This was never going to be a relaxing day by the seaside despite me wanting one. I knew that going in. I was the one who booked the van.
There’s a whole hell of a lot of stuff that Lou has had in storage. The unit is about half an hour from hers and her grace period runs out at the end of the week. It is about to get expensive as storage does. It’s a rip-off as we all know by now, the storage game. Loadsa money so we can all do it later, whatever it is.
We hired a transit van and filled it. Bags and bags of fabric, man vs stairs. Fabric is heavy, kids. Lou was on unload and sort duty and needed to be as some of the stuff wasn’t going up. I was on yo-yo. Thankfully a young Sikh builder working in the block saw our predicament and got stuck in helping. About three quarters of the way through I collapsed into a chair drenched with sweat and panting. My heart rate was through the roof. I thought I was fitter than that but haven’t had a good run of theatre for some time. This is why people join gyms. Lou picked up my shortfall and it all got up up up into the sky palace. All those steps. Over and over.
Lou and I and the Sikh whose name I don’t know. Well done us. Hot sweaty work, yes, but satisfying. “You look exhausted,” said Johnny the Romanian builder, who had been watching us all graft. All I could do is grunt. He did help right at the end though. Unlike the English electrician guy but we knew he wouldn’t. He’s a lazy fucker.
Sweaty and knackered I hit the chair again and reaped the benefit of an almost forgotten morning impulse:
As I was buying my inevitable morning coffee, the chef at the café dumped four plump scotch eggs in a tray into the counter to put on display. “I’ll have one of those for later,” I said, and purchased his comestible at a fair price. This was me at my most inspired.
Reader, I am now that scotch egg.
Most of my inner juices had leaked out through my face and upper on the forever stairs. My tired and hungry molecules absorbed every bit of that meaty eggy delight. This is science, kids. Either I’ve just eaten the best scotch egg in the history of eggs-wrapped-in-spicy-porky- bits, or it came at precisely the right moment. Possibly both.
Oh porky egg, thank you for the power you gave back to me. I needed it.
In an attempt to do something healthier on the way home we stopped at the fish place round the back of Quentin’s gaff and ordered the biggest bream they had and five scallops. The scallops are already in us. I had to decapitate the bream with a bread knife but it is now wrapped in foil and baking away. Samphire and veg and tatties on the boil. Seaside fayre. Ten minutes to fish.
At some point tonight I’ll be that fish. I’ll get into a hot bath and swim around in it until all the aches and pains are loosened. This is essentially my weekend. I’m glad I get kicks out of doing hard work. Cos that was a schlep.
—
Full of fish. I lay in the bath for ages and I’m pickled. It’s equinox. The nights are getting darker.
