Jenny nods over at me. I’m assuming that it wasn’t brilliant for her and that she’s humouring me. Humour away, I don’t give a fiddlers.

Can we watch Location, Location, Location? I have it recorded, she asks.

I tell her that she certainly cannot put it on, that I’d rather watch paint dry. It’s a fucking repeat of a repeat of a repeat, now repeat after me. I don’t know where this mean streak of mine has come from. I suppress it when I can but she’s not watching those two clowns trying to buy property for losers and telling terrible jokes. There has to be a better way to live.

After a bit of an argument, we settle on a late-night show about the history of punk music. She’s sulking a bit, but so be it, it’s better to have the room soaked with music than watch people who are incapable of making a decision becoming more and more indecisive. In my view this is the whole problem of choice, that people have to make a choice.

11. God

April 2017

I often feel that God is coming at me. Perhaps fear does that to you. Perhaps having children creates a fear of the unknown. What if they grow up disappointed?

Saturday morning – I prop up my pillow and I take Jenny’s satin cushion and place it at the back of my neck. I kick the cushion with the terrible peach paisley design and the lace trim off the bed. Jenny purchased it in a charity shop. She buys an awful lot of tat, used unloved stuff from other people’s lives, and she’s always trying to be retro, it’s like a disease with her. The cushion reminds me of the insipid carpet from my old flat on Camden Lane. I wonder if Jenny was trying to be ironic when she chose it. I lie back in bed. I wish she would come to me. To place her cool palm on my forehead and to bring me a cup of tea, for I often bring her tea in bed and this might be as good time as any for a little payback.

Jenny, I shout downstairs but she doesn’t hear me because she has the radio on – mainstream stuff from Lyric FM. I wish she would put on some decent sounds. Jenny, I call her name again. There is no response. I get out of bed. I’m wearing grey boxer shorts and an old black T-shirt. I rub the surface of my bedside locker, a layer of dust is on my finger. I find my grey velvet dressing-gown on a chair under a pile of clothes. I resolve to clean up later.