Rocket Science - Monday

Reluctantly I go to another friend of a friend’s fireworks party. It’s curious how with the blurring of months and years, marked mostly by relentless pursuit of sales targets that dance ever further away as if some malicious god has you as the donkey and the deity as the carrot-dangler/stick-wielder, that the passage of time is signposted by another annual festival arriving.

‘I don’t really want to go.’ I grumble as we make our way through the darkened streets and I spot a new opposition For Sale board on a house I valued a few weeks back. ‘You used to love fireworks.’ Chides the wife, oblivious to my growl of protest at the betrayal the flag is illustrating all too obviously. Momentarily I tempted to uproot the hated board and add it to the pile undoubtedly waiting on the bonfire we’re heading for. The public’s dislike of estate agents manifests itself yearly in the pyre of correx flags that burn like phosphorus once you get them going.

‘I used to enjoy it when the kids were still young.’ I tell her. It was the same with Halloween briefly, but this year with the eldest at university and the youngest in the sixth form and eschewing parents carving pumpkins, and extorting only cash not candy, I decided to pass. Without the crutch of kids as a reason to participate there’s something slightly sinister about waiting in the hall with a tray of sweets for strange fancy-dressed children to call. Probably end up listed on some sort of illuminated- squash offenders’ register, if you have a misunderstanding with a finger of fudge.

‘That twat from last year will be there baiting me about property.’ I grumble as a loud bang detonates nearby and I nearly have a cardiac. The oiled-up oaf wanted an argument about how we supposedly manipulate the market last time and I’m not expecting his opinion to have changed, any more than my circumstances.
‘When did you become so angry?’ Asks my wife with a hint of despair and we fall into a silent walk punctuated only by the odd explosion and the excited chatter of unseen children behind garden fences.

And I ponder once again where it all went wrong. There was the faux anger of youth dovetailed neatly with punk rock and the standard testosterone-rich rage that went hand-in-hand. The rather more caring and inclusive new romantic phase when I mellowed slightly and thought I could be a writer, rather than just a writer of room measurements. On reflection, I guess it all started to go pear-shaped when all that acid/rave nonsense started, about the time I got my first child, first manager’s post, and the pressure to perform began to skyrocket.

‘Hear he comes.’ I mutter acidly to my wife after we’ve handed over flowers, a tenner towards the communal incendiaries and a bottle of Bordeaux. And with demoralising predictability the drunk from last year approaches, cheeks ruddy with wine.
‘Ah-hah the property purveyor.’ Stumbles the oaf as I calculate whether my back is strong enough to heft the bore straight on to the bonfire, where at least one of my boards is burning brightly.

Like an overgrown schoolboy who has tired of detaching legs from spiders, the piss-head has moved on to bar-room rhetoric about bankers and estate agents ruining this once proud nation. I’m hoping he’ll start ranting about foreigners taking all the plum jobs in chicken processing plants then at least I might get some grudging kudos for punching him in the face as an exit strategy.

‘You lot,’ babbles the man finger jabbing aggressively. ‘Are the reason my children can’t afford to buy a house.’ My, you are just looking for a fall guy gag falls on deaf ears and the jibe about him not being a very civil servant and needing to get a real job only adds flames to the fire, so my wife pulls me away.

‘Can’t take you anywhere.’ She hisses in tandem with a launching pyrotechnic.
‘Sticky situations wherever I go.’ I tell her forgetting about last year, reaching for a toffee apple, and beginning to enjoy myself.

Could have done without losing the filling.