Who the Arse Does Tim Brooke-Taylor Think He Is?

There’s a man com­ing to fix my TV, which tried to neck itself last week after inad­vert­ently being left on for a whole epis­ode of Threshold, and the repair com­pany is only able to give me an appoint­ment time accur­ate to the nearest geo­lo­gical epoch.

So I’m forced to spend a whole day stuck inside the house wait­ing for him to come, a job made much more dif­fi­cult by the neces­sity to avoid the fact that it’s a nor­mal work day and I should be inside the house any­way, actu­ally work­ing. Here’s how it goes:

07:25 Alarm. I hate everything in the entire uni­verse and the pack­age it comes in.

07:29 Let out the edit­or­ial con­sult­ant, let in a strange cloud of little flies that imme­di­ately adopt me as their god.

07:49 That had bet­ter have been a fuck­ing sul­tana in my oats.

08:37 Start up com­puter, look over vari­ous out­stand­ing jobs.

08:38 Watch­ing Good­ies DVD on laptop. Filled with ques­tions, which I spend forty minutes par­ing down to an essen­tial three:

1. Has any­one ever been con­vinced by a blue-screen spe­cial effect?
2. Why are there so many tits in this children’s pro­gramme? Did someone in pro­duc­tion mix up Bill Oddie’s orni­tho­logy notes with the script?
3. If I dress more like Graeme Garden, will people respect me?

09:21 Stare at the wall for an hour or so. Think­ing of Mup­pets. Bit confused.

10:21 Someone’s at the door. It’s a cour­ier. Bol­locks. He’s deliv­er­ing a box filled with Christ­mas presents from inter­state fam­ily, which I’m going to have to sit all day and look at and not open because I prom­ised The Evil Sul­phura I’d wait until she comes home. Double bollocks.

11:01 Q. How long does it take to teach your­self ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ from memory on the guitar?

11:18 A. 17 minutes.

13:12 That had bet­ter have been a fuck­ing sul­tana in my chicken salad sandwich.

13:49 Sit down in front of the com­puter again, ready to go.

13:51 Just exactly who the arse does Tim Brooke-Taylor think he is?

14:12 Want to ring the TV repair com­pany. Actu­ally, truly do have the thought, I bet if I call and demand to know where he is, he will knock on the door as I’m on the phone, and I’ll look like a prick. Don’t call.

14:34 Big box of presents still unopened on kit­chen table. TV not fixed. Glor­i­ous day out­side. Actual birds tweet­ing on my win­dowsill. Filled with rage.

15:01:09 Call the TV repair com­pany to ask when the guy will arrive.

15:01:31 The guy arrives. While I’m on the phone. I look like a prick.

16:00 TV fixed, nice repair guy leaves. Sulph rings, talk of mar­tinis at Polly with Jen and Jonathan. Couldn’t be happier.