I put my fears about work to one side and decided to let life happen to me. I don’t believe in such thinking but the truth was that if I had tried to fight against it I would have lost and losing takes away your spirit. I needed all the spirit I could muster and started planning for things I could control.
I got Elly to organize for doors to be installed at our new home and also to have insulation put into the roof then sealed off. Another thing we needed sorting were the stairs but I didn’t want to pay for stairs when builders would be going up and down scratching them. I had never applied my brain to solving building site logistical problems but it seemed obvious to me that we should build a little step then just let the builders use the concrete base and install expensive wood steps when everything was finished.
It also seemed logical to get an electrician in to install light fixtures and plug sockets. This was where we had our first real headache. The sparky needed to know what each room was going to be and where everything would go. I had never thought about where I’d put the TV aerial, where plug sockets would go and how many I’d need. I had just dealt with what was there when I arrived.
Me and Elly sat down and started to think things through.
We identified what would be our kitchen and bathroom. We picked rooms either side of the bottom floor. I knew that I wanted to get our bedroom and Andrew’s room designed and finished next. That took up the whole of the ground floor. I thought that was enough and once we’d moved in we could organize the upstairs. I had wild plans for a home gym, a guest room for friends and family, I even thought about a second room for a second child maybe we would have a girl in the future.
I was getting carried away with myself and told Elly that we needed to be practical and do things in stages.
Stage one was the electrician and roof, well after the doors.
Stage two would be getting the kitchen and bathroom sorted.
Stage three would be the bedrooms and stairs.
Stage four would be organizing the horrid garden.
Since I wouldn’t have any work soon, I’d have plenty of time to do things myself and as Elly got to work finding the men we needed most urgently I decided to hit up some bars.
Nothing is as depressing as a depressed person drinking alone in a bar. There is something to be said for drinking with friends but when you catch sight of yourself drinking alone it is even worse than watching one fat girl stuffing down a family size pizza
No. It wasn’t a clever idea.
Once I’d had enough to drink in one place I was stumbling my way along the pavement to the next. People could see from my Ali shuffle that I was a little enthusiastic for so early in the day. It wasn’t an uncommon site and I probably saw at least five or six drunks who were stumble bumming around worse than I was.
I happened to notice the Hair Club for Men as I steadied myself against a bus stop. If I wasn’t angling my head up I would never have noticed it as it was so high up, on the top floor of a building. No signs on the ground floor. I wasn’t going to be perturbed though and as I stumbled through the foyer and lent against the elevator burping along to the muzak, I thought about returning to Elly with a stylish new do.
I walked into an open plan salon and was greeted by a very happy little Asian man. I want to say he was Chinese, maybe Vietnamese but in all honesty I have no clue. He had a typical jet black Beatle’s cut hair do, not what I’d be leaving with. He sat me down on some minimalist leather puffs with style books full of handsome men and their wonderful new haircuts. He returned with green tea and as I pointed out the style I wanted, he said things I couldn’t comprehend.
He wasn’t dissuaded by our lack of communication and he led me off into a booth. It was a bit strange as it was curtained off. I could see the appeal of such a thing, a bit more privacy but I was getting drowsy and the curtain restricted the light and made me even more sleepy. A women entered and smiled at me.
She was about five foot eight in heels. She had a very tight short dress on and to say it was tight was to ignore the fact that she was a little chunky. She spun me round and tipped me skyward to start washing my hair and massaging my scalp.
That felt good.
She brushed up against me repeatedly with her breasts. Sometimes hairdressers do this by accident, it’s just part of the job but I was getting the feeling that this was too frequent for that. She started to wash my eyebrows.
Are you supposed to condition and shampoo your eyebrows?
Does that go for all your hair?
She certainly was thorough and began to wash my pubic hair as well. I laid there part intoxicated, part aroused and just let it happen. She had a zip at the front of her dress and zipped it off. She was naked underneath and a light bulb went off, I understood what the curtain was for. A strange, unique front but am guessing a successful one.
She turned around and started squatting onto me. A not unpleasant phenomenon.
I checked my watch and thought about hitting the office up afterwards or just heading back to the flat and Elly.
God, Elly.
It was too late though and as I bucked to try and get her off she just rode me harder and that felt even better. This was turning into a battle of wills and mine was being divided and conquered. She was the victor and she knew once the war was over.
She produced some wet wipes and cleaned me off. When she’d done herself she zipped back up, popped me back in my pants and sent me on my way. The little smiling man presented me with a calculator with a number on it. I produced a fist full of notes which he grabbed at and he returned some to me but how much he took I’ll never know. I don’t think I really want to know and with my hair still damp I stumbled back out into the World.
I decided that I should grab some food and a coffee then I walked home. The walk took about an hour and when I finally got home I was sober enough to spin a good story and say it was just two beers after work with Kins. Elly was so caught up in decorations she wouldn’t have noticed. I went to bed early and slept like a baby.
The next day I told Elly about my work situation or future lack of work situation. I then repeated that we should decorate the downstairs first, move in and do the rest when we had the cash. I wanted to do a lot of the work anyway and now I was going to be forced into it. I was glad that I’d been so enthusiastic at first because I certainly hadn’t planned to do so much but once we’d budgeted the materials and contracted out the doors, roof, electrics and plumbing jobs, there wouldn’t be much left.
I wanted a dog and after seeing the cute puppies at her Aunts that were so uncared for I asked if we could go and take one. She surprised me by agreeing and then telling me that builders would be arriving to start work the following Monday. She wanted to set-up there to greet the builders and keep an eye on them. I had to be convinced that it was safe for her and as stupid as it sounds I was slightly swayed by the idea of the puppy.
I had some pretty big cheques to sign and Elly seemed nervous about asking for the money. I asked to see the contracts and said it would be better if I paid them via the internet but she said that she’d contacted friends of the family and would pay in cash.
Alarm bells were ringing loud and clear at that announcement.
“I’d rather have real builders do a proper job than some village drunks botch it up.”.
“Just because Polish does not mean drunk. Look at you yesterday English.” She stormed.
“That’s not what am saying.” It might have been. I wasn’t sure of much at that point. “Why can’t they give us a contract with a guarantee?”
“Word is guarantee.”
“If your word is good then you’ll sign a legal document which says the same things. Contracts don’t lie.”
“No one is cheating you. You are cheating me. My family give you so much and now you want to question long time friends of my family?”
Yes.
That was the obvious answer.
I wanted a contract and not a vodka stained handshake.
I wanted to be able to take them to court when in two years the half assed job they’d done started to bite me in the ass. The argument raged on. It wasn’t my house anyway. It was her family’s and who was I to choose who would do the work there or what should be installed.
Who was I?
The fucking mug who was paying, that’s who.
By the time the weekend had rolled around guilt and the realisation that things needed to be done on the cheap led me to agreeing to hiring or well, paying Elly’s Granddad’s friend’s son and his crew. The electrician was an old friend of Elly’s Mum and the doors had already been fitted by an actual professional who gave a receipt and everything.
I knew he was a professional because we made an appointment, he came, measured up, came back and fitted the doors. That is how things should work. I knew there were some sensible business people in every country, unfortunately that did not extend to the son’s of friend’s of Granddad’s of women with foreign lovers. No the roofers should have turned up on horseback with their six-shooters holstered to their hips because they were cowboys plain and simple.
We visited Elly’s Aunt and Uncle’s come her Grandparents the weekend before they should have started and I was warmly welcomed. I thought that it was because they really liked me, maybe they just liked me pouring more vodka money into the village.
We had come not for a visit really but to collect one of the dogs. A black and brown one, at least he’d look like an Alsatian even if he was pint sized. We had already prepared by buying a food and water bowl, a lead and some toys. We had brought a blanket, some doggy treats and the toys with us to the countryside to collect him.
Elly didn’t really care and spent much of her time talking to her family. I studied the three dogs and saw that one was a little calmer. When the other two were rough housing, the third watched on. He disappeared one time only to return moments later with a slice of watermelon in his mouth that was bigger than he was.
That was my dog. That was my Krueger.
I couldn’t have been happier returning triumphantly in the back of Elly’s Mum’s minivan with little Krueger to our home. We had our first baby in our hands and he did fit into the palm of your hand. He was so excited, so nervous, so full of fleas. He watched excitedly out of the window as we drove off. He had never been out of the village before and I got a feeling, a strange and wonderful feeling showing him something that he’d never known. I poured some water out of a bottle into my cupped hand and as it seeped through he lapped it up. Elly wanted to do it but giggled when he licked her and dropped the water on her leg.
They were beginning to bond but I’d read that she should be careful of the fleas and we had brought some spray and doused him with it in the van. I didn’t think about checking if the chemicals were ok for Andrew.
Krueger gobbled up doggy treats from Elly’s hands and then she produced a soft pink elephant and he curled up and fell asleep on it. That elephant was later subjugated to Krueger’s sex toy/wife. He ripped her stuffing out when he’d had enough of her and moved on.
That was true love.
Falling asleep on each other, frantic humping, ripping each other to shreds and then moving on to the next victim, I mean romance.