Milton Tibb RIP
Article 2- Originally printed 15/3/07
I’m tired, emotional, smelly and trapped in my loft. Well, ok I’m not trapped up here, but for all intents and purposes, I’m now contemplating a life in which my closest friends are a water tank, loft insulation, an old tennis racket and the occasional pigeon which sneaks its way in. I’m almost officially a weird attic man. I have some tinned food and my laptop up here from which I am sending this piece to my editor who has been leaving answer phone messages in a blind rage for three days now. He promised to rip off a very sensitive part of my body and ensure I end up gagging on it. Safe to say, life as a weird attic man is beginning to feel like a better path.
How has my life come to this point you ask? It began innocently enough a few weeks ago when my partner and I were finally able to move back into our flat following the Tony invasion (see my previous column). I was perusing a social networking site and came across an old friend from school, Anna who had sent me a message. We began chatting and kicked off a rapport, laughing about the class fruitcakes that were either still fruitcakes or now making 6 figure sums in The City ordering other fruitcakes around. After a week or so, I was informed of the death of an ex-classmate, Ben. Ben was a nice enough guy, if a bit non-entity and if I’m honest, I had no relationship with him at school and felt the same about his death as I would hearing a story on the local news about a man who got eaten alive by his own Dalmatian. There was sympathy apart from social reflex sympathy.
I was invited to the funeral. This was something that would eat into my schedule (I’d been doing brilliantly on the latest Call of Duty on the Xbox and wasn’t about to let the Nazi’s take Moscow for this guy) and see me thrown in the deep end with people I’d successfully avoided for a number of years. In an act of cowardice I messaged Anna the day before the funeral I was extremely sorry, but I had come down with the flu and wasn’t able to make it. I heard nothing, so assumed this hadn’t gone down brilliantly, but that was the end of the matter. The evening the funeral had taken place, while sitting in my boxers blowing up a panzer division there was a ring at the door bell. My girlfriend has a real job and was away on business. I decided to leave it imagining it to be someone trying to bust my balls for a charity they’re making £9 per hour out of in wages. A knock was followed by what I instantly recognised, all these years later as Anna’s voice.
I scrambled around turning off the console, getting rid of the remnants of dinner and looked in the mirror to inspect myself for possible signs of illness. My usual appearance is one of runt like sickliness, nature gifting me with a translucent pale hue. Bags under my eyes remained from the late night gaming sessions. I went to get a class of orange juice and paracetamol to have in hand as I answered the door.
Anna was faking a happy disposition brilliantly. I’m a grade A liar, and admired her work, but also realised she was on a revenge mission for my blowing off the funeral. I gave her my symptoms ( pretty much describing the plague from symptoms listed on the Wikipedia entry) and seemed days away from death. Anna nodded and feigned sympathy. Had I met my match in her? She twittered on about the funeral and the ‘beautiful’ wake for so long, I regretted not going as this whole thing was going to last longer than the actual event itself. She left 3 hours later and told me she’d be back in the morning to check up on me and bring me some supplies and more paracetamol. A call to my girlfriend garnered no sympathy and as she sat on the motorway in traffic, my situation gave her some comic relief.
I awoke at 7am to the doorbell. Anna had brought round some fruit juices, as well as a couple more old classmates for ‘support’. It seemed she’d actively picked the two biggest cocks from our school days I’d ever have the displeasure of seeing again. I sat in my dressing gown, periodically feigning a cough and sneeze (harder to maintain than one may imagine) while these douche bags rattled off every detail of their lives over the past ten years, warts n all. Babies I would never remember the names of, overweight partners or wives, crappy jobs in marketing and the rest.While they were banging on, my cat walked past, disturbed from his sleep by their booming voices, looked me in the eye knowingly. Yes cat, I messed up, sorry.
On the third day, I needed to go into the office as my boss was hounding me for some copy. I snuck out early, so I could try and be back in case of another impromptu ‘pop in’. Here I failed. When I returned there was a message from Anna asking where I was and whether I was ok as she was terribly worried my condition had worsened and I’d slipped unconscious (this lady was such an accomplished actress I almost felt I was falling for her). I called her back and told her I’d been asleep. She was coming around that evening. This went on for a couple more days, by which time I imagined I could bring on my recovery. My problem didn’t go away though. Anna left a message saying we’d go to the graveyard to lay some flowers once I was better and that I could then join her and ‘the others’ for a drink. That’s when I decided to make a quite retreat. All great generals have the skill to sense when retreat and consolidation is necessary. I called Anna back and told her I had to go away for work for a week or more. I knew this would be followed by a visit, so I gathered supplies and moved my life to the second floor of the house, and then, the attic.
Anna did turn up numerous times. Due to the vent in the roof, I could hear her pretty well whenever she was at the front door. She cursed to herself and muttered under her breath that she knew I was around and avoiding her. We both knew that was true, but as long as there was no proof, I was golden. Her visits became fewer and then the girlfriend arrived back, not knowing what she’d returned to. Of course, she knew she was coming back to a small and pathetic man, but that only brought out the mothering side in her. When Anna next rang, the girlfriend had some fun (without running it past me) and told her my condition had worsened and I’d passed away the previous week. Apparently Anna sounded truly shocked. Well, she will be if she bumps into me in Tesco’s.
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Article 1 – Originally published 25/1/07
“I thought I was watching a Silverback gorilla backing out of my shower”
For the past four months there has been someone living with me and my girlfriend who is neither a relative nor a friend. This person is a 50 year old, 15 stone male who has been in our employ as a builder and developer. Tony is his name and he was originally employed to oversee the construction of an extension to our house, yet little did we know we’d actually be gaining a housemate against our will.
Tony was more than affable at first, willing to accomadate our ideas into his own plans for the extension. He was short, stocky and balding on top. His hair must have have been diverted elsewhere as the rest of his body was incredibly hairy which would strike unease into me and my girlfriend’s minds whenever he spoke to us in his thick cockney accent.
As the weeks rolled on Tony began coming to the house on his own whim and talked us into accepting that it was standard practice for builders to have their own key to a property they were working on. Before we knew it there were 11pm visits, ‘all nighters’ and weekend drop-ins.
Work on the actual extension was slow. Teams of builders came and went as Tony chopped and changed plans, having violent outbursts in front of me and my girlfriend when we explained that we couldn’t afford a wind turbine on the roof of the extension, and it would be impossible to get planning permission. Tony sulked away to ‘his’ office in our study almost in tears muttering something about the future of the planet.
Time continued to breeze by and focus on other events in our lives diverted our attention from the constant hiring and firing of other other builders, and to be honest I feared the probable wrath of Tony if I had attempted to sack him. When not erupting into violent outbursts, Tony could be an extremely charming and loveable rogue who could talk his way out of a paper bag. Whatever that means. He told us things were fine and in a couple more months the extension would be complete and we’d be relaxing in our new sun room over dinner.
Then things took a turn for the surreal. Food began disappearing from the kitchen and I could have sworn someone had been smoking my collection of Cuban cigars. Tony had taken to sleeping in what there was so far of the extension, claiming being spiritually closer to the building would inspire him further. My girlfriend being a sentimental fruitcake accepted this tripe while I had not been informed of this development. ‘Let’s keep it a secret between me and you, eh sweetheart?’, Tony had told her.
Then something else happened. Tony began bringing women to the house. At this point you may be asking why I hadn’t kicked this propesterous little urchin off the job and out of my house, or called the police to do it for me. My cowardly nature prevented me from doing the first and in attempting the latter I was duly informed by the local constabulary that I should stop wasting their time. It was just me and Tony now.
Me and the girlfriend were out eating lunch one day and formulating a plan to get this stranger out of our house. Things had come to a head that morning when thinking my girlfriend was in the shower, I disrobed and quietly walked up to the steamed up door looking to get a little ‘amourous’. I watched in pure horror as the door swung open before I could reach the handle and I thought I was watching a silverback gorilla backing out of my shower. ‘Alright Guv’nor? Well well, you aint turned bent on us av you?’, Tony exclaimed on seeing my naked frame in front of him as he reached for his towel.
We decided on a plan to stock up on supplies, change the locks and barricade ourselves in the house. Tony usually went into town on Saturdays, so we would have time, but would have to be quick.
On our return, I attempted to slide my key into the front door but it wouldn’t fit. After 30 seconds of jangling a bullet like dread hit my chest and a cold sweat collected around my foreheard. He’d got there first.
After a couple of minutes of incessant shouting and banging on the door on my part, a naked woman opened the bedroom window and cried out, ‘Look, can you just shut up and accept this is our house now’. My girlfriend was white as a sheet when we heard Tony call the woman back to our bed.
And that is the reason I am writing this column fron the Travel Lodge off the Clacket Lane services on the M25 outside London. According to my lawyer, Tony is putting up quite the legal fight and the council are giving me and my partner more grief about the fact that we didn’t have planning permission to build an extension and as we haven’t paid for the materials in full, Tony still has rights over it. Although it also turns out Tony is not a certified building constructor, and his name isn’t actually Tony.
