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In the afternoon I had a Frenchman in my van. Ali is back in the warehouse with all his Ali mojo. He’s on fire at the moment. He’s total Ali. Knowing he has it all in hand makes it much easier for me to start bussing things to people who want them urgently, and to start responding properly. I’ve got one or two venue managers who have realised I’m the sharp point of the stick and have started to try and get me to do their things direct. If it’s convenient I’ll do it, but I remember Kes on my first big job for him out in Saudi noticing I was being overused by a particular small group. “Don’t let them make you their personal driver, there’s too much else.”

I try to be the emergency response guy but don’t call me if you’re not happy with the size of the cable ties you’ve got. Call me if you’ve been spiking your timber for lack of screws and it’s starting to feel dangerous. Call me if nobody will work at height because there are no harnesses and the law says xyz. Call me if there’s a donkey in your venue and you can’t make it leave. Don’t call me because you think there’s a better colour of gaffer tape than the one you’ve already got please, Tony, with two excellent hardware stores twelve minutes from your one of about fifty venues. I’ll still respond. But before long you’ll have blown your credit and then, if that donkey gets in, you’re fucked as I’ll be prioritising the quiet ones. It’s often the quiet ones who are actually drowning.

I’m home. It’s later than I want it to be but we are in the crunch now. I wish there were more drivers than we have in the warehouse – if two people were working as hard as I am with two different vehicles it wouldn’t be so stressful.

But Edgar the Frenchman was my plus one for much of today, renting huge drills. He flattered me after my first exchange: “I didn’t realise you spoke such good French.” My French is archaic and influenced by my Jersey childhood. This means my participles are all over the place. The road I lived on was “Rue au blancq” White Road. “Rue blanc” in french. That au and the q both fucked me over at school and still jump out at me now.

You know the often eastern European or Italian guy with poor vocabulary but fluent English? That’s me in french. “Hi so I’m looking for a little metal thing that I can use to put tension into a steel cable ten millimetres thick, it has a hook one end and an eye the other.” “You want a tensioner ” “probably”

My vocab is improving though. Having Edwin in the cab helped. Practice makes perfect.