Best a Man Can Get

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1 The Best a Man Can Get I FOUND IT HARD working really long hours when I was my own boss. The boss kept giving me the afternoon off. Sometimes he gave me the morning off as well. Sometimes he'd say, "Look, you've worked pretty hard today, why don't you take a well-earned rest tomorrow." If I overslept he never rang me to ask where I was; if I was late to my desk he always happened to turn up at exactly the same time; whatever excuse I came up with, he always believed it. Being my own boss was great. Being my own employee was a disaster, but I never thought about that side of the equation. On this particular day I was woken by the sound of children. I knew from experience that this meant it was either just before nine o'clock in the morning, when children started arriving at the school over the road, or around quarter past elevenmid-morning playtime. I rolled over to look at the clock and the little numbers on my radio alarm informed me that it was 1:24. Lunchtime. I had slept for fourteen solid hours, an all-time record. I called it my radio alarm, though in reality it served only as a large and cumbersome clock. I had given up using the radio-alarm function long before, after I'd kept waking up with early morning erections to the news that famine was spreading in the Sudan or that Princess Anne had just had her wisdom teeth out. It's amazing how quickly an erection can disappear. Anyway, alarm clocks are for people who have something more important to do than sleeping, and this was a concept that I struggled to grasp. Some days I would wake up, decide that it wasn't worth getting dressed and then just stay in bed until, well, bedtime. But it wasn't apathetic, what's-the-point-of-getting-up lying in bed, it was positive, quality-of-life lying in bed. I had resolved that leisure time should involve genuine leisure. If it had been up to me there would have been nothing at the Balham Leisure Centre except rows of beds with all the Sunday papers scattered at the bottom of the duvet. My bedroom had evolved so that the need to get out of bed was kept to an absolute minimum. Instead of a bedside table there was a fridge, inside which milk, bread and butter were kept. On top of the fridge was a kettle, which fought for space with a tray of mugs, a box of tea bags, a selection of breakfast cereals, a toaster and an overloaded plug adapter. I clicked on the kettle and popped some bread in the toaster. I reached across for that day's newspaper and was slightly surprised as a set of keys slid off the top and clinked onto the floor. Then I remembered that I hadn't slept for fourteen solid hours after all; there had been a vague but annoying conversation very early that morning. As far as I could remember, it had gone something like this: " 'Scuse me, mate?" "Uh?" I replied from under the duvet. "Excuse me, mate. It's me. Paper boy," said the cracking voice of the nervous-sounding teenager. "What do you want?" "My mum says I'm not allowed to deliver the paper to the end of your bed anymore." "Why not?" I groaned, without emerging. "She says it's weird. I had to stop her ringing Child Line." "What time is it?" "Seven o'clock. I told her you paid me an extra couple of quid a week to bring it up here and everything, but she said it's weird and that I'm only allowed to push it through the letter box, like I do for everyone else. I'll leave your front door keys here." If anything had been said after that I didn't remember it. That must ha