Three

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from: richardvhirst@acemail.com
to: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
sent: 21.01.10 at 22:59 pm
subject: RE: Hello!

Hello, Martin!

Sorry it’s taken me a while to get back to you. I finally have broadband set up in the new flat. I’m emailing you from my the comfort of my own ‘desk’ (an ironing board) at home, the hustle-and-bustle sounds of the city emanating from below my window: people chattering away, sirens going off, thousands of volts of electricity being pumped into lifesize rubber dummies. Admittedly that doesn’t sound very romantically metropolitan, but my flat is above the police’s taser range, so I have to make do with what sounds I hear.

I’ve had quite a week. The new job, the new pad and all that. First of all though, I can’t believe you’re bringing up your uncle Patrick’s perimeter fence again! Let’s face facts: we both know there is no fence. There’s only your uncle Patrick’s extended hallucinations. The man’s patently insane. Sorry, that sounds harsher than it was meant to. I’ve no problem with your uncle Patrick so resolutely insisting on the existence of an imaginary perimeter fence. The fact that he seems to think it runs throughout his flat, forcing any visitors into a ridiculous pretence of clambering or hopping over it, is a bit much but just about manageable. But that he expects you and me to go over twice a month to go through the absurd charade of ‘painting’ the damn thing is really taking the biscuit. I didn’t like to say at the time, but don’t you feel a bit foolish, stood there, over an imaginary indoor perimeter fence, waggling a teaspoon (or ‘brush’) around and making ‘painting’ sounds for a full day? I know his crumpled little sack of a face always looks really chuffed with the brilliant job we do but, honestly, it’s just supporting your uncle Patrick in his fence-based madness. The fact that we had to be ‘supervised’ by ‘Melvin’, a giant talking egg in suspenders, only testifies to this.

Anyway, sorry. Ignore me. I’m not in the best of moods. I had a terrible night’s sleep: I had my usual dream in which David Blunkett is creeping about in my loft, dressed as a croissant and rubbing crushed Wotsits into his hair. So I got up and tried to start work on my novel - A Clown In The Circus Of Sadness - but I’ve felt pretty uninspired ever since you quite rightly pointed out that my original first chapter, where I had my hero sit down to play chess with Death on a beach, was a bit of a rip-off of the beginning of The Seventh Seal. I’ve now changed my novel so they’re no longer playing chess but Kerplunk; and it doesn’t take place on a beach any more but by the deep-end of an indoor swimming pool on the outskirts of Wigan; and it’s no longer Death but ex-Monkee Pete Tork who, gone mad, has dressed himself in tattered bin-liners and is demanding Ribena. This, I’m pretty sure you’ll agree, certainly makes for an arresting opening, but it’s a real bugger to think what should happen next, plot-wise.

Then there’s the constant night-time interruptions from Virgil. I know, before you say anything! He should have gone by now. I really should have just kicked him out. Don’t worry though, he should be gone soon - he’s just started a fantastic new job. Well, maybe not ‘fantastic’ actually, but a job’s a job. Well, I guess it’s not actually a job, per se. Basically, he’s decided to join a gang. I say ’decided’. Late last night he came back in a very distressed state, his hair and head covered in bright red paint. This, so I’m told, is what they do round here. He’d been ‘tagged’ by a gang and is now their ‘property’. I asked if they were called ‘The Red Heads’, which I thought was a gently amusing attempt to cheer him up. But no, apparently they’re called the ‘Cunt Fuckers’. Still, he gets paid. Apparently they deal everything round here these days: drugs, organs, novelty thimbles, anecdotes regarding Robocop actor Peter Weller, those fake glasses with a little plastic moustache attached to them. Still, he seems pretty upset about the whole ordeal, so I feel bad about kicking him out right away. Plus he’s the only one who can re-set the sound-settings on the tv (whenever I turn it on it’s always gone to the setting which makes every programme sound like it’s been filmed in a tin filled with screaming gulls). And he knows how to make carbonara sauce just the way I like, with bits of garibaldi biscuits and pineapple rind floating about in it. And he does this brilliant impression of George Alagiah - he’s all ‘Hello, I'm the news,’ and then he’s all ‘Coming up in the programme.’ It makes me laugh like this: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. After which I make a sighing ‘Ahhhh…’ sound. Sometimes I start laughing again after this. You sort of have to see it. So yeah - it’s best he leaves but, for now, I’m letting him stay on the couch. I do with he’d put some clothes on once in a while though.

How’s life at Betterbins? Things sound much the same. Sorry to hear Mr Crumbgold has decided you’re the current ‘office chimp’. If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure he does it to everyone once in a while. I was the chimp for a while. It’s with no small amount of shame that I recall how easily I caved in when he demanded I burst into his office and fling my dung around during Alan’s disciplinary meeting for stealing drawing pins. Poor Alan. I wonder if those surgeons ever managed to fully reconnect his retinas.

And I’m surprised you weren’t aware I was leaving. I assumed it was you who’d arranged the ‘Goodbye And Good Luck Richard, Love Martin’ party. I could have sworn I saw you gluing the tiles that spelled out the ‘X’ kiss onto the farewell mural on the side of your block of flats. And stitching the bunting with a photograph our smiling faces appliquéd onto each heart-shaped triangle of fabric which was hung throughout the town. Clearly, when I said my farewells just before leaving for the railway station and you dodged into the toilet muttering ‘Will you all excuse me, I’ve got something in my eyes’ it really was just your glaucoma playing up again. Ah well. There’s tons of things I miss about the old town, the month long festival period that led up to the Mocking of the Turnip being but one. Do you remember when Tall Gary beat Dog-Patter Geoff and Gaseous Trevor to win the Chip Peg Contest? That’s one of the things I don’t like about living in a city. If I tried to describe to the people here a competition that revolves around grown men picking chips out of a ditch with clothing pegs, in the nude, whilst being thrashed with nettles and urinated on, they’d probably think it backward.

I’ve attached a picture of my new offices at Benjamenta Insurance. My new job is okay, I suppose. A bit boring. Each morning I’m given a list of numbers, some in red ink, some in black. My job is to copy the numbers out - the ones in red into a spreadsheet titled ‘Red’, and the ones in black into a spreadsheet titled ‘Black’. There’s been some talk of adding some numbers in green ink to my list, and a corresponding spreadsheet (titled ‘Green’), but at the moment that’s all only crazy speculation. I’ve no idea what any of the figures mean. So, yeah - not brilliant, but it sure beats being in Betterbins, all that having to spend the morning swinging from the artificial ‘vines’ Mr Crumbgold had fitted to the ceiling in his office before giving him his ‘afternoon groom’. Plus the people here are nice and friendly, although they don’t show it as much as they do back in the old town. None of all that hugging, shaking hands, smiling, talking, making eye-contact or getting out of someone’s way here. No sir! We’re too dynamic to have time for all that sort of thing here in the city.

Actually, the one person in the office who I seem to have struck up a sort-of-friendship with is a woman called Agatha, who I’m thinking of asking out. She works in the office upstairs (where, it’s said, their spreadsheets are inked with all the colours of the rainbow) so I only really see her when she comes down to get things from the stationery cupboard or when I’m loitering about near the stairwell by the women’s disabled toilets hoping to get a glimpse of her. A glimpse of her in her office, I mean. You can just about see where she works from near the women’s disabled toilets. I didn’t mean I hang about trying to get a glimpse of her going to the bathroom or anything. I’m not some kind of disability-fixated wee-fetish peeping Tom. I mean, if it turned out she was into that sort of thing, I’d be willing to give it a try. Although I’d probably try to talk her out of it beforehand. And she’s not actually disabled. Not that there’d be anything wrong with that, of course. She just isn’t - I have no say in the matter. So, if having me spy on her whilst she relieves herself in a semi-public manner, any aspect involving disability - a set of crutches, for instance, or a whiplash-brace for her neck, maybe even a fully motorised wheelchair - would be purely cosmetic. Which is all a bit messed up, when you think about it. Borderline insane, really. Can you imagine what kind of issues someone like that must have? Jesus. I don’t want to get involved in all this. I think I’ll give Agatha a wide berth from now on. Thanks for warning me, mate.

Don’t mention Elizabeth Fraudenshoesen! You know that name sends shivers down my spine. And not the good kind, like sex-shivers. The bad kind of shiver, like when you see an elderly man spitting up a sandwich into a napkin. I don’t want to sound all appearance-ist or anything, but if you have to have two glass eyes, opting for a set of novelty ‘breast’ ones, with massively protruding nipples, is not a good day-to-day look. Lord only know who told her popping them into her mouth and sucking on them was seductive. And then there’s her hands, with the nails on the wrong sides of her fingers, all facing inwards. Have you ever watched her clench a fist? It’s like being on a bad ketamine trip.

I think we both know the reason me and Veronica never really got on: it was that incident. You know the one. I hate to write it down, to be honest. Whenever you see the sentence ‘I did a poo in her knicker drawer’ it just looks totally inexcusable. But I still maintain that if someone invites me round to their place to play a game of ‘hide and seek’ they shouldn’t just assume I know the rules. I hold your uncle Patrick half-responsible: insane or not, he knew when I asked him how wickedly bad the advice he gave me was. Veronica must know that I felt more ashamed and idiotic than I’ve ever felt in my entire life for the remainder of her grandparents’ anniversary party. Her calling me ‘an evil sex-lunatic’ and then fuming about it for the rest of the evening didn’t exactly make me feel any better. And it certainly killed the party mood: no matter how much go-go dancing I did afterwards no-one cracked a smile. Nonetheless, I forgave her. I can only hope one day she’ll look within herself and be big enough to do the same. Anyway, maybe she’ll relax a little now I’ve moved away.

I'd better stop writing this now. Virgil's carbonara's ready and the pineapple rind can go quite soft if it's left to stew too long. And I don't like that.

Bye for now,

Richard