Ruby Explosion

What a relaxing Easter weekend I had!

A pleasant trip to Cheshire on the train, leafing through a murder mystery paperback, gazing out at rolling pastures and rocky peaks, revelling in the prospect of Easter eggs and roast dinners with a possible country stroll.

I arrived home, crossing the familial threshold, not into my Mother's welcoming bosom, but into a sitting room in complete disarray! All of the furniture oddly crammed into the middle of the room like some sort of Turner Prize entry.

What can be happening, I thought? A spring clean? A 'welcome home Robert ' game of musical chairs? An orgy? All was revealed when my eyes fell upon eight roughly equal squares of paint on the wall by the window, all of which were almost identical shades of cream. Decorating.

Well, I managed to spend Good Friday and most of the Saturday holed up in what I rather pretentiously refer to as the Music Room pretending to study but in fact chatting to Norwegian gays online. Eventually, I could stand neither the suspense nor the Norwegian gays any longer and joined the debate as to precisely which identical shade of cream to go for. My sister joined in, and thankfully can always be relied upon for constructive input. It went something like this.

Mummy: "The buttermilk is too dirty from this angle. It's alright from where you're sitting, but from where I'm sitting it's dirty.

Daddy: "I like the buttercream not the buttermilk."

Mummy: "No, that's too insipid. I'm not sure what you can see from where you're sitting, David, but from where I'm sitting it's insipid."

Caroline: "They're all bloody awful."

Daddy: "I still like Barley Glow."

Robert and Caroline: "That's exactly the same as you've got already!"

Robert: "Why don't you do a feature wall of the buttermilk, and then the buttercream, everywhere else, like in the sample book?"

Daddy: "Yes! That's what I've been saying all along!"

Mummy: "No. Not nice. I've seen sitting rooms done up like that. I've been to sitting rooms done up like that. I've sat in sitting rooms done up like that. It wasn't nice."

Robert: "They're both magnolia anyway. Why don't you for for Lunar Falls or Daffodil White, brighten the place up a bit?".

Daddy: (adopts patronising tone) "Because, Robert, they're only available in matt finish I'm not putting bloody matt on, it's a bloody nightmare."

Caroline: "They're all bloody awful."

Robert: "But a matt finish is much more contemporary, clean lines and all that. If you're thinking about saleability it's worth going for matt".

Daddy: (adopts tone of rising anger) "I'm not putting bloody matt on."

Robert: "But..."

Daddy: (adopts tone of apoplectic frenzy) "Do you want to do it? Do you want to do it? Do you want to do it? Do you? Do you? Do you?"

Robert: "Not if you're going to speak to me in that tone".

Mummy: "Let's not fall out about this!"

Robert and Daddy: "Too late."

Mummy: "I still think the buttermilk is dirty. What about a feature wall? I like the way they've combined the Ruby Explosion and the Ivory in the sample book."

Caroline: "They're all bloody awful."

Daddy: "Yes! That's what I've been saying all along!. I think the Ruby Explosion is too dark. What about Roasted Red?"

Robert and Caroline: That's exactly the same as you've got already!

Mummy: You'll have to go and get some more samples.


In the end, after two trips to B and Q, which were conducted in stony silence, Ivory was selected with a Mud Hut feature wall. Both of which were my suggestions.

I rest my case.

Shit shit shitty shitting shit.

Isn't England shit? Well, Britain. Well, the United Kingdom if we're going to split hairs, although I have never been to Northern Ireland and it may not be shit, but I imagine that it is.

You see, I am relatively bright. Not massively bright, but relatively. Alright, I think I'm massively bright but my need to outwardly suggest some degree of modesty made me qualify the brightness statement.

Anyway, I am bright. I am relatively hard-working (that really is relative) and and have been relatively hard-working since I started a paper round when I was thirteen. I have never stopped working since then, in fact. I worked in Littlewoods cafe in Chester (albeit for one day). I worked in Marks and Spencer, where I was attacked with a spade by a violent drunkard whilst manning a Portacabin full of chilled perishables (I shit you not). I worked in Racing Green, an awful clothes shop which never had any customers. I endured levels of boredom which you will never understand. I worked in Pizza Hut, for four years. I worked in a call centre. I worked in a hideous gay bar in York. I worked in Marks and Spencer again, in Wood Green. I worked in the glamorous world of TV. I work in a relatively snazzy law firm, even if my office is still like a doctor's surgery even though we've been here for four months. It even smells like a doctor's surgery.

I have qualifications. A masters degree, no less. I vaguely speak a number of languages. I have life skills - hell, I can even touch type.

And yet, I am still poor. Well, alright, not poor, but not comfortable, either. No prospect whatsoever, for example of buying my own home. Not even a studio. Isn't that shit?

I am the first to admit that I have sometimes made the wrong decisions. Choice of degree, for example. Doing a pointless master's degree, for another example. Yet, I might add, I gave up on all my dreams of being a world class flautist and/or opera singer because of the shitty careers advice at my shitty school (bit of fruitless ancient bitterness creeping in there).

So, what I'm saying, is. I'm 30, I'm relatively bright, I'm relatively hard-working, I still have student debts, I'm still not financially comfortable, I live in a flat that isn't big enough for my stuff and I spend my whole life waiting for the bus with Morrisons shopping bags because I can't afford to go to Waitrose, like some latter-day Shirley Valentine. Even she had nice house, albeit a bit surburban for my tastes.

The point of this uninformed rambling, to coin a phrase, is that this country is shit.

NB - I promised myself I would never use any expletives in this blog, but decided to allow 'shit' to creep into this one.