The Man With No Life

Danny King

“Alright Adrian, how’s it going?”

Oh fuck, I knew I shouldn’t have picked up the phone. I did it without thinking and now I’m stuck with this sanctimonious bastard for the next half hour. If we were all robots and thoughts and feelings didn’t come into it, I could just replace the receiver and carry on watching Minder on ITV4, but unfortunately we’re not, so now I have to talk to my fucking brother instead.

“Oh, yeah, okay. Er, sorry I didn’t call you back last week. I got your message and everything but I’ve just been up to my eyes and everything (watching ITV4), so I haven’t had a chance,” I tell Colin, who snorts derisively before asking the one and only question he knows how to ask.

“That’s alright. Anyway, so how’s it going?”

Motherfucker! Which is an even more complex insult when lumping it at your own brother. I hate this question. I hate everything about it. I hate the fact that it’s so ranging, vague and unimaginative. I hate that it takes absolutely no thought whatsoever to come up with it. That it’s lazy, contemptuous and interpretless. But most of all I hate the fact that it can be asked repeatedly, dozens and dozens of times in the course of the same conversation by the same fucking dimbo and never be answered to any degree of satisfaction. eg. “Oh yeah… so how else is it going?”

See, the problem is Colin phones up when he has nothing to say himself. No news, no stories, no anecdotes or thoughts. Just an insatiable appetite to know “how it’s going”. Not that Colin ever has anything to say for himself. If ever there was a man who so epitomised the phrase, “he doesn’t get out much”, it’s my shut-in window starer of a brother.

Pubs? He may get dragged to the odd one at Christmas if his workmates pressgang him into a drink, but by and large he has the same attitude to boozers that I have to florists. ie. he’s aware of them and knows other people use them but has no truck with them himself. “I don’t really drink much,” is his curious boast whenever I mention I’ve been out for a weekend on the lash. And as if to prove it, whenever I occasionally meet up with him for our bi-yearly catch-up, he always fidgets about for an hour or so nursing a glass of shandy and acting as if I’ve taken him to the dentists.

“Fancy a walk,” he’ll usually say after his second pint.

“What?” I’ll cough.

“A walk? A breath of fresh air? Get out of this stuffy pub. We could go over the park and take a look at the pond,” he’ll suggest.

What the…

I’ll see he’s serious and realise he’ll just get more fidgety as the afternoon goes on if he’s forced to endure another pint, so I’ll relent and let him have his way.

“Okay,” I’ll shrug. “I’ll get some cans.”