Ice Ice Baby - Wednesday

I pull slowly into the council car park, the only one I can still use without punitive charges that chase local businesses out of town, even as clueless councillors wonder why there are so many charity shops in the high street?

My wheels spin on the un-gritted surface. For a moment I think the company car is going to slide  rather gracefully into one of the disabled spaces that are always annoyingly free, while I circle endlessly for a space, post appointment. The doctor on call sign doesn’t fool the Nazi wardens who patrol here with zestful malice, as long as it’s not raining, so I might have to lift one of those Blue Disabled parking badges if we get to another deceased estate property before the distant relatives have stripped it.

‘Morning.’ Calls a familiar voice as I step gingerly onto the glistening tarmac, having found a free bay and placed the legitimate taxable-benefit permit in the window. I look up to see the disillusioned banker with the dodgy hips, parked opposite me. Great, now I’ll have to talk to him all the way across the park and on to the office. His job title is only one letter swap away from the truth….

‘Slippery.’ Says the banker as he shuffles towards me and I hope for some black ice and a tumble. The new implant can’t be that well bedded in yet, so a dislocation and a trip to A & E can only be a misplaced foot away.

‘Don’t know why they can’t put salt on the surface.’ I say to the banker, as we slip-slide in some ghastly approximation of Dancing On Ice, towards the exit.

‘Cutbacks.’ He answers, spreading his hands for balance like a cheap tightrope-walker. ‘Same at the bank nowadays, bean counters looking to cut corners, irrespective of the consequences.’

He has a point, my boss is a figure-fiddler par-excellence and to think we used to pinch the sandwiches from that geeky kid who excelled at maths, each school lunchtime. Last I heard he was running some multinational outfit who specialise in buy-ins and turnarounds. Shorthand for asset-stripping, a shed load of redundancies and a pension pot deficit. 

Our musings on middle-aged underachievement are cut short by a pitiful scream and a dull thud. We spin in unison and I make an unseemly grab at the banker's sleeve as my inappropriate brogues, with the leather soles, momentarily betray me. We steady each other like a pair of over-sized fawns on a frozen lake, to see another old person has taken a tumble.

We get several fallers a year outside the office and I always give out cups of tea and the meagre dressing our impoverished First Aid box will allow us to stock, now the health and safety bitches from head office have removed all the drugs and the scissors. I look at it as more of an investment than compassion that might alter the public perception of estate agents. If they croak in the ambulance, the family might find my business card in a handbag and give me the probate sale.

‘Are you alright?’ Asks the banker pointlessly, as we approach the old lady whose head is already bleeding alarmingly. She has a crimson stain spreading through her blue rinse and we can see her thermal underwear, with her legs at such an an ungainly angle. I’m no paramedic, but I’m guessing not.

‘I don’t want to get old.’ Says the banker wistfully, once the ambulance has gone and we resume our journey. It’s the same comment I get several times a week from ancient people contemplating selling the family home for something more manageable, with emergency pull cords in the bathroom. Pointing out the alternative is much less palatable, is always futile.

The park is as treacherous as the car park and I wonder why the council can’t supply those children’s Penguins, you see on ice rinks for stability, as people slide towards work. Probably spent the budget on a drop in centre for trans-gender giraffes with height issues.

‘You’re late.’ Taunts assistant manager T, at the office before me for once.

I let it slide.

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Spanish Fly - Sunday

‘I’m not sure we belong here.’ I tell my wife as we search in vain for a couple of non-towelled sun beds. You have to invade the pool early to get a space before these surprisingly sprightly ex-Nazi youths, stake a claim.

‘You are just being foreign-phobic again.’ Hisses my wife, ‘Bet you couldn’t take that attitude at work.’ She continues, as I spot the only free beds are next to the shaded shower where I refuse to soak myself before jumping in the pool. Needless to say the portly Bavarians all follow orders.

She’s right. I don’t discriminate where property is concerned. Not only is it illegal but it’s counter-productive. Without offshore money there’d certainly be a lot of London agents looking to renegotiate their rents, and lazy journalists might need to leave the Central Line for their next glossy interior story.

‘I mean who thought people still wore Speedos outside of the Olympic diving pool?’ I say, as the man I’ve nicknamed Dead Elvis strides by. This scrawny octogenarian sports an improbable silver-coloured quiff and leopard print trunks. His leathery skin is tanned to ebony brown and has more lines than a cyclone affected weather map. I wouldn’t let him within five miles of a school.

‘And here come the Munich festival crew.’ I grumble, as a group of retired German bankers - who else can afford to stop work while they can still herd shopping trolleys round an Asda car park – arrive at the pool bar and order their first beers of the morning. In the cheaper, locals’ bars behind the beach, unemployed Spanish men are also drinking alcohol with a spooky symmetry.

The overweight German men are already in their skimpy, unappetisingly saggy swimsuits, and their perma-tanned wives sport garish prints on their blouses that match their varicose-veined legs. The males wear more gold reserves around their necks and wrists than the Greek economy can muster. I start to yearn for some kids to disrupt the smug air of entitlement and maybe wet this bunch on the outside with the sort of bombs that didn’t remodel Coventry.

‘Don’t check you work emails.’ Scolds my wife as we get out of the midday sun ahead of the mad dogs. I’ve just had a shameful rant that the overworked maid, on a minimum wage sweating in a nylon uniform, hasn’t cleaned our room yet. The naivety of my punk rock anarchist days never seemed further away.

‘I need to know what they are up to.’ I tell my wife switching on my netbook and failing to find a strong enough Wi-Fi signal again. We’ve changed room once already and the receptionist insists on greeting me with a curt, Guten Morgen before breakfast every day. I can’t make another fuss.

‘The office will survive without you.’ Continues my wife so reasonably I want to bark a couple of angry Halts Mauls at her. The paradox is, I ached to escape the office and now I feel like starting a tunnel to get back there. Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome, my geography is all over the place, so who knows?

‘What did that achieve?’ Asks my wife as we go back to the hotel terrace for a pricey coffee, as there is no kettle in the room. We’ll be taking the tea bags back home again then.

‘Not a lot.’ I acknowledge. The asinine work emails I’ve just scanned made me testier than ever and now my shorts are feeling so tight I reckon I’ll need to concede to the next waist size up when we next travel. All this food and alcohol is starting to take its toll, my liver is grumbling as much as I do and I’ve a feeling I’ll still be finding sand in places I didn’t know I had, in February.

‘No we don’t want any fake sunglasses.’ I snap at the African lad flogging knock-off designer shades with authentic looks and all the UV protection you’d get popping you pants on your head. Then the smokers sit next to us, something I now find as offensive as someone squatting down and taking a dump alongside you.

Auf Wiedersehen. 

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