MADELAINE GREENE

Conversations with my bailiff: 22nd July

23rd July 2009 | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree

Daughter returns from school with her friend Claudia.   Claudia’s mother is Harriet Crawling, but I don’t hold that against her. Daughter and Claudia think remains of disembowelled lavatory, and me with a wrench in a wrecked McCartney top,  it is very funny. I do not. Claudia, it seems,  has a love of motor bikes.  Pipes and wrenches offer no challenge to her and  within fifteen minutes the ten year olds  have...

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Conversations with my bailiff: That morning, 20th July

20th July 2009 | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree

My daughter has gone to school.   Her hands touched my eyes.  Gently.  I am ashamed.  Great parents we are!  My ex and I!   The phone rings.

Oh God, I forgot to ring Barry.

I know I sound awful .

“You not sleeping, Madelaine.”

No, not really.

“I know all about worry, I do.  My wife, Vivienne, to be honest, she’s a bit of a spendaholic.  Afghan brushes for skin toning.  Twenty seven quid!  Now you tell...

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Conversations with my bailiff: 20th July, 4.30am

20th July 2009 | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree

4.30 in the morning

Michael hasn’t rung, or even sent a text.  He’s never not sent a text during the day.  My stomach is crawling.  Is it because I have to sell the house?  Was I just a place to stay?   What is he doing?  Who is he with?  I am trying to remind myself that I am the older woman, twelve years older.  What do I expect?   Happy ever after? ...

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Conversations with my bailiff: 19th July

19th July 2009 | 1 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree

“What do you mean, sell the house?”

I am in bed.  Michael, God he has a beautiful body, has just come in from the bathroom.  I have broken the devastating news to him.  The estate agents are coming round next week.   Could he mow the lawn?

Michael asks how things could possibly have come to this.  I remind him of those congestion charges he told me not to worry about, and the...

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Conversations with my bailliff: 18th July

18th July 2009 | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree

My boyfriend,  Michael,  is beautiful.  At least I think so.  He plays the flute in a folk band.   Occasionally he paints  - paintings, not houses.  He says he can’t paint houses, it would mean having to work to a schedule.  He needs space for his art to grow.  My daughter says if he earned some money it would be easier for his art to grow.  I am beginning to wonder...

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Conversations with my bailiff: 17th July

18th July 2009 | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree

I’ve got a paying job.  It’s a “How to Install Your Lavatory” pamphlet.    Seems a lot of people are installing their own, or repairing their own.   To cut costs.  I’d walked down the road to buy a new bath plug.  I am always losing bath plugs.  Normally I buy the chrome ones, but resources being what they are, I opt for rubber.   The man behind the counter commiserates.  I find...

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Conversations with my bailiff: 16th July, 7.30am

16th July 2009 | 2 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree

I am stumbling around the kitchen, trying to organize my day.  Tea, yes, a cup of tea.  My ten year old daughter is looking at me patiently. She is eating her cereal.  On the Today programme, Robert Peston is discussing banker’s bonuses, apparently they are all getting them again because bankers are doing well. Really? !  I thought the word of the moment was “make do and mend”.

“When are you...

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Conversations with my bailiff: 15th July, 3pm

15th July 2009 | 6 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree

I am standing on Waterloo Bridge looking down at the sludge grey water of the Thames.  I’m going to jump.  There’s no other way.  I climb over the railings and remove my Jimmy Choo shoes.  No point in wrecking beautiful shoes.  They will be my epitaph.   

Around me, London goes about its business.  Have you ever noticed the overwhelming noise of city life?   There is nowhere to be silent. 

A man grabs...

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Conversations with my baliff: 15th July

15th July 2009 | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree

I am in a restaurant.  It has all the atmosphere of a hospital cafeteria.  I am only there because I am trying to sell Harriet Crawling, Style Editor of a glossy magazine with more advertising than content, an article on “Home Grown Vegetables on your Window Sill.”  She doesn’t want “window sill gardening.” And now, between sips of champagne,  she is axing my only regular source of  income.  My monthly...

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