False advertising

The Christmas rush has officially started at the Bottle Shop. The number of epsilon semi-morons coming in to buy Babycham and/or Liebfraumilch has more than tripled. This year though, thanks to Lucy, they have exited the shop dazed, reeling and, more often than not, with a carrier bag full of decent vino. For example: a woman enters the shop. Hair scraped back in a scrunchy. Flesh poured into a pair of leggings. Alarming blue eyeshadow. I know the type, wearily reach for the Babycham. Lucy stays my hand, whispers to me.


Lucy: I bet I can get her to buy something decent.


Me: No chance. Look at her. She thinks Brut Champagne is a new kind of aftershave.


Lucy: Name the champagne, and I'll get her to buy it. I bet you fifty quid.


Me: You're crazy. Okay then. Errrr... Heidsieck.


Lucy: Pfft. Come on. Go for something with a little more class, please.


Me: Alright. You asked for it. Get her to buy the Bollinger Grande Année 1996.


Lucy: You're on.


So Lucy went over to Mrs Scrunchy, with a smile so wide that it nearly met at the back of her head, and started quietly talking to her. I couldn't hear what was being said, apart from a loud "Really?!" from the customer and an "Absolutely" from Lucy. And bugger me, if the girl didn't manage to get Mrs Scrunchy to buy a fifty quid bottle of bubbly. I watched in wonderment as Lucy rang up the sale and Mrs Scrunchy waddled out.


Me: How in the name of sweet Christ did you do that?


Lucy: I told her that scientists recently discovered that champagne aided weight loss, especially expensive champagnes.


Me: You told her that, and she believed you?


Lucy: I can be very persuasive if I put my mind to it.


Me: And how.


Lucy: So where's my half ton then?


I got out my wallet and gave her fifty quid, then watched agog as she put £25 of it in the till.


Lucy: I also gave her a £25 discount. Still, that means I'm still £25 better off.


I'm going to have to keep an eye on this one. She's tricksy. Then again, perhaps I'm just bitter because I never thought of that little scam. Maybe I'll try it on Keith...


The Bottle Shop recommendation for today: Vacqueyras 2002 (France). A rich, lushly fruity red that will improve your skin tone, reduce cellulite and give you everlasting youth. Honest. £4.99
1.12.03 16:00


Ho ho ho

"Christmas is coming/The goose is getting fat/But mention it in the shop/And Marxist Jim will beat you about the head with the cash register."


Okay, so it doesn't scan. But it is true. Marxist Jim gets sourer and sourer as the day approaches. Any customer who wishes him a "Merry Christmas" gets a "Fuck off out of it" in return. He is an Ebenezer Scrooge for the new millennium. So when Lucy suggested doing a Christmas window display I was less than encouraging, for purely selfish reasons - I am rather enjoying being her almost-sort-of-boyfriend, and am not keen on the idea of our sexual shenanigans being curtailed by Marxist Jim firing and/or murdering her.


Me: Errr... I don't think it would be such a good idea. Marxist Jim doesn't really do Christmas.


Lucy: Aw, c'mon. It'll be great. Marxist Jim liked the Hallowe'en window, didn't he?


Me: I think "liked" would be putting it a bit strongly. "Tolerated" would be more appropriate. Or "endured".


Lucy: Well, he'll like this one.


She was adamant. So last night it was with a sinking heart that I let her loose with her paints yet again. I really shouldn't have worried. The window of the Bottle Shop now has a beautiful snow scene which is dominated by a (very accurate) caricature of Marxist Jim holding Santa Claus in a headlock. Underneath is the legend "No Christmas Music. No tinsel. Just wine". Lucy had been at it all night. She had white paint all over her, but a big bobby-dazzler of a grin on her face.


Lucy: So, what do you think?


Me: I think I should stop underestimating you.


Lucy: Damn right.


Marxist Jim actually cracked a smile when he saw the window, which is amazing because he rarely smiles at all in December, and deemed it "pretty f***ing good" which is high praise indeed coming from him. What I didn't expect was the reaction the window has been getting from the punters. At least five people have come in today and commented on it, saying how good they think it is that we've not succumbed to the commercialism of Christmas. I didn't feel the need to tell them the real reason behind the window ("Actually, it's nothing to do with any high moral standpoint, it's because the owner is a rabid misanthropist who hates people to have a good time"), because after complimenting us on our anti-capitalist stance they all bought some wine. Yet again, one of Lucy's little initiatives has resulted in a hike in the sales figures. I'd better watch my back or she'll be after my job.


The Bottle Shop recommendation for today: Argento Malbec 2003 (Argentina). Spicy blackberry and rich bramble notes. Or, as my soon-to-be-boss writes, "Like getting the Ribenaberries pissed on Kir Royales and then molesting them". Hmmm. Maybe my job is safe after all. £4.99
3.12.03 15:27


Conversation with myself, yet again

Me: I really should update my weblog.


Inner Voice: Yeah. Slacker.


Me: But it's as if I've got nothing to moan about any more.


Inner Voice: You know why that is, don't you?


Me: I've finally become numbed to the crippling tedium of my job?


Inner Voice: No.


Me: All those hours of interacting with intellectually sub-normal punters has sapped my last ounces of creativity?


Inner Voice: Nope. Try again.


Me: Errr... I can't think.


Inner Voice: It's because you're happy.


Me: Happy?


Inner voice: Happy.


Me: Wow.


Inner Voice: I know. It's been a while.


Me: You're right. I am happy. Really fucking happy. Happy Gilmore.


Inner Voice: Yeah, well don't get carried away, Late boy. Hayley's in this afternoon.


Me: Oh, well, great. Way to piss on my happy parade.


Inner Voice: Well at least it'll give you something to write about.


The Bottle Shop recommendation for today: Santa Rita Reserva Chardonnay 2002 (Chile). A complex wine that displays soft mango and grapefruit flavours, with a creamy oak influence. And that makes me happy. £4.99
5.12.03 16:30


Small victories

Oh Hayley, where is thy death? The young hussy is currently got up like a mini version of Anna Nicole Smith and seems hell-bent on causing havoc in the Bottle Shop. I don't know when it was that Hayley Discovered Boys. Probably before she was weaned. But now, seemingly, the local boys have Discovered Hayley. Not just any local boys either - no, in a move designed to give me the maximum of grief, Hayley has chosen to bestow her affections on one or all of the Steves.


In a way, this could be seen as a good thing. After all, if Hayley is outside watching Ste/Stevie/Steve-O spitting onto the pavement, it means that she's not in the Bottle Shop tormenting Keith and I. And Lucy's window display means that I can't really see what she's up to - the last thing I want to watch is one of the Steves giving Hayley's tonsils a good licking. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.


But then she comes in, with the Steves in tow. I put on my most placid expression. I am sweetness and light personified.


Me: Hayley. Can I help?


Hayley: We want some fags.


Me: You know I can't sell you cigarettes.


Hayley: My dad owns this shop.


Ste: Yeah.


Steve-O: 'S right.


Stevie: Giz some fags or she'll getya sacked.


Me: Ah. But you see, her father is far more likely to take umbrage at me selling his underage daughter a packet of cigarettes. However hypocritical that may be, considering his own 60-a-day habit.


Stevie: Y'wot?


Me: Marxist Jim would kill me if I sold you some fags. So I'm afraid the answer is "no".


Hayley didn't take this too well. Some screaming occured (Hayley). A lot of swearing (the Steves). I was impassive. I was adamant. I was Daddy fucking Cool. Eventually they gave up and went off, presumably to throw bricks off the railway bridge or something. Hayley looked furious, but strangely defeated.


Late Bland: 1, Hayley: 0


I thank you. Maybe there is something to be said for being happy.
5.12.03 18:08


Home sweet home

So, after a few days of pleasantly uneventful nothingness, something interesting finally happens. "Interesting"? Possibly the wrong word. "Unnerving" might be a better description. Or "potentially catastrophic".


Lucy showed up to work yesterday with a big rucksack and a couple of black bin bags. I, curious but used to her little eccentricities by now, calmly asked if she was off on a trip somewhere. She shucked off her rucksack and slung it behind the counter.


Lucy: Nah. I got chucked out of my squat.


Me: I'm... I'm sorry?


Lucy: Yeah. The landlord came back. It's really fucking annoying - I'd just got the place nice and cosy.


Me: Hang on... you were living in a squat?


Lucy: Yep.


As if it were the most natural thing in the world. Now, call me a stuck-up middle-class white-boy if you will, but I always assumed that squats were generally the domain of crack-whore-junkies-on-speed. (Shit. Maybe Lucy is a crack-whore-junkie-on-speed. It would certainly explain a few things). And I've never heard the words "nice" and "cosy" mentioned in the same breath as "squat". Unless the sentence was "I was thrown out of my nice and cosy semi-detached house and ended up in this shitty squat".


Me: So what are you going to do now?


Lucy: Oh, I dunno. Something will turn up.


Lucy busied herself behind the counter. She seemed unperturbed by the fact that she was now homeless. She was even whistling a little tune. I bit my lip, then bit the bullet.


Me: Err... Lucy...


Inner Voice: Late, I really hope you're not going to do what I think you're going to do.


Me: You could always... I mean...


Inner Voice: Don't do this. She's nice to have around, sure, but not all the time.


Me: If you like, you could stay with me.


Inner Voice: Oh crap.


Lucy: Yeah, okay.


"Yeah, okay"?! Not "Oh thank you Late, you've saved me from a night in the gutter". Not "Oh, how can I ever repay your kind generosity". It makes me wonder why I bother.


She's upstairs in the flat right now. I can hear her banging about. I dread to think what she's doing up there. Okay, so the flat is crappy and messy and hasn't had a lick of paint since Wilson was Prime Minister, but it is mine. And the last thing it needs is the Screw Lucy touch.


I fear I may have made a terrible mistake.


The Bottle Shop recommendation for today: Lancié 2002 (France). Aromatic, redolent of strawberries and violets. Or, as Lucy puts it "the wine equivalent of Helena Bonham-Carter being roughly spanked by Julian Sands in an X-rated Merchant Ivory film". And I'm sharing a flat with this girl. £4.99 
10.12.03 14:51


I knew it

Finally, the computer is back up and running. It's only taken three days. For a computer geek, Keith is surprisingly inept at figuring out what's wrong with the computer. After de-fragging, de-bugging, praying to the Great God Bill Gates and weeping a little, he admitted defeat and we got a professional in. The Professional did something technical, charged us a fortune and left. So we have our computer back. Which is nice, because trying to run a business using only an HB pencil and a WHSmith jotter pad is harder than one would think.


Now, as you know, in my last entry I told you that I'd offered to let Lucy stay at my place until she could find herself a new flat/squat. I realised almost as soon as I opened my mouth that I was letting myself in for trouble.


To my surprise, however, the first couple of days turned out to be okay. Nice, even. I haven't lived with anyone since I split up with Nell, and having a woman about the place again felt good. Lucy made me cups of tea. She cooked dinner. She even cleaned the kitchen (which must have taken her ages, considering the layers of grime that had built up in there). I began to think that inviting her to stay had been a good move.


Then yesterday it was her day off. I figured she would go off on one of her insane, A-Z inspired jaunts around the capital ("Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be visiting Pinner"). She popped out in the morning, then came back with a couple of carrier bags claiming that she was "going to spend the day chilling out in the flat". Wow, I thought, maybe I've succeeded in domesticating Lucy. This made me feel rather manly. So I got on with stuff in the shop and didn't give her a second thought.


End of the day. I close up the shop and make my way up to the flat. I open the front door... and smell paint. Oh Christ, what's she been up to? I go in, look in the bedroom. All normal. The living room - yep, still the same shade of magnolia. The kitchen. Oh holy crap, the kitchen.


It's red.


It looks like an abbatoir.


Lucy is still painting. She turns round, grins.


Lucy: Surprise!


Me: Gah. Argh.


Lucy: Do you like it?


Me: It's red.


Lucy: Yeah, isn't it brilliant? So much better than before.


Me: It's red.


Lucy: I really hated that shitty magnolia colour. I might do the living room next.


Inner Voice: I told you! I TOLD YOU! But would you listen? Ooooh, no, Mr Late "I know what I'm doing" Bland let a psycho into the flat and now she's never going to leave. Never! All because you're a sucker for a big smile and a nice pair of tits.


Me: Err... ha. Erm, it's...er... very nice, Luce. I'm just popping out for a second.


I went downstairs, out onto the street and round the back of the shops.


Me: AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!


Inner Voice: Yeah, scream away loserboy.


The Bottle Shop recommendation for today: Navarra Tempranillo 1999 (Spain). A full, firm red wine that is approximately the same colour as my fucking kitchen. $4.99
16.12.03 16:25


Jingle all the way

There are many aspects to Lucy's personality that baffle me. Her somewhat eccentric taste in clothing. Her unpredictability. Her almost total lack of inhibition. But chief among these is the fact that she hardly ever sleeps. While I'm in the land of Nod, she's kicking about the flat doing "stuff". That is always her answer when I ask her what on earth she can possibly do at 4 o'clock in the morning. "Just stuff," she says. "I don't like to waste the day." I've tried pointing out that 4 a.m. is technically still night-time, but she just snorts her derision and starts reading yet another book.


The reason I'm telling you this is to explain why, when my mother did her usual trick of phoning at 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, Lucy was the one to take the call. I dimly recall hearing the phone ring, but it stopped almost immediately so I just went back to sleep. It stopped because Lucy had picked it up. This was a terribly bad thing to happen.


I need to explain something. I haven't told my parents about Lucy. I haven't even told them that I'm seeing somebody, let alone that she's now living in my flat. This is not because I'm ashamed of Lucy. It's because I know that my mother's reaction would be something along these lines:


Me: I'm seeing a girl and we're living together.


Mother: At last! When are you going to get married and give me grandchildren? I can't wait to tell everybody in the village that you're going to get married! Your father was worried that you were a homosexual, you know, but I told him, "Daddy, he's not a poof, he's just hopeless with women." Now make sure you don't mess this one up, like you did with that lovely girl Nell. I always hoped that you'd get back together with her, such a nice girl...


And so on.


So I slumbered on, blissfully unaware that Lucy was having a cosy little chat with my mother. In fact, I didn't find out about it until lunchtime. We'd gone to the pub for a roast (not the Swan - curled up sandwiches are the limit of Mick's capabilities - rather to a nice little place a couple of train stops away). We were just tucking into our roast beef and yorkshire pud when Lucy dropped the bombshell.


Lucy: Your mother called earlier.


(I nearly choke on a brussels sprout).


Lucy: She seemed quite surprised when I answered the phone.


Me: Ah. Gah. Yeah. Thing is, I've kind of not really told her that you and me are, y'know...


Lucy: Oh, it's all right, she knows now. She seemed rather pleased.


Me: She did?


Lucy: Yeah. And she's looking forward to meeting me on Christmas Day.


Me: Ack.


Inner Voice: There goes another sprout.


Me: Christmas Day?


Lucy: She called to see if you were going home for Christmas Day, and I said of course you were, then she asked if I was coming too and I said I'd love to...


Me: Ack. Ack.


Inner Voice: For Christ's sake, stop eating! You're going to choke to death.


Lucy: ...And she seemed really happy because that meant it'd be a full house, what with your cousin coming along too...


Me: Jasper?!


Lucy: Yeah, that was his name. Anyway, I said we'd be there bright and early on Christmas morning.


Inner Voice: Sweet suffering Christ! This girl is trying to take over your life! Say something, for fuck's sake!


But I was stunned into silence. The rest of the meal was a very subdued affair, on my part at least. Lucy chattered away gaily, not registering my monosyllabic replies - or not caring. She genuinely didn't think she'd done anything wrong.


Later, while we were in the shop, something occurred to me.


Me: Uh, Lucy - won't your parents mind that you're not going to see them on Christmas Day?


Lucy: I wasn't going to anyway.


Me: Oh. Right - are they in Australia?


She looked at me blankly.


Lucy: Why would they be in Australia?


Me: Well, that's where your mother's from.


Another blank look.


Lucy: No she's not.


Me: But... but... when we were in the pub watching the rugby you said you were half Australian.


Lucy: Oh yeah, I did, didn't I?


Me: And are you?


Lucy: Nope.


Inner Voice: Achtung! Achtung! Weirdness levels reaching critical point!


Me: So what was with the Australian accent and the shirt and everything?


Lucy: I just fancied stirring things up a bit.


Me: Riiight. So, er, what's the real reason you're not seeing your parents at Christmas, then?


Lucy: (with force) Because I fucking hate them.


And she stormed off into the back of the shop and started crashing crates around. So rather than being tucked up in bed with a bottle of wine and "The Great Escape" as I'd hoped, it looks like I'll be spending my Christmas at the Bland familial home. With a father who thinks I'm gay, a mother who is so desperate for grandchildren that she'll probably spike my turkey with Viagra, a cousin who makes me feel like a prime loser and a girlfriend who is obviously more than a little bit screwed up and who lacks any sense of propriety. Merry fucking Christmas.


The Bottle Shop recommendation for today: Lirac 2001 (France). A wonderfully deep, berry-scented and cassis-flavoured wine - perfect for taking home to the folks. Who will probably then dismiss it as "a bit poncey" and crack open the Piat d'Or. £7.99
22.12.03 14:20


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