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At Christmas my editor of the Metro takes me out for lunch. It is one of the many perks of having had a weekly column for almost 4 years. The other perks are that I was once sent some free Mr Kipling cakes and some yoghurt (but rather than get them delivered to my house I let the people in the office have them). It’s a strong indication that the Metro will continue to employ me for a while at least. So I should hit that anniversary and get to my 200th column (this week’s is number 194). Nothing can possibly go wrong. Or so I would imagine. I don’t know. I have never had a job that has lasted four years before. We’re off the yellow brick road here folks.
Lunch was very nice, in a posh 10th floor Chinese restaurant with all the sights of London in the distance. But I’d had a mildly tough night with the baby and had walked from home (it was about an hour away) and was a bit tired. And I had a couple of glasses of wine. In spite of my weariness and tipsiness I didn’t insult my editor (I don’t think) or reveal my racism against the Chinese (I couldn’t reveal it because it doesn’t exist - it’s the bloody Japanese that I can’t stand) and it was a pleasant repast.
I decided to walk home as well, which might have been a mistake as I was tired and needed a wee. I also thought I would take what I imagined might be a shortcut, by cutting up a side road to Notting Hill Gate. But it was not a short cut. And I was half cut.
Unsurprisingly there are some expensive looking houses in the roads between High Street Kensington and Notting Hill. I walked up a private road hoping it would lead to Notting Hill, but it turned to the right and then to the right again. I had gone round in a huge three sides of an oblong. But I had seen into the lives of the super rich private road people (not that amazing) and briefly considered weeing behind one of their hedges (I held it in til I got home, somehow).
There are loads of parts of London that you never end up walking through and I was astounded by the hidden opulence in street after street, each house worth several million - where do all these millionaires come from? Loads of them were having work done to their houses, digging out basements for swimming pools and so on. I know how much a house in Shepherd’s Bush can (fail to) go for. It’s quite breathtaking and sickening the way the housing market has gone. But in any circumstances these places would be beyond the budget of anyone who wasn’t born into it or had made billions on the internet or had won the Euromillions (and even then, it’d have to be one of the big wins).
There’s a big hidden away mansion on the top of the hill, which you can’t really see from outside but which I’ve read has quite big grounds. If everyone else in the world vacates the planet and leaves me behind (which I am pretty certain is going to happen at some point - I was going to write it as a short story, but Stewart Lee told me someone else has already done it) then I think I might make that secret mansion my base. Though I don’t know why. There will be no need to be hidden away if I am the only person on Earth . I also fancy living in one of the penthouses above St Pancras station, but again there would be limited point if there were no other people. But if there were other people around I’d be too ashamed to do it. At least when property is in Shepherd’s Bush there are drawbacks, like people shitting by your front gate. I bet that doesn’t happen at St Pancras. Well actually, it almost certainly does, but a man in a top hat and velvet gloves will clean it up before your see it and have the shitter executed.
I wasn’t able to properly enjoy envying the rich, whilst secretly hoping to join their ranks, because of my tiredness and full bladder, but this is the first time since the birth of my daughter that I have wandered the streets of London alone for a couple of hours. So the freedom made up for the discomfort.
And I’d already earned the break, but Phoebe made me pay more as I was in charge of bath and bedtime and though I thought that I might collapse at any moment, she was determined to stay awake. She cried quite a lot, but in between times she tried to (and succeeded in) making me laugh, knowing she was meant to be going to sleep, enjoying being naughty. And it’s no good if I enjoy her being naughty too is it?
Luckily I have a tag team partner and my wife took over this thankless task after an hour and finally somehow got the monster we have spawned to sleep. Until 4 am anyway, when I had to entertain her again.
Use a condom. If there had ever been any hope of me saving enough money to buy a mansion I lost it when this idiot was born. But I wouldn’t swap her for all the mansions in the world. That would be unreasonable and all the mansion owners would have to take a little bit of her in return which would be upsetting.
I would swap her for one mansion. But it would have to be in the three million price range. Maybe two million if it had parking.
