I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [94]
After the burial things slowly got better. For the first couple of days I used to visit the grave every day. My schedule soon got in the way, though, so then I’d start sending my assistant as my grave-side representative. She was visiting her mum anyway, and the bus connections between the two graveyards were really quite good considering how far apart they were.
Besides, I reasoned that, as a believer, my assistant derived more meaning from grave-side grieving than I did. Not that I’m a non-believer as such. I’m pretty open-minded about the possibility of an afterlife, although I always think of heaven as a kind of members club for do-gooders. White bean bags, 24-hour room service, fat babies with wings, pointing at other fat babies playing compact harps. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good stuff. If you find it comforting, go there.
I don’t go down to the cemetery at all these days unless I happen to be passing. In which case I’ll take flowers. The beauty of her headstone is that it’s located on the main thoroughfare through the graveyard. So if I’m pushed for time I can open my passenger-side window and throw the flowers out without stopping. That might sound crass, but in many ways it’s a tribute to Mum because she was a real stickler for punctuality. Not that the flowers always land in the right place. Quite often they end up on the grave of Dan ‘loving father and loyal husband’ Faversham. Occasionally other mourners will see this happening and frown. I can only assume they think I’m a predatory gay with a fetish for the dead. And I know that would have made Mum chuckle.
209 Press play on Track 38.
210 The first one I ever went to was that of my dog, Barney the dog. He lost his life at the hands of an ice-cream van. I decided to bury him in the back garden but it had been a very hot July and the earth was rock-hard. I managed to dig a hole big enough for his head but then had to give up. It looked like he was digging for a bone; a bone that, sadly, he would never get to chew on.
211 Always M&S, unless finances were tight. In which case, I’d cut the budget and send her to Next.
212 A Phoenix Stainless Steel 4 Burner. It’s actually a lovely bit of kit. And with a cooking surface of 70cm x 45cm it allows the adventurous host to try his hand at any type of food. Play it safe with sausages, or become the talk of the town with a delicious spatchcocked chicken? The choice is yours.
213 I never actually called him Poppa but it just looks cool on the page.
214 Seriously, let me know because I can easily turn round a mis-lit book: – e.g., 1968: Summer of Hate (For Me) or Locked in the Larder.
215 But she was fat in a nice way. She wouldn’t have looked out of place on a packet of Aunt Bessie’s Yorkshire Puds.
216 Hell.
Chapter 30
Classic House
BEFORE CHANNEL 4’S INSUFFERABLE Grand Designs programme, few people realised that it was possible or legal to build your own home. Apart from me. My project was in the works a full six months before the first transmission of the show, and I defy anyone to prove otherwise.
Unlike the deeply unpleasant couples who appear on Grand Designs, I wanted to create the perfect home rather than an art installation with a built-in toilet. So, working with a team of expensive architects, I asked them to duplicate exactly the design used by Redrow homes, with a soupcon of Barrett thrown in around the porch area. Imagine Henry 8th had commissioned, nay ordered, Redrow and Barrett to create a modern 21st-century house for a pre-renaissance fat king using the efficiencies of modern techniques combined with a Tudor brick quality (a sort of Hampton Court fit for a Norfolk Conservative), that’s the effect I was going for.217
I could sense the architects were disappointed not to be able to flex their creative mind muscles, but Redrow and Barrett are experts in creating homes. Architects aren’t.
Besides, as with advertising agencies, it’s hard to think of architects as genuinely creative people when the best company names they can muster