protein shake

I forgot to mention: Mat installed me on MSN, a device through which you can ‘talk’ to people using a ‘keyboard’ to form ‘words’. Amazing. And not without its hazards. I was talking to Liz and she accidentally pressed ‘search’ instead of ‘send’, after writing the word ‘Horlicks’. Which summoned out of nowhere the phrase ‘spunk drinker’, with a link. To what? A failed (or banned) advertising campaign for that beverage? I couldn't bring myself to look.

Mat has been busy ticking all the boxes marked ‘crazed loner who eventually goes on killing spree’. Samurai sword on prominent display in bedroom. Protein shakes for ‘bulking up’('Do I look bigger?'). Military obsession (Operation Flashpoint). All he needs to do now is shave his head, and buy an assault rifle. Those clients who haven't paid him yet (or, as he prefers to call them, his 'enemies') will have the surprise of their lives!

At work, everyone is ill, leaving me to field inane customer requests. A bored woman’s voice on the phone asks: ‘Have you got anything on how to build a log cabin?’ No. ‘What about Basildon? Would they have anything?’ Basildon? Oh sure, they would. That’s real deer-hunting territory, Basildon. Watch out for them grizzlies, though!

it's a kind of magic

Mat was up bright and early the other day. I thought he must have work to do, but when I got downstairs he was lying under the bedclothes watching Seven on DVD. Which struck me as a rather unwholesome way to begin the day. ‘I’m going to do this every morning!’, he vowed. He meant watch a DVD, not necessarily Seven. That would have worried me.

He hasn’t, of course. The next day he was recovering from a night in Sam’s. So was I, although I didn’t go. I was merely woken up by the revellers’ return. To be fair to them, they were very concerned about waking me up. I know because they expressed these concerns, loudly, at the time.

Dave has moved in, so we are now a unit. A unit of what, I dread to think. At least Mat will have someone to talk about IP addresses with. They’re so digital and I’m so analogue. Soon the house will be full of invisible technology and you won’t be able to cough without turning the kettle on. Or so I imagine. Already there is a robot voice announcing the time every quarter hour. I daren’t ask.

return of tuna smash

So after the first week of this social experiment (as I have decided to call it), what have we learned? Well, not how to use the washing machine, at any rate. I have already taken a batch home. You have to understand that I lived with my parents until I was forty. So clearly I have no shame.

Alone in the house all day, Mat has taken to obsessively boiling things on the hob. I get back home at five-thirty and he’s right behind the front door, grinning maniacally: ‘Hello! I made a chicken!’ The other day he was out of the house, but texted me to tell me to put three pans of water on the boil. It turned out that there was a genuine reason for this: we were having haggis, with broccoli and swede. Haggis has always struck me as, at best, a joke, but this was a revelation: Mat, no slouch in the catering department, had surpassed himself.

Although I’ve done a bit of washing up, my own usefulness is questionable. I can’t get by on correcting everyone’s grammar, can I? Mind you, washing up for Mat would be a full-time job since, like a shark, he eats constantly. Rather than recognise traditional feeding times like breakfast or lunch, it makes more sense, with him, to commemorate the times when he isn’t eating.

Foodwise, I can only do omelette. For one. The breathtaking simplicity of risotto has been demonstrated to me, but I wonder if I might yet reintroduce the signature dish of my university years, a highly original combination of instant mashed potato, tuna, and salad cream - made in, and eaten from, a dessert bowl. I have yet to patent, or even name, this, but I feel its time may be coming.

the monkeys of the night

So I moved in. A few restless nights, disturbed by people returning from Sam’s, and a horrific shrieking from the garden that sounded like a battle between rival armies of monkeys. Everything is slightly strange. I wake up and turn on the radio to find that it has retuned itself while I was asleep and is now playing soca music (whatever that is). I have a jaffa cake bar for breakfast. And go out to what should, I can’t help feeling, be an entirely new job instead of just the same one from a different angle.

Work’s weird too. The other day there was a power cut that mysteriously affected only about three quarters of the shop. When full power returned there were problems with the computers. I was on the phone to this IT guy, running up and down the stairs in search of something called ‘the hub’: I felt like I was in some terrible game show. Meanwhile, it rains. God how it rains!

On the plus side, lots of people have been paying visits, notably on Sunday. I wasn’t there, mind; I’d gone 'home' for lunch. Few thought I’d return, but I did, and here I am, still wandering dazedly around, trying to establish some kind of routine.