I should probably tell Ross he's moved into this blog

Mat finally moved out. There was some doubt as to whether this would actually happen, partly due to his fear of being murdered at some point by Amanda. Not for any reason, just for being himself really, but obviously that is quite a provocation. Anyway, dead or alive, he's more or less out of here. Ross came round on Thursday for the keys, offering us an ‘elegant coffee table’ for the lounge and saying that he had ‘an army of midgets’ to help him move in on Saturday. An elegant coffee table and an army of midgets! Things were looking up.

The army of midgets did not in fact materialise (though possibly they are too small to be seen with the naked eye) but the coffee table did, and it sits here in front of me now, its glass surface reflecting the net curtains, a pile of Mat’s business cards lying atop it in case any entrepreneurs wander past. Ross came in carrying a variety of hats, plants, and swords, and spent much of his first day creating a wardrobe in his room, not an easy process by the sound of it. Hearing loud banging noises issuing from behind the closed door of his old room, Mat was reminded of the film Pacific Heights, in which Michael Keaton plays a deranged tenant-from-hell, and of course Dave and I have been mocked for not interviewing our prospective housemate very thoroughly; or indeed, at all. But how would that help? He's not going to say: ‘I’m a professional psychopath and my hobbies include cutting people up into small pieces and eating their boiled entrails.’ Is he?

Of course there is bound to be the odd culture clash. He is from Bulphan, a village that only exists for a few evenings each year (or so the rumours in nearby Ingrave went during my childhood). In the office last night a soft toy in reptile form lay sprawled on his computer: ‘It’s a monitor lizard’, he explained. I was about to say that it more closely resembled a salamander when the joke hit home.

How will it end? When will it end? Will it please end?

Did I say people were ‘insane’ to pre-order Harry Potter 7, because nobody was going to run out of it? Well, it turns out that, as so often in life, those insane people were right. We have run out, after a midnight opening which still-trembling staff remember as ‘a vision of Hell’. I was in bed, luckily.

Even before the book’s release, customers were being encouraged to add their names to a petition that begs JKR to not let the series end here. The goal is to reach a million signatures. Feel free to add your name (just beneath those of Bloomsbury’s staff) but read the book first. I mean, what if it turns out to be an expletive-ridden rant in support of the BNP? Or a highly plausible justification of bestiality? I’ve read the last few lines, and from what I can glean, it is both:

“ ‘Do you think I should use my powers to wipe out the inferior races?’, pondered Harry, continuing to rape the kitten.
‘Too fucking right you should’, agreed Hermione.”

Not even this filth is enough to stop people buying the thing. We are getting to the point where we will run out of pre-orders, precipitating the ultimate nightmare scenario: the customer being angry with us - and right to be. Nothing in retail can be worse than the customer being right, but luckily it doesn't happen often. The other day a woman with a bizarre and aggravating voice made me look for a book, which I found for her. Then she made me ring our Chelmsford shop to check that they had it there. They did, so she had it put aside for her. 'I can pick it up any time I like, yeah?' That book you just had in your hands? 'Yes.' No explanation was offered for this behaviour, unless her air of dull-witted confusion constituted one.

the future

What with all the excitement I forgot to say that we have a new housemate: the Facebook guy signed up and I can reveal that his name is Ross Michael Brown. Shortly after signing the contract, he put his ‘pros and cons’ on his Facebook profile, and his cons were that he is ‘selfish, lazy, and thoughtless’. Later, he deleted the pros and cons and simply wrote: ‘I am completely awesome and legendary’.

In the photo on his profile, he is wielding a big sword. It really is all quite frightening.

At least we’ll be too busy dodging RMB’s blade to watch terrible TV like Britain’s Youngest Boozers. Really, it’s enough to make you turn to drink. Take this girl, reacting badly to being called a pisshead: doesn’t she know the name of the programme she’s in? Of course, she never had a chance: her mother called her Sherrie. What hope for her sisters Brandy, Chardonnay, and Sex on the Beach?

Mat and Amanda are back from Cuba, still talking about having a pig or pigs. Only he wants to eat them, and she just likes them for themselves. Actually, that isn’t such a bad basis for a relationship. Both are considering new careers: beauty therapy in her case while Mat will be taking photos of small children, hopefully with the permission of their parents this time…

We’ve been trying to think of ways in which they might combine their talents. Perhaps, should Amanda branch out into colonic irrigation, Mat could take a picture of her clients’ faces just as the water hits. Like the souvenir of some wild water ride in Thorpe Park (if they still have such things). In fact, why call it colonic irrigation? It’s very off-putting. How about, I don’t know, Happy Hose Hour, or The Splurge? That might really work, and if we can get the pigs involved too…

I think I’ve got carried away again.

my status gets updated

At work Jo went to a ‘Penguin launch’. Well, I thought, that makes sense. How can you really be sure that penguins can’t fly unless you put them on the spot? But it turned out to be something to do with books.

I made arrangements to meet up with Richard, who I once attempted to write a sitcom with. In the interim, however, I passed someone who looked exactly like him in the street. I smiled at him but he ignored me. Something about his clouded gaze and the loose way his mouth worked suggested a mental problem. Perhaps, I thought, he’s had a lobotomy; and he was wearing a woolly hat. But the truth was even more horrific. He texted me to say he’d been at work at the time: I’d smiled at a stranger.

The news that eclipses everything, however, is that I have been made an uncle. Bobs released the baby, not without a struggle, on the expected, the magical, date: 7/07/07. ‘Maybe she’ll be Jesus’, I said; and they are at least toying with the name Jessica. I was expecting not to schedule a meeting with my niece until she could form a coherent sentence, in 2012 say. But in practice I saw her today. What does one say to babies? They always look as if they know everything already. She was asleep, luckily, so no need for awkward small talk ( ‘So, how did birth go?’ ‘...’)

I know how to live

Monday was the first day of my week off: ‘The wettest day in fifty years’, according to the headline in the Daily Express. I had expected as much.

I went to see The Mother And The Whore, a nearly four hour long French film in black and white about people talking in cafes. I like a challenge (in no other area than this). As luck would have it, all films shown at the BFI are a fiver on Tuesdays, which this was. As luck would have it, The Mother And The Whore was an exception, because it’s ‘long’. Suppressing a feeling that they should be paying me to see it, I coughed up the asking price.

There was a half hour interval. It didn’t really need one, but probably there’s some EU policy. During the interval I ate a sandwich from Eat. Ham and brie. Eat do good sandwiches. Oh, the movie? Well it wasn’t the defining event of my existence (which I felt it should have been for £12-50 a ticket) but the characters were vivid, and by the end you felt you knew them. Though not to speak to.

Anyway, the important thing is: I survived.