This House Is Not A Home - It's A Sauna

Today marks the beginning of Father-Daughter Bonding Week. This is not an event recognised by any calendar or shop-bought diary. It is an unofficial holiday concocted by my father, and although it may have got me out of work for a week, I think I'd rather take the 9 to 5 slog and slump in front of the computer all day (which, to be honest, I would do anyway - this is one area of my new job that I am highly adept at) than spend this amount of time with him. I suppose, when you think about it, it's desperately sad in its own way, but if I'm perfectly honest, I don't really miss Dad a whole lot since the split. This does not mean that do not I love him. It simply means that a week of day trips and listening to rants about everything, my mother being the topic of choice, is unappealing. Unappealing is an understatement. I can't think of a word to describe it. This illustrates what a terrible daughter I am and also what an incredibly tedious man my father can, on occasion, be. In fact, when I arrived last night, my spirits were raised only by the presence of the Girlfriend's car at the bottom of the drive. You know there are problems when you're more excited by the prospect of seeing your father's girlfriend that actually seeing the man himself.

The Girlfriend is a wonderful woman. She is a policewoman and is excellent at correcting my father when he says things that are mildly offensive. She has also proved herself to be some sort of dietician. Up until meeting the Girlfriend, you would open my father's fridge and be faced with the conundrum of what to have. Bread? Bacon? Or beer? Beer and bread? Or bread and bacon? A Triple B? Such decisions!

I'm spoilt for choice! How will I ever decide?

This may seem a perfectly reasonable diet to a recently separated middle-aged man, but as far I was concerned, it had gotten to the point where dinner at my father's place was something to be avoided at all costs. Luckily, since the Girlfriend came along, she has estbalished herself as the Patron Saint of Tesco, saving my father's fridge and, in the process, his arteries. However, this time, even the Girlfriend could not lift my spirits. I was exhausted. I was running on three hours sleep. The only thing I was truly looking forward to was my bed. I was to be disappointed.

Allow me to explain. My father's house is a four bedroom property that is Grade II listed. "Wow!", I hear you say (well, probably not, but humour me for a second here), "Just imagine all that history!" Well let me tell you, history is no replacement for air. When you own a building of such 'historical value' (the quote marks indicate the scorn with which I regard this supposed value. When you have spent a childhood searching for hidden passages, removing bricks to see if there may be any long-lost treasure lurking and digging up the back garden in search of great hoards of gold and riches, and your greatest prize, in fact your only prize, after all that effort, was a single rusty door knob, your view of historical value would be tainted too).

Rusty door knobs - responsible for the death of my childhood dreams.

Anyway, it transpires that as the owner of such a historical gem (*coughbullshitcough*), certain responsibilities are bestowed upon you, mostly involving protecting the historical integrity of said building. We already broke this rule once by plastering over some brickwork in the lounge, mainly because it was so dark in there that we kept walking in to things. Why the brickwork is so integral to the house's history, I will never know. People knock walls down all the time. The National Trust can't purchase every freaking brick in the country. I'd like to see them try. What a tourist attraction that would be:

Hey kids, let's go and see a shitload of bricks! What a treat!

Anyway, I digress. The part of staying in a Grade II listen building that really gets my goat is that fact that you can't change anything at the front of the house. Do whatever the hell you like to the back, install an indoor boxing ring, establish a crack den, even demolish it if you like. Just don't change the front. At first this doesn't seem to be a problem. But there is a catch. The windows don't open.

England is currently enjoying a heatwave. I say enjoying, but this is a misnomer. The first few days are enjoyable. Britain is renowned for what is generally shitty weather. Most summers, we drown in a mixture of rain, mud and our own self-loathing. When the sun shines, people wet themselves with excitement. They run to their local pharmacy and purchase their entire stock of sun scream. They gorge on barbecue food. They flock to the beach in their thousands:

...Where'd I leave my towel again?

For the first few days, the heat is the best thing that has ever happened to England. And then, as us English are wont to do, we start to complain. Our paranoia results in the issuing of hundreds of health warnings. If we had our way, we would crawl into some kind of bunker and sleep until the heatwave is over. As a friend of Facebook so accurately observed, "We, the English, love sunny weather. Except the English sunny weather, it's too hot and bothersome. We prefer Spain or Jamaica." How right you are, my friend. Anyway, this is merely to give you an indication of how hot it currently is here right now. Now imagine your room is at the front of your house. The very same house, in fact, whose front windows do not open. Earlier in the evening, I had congratulated myself on my success in winning the computer for the evening. Imagine my fury when I eventually retired to bed, only to realise that my sister had won the one electric fan in the house. A computer, whilst a source of entertainment, is of no use when the percentage of your body that is composed entirely of water is rapidly on the decrease, due to the fact that most of it is escaping out of every pore in your body. I seriously contemplated stealing the fan. My sister was asleep - she would never know. After battling with my conscience for a few moments, I decided that I am not completely heartless. I went downstairs to my father and presented him with my predicament. He pointed out that, in my panic, I had completely forgotten about the connecting door between our two rooms. A compromise was reached! The connecting door was opened, the fan was repositioned and switched to the 'oscillate' system. My internal water supply was, it seemed, saved.

Air, I soon discovered, does not travel far.

I tossed. I turned. I stripped (contain yourselves). I wrapped my bottle of water from the fridge of my duvet and cuddled it like a particularly bizarre soft toy. A turbulent night's sleep was had, which, combined with the previous night's escapades, resulted in me not getting up until 12. In a bid to wake up, I took a very long shower. I had forgotten how much I missed my father's power shower, the one with the glass door. I drew grotesquely oversized genitalia and wrote rude messages, sniggering to myself like a boy in the early throes of puberty. Once I emerged from the shower, a small problem arose in that I suddenly seemed to have acquired extensive hand dandruff. I have shed enough skin to build an entirely new set of hands. It appears that my entirely family are doomed to turn in to snakes. Is this some kind of pandemic that the government ought to be alerted to?:

Snake fever - the new swine flu.

Once I had recovered from the unnerving discovery that my hands were now missing significant skin coverage, I went downstairs, only to be informed that we were going shopping - clearly my father remained undeterred by the fact that I had spent most of the time round at his house asleep. My sister had decided that she wanted new riding boots, so new riding boots she would have. The most exciting part of this trek was when my sister decided to imitate the Paco Rabanne advert at the checkout (if you want to watch somebody who can actually dance, try the parody. I'm not even being sarcastic. The reason my sister's imitation was so funny, is because it was so accurate. She looked like a praying mantis on drugs. Mat Gordon - the model in the original advert - can't dance. By comparison, the guy in the parody is Michael Flatley). We then moved on to TKMaxx, where I conned myself into thinking some t-shirts might actually fit, and then went into the changing rooms, discovered they didn't, and contemplated the pros and cons of a gastric bypass. Deciding that I preferred food, we went out for lunch and I ate the world's biggest chicken bake. This was about four hours ago now, and I still can't move.

So, that was my day, in short (or very long, depending on how you look at it). I now ought to attempt to finish my book. I'm currently reading 'Juliet, Naked' by Nick Hornby. I wish I could say I liked it, but in all honesty, I feel a certain sense of apathy towards it, which is going to make my attempt to review it here (shameless self-promotion, I just felt my soul die a little bit) incredibly difficult. The sooner I manage to drag myself to the end, the sooner I can read something superior in quality and then race through the rest of my pile of books. I want to see the look on the library man's face when I return my five books in less than a week. You know you lead a boring life when this your main source of joy. How do I live with myself?