Monday 20 December 2010

I'm still having to step over last years dead Christmas tree...


I’m still having to step over last year’s dead Christmas tree to get to the letter- box at number 87 on the estate.

A woman with tight jeans and a furry hat with ear flaps mistakes me for a colleague who recently featured in The Daily Examiner for doing the shopping for some of his elderly customers during the cold spell. She tells me how much old Mr Mallinson appreciated me getting his fags for him.

I hand over a parcel to a man in his fifties with some keys on his belt. It’s obviously a Christmas present: “Bloody Hell! Someone’s got money to burn” he says. “I’m a miserable sod, aren’t I?” he adds before laughing and saying “Thank you, my man” three times in a West Midlands accent and then shutting the door.

Just past the interior designer’s house with the UPVC porch and the fake leaded lights in a stylised tulip pattern, about ten yards down from where he parks his white Astra with the body kit and the white circular cardboard air freshener which dangles from the rearview mirror and has the word ‘AIR’ cut out of it in Helvetica Bold, opposite the red brick inter-war semi called ‘UP ’EM HALL’ with the three-wheeled motorcycle on the drive, half buried in the pile of mucky snow across from the house with the six-foot-high inflatable Homer Simpson wearing a Santa hat, I discover I can find eternal peace of mind from just £28.00 per annum (according to the promo- tional leaflet about insuring memorial stones and headstones I find there).