some minor geological shift, in which case, it’s accompanied by every other alarm in town.
That’s when I stand in front of the control panel, furiously punching in birthdays, dates, bank account details, gas metre registrations. The neighbours stop by to ask if I know my alarm’s going off, and suggest I try the year Southampton won the FA Cup, or the England cricket score. I’m tempted to take a hammer to the damn thing and pound it into submission. But my dearest comes demanding why I haven’t fixed it yet. “Hurry up, I’ve got work to do,” she growls.
“Yes, dear.” I try the median value of Tesco preference stock in 1998.
My son turns up to ask if I know the alarm’s going off. He suggests I phone the alarm company. “How dare you tell your father what to do,” I snap. “Go to your room! You’re grounded!”
“Yeah right, Dad.” He tells me he’s off to his mate’s house, whose parents don’t have an alarm. When it goes off at three in the morning is when I seriously dream of divorce.
But it doesn’t, and my wife digs her elbow into my ribs to inform me the alarm’s going off. She maintains it’s my job to fix it. After all, she insists, it was me that bought the damn thing. I lump out from under the covers into the Antarctic darkness: “I may be gone some time.”
“That’s nice, dear.” What does she care? She’s warm.
I skit across the icy floorboards in my underwear, onto the landing, where my teenage daughter is lurking. Her dental brace glints malevolently in the moonlight. She demands whether I know the alarm’s going off.
25 I explain that I’m well aware of this, and
enquire why she thinks I’d be running around the bloody house, half bloody naked, in the middle of the bloody night, unless I were bloody well doing something about it. For a moment, she is silent, staring at my middle-aged body, its sagging pecs and hanging
I burrow
under the covers, folded like a bat, driving my fingers into my ears, and praying God to … please … just make it go. Away!
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32