Richard Baum

My house creaks an alarming amount in high winds, I have noticed this weekend. Of more concern is that, for the first time ever, I am now liable for repair bills should the breeze dislodge the foundations. In my former days as a tenant of various sub-standard hovels across the UK, all it took was a call to the landlord when a slate blew off the roof and scalped a pedestrian, and the problems went away. Now such liabilities rest on my shoulders, and it is a worry. I need to live somewhere low down, to avoid the winds. Yet high up, to avoid the floods. A quandary…

The other week, when workmen came here and stodd tutting and shaking their heads at an appliance that neither worked nor fitted in the hole I had prepared for it, one of them remarked that I had landed in the “real world” of home ownership. I said then, and I’ll say it again now - there’s a lot to be said for a nice landlord and zero hassle. Yes, it’s money down the drain every month, but at least that swaying tree in next door’s garden threatens to fall on a roof that’s someone else’s problem, not mine.

All of which has detained me in the last couple of days, as well as some leafleting across the ward as the world says hello to the latest St Mary’s Focus. We’ve been out and about distributing it, as well as working across other wards. Yesterday I was in Liverpool for the majority of the day on a Lib Dem training event, returning just in time for the City v Wigan game. I thought I’d not make it back for kick-off, so I’d given my tickets away and had to settle for watching it in the pub. At half time I left, returning home to listen to it on the radio. My thought was that if I could reduce the number of my senses involved in the match from two (sight and hearing) to just one (hearing), it might make the horror of a goalless draw against Wigan at home seem bearable. It didn’t. Paying for two tickets and then not going to that game was probably about the best forty quid I’ve ever spent.

Tamsin was away for much of the weekend, and so I took advantage of being a young, free, single-for-a-night Councillor about town, and went to bed at 20:30. I slept for a dozen hours and then got up in time to head to Argos and buy a £7.99 Casio digital watch, purposefully purchasing the cheapest timepiece money can buy. The way I look at it is, there’s no point flattering to deceive with a hundred quid twinkly watch which looks alright but is actually rubbish. If I could afford a really lovely watch, or wear it without splattering it into a wall as I walked past, then I would wear a nice watch. As it is I don’t trust my arms not to swing into solid surfaces, so I may as well wear an awful watch. It says I don’t care, and has a certain “geek chic” appeal. So I like to believe…

I just watched “Bobby” on Sky Drama. If I could make a speech like that guy, the public gallery at the Town Hall would be overflowing…

And there endeth the weekend.

Rick