The man with no life
from 'The Burglar Diaries'
“Alright Adrian, how’s it going?”
Oh fuck it, I should’ve known not to pick up the phone. I did it without thinking and now I’m stuck with the sanctimonious bastard for the next half hour. If we were all robots, and thoughts and feelings didn’t come into it, I could just replace the receiver and carry on watching Minder on UKTV Gold, but unfortunately we’re not, so now I have to talk to my fucking brother instead.
“Oh, yeah, okay. Er, sorry I didn’t call you back last week. I got your message and everything but I’ve just been up to my eyes and everything (watching UKTV Gold), so I haven’t had a chance,” I tell Colin, who snorts derisively before asking the one and only question he knows how to ask.
“That’s alright. Anyway, so how’s it going?”
Motherfucker! Which is an even more complex insult when lumping it at your own brother. I hate this question. I hate everything about it. I hate the fact that it’s so ranging, vague and unimaginative. I hate that it takes absolutely no thought whatsoever to come up with it. That it’s lazy, contemptuous and interpretless. But most of all I hate the fact that it can be asked repeatedly, dozens and dozens of times in the course of the same conversation by the same fucking dimbo and never be answered to any degree of satisfaction. eg. “Oh yeah… so how else is it going?”
See, the problem is Colin phones up when he has nothing to say himself. No news, no stories, no anecdotes or thoughts. Just an insatiable appetite to know how it’s going. Not that Colin ever has anything to say for himself. If ever there was a man who so epitomised the phrase, “he doesn’t get out much”, it’s my shut-in window starer of a brother.
Pubs? He may get dragged to the odd one at Christmas if his workmates pressgang him into a drink, but by and large he has the same attitude to boozers that I have to florists. ie. he’s aware of them and knows other people use them but has no truck with them himself. “I don’t really drink much,” is his curious boast whenever I mention I’ve been out for a weekend on the lash. And as if to prove it, whenever I occasionally meet up with him for our bi-yearly catch-up, he always fidgets about for an hour or so nursing a glass of shandy and acting as if I’ve taken him to the dentists.
“Fancy a walk,” he’ll usually say after his second pint.
“What?” I’ll cough.
“A walk? A breath of fresh air? Get out of this stuffy pub. We could go over the park and take a look at the pond,” he’ll suggest.
What the…
I’ll see he’s serious and realise he’ll just get more fidgety as the afternoon goes on if he’s forced to endure another pint, so I’ll relent and let him have his way.
“Okay,” I’ll shrug. “I’ll get some cans.”
He’s the same with telly, books, movies or games. He doesn’t do any of them. Seriously, he sees all of this stuff as beneath him.
“Hey Col, see that thing on telly last night? That thing where they actually managed to film a space ship landing and a little man coming out and planting a flag on the lawn of Buckingham Palace? Incredible it was. Did you see it? It was on every channel around the clock and spells the end to life as we know it. Nothing will ever be the same again.”
“Nah, I don’t really watch telly.”
See, my brother thinks all of this stuff is mere window dressing for life. Pubs, books, newspapers, telly, cinema, crosswords, games, music, sports, pub quizzes, gardening, everything. They’re all something that other people do, but he hasn’t got time for. Why? I hear you ask. Is he the Prime Minister’s speech writer or on the brink of discovering a cure for Athlete’s Foot? No. He’s a fucking postman. In fact, he finishes work at 12.30pm so technically, he has more time for all this shit than most of us, but Colin’s a funny sort of bloke, he always has been. Ever since he was a kid. He likes to elevate his own importance and behave like the most knowledgeable man to ever pull on a pull-over. And nothing elevates a person’s own sense of self-importance quite like dismissing everything that everyone else is
into as trivial.
“Did you? I haven’t played with fireworks myself since I was a kid. When you get married you’ll find you don’t have time for these sorts of things.” And there you have it, this is Colin’s excuse for everything – being married. This is what burns up all of his time. It’s his full-time occupation. Don’t ask me how or what he does because I haven’t got a clue, but it’s been going on now for over ten years so Helen must have him doing something, but surely it can’t be watching that dull DVD over and over again (the one in which I get royally plastered and knock over the disco – he still hasn’t done me a copy) or sending out thank you cards, because I still haven’t had mine. So how being married is any more time-consuming than having a girlfriend is something of a mystery to me. I mean, I’m all moved in with Mel now. I’ve grown up and settled down. I cook the occasional tea, replace the bog roll when I can remember to and go to Tescos as much as the next bloke, but I’m still left with enough hours in the day to piss a good chunk of my life away in front of the horses, so why can’t Colin? What’s he doing that I’m not?
Nothing as far as I can make out, because he never has anything to say for himself whenever he rings up except:
“So, how’s it going?”
“Fine Colin. Not bad. And you?” I ask, fruitlessly trying to turn the tables on him.
Colin guffaws again, though at what I don’t know.
“Yeah, alright I guess,” he affirms.
And that’s it. That’s all he has to say. The phone goes quiet for a few moments as he tries to work out where he should take the conversation from here before asking a variation on a theme. “So, what have you been up to?”
As it happens, I’ve been up to quite a bit. I’ve watched three episodes of Minder back-to-back, made forty quid cutting a quarter of Skunk with Oregano and turned a tidy profit helping a young couple move house while they were away on holiday – not that they knew they were moving house, but they were stupid enough to hold a leaving drink in my local the night before they went to Australia for three months, so now they have less dusting to do when they get back. Electric even accidentally parted with twenty quid more than he intended to for the haul when a couple of his purples got stuck together, so all in all it’s been a very pleasant weekend indeed.
Not that I can tell Colin any of this as he’s holier than thou about my line of work. He wouldn’t dob me in or anything, but it would dislodge half an hour of sermonising from his end of the line so why bother? If you don’t like annoying clockwork monkeys wandering around your flat banging cymbals together all day long, don’t keep winding them up. That’s my basic philosophy.
So I fudge.
“Same old same old. You?”
“Not much,” he replies, which does beg the question then why the fuck is he phoning me up? I mean, if I’ve got nothing to tell anyone, I generally don’t give them a bell to let them know I’ve got nothing to tell them. I mean, what’s the point? But Colin doesn’t prescribe to this philosophy. Any occasion’s the ideal time to ring. It doesn’t matter if we ain’t got nothing to say, nothing’s happened and there’s no news to report, just as long as I miss Minder, that’s all that fucking matters. The thing that really annoys me though is that he’ll phone up, ask me how it’s going, then expect me to do a half an hour monologue on what’s new in my life because he’s too illiterate to pick up a book.
Mel tells me I shouldn’t be so hard on him, that he is my brother after all, which is nobody fault, least of all his. But serious, conversations aren’t spectator sports. Try chipping in a bit your end from time to time, particularly when you’re the one who’s instigated it.
“Yep, I ain’t really done nothing,” he confirms.
I breathe deeply through my nose, glance up at the telly and wonder why Terry’s swinging punches at that bloke who used to be on the coffee adverts before Colin starts laying into our dead horse again.
“So how’s Mel?” he asks.
“Fine,” I guess, though who ever really knows with women – without asking.
“She alright is she?” he corroborates, reading back over the transcript.
“Yeah, she’s okay,” I say, at a loss at what else to say. I mean, how is anyone? Everyone’s fine unless they’re not, aren’t they? And as far as I know she’s fine. She ain’t got a new job or Whooping Cough or nothing so she’s no different from how she was when she left for work this morning so I’m guessing she’s still alive and slagging me off to someone somewhere. Give her a bell if you like. Cut out the middle man.
“And how’s Ollie, what’s he been up to?”
Arrhhhh, stick on the fucking telly why don’t you? I want to scream, but then I’d be the one in the wrong, wouldn’t I. I’d be the one being hostile to my own flesh and blood when he’s only ringing up for a nice little chat, but seriously – fuck the fuck off!
“I don’t know, I ain’t seen him for a few days,” I tell him, just for variety, before going on the offensive.
“And how’s Helen then? Is she alright is she?”
“Yeah, she’s fine,” I hear him shrug, as if I’ve just rung him up out of the blue to ask him a completely pointless non-leading question.
See, what Colin really wants is for me just to volunteer everything I’ve been up to so that he can do his King Solomon bit and flex his learned counsel by telling me that he wouldn’t have done that if he was in my shoes. Which is what’s really going on here. That’s why he’s really ringing up. To enjoy the warm bask of accord as his younger and divvier brother seeks out the illumination of his elder kin folk’s superior wisdom. Thinking about it, he could’ve probably save himself the phone bill and just trotted round here seeing as he was on his high horse already.
But this is Colin all over. He’s been like this as long as I can remember for the simple fact that he had always been two and a half years older than me. And always will be. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t read papers, books, watch telly, listen to the radio or even have as many CSEs as me, his two and a half year head-start is all that counts, so in his eyes he will always be cleverer and more grown up than me.
“When you’ve been around as long as me…”
“When you’ve been married for as long as I have…”
“When you get to my age…”
These are Colin’s staple precursors and he’s been dropping them into conversations for longer than I can be bothered to remember. Certainly before either of us were out of short trousers.
“When you get to my age, you don’t really play with toys any more,” he told me on his eleventh birthday – no, I tell a lie, it was my ninth birthday. I remember it because I was showing him my new Action Man at the time. Cunt. Still, my Action Man was brilliant he was, with Eagle Eyes, gripping hands, rope ladder and the ability to play with himself in the garage whenever I was out, because that’s where I kept on finding him and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my mum or dad who made him a tool box Action base whenever I was at football practice.
“How’s the flat?” he asks.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” I reply, which is the stupidest question of the lot. I mean, a flat’s a flat, ain’t it. It’s four walls and a roof. How’s it likely to be? Feeling a bit down because no one’s mowed its lawn for over three months? Unfortunately, while I’m airing these thoughts I accidentally let slip that Mel‘s asked me to put up a few shelves in the living room, and that’s that, the damage is suddenly done. But I couldn’t help it, it just came out in the face of such relentless vacuousness. It’s a tactic that Weasel might perhaps consider next time he’s got me down the station. Just sit me in an interview room, stare at me blankly from across the table and ask me how it’s going a few trillion times and I’ll be coughing to all sorts before the day’s out.
“Shelves hey? Well if you need a hand with them you can give me a call if you like.”
“No, you’re alright. I’ll be fine,” I quickly back-paddle.
“I’ve put up dozens of shelves in our house. You know those ones in our bedroom?”
“No.”
“You can stand on those if you want.”
“Fine, I’ll be round in a minute to try.”
“See, and that’s only a dry-lined wall, but I used these proper elongated rawl plugs that went through the plasterboard and actually anchor directly into the brickwork. What sort of walls have you got?”
“I don’t know, they’re fucking walls aren’t they?”
Colin laughs at that. Fancy not knowing what sort of walls I’ve got. What a cunt!
“Well are they plastered or plasterboard?”
“Who cares Col, I’m only up putting a few shelves, I’m not starting work on Tom,” I tell him, causing him to chuckle even more, though not at my rather fine, but rather obscure Great Escape gag but at my shocking lack of shelf-cred.
“I’d better come over and show you what to do,” my mother’s second most disappointing child announces.
“No, I’m fine. I can do it. I don’t need any help,” I object.
“But you don’t even know what sort of walls you’ve got.”
“Well I haven’t looked at them yet have I? I’ll have a butcher’s later when I get five minutes.”
“How can you not have looked at your walls?”
“I dunno. I guess I haven’t been with my missus as long as you have. Besides, we’ve got Sky.”
He laughs again. I grind my teeth.
“Well if they sound hollow…”
“I know, I know. I know what a fucking plasterboard wall sounds like,” I tell him.
“Plasterboard’s one thing. A partition wall is quite another. Is it a supporting wall?”
Things go quiet at my end for a bit while I root around the ashtray for that joint with a couple of puffs left on it that I was saving for later and light it up.
“Hello? Hello?” the phone keeps asking my knee, forcing me to lift it to my ear again.
“Yeah, I’m here Col, I just dropped the phone for a moment.”
Colin laughs.
“So is it a supporting wall?”
“Yes!” I snap. “And it’ll be supporting a couple of shelves before the fucking week’s out. Alright? Happy?”
“Well if it is a partition wall, then don’t get those elongated rawl plugs that I got otherwise they’ll go straight through the other side. They’re only for dry-line walls, not internals. What you want are proper plasterboard rawl plugs.”
“Oh fuck me…”
“There’s several types. You can get either plastic or alloy. What sort of bead’s behind the plasterboard?”
“Seriously Colin, who fucking cares?”
“Well I think you’ll care when all your shelves come down around your head,” he chuckles, then ploughs straight on and does fifteen minutes on hidden gas pipes and plug sockets. By the end of it I’m ready to voluntarily weld myself to the National Grid just to end this conversation, but Colin’s showing no signs of slowing up. But then it’s my own fault. I gave him an in. A chink in my armour. A nook in my cranny, and now Colin’s burrowing through all sorts of conversations I really can’t be arsed with.
“What do you mean your Hoover’s broken? How long’s it been broken for?” (chuckle chuckle) How do you vacuum your carpets then? What does Mel say? Why don’t you borrow one from someone? I can’t lend you mine… no I’m sorry but I can’t, because the last time I lent you something I never got it back. And Helen would crucify me if I lent you our Hoover and you lost it because she’s still annoyed that you broke our barbecue tongs.”
“How many times? That wasn’t me, that was Ollie. He was the one that left ’em sticking out of the barbecue coals.”
“Well you invited him, so technically…”
“Colin, Colin!”
“What?”
“I don’t want to borrow anything off you, okay?”
“Well how are you going to clean up after you put your shelves up?”
I realise this conversation’s now out of control, like a runaway train and it’s smashing through every buffer I throw up in front of it. I’ve no alternative, I have to jump for it. And I have to do it now. Because if I don’t, the debris that’s likely to be thrown out is liable to ruin every family reunion from now until the first of either mine or Colin’s funerals.
“Listen Col, I’ve got to go. Sorry, no, but a new episode of Minder’s just started. And I think this one is the one where Rycott tries to close down the Winchester,” I tell him.
Colin guffaws. “Minder? Cor, I remember that. I didn’t even know it was still on. Are you still watching Minder?”
“I’m fucking trying to,” I remind him, watching Terry shake hands with Arthur across the bonnet of an old white Ford Capri.
Colin breaks into all out giggles.
“It must be nice to be able to…” he starts, but that’s his lot and I leave him to tell it to the dialling tone as the phone goes back on the base.
“Cunt!” I fume, which is a bit harsh and I don’t really mean it, but fuck me Colin, get with the programme.
I send him a text in the first ad break to smooth over the waters, telling him that my handset had started to beep, meaning it was about to pack up with a low battery, and predictably enough he phones me straight back on the mobile. I don’t answer it this time as I’ve talked to him for almost half an hour already today and he didn’t have anything to report then, so what he’s doing phoning me up a second time is anyone’s guess. I text him back again five minutes later and tell him I was on the bog so I couldn’t answer the phone, then direct all incoming calls to Voicemail. My mobile gives up beeping after ten minutes and I’m finally able to watch the rest of Minder undisturbed.
Five minutes after I Could Be So Good To You, the phone rings again, so I let the answering machine pick it up.
“Alright Bex, it’s Ol. Not phoning for anything in particular…” Ollie says, wasting my tape.
I snatch up the phone and press a couple of buttons before I’m able to convince Ollie it’s me who’s talking to him and not my BT Response 75. “Ollie. Ol mate. It’s me. I’m here. It’s me.”
“Oh, alright Bex, I was just leaving you a message,” he replies.
“Cushty, I look forward to listening to it later,” I tell him.
“What are you doing?”
“Not much, just screening my calls.”
“Oh,” Ollie ohs. “Aren’t I a privileged bunny then.”
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Nothing, just bored,” he says. “How’s it going?”
“Yeah, not bad. I’ve just watched Minder,” I tell him.
“What on UK Gold? Yeah, I just watched that one an’ all. Seen it before though,” he says.
“Well, same here, but not for about twenty years.”
“Nah, it was on this morning at eleven,” he says.
“What else you been up to then?” I ask him.
“No much,” he admits. “Just phoning for a chat really. So how’s it going?”
“Yeah, alright,” I tell him. “Thinking of putting up some shelves in a bit.”
“What sort of walls you got?” he asks.
“Plasterboard apparently.”
“Dry-lined or partition?”
“What the fuck…?”
“You know you have to use plasterboard rawl plugs with plasterboard, don’t you? They sort of screw out as you screw the screw into them.”
“As it happens, I do. Thinking of getting the alloy ones,” I tell him, partly to get ahead of this conversation and partly to blow his socks off with my rawl plug know-how. Ollie is suitably impressed.
“Sweet,” he smacks. “They’ll hold up anything, they will.”
“Bring over some cans and you can help us if you like.”
“I’ll see you in a bit then.”
Which just goes to show, there are ways of talking about shelves and there are ways of talking about shelves.
Just as there are ways of talking about everything and nothing in particular.
All it takes is practice.
Practice and possibly UKTV Gold.
The end
Yet More Burglar Diaries – Danny King 2008 ©