Ten minutes after he had arrived home on Friday evening, my father received a phone call from the dental surgery at which he works, and has done for the past nine years. It was the manager, who was apparently disgusted by the fact that my father had left some drips of water on the floor, and had escaped without cleaning them up. “And it’s not just me,” he continued in the tones of a human wasp, audible down the phone even in the next room, “I’ve had the other staff in as well and they all agree with me. It’s bang out of order.” Never one for sophistry, my father’s response was to throw the phone into the corner, and steam back down to the surgery that very instant to hand in his notice. Still, people are constantly wrecking their teeth one way or another: I’m sure he’ll find somewhere else to work. The whole thing is only really noteworthy and quite curious with it because it probably would not even have happened had my mother not been prevented from talking him out of being so impulsive by the greasy, all-pervading aftermath my sister’s nauseating antics with a chicken carcass. Not content with putting galline cadaver #1 into the microwave that morning for 42 minutes straight in an attempt to defrost it, she then left it there all day, black of limb and blistered of skin, to fester before coming to terms with the fact that I would not under any circumstances remove it for her, and on returning from the hurried purchase of already ‘cooked’ cadaver #2 ( an enterprise designed to distract my mother from the morning’s debacle, and another thing of which I washed my hands entirely) dropped it all over the floor. So: the house smells of microwaved corpse, the kitchen floor is like an ice rink, I can’t go in there because the idea of encountering something I don’t want to with my foot makes me ill, and my father suddenly has a lot of time on his hands. It is very curious and oddly liberating, in ways that I cannot really articulate, to think that this may not be the case did they not insist on eating chicken, or if Grace could operate the microwave, or even - simplest of all - had she not cascaded fluids of unmentionable origin all over the floor.

More happily, all the beer had gone off at where I work. (It may not sound very happy, but it was because it adds variety). This was only found to be the case after a great many had been served, resulting in en masse mutiny and decampment of our usual customers to the bar downstairs, where the taps are shinier and there are no annoying Christmas decorations as festooned all over the place by me because I was quite bored. The upshot of all of this is that we sold not a singular pie (again!) and management are giving serious thought to confiscating our pie oven. They can’t do that: people won’t be able to complain because the chocolate bars are all melted from sitting on the top of it. It’s not very public spirited of me, but really work is only engaging when it goes awry. I have no future - other than as a sabotager of all that is wholesome and decent. And who would pay anyone for that?