In a World Gone Mad: Sunday 31...2 May 2020

The party turned into a farce.  Carrie’s Turkish husband ranted on about all the problems in the world being the black’s fault. Annie was on Facetime to her boyfriend, in Turkey who said that it was all down to the Chinese.  Kila, who is half Chinese was sitting next to them. Kila, give her,  her due is a lady and would have let it go, but not Belle. She up and ranted and swore and screamed and called Annie’s boyfriend and Carries husband, racist bastards and another family event turned into a slanging match with Belle inevitably falling out with everybody in a three-mile radius.

Family politics.

I didn’t want Max to buy his fancy Emerald guitar using his dad’s money. I knew it would cause trouble.  Archie, his brother, ten years his junior took five thousand pounds in a loan from his dad’s estate in April last year to pay his tax bill. He has never paid tax…Arthur always pays it for him when he’s ignored it that long that he’s on the point of getting into trouble, he goes cap in hand to his father. Last year was no different and Arthur bailed him out to the tune of five grand.

Six months later Archie decided he was expanding his business. He’s always been his own company but has sub-contracted his services to other carpet firms all of his working life. Now he’s decided to have his own flooring shop and run his own fitters.  He took thirty grand from Arthur’s estate to set up.  This was supposed to be a loan, but both brothers know that when the money is left to him as his share of Arthur’s estate, legally it is his to do what he likes with and there are no provisions in the will for repayment. He will not pay a penny of it back and will have some excuse up his sleeve for not doing so.

At the beginning of lockdown, he asked for another ten thousand to see him though the crisis so that he can keep his business afloat. Kevin said that he thought he’d had enough. Despite Archie’s constant whingeing and whining, Kevin has not released another ten grand to him, as far as I’m aware.

To give Kevin his due, even though he’s a slimy, self-righteous toad, he has never touched his dad’s money but he holds the purse strings so who knows. And Max tends not to tell me things because he says I’m sanctimonious where his dad’s money is concerned.

I am. I think it’s disgusting that  Archie, in particular, but now Max too are raping this old man’s estate when he isn’t even dead. I am disgusted and can’t keep my opinions to myself. Their finances are their business and nothing to do with me. As long as I personally don’t benefit from it, then it’s fine they can do what they like. But I’m damned if anybody’s ever going to be able to say that the only reason I have that disgusting old man here  is because I’m getting anything for it.

Max was going on and on about this sodding guitar for months. He would have had the money legitimately when  his dad dies, but he couldn’t wait for that. He went behind my back and asked Kevin to gift him the three thousand out of Arthur’s estate.

Archie is like a three-year-old.

‘You’ve had a gift, why haven’t I got one?

Well boo hoo, little boy has only had thirty-five thousand pounds in the last year. Poor little mite. Of course, that’s not enough and he should be given more. He has a six-bedroom house and four family vehicles between two of them to maintain. And he looks like a fucking weasel, with his weaselly teeth and his weaselly mouth. And he can’t say dementia and calls it di-mentia and I want to punch him.

This week he’s had two money making schemes, and Max, who is a spineless pussy is going along with them.

Arthur’s house is being decorated to let.  We’ve had a new boiler put in at the cost of two thousand pounds and Kevin wasn’t happy about releasing that. He refused to do a bank transfer from the  estate and Archie was too busy with his little life to take the card and go to the band every day. So, Max has had to go to the cash point every day to draw it out in increments from Arthur’s pension account. I’m surprised they haven’t blocked the card for unusual spending on the account.  They had some quote in for a blokes to come in and give the house a lick of paint and the cheapest one came in at six hundred pounds cash.

Archie came up with the idea that if Max did the work himself, he could give  Archie the  six hundred pound towards the cost of our next carpet. We have a very large lounge. We’ve waited ten months for carpets and so far the only one we’ve had from him is the one for Arthur’s room when he moved in. Max has just paid him six hundred, out of Arthur’s pension account for carpets that we’ll never get. I don’t object to that too much because Max has done the work for it. So, it’s a case of paying his son for a job done rather than a stranger.  Arthur would benefit from a lounge carpet. And although it’s cheating Kevin who will never know that an outside bloke didn’t do the work, I don’t feel that we’ve taken advantage of Arthur too much because that work needed to be done.

If it was my father—who I hated beyond reason—I would still have done the painting and not charged six hundred quid to my parent for it, but that’s coming from a different value system.

Again, Archie ends up with money, doesn’t lift a finger for it and despite Max saying we have some leverage to get the carpet because we’ve paid for it up front rather than in arrears, we’ll never see it. He’ll just keep saying that he’s too skint  or too busy and the wait will continue and  my resentment  from living on floorboards will rise.

The other scam comes about from all of Arthur’s junk being stored in our house. We bought the sofa bed and it’s impossible to sleep on it because it’s so uncomfortable. Max has brought  a brand-new double mattress from Arthur’s house. It has never been slept on because we sorted out his spare room so that Arthur could have the lads come from London and stay with him. Looking to the future it meant that if we’d had to put in overnight care for him, there was a bedroom for carers to use. That’s a moot point now.

We’ve got  the mattress already and the bed is to follow today. The bed will be stored in our room with everything else. The mattress was going to be stored in the  lounge to go on top of the sofa bed when his precious daughter stays sometime this week because she has a bad back and can’t be expected to sleep on the hard  sofa bed. But it’s good enough for me?

I’ve been asking for a lock on that door since Arthur moved in. Belle is staying mid-week and he’s  going to get it done in advance of her arrival. We can’t have Arthur walking in on her and Ocean through the night. But it’s good enough for me?

Today I am in full bitch mode and have been poking him with a stick at every turn.

I kicked off about having a double mattress permanently stored in my lounge.

‘Well it’s that or your office.’

‘My office it is then. Why should I think that I deserve a nice room to work in?’

‘That’s a horrible thing to say Sarah, I’m just trying to find the best solution for everybody.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you what then, the best solution for Everybody is to turn my office into the junk room. Leave me my corner and  you can have the rest of the room. I don’t have any say in anything anyway and you’ll do what you like, so let’s make it easy on Everybody. Everybody will be fine then, and I’ll make do as long as Everybody’s okay. Does that please Everybody’

He’s decided to move the sofa bed from beneath the window in the lounge to my office too.  Which means that Arthur won’t have a seat in the living room again and we’re back to square one.  He’ll be  back to taking my chair all the time, which he still does on a daily basis anyway,  but my chair will become his seat, with his sweaty half-naked body and his nose picking all over the arm. When the sofa moves, I’ve got nothing to kick him off to.

Archie has the solution.  He has a recliner armchair, just like the one that we have in Arthur’s bedroom. Funny that, since it’s the other one to his matching suit from one of his four reception rooms.  He’s offered to sell us the other armchair for five hundred pounds.

Five hundred fucking pounds for his second-hand armchair.

We could buy a chair from one of the selling sites if that’s what we wanted.

Max says this way we can release the five hundred from his dad’s estate and Arthur will have somewhere to sit downstairs again. I hated the twin of this chair being in my lounge and now we’re getting another one.

Again, Archie comes out with what he wants, and again more money is taken needlessly out of Arthur the cash cow’s bank.  We could buy a chair for under fifty pounds. Why can’t Max stand up to anybody? I’m disgusted. We had a huge argument again this morning, but  it was on deaf ears. I have a double mattress leaning against one wall of my office. I have a bedding box that is too small to hold the quilt sheet and pillows, so they spill out of the top and look untidy against the other wall. I have books and music boxes and guitar cases piled all around me. My office was beautiful. It was a nice place to work and when I go back to work a lot of my  meetings will take place in video conference. It will look as though I’m working from a junk shop.

‘I know I have no voice at all in this house. I know I don’t belong here, and despite my name being on the tenancy, this house is yours and your bloody families, but I’m going to say it anyway. I will not have another of your brother’s cast-off armchairs in my house. And I think you’re insane giving him five hundred pounds for it. That’s another eleven hundred pounds he’s had out of your dad this week. And he still wants another three thousand to match your guitar. Your finances are nothing to do with me, and nothing I say matters and I know I have no voice, you’ll do whatever you want and to hell with me, or your dad or anybody else who gets in your way. That chair is not coming here. ’

‘Well I’ve already told him we’ll have it now.’

He was going to go for a shower but decided to leave it until he got back from painting his dad’s house. ‘I’ll get a bath later.’

‘That’s a good idea, then you can wash all the shit of your tongue from licking your brother’s arse.’

‘There’s was no need for that. How unpleasant.’

‘Oh, do one. I can’t be bothered with you.’

He stormed  out.