It’s the sort of Sunday morning that dreams are made of, waking up to some light chit chat in the market place. It’s almost May, and although it’s not hot by any stretch of the imagination, I have started to sleep with the window slightly open as this end of the apartment does get really warm overnight. I have a lot of electrical equipment churning away, but not enough to explain the freakishly warm evenings in the room. It’s still an ongoing mystery as to where the heat comes from.

So with the window open I wake to the sound of two blue rinses and a flat cap talking about how lovely the mornings are again now that Spring is well and truly here, I hear the light flow of traffic rolling past at a compulsory 20 mph, and some gentle whistling from Luke in the Kitchen. Unless Luke has to go to work, he is never awake before me, and I really mean never, his subconscious is as stubborn as they come and it won’t allow him to wake until he’s reached the ‘lazy fat wanker’ checkpoint of about 10 hours solid, undisturbed, dribble inducing sleep. But awake he was and surprisingly chirpy considering it was before 8am.

So I get up with all the joys of spring, ready to face a Sunday with no work, and plenty of social plans. These plans include very little more than visiting parents, grandparents, siblings and some Country & Western dancing later that evening, but they’re my favourite type of plans. Until mid 2007 I had worked shifts my entire working life and weekends rarely existed, so becoming self employed meant developing an entirely new outlook to weekend plans and activities, especially on Sundays. I appreciate them more than ever and do like to get my monies worth from a Sunday without work.

My early morning routine is quite regimental whatever day of the week or whatever time I wake up, and today is no exception. Boxer shorts go on, I can’t sleep properly in any type of clothing so it’s free and easy for me, then the kettle gets filled and the switch is flicked. ‘Flick the kettle on’, what a stupid expression, the switch on my kettle is a nightmare, it sticks out from the base of the kettle and needs to be pressed in a downwards direction – so flicking it means twisting your body/shoulder/arm/wrist/hand in order to have your flicking finger pointing downwards, which you can’t do without huffing and puffing and pulling that trapped wind, distressed face while your tongue pushes on your cheek slightly, subsequently making you look like Stephen Hawking trying to escape from his wheelchair. And just to add insult to injury as you flick the switch, your finger ricochets off and into the worktop causing you to squeal like a piglet trapped in a barbed wire fence, jump around, holding your finger in a loon like fashion. Thankfully Luke had already flicked the kettle on so I skipped straight to the wee wee from my pee pee hole part of my routine before washing my hands and splashing some water over my face. On occasion I will introduce the gentle removal of any whiteheads to the routine between the hand washing and face splashing, but it wasn’t necessary on this particular Sunday morning.

Luke has by this point made the tea, which after previous ever improving efforts is a little disappointing, not only did he get lazy with the squeezing of the tea bag, but he also put way too much milk in, again. I’ll have to have words because standards slip very easy and if you don’t whip him into shape quick enough he doesn’t fully appreciate the error of his ways. I’ll dig out the ‘Making Warren’s Tea’ demonstration video I made, as a little reminder and reference point. The tea then comes back to bed with me, and I spend 30 minutes to an hour drinking my tea while constructing an email. Actually the tea would have gone within 5-10 minutes, but the email then carries on for some time afterwards.

It’s at this point my routine changes depending on what day of the week it is. The day in question is a Sunday so there is no set routine to speak of; it just flows in the way that it wants to flow. On this occasion it was flowing at a reasonable pace, towards Norwich, so by 9.30ish I was showered, shaved, dressed, fed and ready to get going. As I exited the door I shouted the usual “laters” back into the apartment in Luke’s direction, and while reversing out I pull the door closed taking in a breath of clean, crisp, spring air, refuelling my ‘joys of spring’ attitude. Kathy’s car is there, I can spot the back of it protruding from her garage. Kathy is the neighbour next door – The apartments aren’t joined, we’re on the first and second floor while she has a ground and first floor place, the layout is a little quaint and unusual, but going on the basis that we’re #1 and she’s #2, she’s our next door neighbour, and what a neighbour she is. I’ve only briefly met her once, and she was in something of a rush so I didn’t get to introduce myself properly, but it was a memorable experience because she was looking pretty damn lovely I recall. She had got dressed up and looked like she was out to impress. On reflection I should have told her not to bother rushing out, she’d impressed without going anywhere. But off she went to tease and taunt others with her pretty hair and nice bottom. Kathy is rarely at home, her car turns up now and again, but for very short periods of time, and in 3 months that was the only time I’ve actually seen her, well to speak to anyway. Until now it seems.

I’m happily tip tapping down the metal fire escape style staircase into the courtyard as I hear the key moving in Kathy’s door, I’m now crunching my way across the courtyard on the fine ‘burglar deterring’ shingle, creating a noise that could wake the dead and her door opens just as I’m about to pass. I’m quite intimidated by this attractive, slightly older mystery lady that lives next door, and although a hugely confident person I feel my insides tightening up slightly, and my brain thinking ‘what do I say, what do I say’ but knowing I can’t really just nod and walk past, knowing that I really should say a little something, I stop. Being polite I stop just short of the doorway so not to bump into her which would only make a very nervous Warren even more nervous. At this point you’re thinking I’m a sociable, considerate, friendly neighbour – yes? And you’d be right – but that’s not the impression Kathy got. What actually happened at the point of me stopping is Kathy didn’t appear from the doorway as you would expect her too, she’d opened the door for some reason but continued to do whatever she was doing inside, leaving me standing silently just outside her front door able to hear her banging about.

Anyone else would carry on walking to their car and enjoy their Sunday as planned, but I seemed unable to do that. This Kathy lady next door was on a pedestal, I’d built her up in my head as an amazing goddess of mighty power and intelligence, someone I could never aspire to, and would worship for the entirety of my days living here. And it had dawned on me that even if she hadn’t noticed my tip tapping down the stairs she would have, without doubt heard my crunching footsteps across the courtyard towards her front door and I was now very conscious of the fact that I am standing just outside this Kathy ladies open front door, with no reason to be there, knowing that she would be aware of my presence. My brain is pondering what reasonable excuse I may have for standing here and how I am going to explain this, then it finally reached the conclusion; I’m going to carry on to the car. At this point, 15-20 seconds have already passed so the embarrassment factor is stacking up.

Time to move, but just as the first leg moves forward I spot a flash of Blonde hair, which is immediately followed by an uber attractive, even more intimidating than I remember, Kathy, towering over me at the door. She’s no taller than me, but it definately felt like she was towering over me and I was looking up at her powerful yet beautiful face. Unfortunately, just as she appeared I had already started shifting my weight towards that first moving leg and was half a step closer to her open door. Trying to pull my weight back, I stumble clumsily peering in her general direction crunching on the stones in the process. Extremely nervous, unsettled and red faced I look her square in the face and attempt a smile. I could tell it must have been a very unnatural, forced smile, but for the life of me I couldn’t find a single word to say so I just kept smiling.

She looked like she was about to say something when her attention was drawn towards the floor, I watched her eyes go down my body from my head to my toes and stop there, and a look of horror appear. I look down and what I hadn’t realised during the previous embarrassing, shameful, stalkerish 40 seconds of my life is that my penis had come off and fallen out of my trouser leg on to the shingle. It took me a couple of seconds and a double take to realise it was definitely my penis as it was blending in with the stones somewhat, but there it was, resting on the floor. I’ve never claimed to have a big penis, but never have I seen it looking quite so feeble, it had that ‘just got out of the swimming pool’ look about it, the cold water, and general public doesn’t just make it small, it makes it shrivel, it had rolls – not because there’s any fat on it, but because there’s no substance keeping any shape to it at all. It looks like a miniature bullmastiff novelty toy.

What do you say in this situation? I didn’t say anything I looked up and continued to try and perfect my far from perfect smile. Kathy looked less than impressed, I don’t think she was judging my shrivelled, dismembered penis; she just looked generally unimpressed and disappointed that I’d disturbed her day and distracted her from whatever it was she was doing. Without a single word she went back inside, and continued to bang about (slightly louder than before) leaving the door wide open.

I picked up my penis and shamefully crunched my way across the courtyard, head down and heels dragging…..