Feeling guilty?

Another night of Children In Need. Upsetting, uncomfortable and difficult to watch. Three ways to describe Alan Sugar’s attempts at humorous acting and Ian Beale in a tight pink jumper and skirt, pushing a hoover around his living room to the tune of Queen’s “I want to break free”. All this uncomfortable viewing between the many short sad films about the kids of the UK that need the help and the money.
DVD Andy has always suspected me of being guilty of spending my weekly Thursday’s off just like Freddie, with the hoover, as Thursday is usually housework day. This week, however, I was waiting on plumbers coming round to give us a quotation for the installation of Gas central heating. Unfortunately, after being given the quote, we’re not sure we’ll bother. Two and a half grand they want for putting central heating into our wee one bedroom flat. A normal house costs between three and four so I think we may just stick with what we’ve got.
The good old electric.
We’d only be installing the gas heating to help sell as it seems to be the only complaint from possible buyers who’ve come round to view. Look’s like we’ll just have to wait on a non energy biased buyer.
We barely use the electric anyway. The guys in work, asked me how we usually keep warm if we don’t use it. We never need it, though with the winter just around the corner Ka and myself could, quite soon, be finding ourselves walking around with double helpings of dressing gowns. At the moment it would seem all Ka needs is Michael Buble. The wife was up dancing around the living room in her pyjamas on Thursday night as the singer started his contribution to the Children In Need Rocks Manchester concert.
Last night we had a little heat from one large solitary candle standing lit in the middle of our coffee table. We had just finished a curry for dinner though so I suspect that was lit by Ka merely to try and get rid of the stench of Indian food which was now lingering throughout the living room and kitchen. Our second curry in a week.
The first was last Saturday when we went through to Tom and Linda’s in Barassie, Troon. As my Uncle Tom is in the middle of rebuilding his kitchen, we had hit upon the idea, a while back, at my cousin’s son’s baptism, of a curry night. So after arriving early evening on Saturday, just after the sun had set on the cold, Firth of Clyde horizon, Tom and Linda informed us that they were taking us along to their favourite curry house, the Maharani. The maharani was a small, but cosy, Indian restaurant just a short walk from the front on West Portland Street where we ate some fantastic food, mine being a giant portion of Chicken Tikka Tandoori, which arrived sizzling on a long black plate perched on a pile of hot, flavoured onions. Tom had also ordered a Tandoori, a ginger chicken, but refrained from eating all of his massive portion, instead opting to keep some for Sally and Jake, the dogs back home. For a brief few moments I also considered politely putting some of my chicken aside for the dogs’ supper but only for a brief few moments. I then thought better of it and demolished the rest of my plate. Feeling rather full afterwards, and slightly guilty about the hungry dogs back at the house, we then ambled over to the Lido bar where we joined Troon’s Saturday night elite for a few drinks.
Lido is a stylish café like bar, owned by the same bar and restaurant outfit that runs the harbour restaurant in the same town, Scott’s and Elliots in Prestwick. The brasserie sits on the quiet street, among the other, older bars and seaside shops, it’s modern face a little out of place. With polished dark wood furniture and decorated cushion seats and walls inside, circling a decorative bar and open kitchen, it’s obviously drawing inspiration from some of the swankier places in town making it a great alternative for the folks of Troon, to some of the other, more traditional settings. It was busy, lively and comfortable and just as we were leaving to head back to the house the DJ was setting up his decks on the large, rectangular table alongside us, casting some smokers’ drinks and scarves to the side. These smokers had thought it acceptable to keep their interior seats whilst they sat out at the tables in the outside front, framed by neatly trimmed hedges. As long at their scarves were still slung over their inside chairs and their glasses of water were still in place on the table they considered themselves able to come back and forth whenever they pleased. They left their inside table to head outside for a cigarette and made themselves comfortable on one of the round tables outside, safe in the knowledge their table inside was guarded by the scarves and water. For at least forty minutes, they lounged around outside, before frowning through the window as the DJ turned up with his various laptops and control panels, quickly casting their scarves aside after asking if they had belonged to us.
Why should smokers’ unattended tables be kept for them in a busy bar area? If they decide to leave their table empty, in order to feed their nicotine cravings then giving up the comfy indoors table should be a sacrafice they should be willing to take. Why should others, in a busy bar, be made to stand, by a scarf slung over the back of a chair?
Ka and myself have actually nicked smokers’ tables before. One of the last times being in the Theatre Royal Bar in Edinburgh when we innocently nabbed what we thought was an empty table, considering the one jacket left over one of the chairs to have been long abandoned, and made ourselves comfortable with a few glasses of wine before the david Byrne gig next door. After a good half an hour of sitting enjoying ourselves the smoking couple (they weren’t that good looking) turned up looking for their place. As it turned out they were actually very nice about it and pulled up another chair on the opposite side of the table and started chatting away. They were an older couple, the bearded bloke perhaps around forty odd in age, the woman looking a bit older. Before we knew it they were spitting at the ground with the sheer mention of trams, telling us where they lived, how they’d met and about when they’d last seen the Talking heads in concert. When the time came to go and take our places in the theatre next door, Ka and myself apologised once more for taking up half of their table uninvited and left them in the lively bar.
Upon entering the Playhouse, Ka and myself split up for a quick toilet visit and as I was standing at the male trough doing my business somebody ambled up and took the place next to me.
“Oh, hello again!” the bearded man smiled from my side. After another short conversation, very short, as conversation over urinals are always a bit awkward, I headed out and found Ka through the busy throng of the Edinburgh Playhouse. Upon meeting each other we decided to get a wee drink from the bar, rolling out the barrel, as it were, as it’s not every week you go to the theatre or a gig. So as I joined the bustling crowd at the ridiculously small theatre bar I slowly made my way to the front of the crowd as slowly but surely the people before me obtained their various beverages from the choice of two bottles beers at triple the usual price or three kinds of wine, white, red, or rose. Upon finally reaching the bar I planted my elbows down on to the bar and turned to find the bearded smoker standing at my side again. I think he gave me the same look I gave him. The ‘not you again’ look. The pleasant surprise and nod of the ‘how are you’ look followed by the ‘look away at something, anything, that’ll enable me to not make conversation’ look. After getting my drinks I half expected Ka and myself to get into the theatre and find the two smokers sitting in the next seats along from us.
I get the ‘look away at something, anything, that’ll enable me to not make conversation’ look quite a lot. There was a girl in high school that I used to fancy who used to find lamp posts or brick walls extraordinarily interesting to look at whenever I approached.
During the week I was wondering up Cadzow Street in the morning, on my way to work, when the Head honcho woman from our Estate Agents, (let’s call them ‘Your Maneuver’ again), seen me walking up towards her as she made her way to the ‘Your Maneuver’ office. I’d spoke to her for around an hour, not more than four or five weeks ago, and I know she recognised me, but, for whatever reason, decided to suddenly give the passing shop windows at her side and the passing pavestones under her feet, her full, uninterrupted, attention.
Guilt at having failed to sell our beautiful flat. That's what I reckon it was.
Guilt. Terrible thing.
That’s probably what makes Children in Need such uncomfortable viewing. If you don’t donate you must, and should, feel guilty.
It doesn’t take a lot to make me feel guilty.
Hopefully Sally and Jake will forgive me for eating all my Tandoori.

David and his watermelons

“Michael, we’re not selling the buses!” Ka informed me, after our viewer left, her Mum and Dad in tow.
“What do you mean?” I frowned, as Ka moved to finally put dinner on. Apparently during my “flat selling” speech I started rabbiting on about how handy we were for the Number 20 and the number 66 buses, perfect for those bus trips further into East Kilbride or a day out in the city.
It’s a good selling point, I pointed out to Ka. Being close to a decent bus stop would be a great advantage to some people. The viewer may have a tight monetary situation and may not be able to afford the luxury of cars and taxis everywhere. The bus could be their one form of transport, for all we know. The bus is always handy for us when we fancy going into town for a wee pint, so why not to a potential buyer?
The rather unimpressed, bored looking viewer had brought her Mum and Dad along and left after only five minutes in our humble abode. She walked in through the hallway into the living room and commenced her long tour of the flat from there, seeing the kitchen, the living room again, back out into the hallway to the bathroom, out into the hallway before hitting the bedroom, back to the hallway where she took a quick look into the utility cupboard, the hallway again and then the living room again. On her way out she walked through the hallway again. Our home of six years overviewed within the space of five minutes.
The girl who was the main viewer was one of these girls not happy in the skin they're in.
Her big eyes stared, white in a face of browny orange. One of these strange people that, not being happy about the skin they are born with, like to artificially colour their skin by lying in plastic beds of luminous tubes or stand in those plastic portaloos that have no loos but have spray guns in their walls instead. The people that use these devices actually pay for that weird orange/brown colour with which they use to go out on a special occasions. What possesses these people to believe that a special occasion of any kind requires you to colour your almost naked self up in a strange sh**ty brown colour. I’ll never understand that.
Yes, okay, I understand a slight tan. Something to enhance the complexion or contrasts of the skin, get away, be it momentarily, from the Scottish peely wally tones. But that weird overly orange/browny colour? Why?
If it was some kind of camouflage, then yes, I would understand. If these girls, and blokes (yep, blokes do do it as well don’t they) were going paintballing or something then yes, the reasons for painting yourself browny orange would be fairly understandable. You could dive about the forest and probably have some success in hiding out in the foliage. In fact, judging by some of the spray tans I’ve seen in the past, you might be better off simply walking about a paintball site naked to get a bit of colour about you.
I just don’t get it. Why would you want to go out on the town or walk down the aisle with the skin colour of an Oompa lumpa?
The three visitors were pretty hard going. Ka and myself done our best to chat and inform, but the three of them didn’t say too much.
The Mum did seem to like it whereas the Dad looked bored, as if he’d been forced to attend by a firm look from the wife or an arm twisted up his back.
It’s always so difficult to tell whether these potential buyers like what they see. We’ve always had positive feedback from the estate agency after the viewers have reported back but it’s never been so positive that they’ve bothered to put an offer in for our wee home.
We’ve only had a grand total of four viewers the whole time we’ve been on the market. The estate agents, that seem to have only recently really started doing anything for us, (let’s call them ‘Your Maneuver’), gave us a quick phone today to tell us the viewer was taking her interest no further for the not wholly unreasonable excuse of a lack of gas central heating in our flat. Apparently somebody had told her that the underfloor heating that was built into these flats is expensive to run. Someone had also told her that a flat further down the street had sold for a slightly lower price and that that particular property had been recently refaced. All the while, I sat on the other end of the phone, listening to what the someone had told this girl, wondering who this ‘someone’ was. I bet it was her Dad.
Either him or her boss, Willy Wonka.
I thought she may have been informed of the lack of central heating before attending a viewing, by our wonderful estate agents. Ka and myself have survived without gas central heating for six years, using only the old, underfloor heating in the deepest, darkest depths of winter and we’ve comfortably survived. We’ve certainly never had to sit and watch X-Factor with frosted glasses and icicles hanging from our nostrils. Our flat’s always seemed pretty cosy in actual fact, and rarely feels cold in anyway (even in X-Factor conditions).
We’ve certainly never had any complaints from any visitors. It’s probably all the hot air.
Saying that, I did notice, the last time they were here, that some of Ka’s pals’ kept their jackets on. In fact, Ka and her pals’ teeth were also chittering in between talk (between talk is very brief, wondrous moment and you have to be very quick of the eye to notice such an instant. We once got a phonecall from David Attenborough at the BBC to film such behaviour. Women with their mouths closed. Amazing. Unfortunately Mr Attenborough couldn’t find a camera with a high enough shutter speed).
Still, at least I was allowed in the flat last night.
Everyone in work was having great delight in making me feel extremely paranoid and slightly guilty yesterday after I rushed Ka off the phone when she called on the mobile mid morning.
“I really can’t talk just now. I’m busy. I’ll call you later!” or something of the kind, I said rather urgently down the phone, before wishing her a hurried goodbye.
Apparently Ka thought she’d upset me by the tone of one of my texts five or ten minutes before when she hadn’t at all. I’d sent an abrupt text back to her in response to one of her messages which she’d sent at one of the busiest periods of the week, when all our Ayrshire property adverts were being sent to print. I had been, in fact, winding her up about the excited babble she was producing the night before about David and his watermelons.

Ka had arrived home from the theatre on Tuesday night, chatting away excitedly about this David and his watermelons. It was ten past eleven, I was tired and, as a result, couldn’t be bothered with her. The excitable chat was something to do with ‘Dirty Dancing’, the stage production she’d just been to see with Pauline at the Kings theatre. As it was late I wasn’t really in the mood for watermelon talk and left it for the morning, at which point I text her asking about David and his fruit.
As it turned out, it wasn’t David at all anyway. It was Johnny. Johnny and his watermelons. I’m still no clearer and suspect I’d have to watch ‘Dirty Dancing’ in all it’s musical glory to understand, but that’ll not happen any time soon. I’ll just have to struggle on through life in blissful ignorance regarding Johnny’s watermelons.
Anyway, as a result of Ka’s call at work, I was sure I’d upset her and everyone in the work, led by DVD Andy and Dave, were sure I was sleeping on the couch that night, if Ka allowed me into the flat at all.
Sitting in work I was pretty confident though. There was no way Ka could give the sales pitch all by herself. We done our best, for the fourth time, but to no avail. I may need to consider re-evaluating the sales pitch.
I don’t know. Perhaps try not to look nervous when the neighbours are mentioned, attempt to draw my eyes away from any inflamed skinwork and maybe even reduce the amount of the No. 20 mentions. Either that or just install some gas central heating.
That viewer obviously likes heat.
And the sun. Be it the artificial spray gun version.
There’s a professional tanning salon in the Village. You could easily jump on a No. 66 from here to get there. It’s just five minutes down the road. Hmmm, I’ll maybe write that into my next sales pitch.