Baldyman

Since I last posted, summer failed to arrive (no surprise), football didn’t come home (even less of a surprise) and we now find ourselves in the midst of a petrol shortage because octogenarians Alfred & Margret feel the need to fill their tank to the top just in case they run out during their monthly, half a mile round trip to B&Q to buy some cress seeds. So we can’t get anywhere because we can’t get petrol and if you can get petrol you still can’t get anywhere because clowns are sat blocking the roads because they want to insulate Britain (and there was me thinking the loft was a big job!) And then to top it all off, just days ago we were all faced with the apocalyptic crisis of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp all being down simultaneously. This left us with a 7 hour void of not knowing which restaurant the Love Island winners were dining at, not seeing any pictures of our not particularly close friends’ pets sleeping and above all, the beyond  frightening prospect of having to actually speak to people if we wanted to contact them.  I am pleased though that Covid is hopefully on the decline because the last time I went to a drive-through, instead of a Big Mac, fries and milkshake I ended up with a giant cotton bud burrowed half way up my nostril and a sample bag plucked from my grasp by a plastic claw through a centimetre gap in the window as if I were a resident of Chernobyl.

In the popular Channel  4 TV programme ‘SAS: Who Dares Wins’ the penultimate and most demanding phase (Evade & Capture) sees the remaining recruits go on the run before being  tracked down by sniffer dogs, blindfolded and subjected to a gruelling prisoner interrogation process. In the next series, this task will be directly replaced by a new element entitled ‘packing and moving out of a 4 bedroom house on 36 hours notice using only a Luton Transit Van as transport.’  To put the two into context, one is a process that pushes you beyond your physical and mental capabilities, shatters your human resolve and leaves you sleep deprived, broken and with likely long term psychological damage. The other is an exercise commonly used in British specialist military training.

So after what had seemed an eternity, my house sale and subsequent house move finally went through but (and there always seems to be a but) true to form, not without more drama than an evening at the Inside Soap Awards.

With the upcoming Stamp Duty deadline just  five days away and still no sign of an exchange date, my weekend packing plans were halted because, and to directly quote my estate agent, “After all these months your buyers would have to be mad to expect you to organise a move in less than 48 hours.” Fast forward to 3.25pm on Monday when I took the following phone call whilst patiently queuing to fork out a quid for a 2p ice pop from my son’s after school playground charity ice cream stall (all profits go towards new gym equipment which I can only assume will be gold and diamond encrusted!)

ME: Hello (immediately concerned that estate agents calling me rarely brings good news)

ESTATE AGENT: Your buyers want to exchange today and complete on Wednesday.

ME: Which Wednesday?  (my indifference towards overpriced frozen flavoured water suddenly took on far less significance)

ESTATE AGENT: This Wednesday, they want to beat the stamp deadline.

ME: And I want a centre parting but that’s not happening either. They’ve messed me around for months and now somehow expect me to turn this around in 48 hours?

ESTATE AGENT: Yes although it’s probably closer to 40 hours if the completion happens in the morning (clearly not destined for a future career in stress management).

ME: Look I think it’s about time we made a few things clear to my buyers. Firstly you can tell them that I’m not someone who is just going to roll over to their every demand. Secondly you can tell them that I’m not someone who is going to jeopardize my own mental and physical health by creating a stressful situation just to please them. And thirdly you can tell them that I’m not someone who under absolutely any circumstances in this world is going to betray my strong principles, values and beliefs by moving out by Wednesday!

ESTATE AGENT: They’ll pay you an extra £4000 today.

ME: I’ll get the cardboard boxes and packing tape.

And so with the help of an amazing friend, who I now owe a million favours (and probably a lifetime of therapy), we embarked on a mission so impossible that not even Tom Cruise would have shown an interest to participate. A Luton van (with a windscreen entry keypad more difficult to crack than the Enigma Code) was hastily hired and a night of frantic packing ensued in preparation of a two man removal day inspired jointly by both the Chuckle Brothers (To me) and the chimpanzees from the 70’s PG Tips advert (“Dad do you know the piano’s on my foot?”, “You hum it son and I’ll play it”)

Mentally it was going to be a tough day but as a man who has sat on his arse in an office chair for over 20 years and regularly complains about carrying heavy shopping bags from the car, the physical aspect was likely to prove the greatest obstacle. So where better to visit in order to tackle these concerns than the local road side greasy spoon café which would offer me the opportunity to;

1. Fuel up for the day’s work ahead by eating until I was fuller than a panic buyer’s petrol can.
2. Display my side splitting yet timeless comic genius by answering that I was “sweet enough” when offered sugar in my tea.
3. Take inspiration from an alpha male clientele that were so macho that they made Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson look like Alan Carr.

In a carpark awash with white vans, ladders and scaffolding poles, I could only hope that the skills I had demonstrated two years previously in constructing an Ikea bedside table in under three hours would be enough to see me through. My shaven head helped me to initially blend in and I was fortunate that the ongoing Covid handshake ban would at least prevent my limp wrist and baby soft hands from immediately exposing me for the impostor that I was.

Ignoring the glaring contradiction of a 5 Star hygiene certificate hung in an entrance hall with a carpet stickier than Golden Syrup  , I gingerly entered only to be disappointed to discover that nobody was actively smoking behind the counter like I have regularly seen on ‘Minder’ and ‘Only Fools and Horses’. After a fleeting glance of my surroundings, I made an immediate hunch decision that for my own safety and that of others, I should almost certainly avoid asking about any of the following;

• Almond milk.
• A ‘Specials’ board.
• A vegan alternative.
• Lightly poached eggs and smashed avocado served on sourdough bread.

As it turned out, there was a number of alternative gargantuan sized fried breakfasts to choose from, or a ‘build your own’ option which was fundamentally a decision of how high you wanted your cholesterol  levels to rise and whether you had any desire to live past 50 years of age. As I sat there with fried slice in hand listening to a tattooed, paint splattered man tell a loud anecdote about his non-present close friend’s very private sexual misfortunes, I had never felt more manly or capable of heavy lifting.

The collection of the rental property keys was essentially the starting gun for the removal equivalent of a trolley dash to get everything shifted before we were notified that the sale had completed. Anything and everything left unpacked was crudely swept into any container suitable for transportation, leaving most boxes filled with a severe mismatch of items never previously witnessed outside the middle aisle at Aldi.

The strict time restraints saw the majority of the removal items deposited with all the poise and care of a disgruntled airport baggage handler, with the new kitchen left looking like the publicity shots for the new series of ‘Britain’s Biggest Hoarders’. With the ordeal finally over I decided to take some well-deserved rest only to find myself waking at 2.30am in a sweat worthy of Prince Andrew brought on by a  terrifying realisation (and not that I was bald, 47 and no longer a home owner).

After completion the previous evening I had been instructed to post the house keys through the estate agents’ letterbox in order for the new owners to collect them first thing the next morning. While in essence this had been completed successfully, in my clearly mentally drained state, the door through which I had deposited them had in fact belonged to the company from which I was now renting rather than the one that had actually sold my house. So one would start the working day faced with irate owners with no way of entering their new property and the other with the mystery of a set of unidentified keys on their doormat ( to make matters worse the two offices are directly next to each other and I still hadn’t twigged before making this almighty blunder.)

With my phone battery about to die and its charger about as likely to be found as Lord Lucan (there were alternative candidates here but this seemed the least controversial) I hastily fired off some barely comprehensible emails in an attempt to rectify my colossal balls up. An early morning visit to the offices quickly sorted things out and while I soon saw the funny side of it all, some of the younger employees seemed more indifferent as they gave me looks not too dissimilar to those of Clarice Starling when she first set eyes on Hannibal Lector.

The house is working out really well but there will always be things that are different that you need to adjust to when you first move in. It took a month for the Wifi to be installed, the lack of a dishwasher has seen an enforced return to the marigolds but on the flip side there are Indian and Chinese takeaways within two minutes’ walk and the local ice cream van (‘Mrs Soft Whip’ – although she only offers 99s as far as I’m aware) stops right outside my back fence twice a day (as you can imagine the weight loss journey is going from strength to strength).  I also encountered an early conundrum when the tumble dryer I had brought with me could not be installed due to the necessary ventilation and I was awaiting the arrival of a new washer dryer. My son then needed a cricket shirt washed and dried in an extremely quick turnaround with my options to achieve the latter very limited.

I was hoping to provide the local residents with a new neighbour that would be valued, trusted and make a positive contribution to the local community. Unfortunately what they actually got was a middle aged man in an ill-fitting dressing gown flashing his man cleavage as he unwound a ten metre extension lead in order to plug in a noisy kitchen appliance in the middle of his back garden. And while the shirt was successfully dried in time, the public display of eccentricity needed to achieve this will almost certainly cost me any present or future social interaction with anyone living within a three mile radius.

The extensive summer broadcasting of the Tokyo Olympics once again allowed viewers to witness the world’s greatest athletes battle against each other in an attempt to achieve sporting immortality. Or in my case, gave me the opportunity to stay up until 3.30am with a toast, Dorito and chocolate hobnob banquet to watch Montenegro against Kazakhstan in a Preliminary Round Group B encounter  from the Tatsumi Water Polo Centre ( after 4 enthralling quarters, and 3 less enthralling sofa de-crumbings, Montenegro emerged worthy 19-12 winners).

I have always been drawn to watching the more obscure Olympic sports that I know absolutely nothing about, yet after only about 10 minutes of viewing regularly find myself analysing the participants’ performances as if I were a seasoned expert.

• “He’s over rotated a bit before his entry there” (Diving)
• “That dismount wasn’t the smoothest ” (Gymnastics)
• “Why doesn’t she just kick her in the f***ing face!” (Taekwondo)
• “That’s not the cleanest snatch I’ve ever seen” (Weightlifting)

So basically sporting heroes who have trained tirelessly for 4 years being criticised by a man with the personal conditioning of an over fed guinea pig whose own definition of a physical triumph is getting his socks on in the morning in under 3 attempts.

Tokyo also saw the inclusion of skateboarding, BMX riding and climbing which means when I thought I was just wasting my summer holidays with my mates in the 80’s, we were, unbeknown to us, in actual fact on a 6 week intensive training camp to be a potential future Olympic champion. I’m hoping that this trend with pastimes from my youth continues on to the next games in Paris 2024 where I very much look forward to seeing the introduction of;

• Conkers.
• Knock Down Ginger.
• Rubik’s Cube.
• Finding discarded pages from pornographic magazines in hedgerows.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this and please make sure you all stay safe and well.