Sunday 17th August 2008
I have booked two weeks holiday from work. I can’t take it yet because Sal hasn’t got two entire weeks free until the beginning of November. Of course Daz kicked up a fuss about me offering all of the overtime to Sal. All he has to do is his regular hours. Sal will cover her own and all of mine. I explained to Daz that as I’d lost my last holiday because of him, this time it stands to reason that I’ll ensure that I actually get my holiday by offering the hours to the person most likely not to let me down.
I need some time off. This thing with Marty is driving me crazy. My new routine is that I work all day and then walk home because I can’t park my damned car anywhere near work. I pick up the dog and drive around for an hour every night talking to youths and asking them if they know where Marty is living. So far I’ve drawn a complete blank. When I get home I still have my three hours or so to do with the animals. It’s a long day and I’m tired.
I have no interest in going out for our usual Sunday night. Maybe if I’d spent more nights in the house and fewer out gallivanting my son would never have left home. Russ goes out without me now. It doesn’t seem to make any difference to him if I’m there or not. Tia is on her summer holidays so he’s having her all weekend now instead of just on the Saturday night. It seems like ages since we’ve had a night in together, and when we do generally either Jess or Sally is there. When I’m not at work I have an endless stream of visitors. This is great in some respects but is getting really wearing. Maybe I’ll have to ask people to give a certain night of the week a miss so that I can guarantee at least one night where people don’t come around. I’d like to think that this is another contributing factor to why Marty left, it would be something that I could easily change to please him and bring him home, but it isn’t the case. Most nights he would be working all night and wouldn’t be there anyway, on the rare occasion that he was home he wouldn’t normally sit downstairs with me anyway and would be up in his room or out with God knows who doing God knows what.
I received a seven hundred and fifty eight pound leccy bill yesterday. Oh Joy oh bliss. My life is a mess and it’s no consolation that my son’s life seems to be an even bigger mess. The leccy bill was actually good news. I was expecting it to be anything up to double that because the last one was estimated. My vivs cost a fortune to run but it’s a lot less than I was expecting and I have been putting money by for it so it’s not as terrible as it sounds, in fact I suppose if you were having a Pollyanna moment you could say that an eight hundred pound electricity bill is good news.
Marty hasn’t taken any clothes, as far as I’m aware he only has the clothes that he stands up in and no coat. How is he surviving?
Lizards have their young and once the eggs are laid they just walk away. How tempting would that be? I could just wash my hands of him and when in a year or five I hear of a young smack-head called Marty Doe being found dead and alone in a dirty flat in Drug Eldorado I could say, “I had a son called Marty once.” I can’t do that because with the pain of child labour comes the pain of love.
Col and I had many years of heartache. I lost him when he was five years old to his grandmother and although he was with me, he belonged to her. I’ve never got him back and gave up fighting to be his ‘mother’ years ago. These days I accept the scraps of a soiled relationship and make do with an occasional visit from the kids and my grandkids. I never visit them, always them coming to me. I put minimal effort in and get minimal rewards back. It’s written in blood that I watch from the sidelines of my eldest son’s life. I failed him. He’s grown into a wonderful man. He works long hours for a security firm after turning his back on a promising career as a chef. He has a wife who is Mother earth and two beautiful, but unruly children. He’s done okay for himself despite me. But Col was bad, for five years he was off the rails and worried me silly. Col has an uncontrollable temper. At times I was terrified that he would kill somebody. His temper combined with two years of hard partying mixing soft drugs and hard booze seemed to be leading him down the road of certain destruction. He was a fighter and built the reputation of being a ‘hard man’. He terrified me. He only went bad for two years and then he’d had his ‘phase’ got it out of his system and took to his work and his hobby with his birds of prey. When he was nineteen he met Sandy and settled down. Although he’s broken my heart more than once he’s never caused me a days worry since as regards drink, drugs or crime. He works hard, owns his own home, has a wife that he loves and is doing better than okay for himself.
Maybe Marty will do the same.
I had my meeting with the town council. It was a walk in the park though it was intimidating when I walked in. There were twelve of them at a table, I’d only expected about two or three people. They were mostly geriatrics and I took one look at them and figured that there would be no way that they’d extend a sex-shop licence. I was allowed to speak and gave a good account of my shop, the fact that it’s bright and cheerful and that I’ve worked very hard to make it accessible and get away from the sleazy image. I said that I tolerate no messing in my shop and that I’ve only ever had to call out the police three or four times, mostly to complain about kids in the school holidays and twice with regard to shoplifting again during office hours. I said that the extended hours would enable me to take a third member of staff on so creating a job for somebody.
The spokesperson said that last year a sex shop in Carlisle applied for a Sunday licence and the committee debated for a day and a half before deciding to refuse the license on religious grounds. There isn’t a sex shop in Cumbria with a permanent Sunday license.
I responded to that by saying that there would be no grounds for complaints from a religious perspective because all of my windows are smoked, I have no window display so people with religious conviction would never see anything offensive to them on their way to worship and it would be impossible for them to stumble in mistakenly because there are five inch high letters on my front and inner door and on every window saying that anybody passing through the door will see material which they may deem offensive.
One old man said that he’d never been into my shop but that he had no objections to my request. I said that I’d like to invite all of the members to come and have a look around and that we stock something for everybody. There was a general mumble around the table that ‘in this day and age’ and all that and my licence was granted.
Strike one for the little people. I now run the only sex shop in Cumbria allowed to trade on a Sunday, an event so momentous that it made the mid day news on Radio Cumbria.
I’m worn out, depressed and worried sick. Russ’ solution is to go on holiday abroad. I laughed in his face. I have holidays booked from the third to the sixteenth of November purely because I have to use them or lose them. Russ recons we can get a cheap package somewhere for three hundred pounds … I don’t doubt it, but I’ve just had my gas, leccy and phone bill in this week. I pay seventy five pounds a week for my live food order and twenty to thirty pounds worth of salad, that’s before even starting on our own food, living and leisure bills. I doubt I’ll be able to afford to go on holiday next year, never mind this one.
It’s Solfest this weekend. The whole point of getting the car was so that we’d have transport to get there. Even if I had cover at work this weekend there’s no way on earth that I could swan off to a festival while Marty’s away. Russ is very annoyed with me and says that I never do anything for him.
I don’t want to go abroad, though it would be wonderful to escape, I just want a couple of weeks to be at home, catch up with everything that needs doing and forget about work. I’m ready for a bit of a re-charge and our holiday in Turkey seems so long go. It will be bliss just not to have to turn into work every morning. I’m sick of the sight of naked bodies staring at me from the front of DVD covers. It’s over two months away. Will my son be home by then? Will things be better?
