaire on the PC all day’.

Many of the presenters love it, dancing around with their puppets and brightly-coloured hats. My favourite occupation is to look intently for the fleeting dark shadow that betrays the fact that they are dying inside and have realised that they are never going to be asked to do Hamlet. I also dance around with puppets and brightly-coloured hats, but it is in the privacy of my own home, so that is all right.

“They just do the voiceovers, though, don’t they?” she interjects, five minutes later.

“No – they’re inside the costumes. Otherwise it’s pretty well impossible to synch the sound.”

“Oh.”

Many years ago…

The LTLP is at work. I secretly take the day off and let myself into her shared flat.

The apartment is pleasant, but basic. There is a cooker and a fridge, but few other appliances – certainly nothing that would elevate ‘student lodgings’ to ‘a home’. One of her flatmates has lent me her room for the purposes of gift-concealment; I sneak into here and drag out a small second-hand freezer which I have bought with all the money I have in the world. Panting, I lug it through the doorway and plug it in beside her bed.

I take the bashed-up old car down to Sainsbury’s on Green Lanes. The blizzard drives horizontally against the windscreen; when I reach the car-park the snow is so thick that the parking spaces are completely obscured and I just abandon the car where I can.

I walk in to the supermarket, get out my near-limit credit card and buy every tub of Haagen-Dazs in the shop.

Some years ago…

We are broke; enormously broke.

Nevertheless, we take the tube in to London. We walk along the river, then across Waterloo Bridge which provides one of the most wonderful city views in the world. We dine in a restaurant in fashionable Charlotte Street. The meal is not very nice, but the occasion is everything.

Three years ago…

I plan and execute a traditional English lovers’ meal of roast sheep’s heart. Admittedly, the result is not as expected. We enjoy a delicious Chinese take-away.

Two years ago…

Boooooooo… Valentines Day is just a commercial fraud!!! I am boycotting it!!! That will show the Evil commercial companies who force the unemployeds and poors to buy unnecessary consumer goods and cards!!!

The LTLP presents me with a card. There is a long silence whilst I compose my anti-capitalist explanation in my head. Fortunately the bloke next door with a holiday cottage is off home and throwing some cut flowers away – I purloin them and present an ethically green recycled Valentine’s gift.

One year ago…

A romantic night in. A bottle of wine; the television. The LTLP is away at a work do, however.

This year…

I regret not buying more bread. As it is, I have to eke out the very end of a loaf in order that we have enough to fill the Breville sandwich maker. Something arrives for me from the LTLP. It is the aromatherapy stuff for the fungal infection around my knackers.

Submissions are open for this – a Lulu-published book in aid of the Warchild charity.

In the manner of Shaggy Blog Stories (which is still available – go buy one), Peach, who occasionally lurks in the comments box, is donning an Editor’s hat. She will look quite fit in it, with her woman’s face.

There’s a bit of a wider remit than for SBS – i.e. it doesn’t have to be funny. What it does have to be is under 1500 words and about ‘something you’ve been through from any aspect of your life that you want to share’.

I am trying to think of something, as I only really ‘do’ funny, apart from bits that are meant to be funny but don’t work out that way. I may write a short Misery Memoir about living next door to Short Tony.

Either way, please do get involved. There are full details over at Peach’s site. Go have a look.

The LTLP gazes unusually kindly upon me as I stumble round the kitchen. I have returned from a memorial service that has made me a) maudlin and sentimental and b) horrendously and embarrassingly pissed thanks to the generosity of the family concerned, and the fast-track ‘get horrendously and embarrassingly pissed’ gold card facilities of the Village Pub.

There is a crashing noise from next door, announcing the fact that Short Tony has returned also.

Something to eat is a priority. The LTLP offers several options, none of which seem quite right in the circumstances. There is something nagging at me. It is unusual to have something nagging at me that is not her, and I spend some time trying to identify the source of nag. Eventually I dredge up an old memory, of a man coming to the front door bearing a leaflet.

“You do?!?” I splutter at the telephone, incredulous, like a younger J.R. Hartley with half a pint of Adnams soaked into his shirt. “My name? It’s…”

I get on the phone to Short Tony. “I’vefoundakebabshopthat’lldeliver,” I slur. “To the Village.”

There are disbelieving noises at his end of the line. “It’s just,” I continue, “that they have a minimum order requirement.”

“Sorry. I’d love to,” he slurs. “But I’m cooking some pasta. For the diet.”

There are disbelieving noises on my end of the line, followed by a short argument. I ring off, and crossly ring Big A.

“He’s gone straight to sleep,” barks Mrs Big A. “No – he will not be having a kebab. I’ve cooked him dinner. I had cooked him dinner. And what the hell have you lot been…”

I ring off once more. Boooooooooo – nobody else wants a kebab. In the end I order sixteen pounds worth of kebab for myself and fall asleep during the first one.

I’m not sure how I can possibly get across what an implausible yet marvellous thing it is to find a kebab shop that will deliver to the Village. It is like a magic doorway of sustainance leading out from isolational hell. The only realistic parallel I can think of is that of a starving village in Africa where Oxfam have gone and built a well. And we didn’t even expect Oxfam to come to do all the kebabbing for us, which sheds some perspective on that continent’s difficulties. I will inform Bob Geldof and the man from Toto.

The Cottage smells of kebabs the next morning. I consider microwaving one up for breakfast, but decide against it.

At the beginning of the season, the league organisers took half a look at the Village team playing before allowing us all a generous handicap of 21 points. That meant that we got a 21-point head start against basically anybody who had ever picked up a snooker cue in their lives, ever.

Half way through the season, following our regime of practising, completing league and cup games, and playing semi-competitive matches amongst ourselves, they have come to regret their decision. As from the start of 2008 they have decided to up our handicap to 28 points, this being the maximum that anybody can have.

We were determined to prove them wrong in the first home fixture under the new regime, and thus pulled out all the stops and raised our game accordingly. After losing five frames to nil, we decided to stay for a practice frame amongst ourselves. The opposition elected to stay and watch because ‘it will be entertaining’.

This week we pulled off a huge coup, playing one of the best teams in the league!!! Medium-sized John required a snooker – which he got!!! Before we lost five frames to nil. I proudly took my opponent to a black-ball finish, as I started with a 28 point lead and he kept fouling. But I then missed the black ball completely thus conceding the frame.

There is something honourable in being so bad at something yet persisting. There is a piety yet a self-fulfilment that one simply does not get with success. Years back, everybody laughed at Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards for being a fundamentally blind rubbish ski-jumper who practised by crouching in his skis strapped atop a plasterer’s van that sped round the streets of Gloucestershire. But he was one of the true English heroes, and so are we all.