A Ridiculous Existence

I had a reasonably long love-hate relationship with J. I loved her and she hated me. Also, I was miffed she wouldn’t tell me the other letters in her name. I should have taken the hint when she told me she’d chosen ‘Beelzebub’ as her communion name. I myself, I must confess, had ulterior motives for pursuing her. I was doing a stretch in Birkenhead with no clear sight of parole and the thought of living with her in her Penthouse apartment in Bootle was just so attractive. When Bootle seems like Las Vegas compared to where you’re living, you know you have to move and quick.

She had two cats at least one of which she set against me. One was a runt while the other – my nemesis – was a beautiful Marilyn Monroe of a moggy, curvy and sexy like something out of a cartoon. It generally managed to contain its wind like any normal cat, except when it was around me. It would wait until I had almost dropped off to sleep – by this time I was only allowed to sleep in the hall near to the front door with only a road map to Scotland for a blanket – when it would slink by me and waft out a lethal one. Without in any way downgrading what World War One soldiers must have gone through when exposed to chlorine, phosgene or mustard gas, I can only say that if I lived down a sewer in a laundry basket from a dysentery ward, the effect could not have been more pungent. I don’t know if you’ve ever witnessed a cat smirk…?

I became so depressed that I’d take walks around Bootle just to gather my thoughts. On finding that this depressed me even more, I took up the world of work once again having failed to write up my PhD thesis ‘Trains and Why They Run on Time under Fascism’. I started work in the local job centre where it gratified me to find that there was a local hard-core 20% unemployment. This augured well for the longevity and security of my own job and those of my colleagues. I used to argue this point with some of my more hard-faced comrades but they would insist in trying to urge folk off the register.

“What on earth are you doing?” I’d say “Can’t you see the anomaly here?” but they reported me to management and I had to leave.

In the meantime, J had taken to smashing mirrors on an almost daily basis and would only sleep with me wearing an Aleister Crowley mask while incanting passages from The Book of the Dead.

On finding that the only job then available on the whole of Merseyside was as a sex-bitch for the workers at Edge Lane rail yards, I decided I better head back down south to London. J had a brass band ready at Lime Street and upon my departure ran off with the lead singer of local group, Cruise Missile and the Love Javelins.

My sorrows behind me, I slept for a year in a park in Palmer’s Green, north London. The local Greeks would fling pitta bread my way thinking I lived with the ducks. When they discovered this wasn’t the case the chased me away using that famous Mediterranean ‘meh’ chin gesture and calling me a ‘crazy Mameluke’. This situation offered me no option but to go and work for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and become a tax collector once again.

I’d been a tax collector twice before and was well used to schlepping around London writing out ‘we have called’ notes for folk that were never in. I had a colleague that would simply post these out and piss off home to pursue his work as a tax avoidance consultant. Once it said on the ‘previous calls’ notes that he’d ‘called at premises, 1^st floor flat, no answer to door, called at neighbours but no response’. When I made my call to the address I was informed by locals that the entire building had been demolished four years previously. They should have renamed us No-tax Collectors.