Flat beats.

This week I have become very popular. On Saturday I celebrated my birthday with cake and Dexter Season 5. This meant that everyone felt obliged to let me know how well they wished me. This was of course lovely but the popularity is yet to wane. Every day I receive calls and emails from people who just want a bit of my attention and a bit of my time.
Of course they are not here to wish me a joyeux anniversaire but instead they are asking me for details;
What’s your take home salary after tax?
Where is the best place to send you some documents?
What colour would you like me to dye the towels?

The reason I have become so inundated with bizarre requests this week is that the offer I put in on a flat I instantly fell in love with was accepted, and only a matter of days later further confirmation was received to say the vendors of said property had found themselves a property meaning the chain is now complete and I can start eye-assaulting the pages of an Ikea catalogue and querying why there is a Chinese family in the bathroom.

I know more than anyone what a giant leap for Paulkind this represents. I think I never have any money now, and the idea of being responsible for ensuring I eat and sleep when I should baffles me completely let alone the idea of borrowing cups of sugar from neighbours and reading electric meters over the phone. I keep wondering when it will kick in that I am an adult. By the time my dear sweet mother was my age she had two children. That’s mental. I can’t be trusted with a Rubik’s Cube let alone a baby person. What I am slowly coming to realise is that all of the brilliant and infallible people I grew up around, the giant tree trunks of men and the brilliant matronly and world-wise women, they didn’t know what they were doing either. They were completely winging it. I just didn’t have the audacity to call them out over it as a child. Really, nobody knows what they are doing. The whole thing is just carried out on a wing and a prayer.
As a perfect example of how unprepared I am for life I just had to look up the history of the phrase ‘a wing and a prayer’ to better understand if I had used it in the correct context. As an aside it dates back to the Second World War, and was notably used in the 1942 film The Flying Tigers by John Wayne’s character to describe the condition of a dogfight damaged plane returning to base. Now where was I and what was I talking about?

Yes, I am very excited about this new chapter. I might even get ITV3 to commission a series on my movements in the coming months – Paul Schiernecker: The Next Chapter.

Photo: Nerf bullet in blinds (I will never grow up)