Sticks and Stones 13

I picked Clara and Griff up at lunchtime today and whipped them into Lavaur for Clara’s dance class at two. During that time, I took Griff to a kid’s shop where we got him a proper model of a battleship and then had a coffee and ice-cream, where a five-year old boy had a cute, shy staring contest with Griff, who complied brilliantly with the little whippersnapper and his grandmother.
It was pissing down so we elected to drop the model in the boot so Clara didn’t think it was for her and also to keep it dry (there have to be two reasons for everything where two kids are concerned).
Clara had had a great time at dance and so we went to the local cinema, showing Wallace and Gromit. I paid the sixteen euros and we ended up staying for twenty minutes. I’d bored of the little twat of ten behind me tapping my seat with her shoe.
After I asked her to stop it, Clara didn’t want to stay. She’d been wriggling in her seat since the start and I think she found W and G a bit too handmade for her liking. Griff was upset it was in French, so we hopped it and went back home with the usual Psyence Fiction by James Lavelle and DJ Shadow on the stereo.
At home, Griff wanted to get his model out and Clara wanted to watch telly, or maybe that was what I wanted her to do, still unable to address responsibility as a constructive parent on an hourly basis. I’m lazy, I admit it.
I went out last night and got drunk. A woman came in to the bar and sat down next to me. She was drunk, beautiful but old.
What turned out to be her husband sat next to the bloke I’d been spouting off to about why the UK would never join the euro, and his wife tried to place her hand on my cock, which didn’t rise, on several occasions. She wrote me a ‘poem’ in my little red and black book, about meeting an angel and that she hoped we’d meet again, and then asked me if I’d fuck her at my place. Her husband wouldn’t mind, she said, pulling his lapel to confirm this. He nodded with a chuckle. ‘Elle n’est pas mal, huh?’ he said with a wry smile.
This was all too weird, so I declined and left.
Today, I woke up with one of those hangovers that dogs the mind but doesn’t force the stomach to expel the evidence. The phone repeatedly told me I should get up, but I refused, sipping water every eight minutes for two hours. At eleven, I called Suzie. She told me that the dog had eaten the cat food, a kitten had pissed on a duvet and that there was no coffee (her only vice apart from sugar) in the house. She also told me that it was her period. This was the first time she’d warned me in advance in a calm way, so I took it seriously.
I arrived at noon to the smell of lamb in the oven. The potatoes and carrots were going in as well.
I sipped some juice and felt my stomach want to expel it, so I asked if I could lie down for a while. Suzie was dismissive and I could see the dissatisfaction in her demeanour. The moment passed and I woke up well. The two Nurofen had worked without the need to puke and I was happily surprised.
Lunch went swimmingly. We all sat down to eat and Clara wolfed down her lamb. Then, she tucked in to her pots and carrots, leaving her plate clean. On the other hand, Griff and Maddy pottered along, snatching bread and butter to muscle up against the pots and carrots that we knew they’d never eat. Suzie got angry with Griff for not eating anything (he usually waits till the end of the meal to announce that he’d like a chocolate biscuit or two) and the vibe went. It’s the norm, and I let it go.
At fiveish, I drove to the village where we used to live to tell my friends that the soiree at Les Americains was starting a week later. I saw Denis and we tried to find a laser printer on the internet so that I could print my short stories without paying the earth for cartridges of ink.
When I got back, the gerbils’ home, a big fishtank, was being changed and the hoover was blocked with all their crap. A kitten had pissed on Suzie’s bed again and the duvet was too big to fit in the washing-machine, so she’d washed it in the bath and hung it out to dry in the garden. Clara wanted to play with the gerbils desperately but Suzie had too much on her plate to make sure they didn’t run off while she was cleaning the fishtank.
Griff and Maddy ran upstairs, thinking an argument might develop from my being back with the mayhem.
This time, though, I felt no need to add fire to the flames. Having the flat gave me strength and patience with my own anger, and soon everything was fine. We had a little play with the gerbils and then popped them back into their home.
Suzie talked of her frustration at having to live in a confused way every minute of the day and I listened without making her rise. Her period had got the better of her, and she saw only the negative.
We went upstairs and watched some SpongeBob Squarepants, and all became better.