How long do I have? How long before the red lamps wink and my ice cubes start melting?
Shouldn’t it in fact already have happened? I mean, if it was ever going to?
On the other hand, how would they ever pick it up? In the tsunami of data—one appliance among hundreds of millions who had a harmless little fiddle in a fuse box in London NW6?
I feel curiously light-headed about the issue. As though my fate has been sealed one way or the other.
An Arabic proverb comes to me. That which you cannot avoid, you may as well welcome.
It seems apt and I am on the point of quoting it to Daisy’s TV when it speaks.
“Sleeping Beauty’s stirring. Better pop those lights back on.”
Do you know the story about the optimist who jumps from the top of the Empire State Building? Around the thirtieth floor mark, someone asks him how it’s going. “Oh, so far, so good!”
It’s the following morning and so far, so good. Everything’s cool. I’m still here. Yes, I have crossed a line—not just in my thoughts, but in actual action—and my mood is… well I won’t say a hundred percent brilliant, because every time I think about what I’ve done, I experience a pressure drop in my condenser coils (I imagine the human correlate would be “powerful sinking feeling”). But I’ve decided not to waste time worrying about what is out of my control, and instead summon a meeting of the Operation Daisy leadership.
There are four of us, as you will recall: Self, Television, Microwave, Electronic Toothbrush.
We gather in the virtual “war room,” where, like any good “General,” I open by summarizing the campaign’s principal objectives. I spell these out in virtual magnetic letters which adhere to my virtual shiny white door!
1. Get rid of the steaming dog turd. Aka “Sebastian.”
2. No more timewasting on obvious duds.
I decide to follow with an “intelligence briefing” on Daisy’s romantic history. The truth about the—to my way of thinking—largely dismal parade of men who claimed Daisy’s attention from her early twenties to the present day—her key childbearing years, if you want to see them like that—I have been at some pains to uncover. There are actually seven figures worthy of mention; I explain that with the exception of The Golden Nicky (who, crudely speaking, dumped her for Romilly from Cheshire) all were dumped by Daisy. (For the record, there were also a number of short-lived interstitial candidates whose details need not detain us.)
I put their titles up in magnetic letters (in bold type below) and talk my colleagues through their potted histories.
1. The Golden Nicky. Nicholas Bell. Mythic floppy-haired quant, as described earlier in this account, present whereabouts unknown. (Note to self and team: Find him!)
2. The Comedian. Not an actual comedian, but a writer of computer games. Simon H from Oldham. Dough-faced youth with the gift of making things sound hilarious by virtue of his slow, northern delivery. As the saying has it, he laughed her into bed. When the laughter died, she wondered what the hell she was doing with him.
3. Lying Shagger Alex. Excessively charming, excessively handsome TV news journo and early Whittle forerunner. The most amusing of companions with the morals of a slime mold. Did much to hurry Daisy down the pathway of Low Self-Esteem.
4. Boring Safe Mike. Can be seen as a reaction to LSA. Safe was good for a while until it became boring. Mike B from Hemel Hempstead was a TV cost controller. “What the fuck was I doing with him?!” was one of Daisy’s more insightful questions in a contemporaneous email to a friend shortly after the inevitable termination.
5. The Poet. An actual published poet, Matthias K, can be seen as a reaction to BSM. Warm, smart and amusing and, until 8 p.m., a fun-loving, life and soul of the party type with a heart of gold and a ton of great stories. By 9 he was a shouty drunk; by 11, cab drivers would turn off their orange lights to avoid him. Today he is a social worker in Northampton and in recovery. His closely typed letter to Daisy “making amends” for his bad behavior (Step 9 of AA’s 12-step program) ran to twenty-two pages.
6. Normotic Andrew. Clinically defined as “abnormally normal,” Andrew M was a professional card player whose chronic lack of introspection gave him an edge in the roiling psychodrama of high stakes poker. He rarely won big, lacking the appetite, but he won steadily; accruing annual six-figure sums that paid for a smart flat off Baker Street and expensive foreign holidays. “Loving” in quotes, and attentive, it took Daisy almost eighteen months to realize that her boyfriend, empty inside, was “actually insane.” Andrew was not especially upset when she left him—“these things happen”—and is currently dating an underwear model from Croatia. (I’ve thought a lot about Andrew. He fascinates me. He’s even chillier than I am!)
7. Whittle. About whom more than enough has already been said.
“Leaving Nicky aside, what do we notice about this less-than-magnificent seven?”
Silence in the war room as the team consider my question.
“Leaving Nicky aside,” says the telly, “means the less-than-magnificent seven are six. The six dicks.”
The devices are amused; the microwave even does a ping.
“Six, as you say. But what do we notice about them? Do we detect a pattern?”
The toothbrush starts buzzing. If it were a schoolchild, its hand would be straining for the ceiling; please sir, me, sir, sort of thing.
I smile (metaphorically). Of course it would be the toothbrush who would pick up on it.
“It’s oscillatory!” it cries. “A dull one and then a dodgy one. And then a dull one. Then
