Thursday 14th August 2008 trouble ahead

Thursday 14th August 2008.

For the rest of the week after Sal came in with her C.V. I only had no hopers asking about the job so I took Sally on. She worked with me all last week, the full sixty-six hours, it would have killed Daz and she’s brilliant. I am well aware that this is the honeymoon period and the novelty hasn’t worn off yet but so far she’s proving to be a good girl. She’s sorted out all of my manky wiring from behind the counter, of which there was a spaghetti farm. She’s bought us a tiny fridge and refused to take payment for it. She’s re-arranged all of the back rooms to make more storage space and is on about building shelves across any free expanse of wall. She even rolls my fags for me. No that is not power gone to my head, I can’t roll them with a filter and she’s got me onto these mental (menthol) tips. Well I try to roll one and it looks like Jimmy James on a bad day. As soon as I put it to my mouth the tip adheres to my top lip and pulls out of the paper and I’m just left with a mess. Sal is organised. I have an open baccy pouch neatly and discretely attached to one of my drawers and every day it has been replenished for me from the communal baccy that I bought for us to share, so far so good.

We even managed to get her singing on the karaoke. Her partner Finn is a strange one. She’s so sweet and shy but put her in front of a karaoke mic and there’s no stopping her. Sal is brimming with confidence. She’s six foot one with amazing hair that must take her hours to do every morning. Finn is five foot nothing with a smile that precedes her into any room. She’s Egyptian with huge eyes and she can do wonderful things with couscous. She’s adorable, they both are.

Daz came back to work on Tuesday and I had my first day off in weeks. He was pleasant enough and for the sake of harmony I’m trying very hard to get along with him. On Wednesday morning when we have the two-hour cross over, he asked if he could leave at twelve. I told him that from now on it’s work by the book. To generate some work I decided to begin a stock take. It needs doing and serves the purpose of keeping him occupied. He worked for about forty minutes and then announced that he was going for a fag.

“No, you’re not. Daz, we’ve only got two hours and I want to get as much of this done as possible. If we crack on now I’ll stop at ten to two and we can have one then.” He moaned and grumbled. His back was hurting him. His legs were aching. He couldn’t see the code numbers and it was giving him a headache. I’m not interested!

I had to take Marty back to the police station a few days after his night in the cells. From now on I’m calling the boy, The Cat. Once again he got away with his crime Scott free. The policeman told us that he knew that Marty was lying through his teeth, that much was obvious, but as the owners of both cars were happy enough with Marty just getting a caution they were willing to let the matter drop and not press charges. The damage to their cars was minimal. I said that Marty should pay for the damage to be repaired but luckily it happened on an estate where posh cars are not the norm and neither driver wanted the hassle of going through the correct channels to get the money out of him. A few scratches here and there made no difference to the car … much like my own beasts of burden. Marty thinks that he’s invincible. I’m annoyed with the police; they have done this to avoid the work involved in processing charges. I know they have bigger fish to fry, but this is the second time that Mary has been in front of the police and got away with a slap on the wrist. If they don’t come down hard on him he’s going to become one of those bigger fish that they do need to fry. As far as his beloved bike goes it did cost him dear. He had to pay a hundred and thirty pounds to have his bike released to him from the garage and then he was prevented from riding it because it is a write off. He may not have done much damage to the cars but he has cracked his engine casing, broken the exhaust clean off and twisted something else important to the running and safety of the bike. We all bent over backwards to get him legal and on the road… and this is the way he repays us. That bike was as good as new when Col found it for him. He rode it for one month and now it’s scrap metal. Col’s ready for washing his hands of him.

Marty used to be such a good lad, now he’s a lying, scheming, thief, intent on getting his own way no matter what the cost. The other week he nagged me senseless about getting a contract phone. He told me that he’s spending thirty pounds a week on credit. Well he will be now that our house phone is on incoming calls only because he can’t keep his selfish hands off it and I was sick of the monster bills that he generated. He went on and on, telling me how for forty pounds a month he could get a great contract. Because it has to go through my bank and be in my name because he’s only sixteen I was dead against the idea. What finally made me cave in was that Marty promised me faithfully that he would have a bar put on it so that he couldn’t go over his monthly tariff. He sad that his friend with the same contract had done this and he promised that he’d have it barred and pay me the ten pounds a week religiously. I was dead against this. I have no direct debits on my account at all now and even paid my car insurance in a lump sum to avoid one. But what Marty wants Marty usually gets and he wore me down.

He got the phone. I rang up to ensure that he’d had it barred as he promised because that was the condition of him being allowed to have one. Bugger me, the woman on the phone told me that they don’t have a barring service to stop him going over his limits. She explained that that is how the company make their money. Marty had lied through his teeth to me to get that phone. I asked the lady if I could cancel the contract and she told me that as it had been over seven days it was too late. I queried this and said that I understood that I had a statutory right to cancel up to fourteen days and she said that it wasn’t the case and they only gave seven days grace, which had now expired. There is no ceiling on this phone, he could run up massive bills and now he’s lost his job he has no way of paying them. He lied to me to get the phone. I should take it off him. Why the hell haven’t I? I just want to see my son happy. And even though he tricked me to get it taking his phone from him when he’s already lost his bike seems cruel. More fool me. I can forsee eighteen months of hell over this bloody phone and until those eighteen months are up there’s nothing that I can do about it. I’ve never had a contract phone in my life and always swore that I never would.

This morning I was so embarrassed. When Marty had his bike impounded he’d left the charger of his new phone under his seat. The charger was impounded along with the bike and it would have cost him three pounds in bus fares to go to Utown and get it. He was far too lazy to do that. So he asked around everybody to see if they had a charger he could borrow, when that failed he came up with a beauty of an idea. He rang up the phone contract people and complained that when his phone arrived, it had no charger with it.

I was just setting off for work this morning when the phone rang.

“Miss Doe?”

“Yes.”

“Hello, this is T-mobile. I’m ringing about the complaint you made.” I thought she meant about me trying to cancel the contract and being refused. It took some minutes to clear that up. “No, I’m ringing about your complaint that your phone came without a charger.” She sounded frosty as hell as would anybody who knew they were being scammed.

“Oh.” I knew instantly what Marty had done.

“Before we go any further, Miss Doe. I’d like to ask that you check the box and the packaging again because I think you’ll find that the charger was in the box; you may have just overlooked it.” In other words you’re lying through your teeth and I’m giving you an out here. “All our phones are checked by three different people and signed off on the check card that you received with your phone Miss Doe.”

“I’m so sorry, I realise that,” I replied, “The phone doesn’t exactly belong to me, I got it for my son. I can assure you that he does have the charger and, as you say, in his excitement he must have overlooked it.” I could feel my cheeks burning as I covered for him when both of us knew that he’s a lying little toe-rag.

I’ve told him that the next time he steps out of line, that’s it, I’m taking his phone off him. Next time? Good God hasn’t he had enough times.