“I’ll be about an hour,” I promise.

Four hours later, I am sat hammering out ‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel, whilst Short Tony yells out the words very slightly out of time with the rhythm. The Toddler looks on bemused. My inbox bings with a confirmation from Ebay – a bid of twelve pounds for a ‘Caution – Power Wires’ sign that you affix to the bottom of telegraph poles.

The LTLP is unimpressed.

“You’re not leaving. You’re not leaving,” Short Tony and Eddie had insisted to me as I had attempted to put my coat on at the bar. Fortunately I have always been fairly unsusceptible to peer pressure. Unfortunately, however, I am pathetically weak when it comes to beer pressure, and had stayed for one more pint, a couple of large whisky macs and a test drive of the new barrel of Oyster Stout.

I think Sunday lunchtimes might be the new Friday nights. Or, if I am honest, the Sunday lunchtime Omnibus repeat of Friday nights. There is a nice atmosphere in the Village Pub, and a civilised feeling, and free sausages. I have always resisted lunchtime drinking, in that it tends to eat up the entire day; however when the highlight of the rest of your day entails giving a small child a bath and then watching ‘Lewis’ on ITV there seems to be an argument for screaming and hammering on the pub doors at five minutes to noon.

I do not win my Ebay auction. This is a relief the next morning. Somewhere, somebody out there with a worse hangover than me is clutching their head, looking out upon a telegraph pole and moaning ‘why…?’ Mrs Short Tony arrives at the front door to see if I still have her husband’s shoe.

The LTLP sits upright in bed.

“What was that?” she demands.

“Felt like an earthquake,” I reply.

Despite living in a cottage that has been partially rebuilt by the Methodical Builder, I am not unduly alarmed. The experience is interesting and unusual, but I don’t think that it is the end of the world or the beginnings of a Russian nuclear attack. Everybody knows that the official advice should we be in danger of nuclear annihilation is to grab the nearest woman and make love to her vigorously, and I cannot believe that the Russians would be so heartless as to launch their plans at 1 a.m. when I am in bed with the LTLP.

Nevertheless I am a bit disappointed in the morning when there are not huge great cracks in the road that leads through the Village, and all essential services seem to be working tolerably. The BBC has set up a service whereby people who think it’s important to text that they heard a rumble then perhaps looked outside to see what was happening can do so, their texts being displayed upon a special web page. This seems an excellent idea to stop such people breeding for five minutes or so. But otherwise the country seems to be functioning normally.

As a child I remember being strangely disappointed that Britain did not have earthquakes or floods or hurricanes like in places like South America; clearly as an adult my views have moved on from there. But South America does not have Strategic HR Initiatives or the Jeremy Kyle show, so who is to say which place is worse off?

I plan to walk to the Village Shop shortly; I shall be disappointed if the pork pies have not got through. We have not had such excitement round here for a long time. I will look forward to telling the Village Shop Man that I heard a rumbling noise – I will be annoyed if he trumps my story by having heard the rumbling noise AND looked outside.

I am excited about going to Brighton.

It is one of those vibrant places that makes you feel about ten years younger, plus I will be able to make calls on my mobile there without people poking fun. The breeze draws in off the English Channel. It is bracing and refreshing, just as it is bracing and refreshing to be nailed to an Alp whilst Mary Archer empties a box of Mini Milks down the inside of your teeshirt.

“What do you fancy for lunch?” asks my host. “We should have something that you can’t get in Norfolk. Like something foreign.”

I do not rise to the jibe. Clearly they have not heard that there is a kebab house that now delivers to the Village. I give a long groan of overindulgence.

“Something healthy,” I complain. I have come straight from a few days at the LTLP’s parents. “I feel desperately fat and unhealthy. I’ve been eating and drinking constantly. Roast dinners. Pies. Cider. Wine. Just something healthy. Nothing deep fried, nothing stodgy, nothing in batter, no alcohol.”

I am pointed towards a sushi bar, which I quickly discount. Ten minutes later we are sat in ‘Momma Cherri’s Soul Food Shack,’ ordering plates of fried chicken, ribs, meatballs and jambalaya, to be washed down with bottles Moosehead beer.

Why? Why do I do it? Why?!? Staggering back to the station later on, I find I have to run for the train. This does not go well, and several passengers look at my red and sweating face with alarm.

I still refuse to join Short Tony, Len the Fish etc. at Weightwatchers, although I do like the sound of the fact that they all meet afterwards at the chippy over the road to boast about who has lost the most weight. But I am gradually getting fat. I am eating unhealthily, drinking too much, I have not gone running for months and it is still a couple of months before the bowls season starts.

I need to do something. But where will I find the willpower?

I regret putting a TV in the bedroom.

I pull the duvet over my head, but nothing changes, except that I have a duvet over my head. I turn over and try to ignore the luminous freaks as they dance about making infantile noises.

“David Jason must really be embarrassed by this now,” I mutter, provocatively.

“What? What?” demands the LTLP from the other side of the bed.

“Mmmmphhh,” I reply, closing my eyes once more.

“What did you just say?”

Three minutes later I am left to reflect in bemusement how a woman who is gullible enough to believe that three of the Teletubbies are played by David Jason, Ross Kemp and Sir John Mills can be so shrewd when it comes to, say, accepting my estimate as to when I might be home from the Village Pub.

“The other one’s played by an unknown,” I mumble reassuringly.

I have been watching a lot of children’s television recently. The thing that you come to realise is that it is either very good or very crap. There is a locked find-and-replace template that they use for many shows that goes ‘Previously normal character develops unexpected different character trait’/’Different character trait makes them happy for a while’/’Different character trait makes them unhappy’/’They learn that they should just be happy as they are as everybody likes them and everything is wonderful’. Sometimes you long for, say, Spud the Scarecrow to have an irreversible sex change, or to find work in an administrative capacity and say ‘actually, Bob – the pay’s better and I get to piss around playing solitaire on the PC all day’.

Many of the presenters love it, dancing around with their puppets and brightly-coloured hats. My favourite occupation is to look intently for the fleeting dark shadow that betrays the fact that they are dying inside and have realised that they are never going to be asked to do Hamlet. I also dance around with puppets and brightly-coloured hats, but it is in the privacy of my own home, so that is all right.

“They just do the voiceovers, though, don’t they?” she interjects, five minutes later.

“No – they’re inside the costumes. Otherwise it’s pretty well impossible to synch the sound.”

“Oh.”

Many years ago…

The LTLP is at work. I secretly take the day off and let myself into her shared flat.

The apartment is pleasant, but basic. There is a cooker and a fridge, but few other appliances – certainly nothing that would elevate ‘student lodgings’ to ‘a home’. One of her flatmates has lent me her room for the purposes of gift-concealment; I sneak into here and drag out a small second-hand freezer which I have bought with all the money I have in the world. Panting, I lug it through the doorway and plug it in beside her bed.

I take the bashed-up old car down to Sainsbury’s on Green Lanes. The blizzard drives horizontally against the windscreen; when I reach the car-park the snow is so thick that the parking spaces are completely obscured and I just abandon the car where I can.

I walk in to the supermarket, get out my near-limit credit card and buy every tub of Haagen-Dazs in the shop.

Some years ago…

We are broke; enormously broke.

Nevertheless, we take the tube in to London. We walk along the river, then across Waterloo Bridge which provides one of the most wonderful city views in the world. We dine in a restaurant in fashionable Charlotte Street. The meal is not very nice, but the occasion is everything.

Three years ago…

I plan and execute a traditional English lovers’ meal of roast sheep’s heart. Admittedly, the result is not as expected. We enjoy a delicious Chinese take-away.

Two years ago…

Boooooooo… Valentines Day is just a commercial fraud!!! I am boycotting it!!! That will show the Evil commercial companies who force the unemployeds and poors to buy unnecessary consumer goods and cards!!!

The LTLP presents me with a card. There is a long silence whilst I compose my anti-capitalist explanation in my head. Fortunately the bloke next door with a holiday cottage is off home and throwing some cut flowers away – I purloin them and present an ethically green recycled Valentine’s gift.

One year ago…

A romantic night in. A bottle of wine; the television. The LTLP is away at a work do, however.

This year…

I regret not buying more bread. As it is, I have to eke out the very end of a loaf in order that we have enough to fill the Breville sandwich maker. Something arrives for me from the LTLP. It is the aromatherapy stuff for the fungal infection around my knackers.

Submissions are open for this – a Lulu-published book in aid of the Warchild charity.

In the manner of Shaggy Blog Stories (which is still available – go buy one), Peach, who occasionally lurks in the comments box, is donning an Editor’s hat. She will look quite fit in it, with her woman’s face.

There’s a bit of a wider remit than for SBS – i.e. it doesn’t have to be funny. What it does have to be is under 1500 words and about ‘something you’ve been through from any aspect of your life that you want to share’.

I am trying to think of something, as I only really ‘do’ funny, apart from bits that are meant to be funny but don’t work out that way. I may write a short Misery Memoir about living next door to Short Tony.

Either way, please do get involved. There are full details over at Peach’s site. Go have a look.

The LTLP gazes unusually kindly upon me as I stumble round the kitchen. I have returned from a memorial service that has made me a) maudlin and sentimental and b) horrendously and embarrassingly pissed thanks to the generosity of the family concerned, and the fast-track ‘get horrendously and embarrassingly pissed’ gold card facilities of the Village Pub.

There is a crashing noise from next door, announcing the fact that Short Tony has returned also.

Something to eat is a priority. The LTLP offers several options, none of which seem quite right in the circumstances. There is something nagging at me. It is unusual to have something nagging at me that is not her, and I spend some time trying to identify the source of nag. Eventually I dredge up an old memory, of a man coming to the front door bearing a leaflet.

“You do?!?” I splutter at the telephone, incredulous, like a younger J.R. Hartley with half a pint of Adnams soaked into his shirt. “My name? It’s…”

I get on the phone to Short Tony. “I’vefoundakebabshopthat’lldeliver,” I slur. “To the Village.”

There are disbelieving noises at his end of the line. “It’s just,” I continue, “that they have a minimum order requirement.”

“Sorry. I’d love to,” he slurs. “But I’m cooking some pasta. For the diet.”

There are disbelieving noises on my end of the line, followed by a short argument. I ring off, and crossly ring Big A.

“He’s gone straight to sleep,” barks Mrs Big A. “No – he will not be having a kebab. I’ve cooked him dinner. I had cooked him dinner. And what the hell have you lot been…”

I ring off once more. Boooooooooo – nobody else wants a kebab. In the end I order sixteen pounds worth of kebab for myself and fall asleep during the first one.

I’m not sure how I can possibly get across what an implausible yet marvellous thing it is to find a kebab shop that will deliver to the Village. It is like a magic doorway of sustainance leading out from isolational hell. The only realistic parallel I can think of is that of a starving village in Africa where Oxfam have gone and built a well. And we didn’t even expect Oxfam to come to do all the kebabbing for us, which sheds some perspective on that continent’s difficulties. I will inform Bob Geldof and the man from Toto.

The Cottage smells of kebabs the next morning. I consider microwaving one up for breakfast, but decide against it.