Sticks and Stones 4

I’m thinking of taking the D2H for a nocturnal sortie into town. There are few cars passing by below and Andorra seems to be the most lawful place on earth considering there’s no tax here.
It’s also very dull. The only thing I’ve done since being here is shop for Nikon parts and a laptop for Suzie. The parts are too expensive, though, and they don’t do qwerty keyboards, so I just traipse back and forth to the hotel, wondering if the porter or the cleaners have used some police-evidence dust to find my fingerprints for the four-digit number I tapped into my room-safe where the Nikon sleeps with its lenses.
I even thought about wiping down the safe’s keypad after I tapped the numbers in last time but I think I forgot to do it in the end. Still, I suppose some things just have to be left to chance. (Maybe I’ll use a different code next time.)
There’s not one English pub in the whole of Andorra, which gave me angst when I realised that I’d have to endure watching Barcelona in the Champions League on the room telly instead of Ajax-Arsenal at the pub. I was sure my dead friend said that Andorra was full of pubs, but I must have imagined it.
Maybe it’s a good thing, because I’d have certainly spent at least one night puking up in the bathroom if there had been pubs a plenty.
I’ve managed two-thirds of this bottle of red wine and the Nurofen is doing its job with vim.
Tomorrow, I’ll buy that 70-300mm zoom I saw today. I saw two, in fact, but one was a third the price of the other. The cheaper one’s saving grace is that it’s a Nikon, and that’s what I’m after. Everything Nikon.
It’s easier to write than to go page by page through the instruction manual of the monster, and I know I’ll forget all I’ve read by sunrise, whereas, by writing, I’m telling a story, however flimsy it may be.
When I think of Suzie, Clara, Griff, Maddy, Hero (our black lab), the four kittens yet to be named, Mitzy, Leila, Minxy (cats), the five gerbils, all the bats that live behind the shutters and the mice that live in the attic, I know there is a future that is worth attaining and working towards, but I can’t help thinking that I’m just not up to the job.
How, in the family’s current form, can Suzie and I advance mentally and therefore financially?
She’s promised herself to do a distance course in editing for three years now, but even with the money she gained from the house near Toulouse, free time still eludes her.
‘Why don’t you do that course, Suze?’ I asked her on more than one occasion, almost pleading for her to make time for herself, rather than running around making sure everyone’s bedrooms are clean and tidy, filled with toys and clothes for them to throw around, only for the same clear-up session to be re-enacted the following day. When will she see that, without giving herself time to flourish as an adult with a brain in very good condition, she will soon close all opportunities available to her, and blame it all on me?
She’ll hold me responsible for every one of her shortcomings and make it clear to the children that ‘things could have been very different’ (if she hadn’t met me). They will know, as I will shrivel in their eyes, that it was me who let them down.
But wait! I haven’t let them down yet!
I spoke to Suzie tonight and she sounded almost well, even if I had taken the laptop and denied her time to place bets on Betfair.
She repeated that she had so little time that she’d forgotten to send the £2 cheques to the banks in England, although she reckoned she might just make it in time, if she managed to find a post-box tomorrow. Unfortunately, I could hear her squeezing the trigger of rising tension. By Friday, she’d be blaming me for my absence, but that was still a couple of days away.
One other reason I came away from the family was to show Suzie just how much I do when I’m there compared to when I’m not, because she seems to think, and constantly says so in front of her audience, the children, that I do nothing all day and spend hours on end at the bar. Why don’t I get a job like most men?
That’s when I tell her that I can’t get a job because I promised to pick Clara up from school at midday every day and have plenty of other things to do that are far more pressing than work and almost all to do with the children.
At this point, if Suzie’s period is anything to do with it, we find ourselves wrapped in heated hatred, hurling hideous hatchets of words at each other to cancel out the pain inside.
I have been weighing up on a sliding scale of torment whether it is best for me to stay or leave this relationship. The pain attached to the repeated series of horrendous outbursts between Suzie and I makes my leaving seem like Disneyland for the children, for Suzie and for myself. We are both reasonably solvent, for six months at any rate.
But then I recall that these outbursts, even with the build-up and fallout included, only account for a fraction of the time, which is mostly spent doing the family thing with a few good bits tacked on to make it worthwhile.
What really gets me is seeing other children when I’m away from home. I’m so bored with grown ups that children offer me a peace that I know will never be there again for me if I am to leave for good.
Besides that, there’s my lifelong fear of being alone somewhere. The longest I’ve lasted in one relationship before Suzie was one and a half years, and that was pushing it, and the longest I’ve stayed in one place is about seven months. Home is a foreign concept to me, and always has been.
Five or so Christmas’ ago, Suzie and I decided to rent a van and do a soup run for the homeless in London. We’d both always wanted to do that.
During her time working in London, Suzie had always enjoyed talking to and photographing the homeless on her way back to Waterloo, whereas I had always retained a fear of becoming a tramp aged fifty. It was like looking in the mirror.
I managed to get the van and loads of soup, tea, coffee and sugar for free by calling a few trades and Suzie made extra-special sandwiches.
The first night was a success. We parked up outside St John’s church in Lambeth, put out some tables and chairs and stayed on till five in the morning.
I filmed one guy there telling me how he’d been given a lovely new mews house with three bedrooms in Brixton just last month but, having been on the streets for so long, he couldn’t get used to the fact that he had somewhere to live. He hadn’t spent one night in this house since being given the keys by the council. He was scared that someone might break in or that they’d take it away from him if he got lairy with neighbours.
Other well organised soup runners came and went in a matter of minutes, dropping off supplies like army personnel in a war zone, but Suzie and I stuck it out all night. The homeless loved us.
The next night, I went up alone. I got all the chairs and tables out like the night before, but there weren’t as many people this time.
Being Christmas Eve, I thought I’d be packed out. The guy that couldn’t go home was there and the Penniless Poet only ducked in to save himself getting his head beaten in by a less than savoury northerner.
The old guy that always got moved on from the seats by the statue of St John at midnight showed his face for a while, but it was a dull night overall. I asked him why the lighting was so good in the church grounds and he laughed.
‘It’s so we can’t sleep,’ he said.
At about three o’clock, a drunk youth who claimed to be India’s richest man came up to us and showered twenty pound notes around the place before hazardously meandering towards his hotel with inebriated tears rolling down his olive cheeks.
Thinking about it, after the money had been redistributed, the crowd that had slowly formed suddenly dispersed quickly. Dealers are easy to find in Lambeth.
On the third and final night, Steve joined us so I decided to take some lagers and whisky up, being Christmas Day, the big one for the homeless.
Maddy and Griff were with their father, and Clara was but a twinkle in an eye.
Along with the sandwiches and soup, Steve had bought a nice big Christmas cake and a small bottle of brandy, so I got the ghetto-blaster and bought some extortionate batteries from the petrol station on the way up for what we hoped would be a proper night out on the toils.
The guy who couldn’t go to his new house was in a bad way. He’d tried to go home for the first time that day but found that the locks had been changed. The council had repossessed his house and given it to an Afghan family of ten.
I tried cheering him up with a joint but that only made him worse.
When the Penniless Poet turned up, the guy headbutted him. I asked him why he did that and he told me that he’d tried to convince him earlier in the day that I was an undercover copper attempting to bust the local drug/thief network (in order to get me beaten up), so I was glad to see the back of him, although I’d still have served him if he’d stayed on.