Diary of a Grumpy Old Git (20 page)

I’m convinced it’s all over now. If there was a remote possibility of anything happening with Jo, last night will have snuffed it out. She can hardly parade a
coffin-dodger like me to all her friends. I need to move on and buy a Harley-Davidson or grow a ponytail or whatever else you’re supposed to do when you have your mid-life crisis.

Today Josh told me that Trevor wants me to go in on Monday for an emergency briefing. He said he knew that Monday was a bank holiday, but the TC Waste Solutions account was important, so
we’d better play ball.

I’m sure Trevor thinks he’s getting another of his little revenges by dragging me in on a bank holiday. But the joke’s on him, because I hate bank holidays. I’d rather
spend the day in his grim office than watching half a Bond movie and failing to lay the decking.

I discovered I didn’t have any food in the house when I got home so I had to call a pizza. I only wanted a small one, but the man said the minimum amount I could spend was ten pounds, so I
had to get a medium. Then he said it was only two pounds more to get a large so I might as well get that instead. Then he said it was only a pound more to get garlic bread, potato wedges and a Coke
so I might as well get that.

When the delivery boy finally managed to find my flat, he spent so long counting out my change in five-pence pieces that I told him not to bother. I sat down on the sofa, fifteen quid poorer and
clutching enough lukewarm food to make Jabba the Hutt undo the top button of his jeans. At least it explains all those oddly shaped people you see waddling around town. They phone up for a pizza,
get conned into ordering enough to feed an entire African village and before they know it they’re wearing a smock and driving a mobility scooter.

I’ve just been mugged. Sort of.

I was planning to eat my pizza leftovers tonight, but at the last minute I decided I couldn’t face it, so I took a shortcut to the supermarket through the council estate.

As I was passing the adventure playground, a child wearing a matching blue tracksuit and baseball cap asked for 50p to call his mum. I told him that public phone boxes didn’t work any more
and that if I gave him 50p he’d only spend it on crisps and glue. The little bastard started snivelling, and said his mum had forgotten to come and fetch him. I don’t know why I was
taken in by this performance. I just didn’t think he was old enough to be a criminal. Sometimes even my levels of cynicism and mistrust aren’t high enough for modern life.

Anyway, I was duped and I told him he could use my phone to call his mum. Needless to say, as soon as the little thief’s paws were on the phone, he scarpered off through the playground and
into the estate.

I know I should go to the police, but I’m too ashamed to tell them I was mugged by a ten-year-old. I considered calling them anyway and pretending someone much older had stolen it. But
what if they caught someone matching my false description and they got sent to prison? I don’t think I could live with that on my conscience.

It’s not losing the phone that’s really pissed me off, though. Graham from IT is in charge of our work phones, so now I’ll have to beg him for a new one.

Graham’s office was even smellier than usual this morning. Takeaway boxes were stacked everywhere, and one of the piles collapsed on to my leg, spilling rancid sweet and
sour sauce into my turn-up.

‘I’m assuming you enabled remote wiping?’ Graham said.

‘Er … I’m not sure,’ I replied.

‘I’ll take that as a “no”. But you’ll surely have kept a note of the IMEI?’ he asked.

‘Just remind me…’

Graham sighed. ‘The IMEI, or International Mobile Equipment Identity, is a unique fifteen-digit number that anyone with modicum of intelligence makes a note of when they get a new phone.
In the unlikely event that someone is too brain-dead to activate remote wiping, it’s used to disable stolen phones.’

‘I think I might have forgotten,’ I said.

‘Of course you did,’ said Graham. ‘Looks like we’ll just have to proceed using your serial number, which was…’

I shrugged.

Graham shook his head and yanked open the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet. ‘You’ve proved yourself incapable of looking after modern technology, so I’m going to make the
punishment fit the crime.’

He held up an old-fashioned phone with a keypad. ‘This is the Nokia C1-01. It has no touchscreen. It has no Web access. There are no apps on it. Want to access your email on the go?
It’s very simple – you can’t. In short, it’s a phone that no self-respecting person would be seen dead with. And as of now, it’s your phone.’

I thanked Graham for his understanding and help and thrust the shameful handset deep into my pocket.

It was reasonably sunny at lunchtime, so everyone from our office complex squashed into the tiny square of grass outside. I’m not sure why I joined them. Summer is one of
those things I assume is going to be more pleasant than it actually is. Maybe it’s because the weathermen always say we’ll be ‘basking’ in sunshine.

Or perhaps it’s because I wear exactly the same clothes all year round, so I spend most of the summer carrying my jacket over my arm, with dark patches spreading from my armpits. I just
can’t bring myself to wear a T-shirt and shorts. Who knows what it might lead to? I might ‘chillax’. And then I’d have to kill myself.

I was just about to give up my space on the grass when Jen came over to join me, so I had to stay out for the rest of lunch. She lay down to soak up the feeble rays and started going on about
how ‘fab’ the sun was. I told her the sun was a big fiery bastard that made my TV harder to see and I couldn’t wait for it to stop bothering me and implode. Jen laughed and called
me ‘Grumpy Bear’.

Grumpy Bear? He was one of the Care Bears, wasn’t he? Even relentless negativity reminds Jen of fluffy teddies. It must be horrendous to be her.

At five, everyone went down to the pub to celebrate the start of the Easter break. Jo asked me if I was coming, but I said I needed to get home. I couldn’t tell, but I think she might have
been slightly disappointed.

So is that it? Have I stopped making a fool of myself now? I’m surprised. I’d have put money on it ending in humiliation. At least it means she can go and find herself a nice little
boyfriend her own age and nobody will ever mistake me for her dad/granddad/Yoda ever again.

Believe it or not, I managed to have some fun on my day off. I was glancing at Facebook this afternoon when an old work acquaintance called Dan posted: ‘Just had a lovely
shit.’ I tried to remember if Dan was the sort of person who liked to describe their bowel movements in great detail. I was pretty sure he wasn’t. A couple of minutes later, the post
disappeared and another one went up, which read, ‘Sorry about that. Fraped.’

I guessed that ‘fraped’ means someone hacked into his account. This gave me an idea. I clicked on to Brad’s page and scrolled through his details for password clues.