Chapter Forty-Five
Forty-Five
Clip
Another hour passes, and I’m still awake. I know YouTube won’t load on my phone with this crappy internet, but I check it anyway.
Max has posted another new video. A one-minute clip.
God, he looks good today. He hasn’t shaved and it’s given him even more of the rugged lumberjack look that his admirers in the comment section have so much to say about. The preview picture shows him talking directly to camera, and he’s framed the shot beautifully. There is an old church in the background to his left, and on the right of him, there is soft light and swans. According to the episode notes, he’s introducing a new spade that he’s using, because his ‘old one didn’t suit his digging style’.
I blink, and feel a lump in my throat.
Apparently, the old spade had a lip that wasn’t working for him, so he upgraded to something superior.
I bought him that spade for Christmas, and he’s discarded it and got himself a newer, sleeker model that suits his needs better.
The irony is not lost on me.
I’m burning to play the video, but I can’t get it to load, which is a blessing, because why am I still doing this to myself?
I’m not used to being apart from him for this long; it’s as if my brain misses seeing his face, hearing his voice, and I need a new hit of him.
Unlike most other mudlarks, Max doesn’t just film what he’s seeing in front of him; he films his own tea breaks too, setting his camera on a tripod so his fans all over the world can have the joy of seeing him working through his neatly packed lunchbox of doorstop sandwiches, homemade biscuits and a Thermos of coffee. It’s like he’s setting himself up as the new Hugh Grant and has his eye on starring as the leading man in every romcom movie that will come out in the next ten years. It’s also undeniably adorable.
I know he’s done wrong by me, but even now I sort of want to reach through the screen and pat him on the head: congratulate him for quadrupling his subscriber numbers in a month, for getting the kind of respect and attention he’s always hoped for. Max has found a way to have his own show and turn himself into its star.
When he was drunk or tired, and his glossy surface persona softened, he would tell me about his big plans for his channel, how he wanted to turn it into a real TV career, to use it as a stepping stone to front a younger, hipper Time Team. How he dreamed of giving interviews to magazines, with artsy photos of his finds arranged next to even artsier photos of himself holding the Garrett Carrot – a nine-inch orange pinpointer probe that he uses to locate his finds once he’s narrowed down the main area with his big detector. He adored that little gadget and I loved that he could feel such enthusiasm over something so deeply uncool. His fans seem to feel the same way. They respond to the sheer joy he feels from following his passion, and it brings them vicarious happiness too.
I can’t help myself; I have to read the comments.