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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Alexis Hall
Read between
October 17 - October 18, 2023
It probably says good things about modern Britain—or maybe just about modern Liverpool—that when I was growing up, I got way less shit for being gay than I got for being named after a hobbit. And while I’m glad my classmates weren’t homophobic, the hobbit thing did hack me off a bit, especially because the hobbit I was named after wasn’t even one of the weird ones.
“There’s nothing wrong,” Brian is saying, “with pineapple on pizza.” “Yes there is.” Tiff is holding fast on this one—she’s shifted her focus from the inequities of global capitalism to the more relatable question of whether Hawaiian pizza is shit or not. “It’s the avocado bathroom of pizzas.” Amjad gives her a nerdy smirk. “You mean it’s fashionable to hate on it but it’s actually fine?” “No, I mean it’s objectively the worst.”
There was just something about his craggy, angry face and the unruly white streak in his otherwise carefully groomed hair that made you want him to do things to you. Or maybe for you to do things to him to see if you could get him to chill the fuck out.
We’ve been talking for less than five minutes and I already want to stick his pencil up his nose.
“People don’t pay your salary. I do.” It’s really tempting to point out he’s just said he isn’t a person. But I’m supposed to be saving my job, not scuppering it.
I’d done alright at interview but then I’d not had much investment which made it easy to say all the right things. He’d said what’s your biggest weakness and I’d said some pack of bollocks like ooh well I’m just too focused on providing quality customer service in the field of bed and bathroom supplies and somehow that’d worked.
the Sheffield branch writes off”—he starts scrolling down what seems to be an ominously long document—“a fourteen-jet double ended LED-lit whirlpool bath worth one thousand, five hundred and ninety-nine pounds over an uncrating incident.” That was code for Brian backed a van over it. “Or twenty-two TheraPur memory foam ice pillows, priced eighty-five pounds apiece, over a stockroom mishap.” Brian again, and that one he’d never quite been able to explain, and I’d eventually stopped asking.
got a werewolf vibe—his thick eyebrows and permanent scowl make him look like any moment he could snap and grow claws and start ripping your skin off. Or maybe just your clothes, if he’s more like the ones from those books that Claire says she only reads ironically.
“I do really appreciate what you’re doing here,” I tell him. I don’t, but kissing his arse is the only strategy I’ve got that’s not illegal, immoral, or embarrassing to try in front of a pyramidal display of Croydex Flexi-Fit Grosvenor Toilet Brushes. “A lot of bosses wouldn’t have given me this chance, like.” “Are you sucking up to me, Sam?” “Is it working?” He raises an eyebrow. I’m beginning to think he seriously overuses them. “Do you think I’m the kind of man who likes being sucked up to?” I do. But I also think he’s the kind of man who likes to think he doesn’t. “Probably not, sorry.
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She pinches my ear, and I flinch. “He’s conscious,” she tells somebody I can’t focus on, “and responsive to pain but can’t answer simple questions.” My teachers used to say that in school as well.
“But he’ll be okay?” asks Jonathan, and either he’s faking concern for me really well, or he’s concealing his concern for his public liability insurance really badly.
“Me?” It’s almost funny to hear Jonathan trying to pretend he gives a shit while also trying to wriggle out of actually helping. “Surely there’s somebody more suitable?” For once I agree with him—a live alligator would be more suitable than Jonathan Forest—except
I’m sure there is, somewhere in the world, a man who drives a BMW and is not a bellend but I’ve not met him. The thing about a Beamer is that it’s the car you get if you really want to be driving a full-on-midlife-crisis-cock-on-wheels but you’re too insecure to own it.
“Here’s hoping none of your staff left out the thing I tripped over because then I’d be able to sue yez.” Jonathan goes white. “I think that’s very unlikely.” “I’m only messing.” “You probably shouldn’t joke about lawsuits, Sam.” I shrug. “Maybe I’m just that sort of person. I’m clumsy and I make inappropriate jokes.” “Or maybe,” Jonathan suggests, “you’re a model employee who never cheeks his boss.”
He doesn’t answer that. Then again, how could he? Either he starts trying to convince me I’ve got a completely different personality like I’m Goldie Hawn in Overboard or he says “actually, you were an insubordinate cock and I’d just fired you” and neither of those are good options for him.
“Claire, can you feed my fucking cat?” “Sure, I’ll just drive around Sheffield, breaking into houses until I find one with a cat in it that looks hungry.” “I’ll give you the address.” “Will you give me a key? Will you ring your neighbours and say, hi, if you see a tiny angry lesbian crawling through my front window, don’t worry, she’s just there for the cat
Jonathan’s in his study working and Gollum’s in the study with Jonathan. And that’s, well, I mean, I don’t really like weekends at the best of times, but at least I’ve got my cat. But now I’m concussed, and I’m bored and I’m alone and my fucking cat has dumped me for my fucking boss. Which really stings because he’s a wanker.
Jonathan’s face is absolutely thunderous. It’s like he wants to fire everyone in the room but can’t because they’re his family and that’s not how it works.
he does seem like a man who lives entirely on caffeine and citrus fruit.
Turns out, going to a supermarket is like wiping your arse. You mostly do it alone so you assume everyone does it the same way you do, but there’s actually a surprising amount of variation.
I scan the lavish rainbow of the vegetable section, feeling better than I have for a few days. “What are your thoughts on parsnips?” “I thought they went downhill after their third album. What do you mean, what are my thoughts on parsnips? I don’t have thoughts on parsnips. Who has thoughts on parsnips? Who has time to have thoughts on parsnips?”
“That’s a cat?” “Yeah. He’s a cat. I can tell you’re a doctor not a vet.” She looks at him in that medical way that medical people have. “He might need a vet.” “He’s been to the vet. He’s had all his everything. He’s fine, but there’s nothing they can do about the ears. Or the tail. Or his face. And, anyway, you shouldn’t body shame him.”
“I’m very sorry, Gollum. I’m sure you’re a very good cat even if you’re riddled with toxoplasmosis.”
I do really need to recover from the concussion, and at the same time I have to fake getting better from the amnesia in a way that somehow ends with Jonathan changing his entire personality and all his values. And that’s not completely impossible—if you spend time with someone really intensely you can get to, y’know, like them. And if he likes me, he might trust me. And if he trusts me, he won’t fire me, and he might let me not fire anybody else. Of course, there’s the tiniest chance he won’t trust me if he finds out I’ve been trying to get him to trust me by pretending to have amnesia when I
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“Language, Dad.” Wendy whacks him in the arm. “You’re making us look a right bunch of wankers.” Natty Blazer Feller is peering at my chicken. “Why can you say wankers, and I can’t say bollocks?” “Bollocks is swearing, wankers ain’t swearing.” “I don’t think that’s right, love,” says the little old lady with the glasses. “If it’s about your underwear bits, it’s swearing.” “What about tits?” asks Johnny, who’s already sitting on the sofa.
Somehow I missed the day in school where they taught you what to do when you were living in your boss’s house faking amnesia and his whole family showed up and decided you were his secret boyfriend but didn’t feel comfortable admitting it to them. In the end I figure it’s best not to argue.
the door opens again, and Jonathan’s standing there on the threshold in his black suit looking like fucking Maleficent.
And then he scoops up Gollum, who nestles against his shoulder like a smug ugly baby who’s decided to abandon the person who brought it home from the baby shelter, and they both storm off into the office.
But my third thought is burglars. And it’s probably not burglars. In fact, it’s almost certainly not burglars. But there’s this little voice in my head saying it’s burglars that won’t shut up. So I shake Gollum off my foot, slip out of bed, drag on a T-shirt and some pants and try to grab something heavy.
I creep downstairs and Gollum creeps after me, even though I try to tell him to stay behind where he’ll be safe. The noises are coming from the kitchen, and they don’t sound like burglary noises, they sound like someone moving around noises, which means I feel a bit of a pillock when I show up in my pants and my bare feet, clutching the top of an Ideal Standard Concept Space close coupled toilet with soft close seat like I’m Moses with the Ten Commandments.
I take a bite of my sandwich and I feel a bit weird that Jonathan Forest made it. Not bad weird, just weird weird. Because he’s about as domestic as a timber wolf, and I’d say about as nurturing but I reckon wolves take care of each other and shit.
Jonathan’s taken his version of casual to the next level because not only is he not wearing a jacket, but he’s undone his top button and rolled up his shirt sleeves. I don’t think he’s trying to show off or win me over with his forearms, but well. There’s a decent chance he could. You’d be able to get a good grip on them like.
What can I say? I like my men like I like my employment prospects: rough and hairy.
“She thinks you’re the kind of person who would be a serial killer. That suggests to me you might have a bit of an image problem.” “Serial killers can be extremely charismatic.” I don’t think she thought he was that sort of serial killer. More the “oh, I should’ve known” sort of serial killer. But I’m not sure I want to be sitting here at midnight discussing the finer points of mass murder.
when I said hey, d’you want us to give you a hand with your party, you thought that meant hey, d’you want us to read through a stack of paperwork thicker than the Bible
“And she gatecrashed Kayla’s thirtieth,” Wendy goes on, “threw up on the cake, kicked the dog, and stole Johnny’s car.” “Now now”—even Nanny Barb can’t quite field all of these at once—“she brought the car back eventually.” “Only after she was arrested,” Del points out. “Yes but—” “For drink driving.” “She had—” “In Majorca.”
“You’re his boyfriend? What did you do, Johnny, hypnotise him?” “I’ve got a concussion,” I say. “Well”—she smirks—“that explains it.” “It does not explain it.” Jonathan’s getting so in touch with his inner werewolf he’s forgotten to deny we’re dating.
Are you really going to eat a twenty-inch pizza for lunch?” Fuck. We’re going to have to split it. We’re going to have to Lady and the Tramp a twenty-inch Wagyu Beef pizza that neither of us actually want to eat. “What if we go halves?”
“No, most people would pretend to be grateful for that while secretly hating you.” A week ago this would have really pissed me off, but now I just find it slightly funny. Double fuck, maybe I do have Stockholm syndrome. “Well, you’re not pretending to be grateful, so you must not hate me either.” “You’re right, I don’t hate you. Let’s get married.” It probably says terrible things about me and Jonathan both that I can’t tell if he’s trying to flirt with me, trying to make me laugh, or just being really fucking insulting.
in case you haven’t noticed, he’s a prick.” “Hey, steady on, that’s your brother you’re talking about.” “Which is why I’m allowed to call him a prick.” “He’s not that bad.” I don’t know why I’m defending him either. “Sam”—this time she mm-hmms me with her eyes—“he’s family and I love him. But he’s exactly that bad. He’s like Ebenezer Scrooge in the first two-thirds of A Christmas Carol. Frankly, if you’re not dating him, then I’m pretty sure he’s going to die alone.” “That seems very melodramatic.”
You’re just trying to make me look bad in front of Sam because you fancy him.” It’s a bit hard to tell in the dark but I think Jonathan’s gone bright red. “I do not. I don’t find Sam attractive at all.” “Oh thanks,” I say. This makes Jonathan even more flustered. “I don’t mean… I’m not saying you’re not… You work for me, Sam. It would not be appropriate to consider you on an attractiveness level.” “Oh thanks,” I say again.
“It’s an employment law issue. I’d be creating a hostile working environment.” “Jonathan,” I tell him, “you already do create a hostile working environment. You’re a walking hostile working environment.” “I am not,” snarls Jonathan hostilely while Barbara Jane watches in glee. “Now all of you fuck off. We’ve done the tree, and I need to get my car back from Notting Hill before the parking fees bankrupt me.”
“Jonathan, do you not think—” “No.” He whips round to face me. “Whatever it is, no I don’t think. Unless by some seasonal miracle what you were about to say was do you not think that I, Samwise Becker, should shut the fuck up and mind my own fucking business for once in my fucking life
“Jonathan,” Les has taken another half step forward. “I’m asking you to calm down.” “I am perfectly calm,” says Jonathan. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the words I am perfectly calm uttered by an actual calm person.
He’s wrong—cats are genetically programmed to be narcissists—but I let him have it. Because for some unfathomable reason the one living being in the entire world Jonathan Forest has chosen to be emotionally open with is a cat with a face that looks like other cats use it as a scratching post.
I watch Jonathan with the chicken for a bit longer. “You’re not stuffing it. You’re fisting it with a lemon.” And after two years of working for him and more than two weeks of living with him, his facade finally cracks, and he laughs properly. I’m not sure if I’m more shocked or he is. “Seriously?” I say. “I’ve been treating you to my wit and northern charm since the third of December and fisting a chicken is what gets yez?”
“I know you’re all tall dark and grumpy and everything. But I can keep my hands off you.” Though now I’m saying it, I will admit that there’s a tiny little voice in the back of my head saying yeah, but what if you didn’t, though
“You’ve come into my life like a beam of very annoying sunshine. You talk so much that I miss it when you’re not. You try to fix things I didn’t even realise were broken. You have a dreadful sense of humour to which I’ve somehow become habituated. You care about people so effortlessly it makes me able to put up with them. And then you kissed me and now I…” He lets his head slip further down into his hands. “…I don’t know how I’m supposed to go the rest of my life without being kissed by you again.”
It’s so typical of Jonathan Forest that, even when he’s telling me he likes me, I feel a little bit like I’m being insulted. Or maybe my brain’s just gone there because I don’t know how to process this. Any of this.
He’s become more than my dickhead boss. He’s become my dickhead boss whose baggage I’ve seen, whose family I know, whose laugh I’ve heard. And I’m not sure I want to go my whole life without kissing him again either.
