Rant Read Free

kind of feeling. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to shake most of it off until at least my second cup of tea, but the post- bit beckoned. I went and rummaged through the letters stacked on the hall radiator, looking for that much-delayed missive from Kenneth Branagh. Dearest Mike, how are you, you old bugger? Didn’t have your latest address, so the new epic’s been on hold for the last two years…. Please find cheque enclosed (hope it’s enough to be going on with) and feel free to adjust script if you don’t like it/feel you haven’t got enough lines/think Helena Bonham Carter gets too much time on screen generally and someone has to make a stand. Look forward to seeing you at your convenience, dear heart – love K.B.
    It wasn’t there, of course.
    What was there was a bank statement from a week ago that I hadn’t dared look at yet and some nonsense from Readers Digest telling the homeowner they’re a millionaire, if they order the English Civil War Diary Collection – forty-eight volumes at the bargain, never-to-be-repeated price of forty-four pounds and seventy-three pence each. Shite.
    â€˜No post,’ said Anna, between gulps of tea.
    â€˜Well, thanks for telling me,’ I replied. ‘That’s ruined my morning now; I could have happily spent a few hours working that one out. Now what am I going to do?’
    â€˜Eff off,’ came the jolly riposte, which is not to suggest that Anna is unoriginal in her arguments, but as I said, we’ve done this one rather too often for either of us to generate much enthusiasm.
    â€˜Ooooh! Get you!’ says me. ‘Someone got out of the wrong side of the calendar this morning.’
    â€˜Yes,’ she screamed merrily, ‘me! I seem to have ended up getting out of the side that involves working for a living yet a-effing-gain.’
    â€˜Oh, here we go,’ I suggested helpfully, ‘come on, let’s rake all this shit up again. You suffer so much and I just—’
    â€˜No,’ said Anna to me, in joyful tones as befitted the new day, ‘you’re the one who effing suffers. You have to wank around here all day in your own sad effing company trying to make sense of the complete waste of space that you are, well I’m sad for you, because you’re not even worth…feeling…sad…at…’
    I tried to find some kind of sense in all of that but we were both a bit tired, so I just asked a perfectly civil question.
    â€˜What are you on about?’
    â€˜Money,’ she explained. ‘As in, you have none, you better find some, you’re going to pay the bills this month, you’re going to pay the mortgage this month, I’m not subbing you anything this month, so you can fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off!’
    I was sure this last outburst was because she’d forgotten to intersperse her whole sentence with eff-off s, so she had to squeeze them in at the end. But it was unlike her to actually say it, and some dim part of my brain began to fathom that she might actually be really upset. It makes for awkward reading on the page, but it’s quite impressive if you read it aloud to yourself; especially on the bus.
    â€˜Oh, come on,’ I whined, in my best Bruce Willis whiny voice, ‘don’t be like that...’
    But Anna had had enough and she strode past me, slamming the front door behind her hard enough to rattle my fillings. (Mind you, some of them are so shit the slightest draught can rattle them.)
    I sat trying to think of some witty line to throw at her but nothing came. Still, that doesn’t usually stop me so I jumped up and flung the door open again.
    â€˜You know what you are, don’t you?’ I screamed.
    But I’d left it too long, as usual, and Anna had disappeared down the cut. All that was there was a little old man whose poodle was shitting at the bottom of our drive. He looked a bit shifty and