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I accidentally buy 154 stamps

  Tue 1st December 2020

I am so robbed of time with this job. I am neglecting everyone.

I miss my old life. I went to Hayley's after work the other day. The front door was wide open, music playing. Hayley, just the same -- selfish, physically desirable, funny, talking over me, loveable. "I feel like an ant in a box," she said, about her gradual estrangement from her boyfriend. Which I found first mysterious, then hilarious. She was slightly stooped over the crack she was preparing for us, an oval ladder in her tights just below her skirt hem. I went to hug her for saying it, keeping a secret smile from forming.

She's working in security on a film set, getting thirteen pounds an hour -- three pounds more than I get. I was tired, so was she. As I left we kissed lips to lips. With my cock stiffening, I opened my mouth to try to encourage her to open hers, but she refused such an intimacy.


Back here, Cath is irritated that I have spent the weekend with Mel rather than cleaning. It's my turn to do it and she likes it to be done at the weekend. On Sunday I am happily tired from wrapping myself round Mel at her friends' house, so I start on it when I get in from work on Monday. She makes a fourteen-year-old's show of stomping upstairs as I hoover the hallway.

Later, she's downstairs again and I apologise to her if I chucked her out of the living room. "Why do you start it at half past six on a Monday?" she cries, with a passion fueled by the lack of regulated discipline in my cleaning behaviour. "Cath, I've got a full-time job and a girlfriend now." "But you had all Saturday to do it!" betraying how little interest she had in the gripping Second Round FA Cup tie in which Morecambe beat Solihull Moors in extra time to win a third round place away to Chelsea. "Well, it's too bad," I said, and she went back upstairs, my admonishment complete.

I was rattled by all this and wanted to go out, feeling the miasma of Cath's disapproval as I felt my way down the stairs in a house thrown into darkness at nine o'clock. Anxious people are never content only with fucking themselves up but see those closest to them as unsigned recruits. I texted the woman I met a few weeks ago outside the pub. "You about? Bored shitless. Just had an argument with my landlady. I'm going down the park if you want to come. I can get us some drink." She didn't reply but I went down anyway.

It was a mild still night, the plane trees almost denuded, just thin witches' fingers left; but most of the magic shouted down by the cars. The council has taken a third of a small park and given it over to foam-floored play spaces for children, giving us alkies fewer seats to share. There were four men there I didn't know. We didn't approach each other. I smelt an effort on their speech, something a bit dissembling.


The same evening I accidentally bought one hundred and fifty-four second class stamps. My mother sent me five hundred pounds the other day. It comes from the meagre savings of a woman who has never owned property, and has nothing but the state pension to live on. She refuses to accept any refund, so the ruse was to buy her fifty pounds' worth of stamps, as she's a keen letter writer.

I could have sworn I got a message saying the transaction hadn't gone through, so I tried it again. Same error message. Then I got two emails from paypal thanking me for my business, with two orders of fifty-two pounds to Royal Mail.

8 comments »

8 comments

Comment from: kono [Visitor]

Work is hell… there is nothing more to say… it’s taken me a bit to get back to the writing once i started having to go out and play serf for other people, i had a nice groove going before then, you’ll get it sorted… then again i didn’t have any female company to distract me either, which is a distraction i’d more than welcome!! you lucky bastard ;)

Sounds like Cath and the Breadwinner should be pen pals lol! seems they’d get along just peachy!

Keep on keeping on my good sir!

Wed 2nd December 2020 @ 12:19 Reply to this comment
Comment from: looby [Visitor]

Yes we both appear to be saddled with difficult women. Why can’t they all go to an island and fight and bitch and pull each others’ hair all day?

Work is like a coloniser. It takes over everything. I can’t believe that I’ve got myself in a situation in which I have one single day in the week when I’m neither at work not going the next day. Bit of a mistake but I’ll let everyone be happy at me bring a good boy for a while, but I am not working 5 day a week for ever.

Thu 3rd December 2020 @ 08:40 Reply to this comment
Comment from: Scarlet [Visitor]

Stamps are legal currency so you should, in theory, be able to spend them on anything.
I wish I’d bought a lifetime of 1st class stamps in the eighties.
Yes, have been missing your updates!
Sx

Wed 2nd December 2020 @ 23:48 Reply to this comment
Comment from: Scarlet [Visitor]

Oh, I have checked - stamps are not legal tender - but some shops will accept them as payment!
Sx

Wed 2nd December 2020 @ 23:52 Reply to this comment
Comment from: looby [Visitor]

I wish I’d held on to my bit of bitcoin I got a couple of years ago!

Thu 3rd December 2020 @ 08:42 Reply to this comment
Comment from: Jonathan [Visitor]

I’m sure that at least one of the off-counters you frequent will accept secondhand secondclass stamps as currency Looby, and if not I can only think you are being insufficiently discerning in your choice of off-counters. Which would be unlike you.

In other news, I got the news from that Guardian job you all know about today.(it was with the Arts Council, if you can believe such a thing). After two interviews, I just missed out. Felt immediately the pain of rejection.. but then, and now, the lightness of a sense of relief. I’m not sure my heart was ever in it. Somehow I don’t think either you or anyone in this comment box needs any further explanation here!

Thu 3rd December 2020 @ 17:56 You are currently replying to this comment
Comment from: [Member]

Oh Jonathan – my comiserations are followed just in parallel to your own emotions, with gladness. I will send a congratulatory card by second class post.

Thu 3rd December 2020 @ 18:09 Reply to this comment
Comment from: Scarlet [Visitor]

Ha! That’s true. I only managed 10 years in ‘proper’ employment before chucking it in and messing about with this and that. Ack.
Sx

Fri 4th December 2020 @ 00:48 Reply to this comment


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