Barry was always told that he needed some sense knocking into him and eventually much to everyone's relief someone did.
Travel through the physical and metaphysical world of Barry Broomfield, a man who has known only one thing: that he is a loser.
Excerpt:
‘Why’d you do that if you knew I was coming? I thought we arranged you’d have them cleaned once a month. Why would you clean the windows if you know you have a window cleaner?’
‘Well, I didn’t know when you were going to come did I? They were dirty and needed cleaning so I cleaned them myself. The next day I come home to see you’ve left your stupid little card saying you’d just cleaned’em for me.’
Mrs Beston’s face swelled crimson and its bloodshot, bulging eyes glared with an unjustified menace. Barry attempted to reason with the thing before him, although he was wasting his breath.
‘Yes, because that’s the arrangement we’d agreed upon remember, once every month?’
‘I don’t think I’m going to want you to do them anymore.’
Barry didn’t feel particularly upset he wouldn’t be cleaning Mrs Beston’s windows again: it was; after all, only a five pound job. And even if it had of been a much larger one, it still wasn’t worth the amount of grief he’d received.
‘Okay, that’s fine—no problem.’
Mrs Beston walked back into her house with its nose ostentatiously turned skywards. Believing she had gone to go and get his money for the final clean he’d done, Barry waited only to find she didn’t come back. Becoming annoyed, he knocked loudly on Mrs Beston’s front door.
‘What do you want now?’ she asked angrily.
‘I’m waiting for you to pay me for doing your windows, you owe me five pounds.’
‘I’m not paying you because they didn’t need doing,’ she said, spitting the words out with biting venom.
‘How the hell was I supposed to know you’d cleaned them the day before I came,’ said Barry, really beginning to get riled now. He had a few more choice words for this miserable hag but managed to catch his tongue, well at least partially. ‘I spent my time cleaning them as we agreed and now you suddenly decide you don’t have to pay me? It’s not my fault you’re an idiot who cleans the windows when you’ve got a window cleaner.’
Revelling in the infliction of suffering, and knowing in this instance she was untouchable, Mrs Beston looked down her long nose at the man before it and said: ‘No, I don’t think I’ll bother paying you—good day.’ With the completion of this closing sentence she shut the door in the window cleaner’s face.
Muttering profanities as he trudged back to his clapped-out car, his ancient, vomit-beige Volkswagen Golf, Barry understandably was in a foul mood.
