Stairlift to Heaven (13 page)

I made my way back to him. “What are you going to do then?” I asked.

“She’ll have to settle for duck,” he said. “Anyway I prefer duck.”

****

February 22 2008.
AIR MAIL.

About
ten years ago, whilst flying home from a holiday in Lanzarote, I was served the most revolting lasagne I have ever tasted. It was so bad that if I’d had to choose between eating it and death I would not be here now, death being the preferred option. The following day I wrote about it to Air 2000, the airline company concerned. I presumed that they would have fielded many complaints about their lasagne and so in order to ring the changes I wrote in praise of it. This is the letter: -

Dear Air 2000   

I recently had the pleasure of flying for the very first time. I’ve always been afraid to up until now, but I finally plucked up courage. I am certainly glad that I did, and for two reasons. One, it wasn’t half so bad an experience as I had imagined it would be, and two, I had my first meal on an aeroplane. Why all the jokes about airline food? The fare we were served by Air 2000 on our flights down to Lanzarote and back were quite excellent, and I speak as a man who knows good food, eating as I do at least five ready-to-heat-up-in-the-microwave or boil-in-the-bag meals a week. Both the turkey and stuffing going down and the lasagne coming back were quite mouth-watering. Nor could I fault the starters and desserts, although it must be said that the couple seated next to me detected a ‘soapy’ taste in the trifle, although if you ask me it was their imagination, because it certainly tasted all right to me.

Is it possible to buy your meals? If so, could you please reply, with details of any other meals you do, your price list, and any discounts you allow for quantity.

Yours sincerely

T Ravenscroft (Mr)

Air 2000 replied to my letter much as I suspected they might, pleased to note that I enjoyed the lasagne but regretting that the meals they served onboard were not available for re-sale. The matter would have ended there if they hadn’t then added the following sentence, which was, and I quote, ‘
Nevertheless, we would be very pleased to welcome you on board again in the near future, to sample the refreshments within our service once again’
.

Now I could have taken this two ways; one, that they would be very happy if I chose to fly with them again (which is what they had meant). And two, that they were offering me a free trip in order that I could have another one of their delightful meals (which is what I chose to believe they had meant).

After three more exchanges of correspondence, by which time I had decided I’d led Air 2000 up the garden path for long enough, it occurred to me that two other incidents worthy of complaint had occurred during my flight; one was that from my window seat I couldn’t see the television set located in the central aisle without leaning over to a degree well in excess of the lean on the Tower of Pisa if I were to view the screen in full; the other was that I was ripped off to the tune of about twenty-five per cent when changing my Spanish pesetas back into sterling. I saw a book looming.

Rather than write to Air 2000 again, who no doubt would have had enough of me by then, I complained to two other airline companies. Their replies and the subsequent correspondence encouraged me to write to other airline companies, but this time with complaints I had made up. There are only so many things one can complain about, even to airlines, so I also wrote to some of them in praise of their service and to others with requests for advice. A book, which I called Dear Air 2000 in honour of the first of my letters, was the result.

Dear Air 2000 must have set a world record for being turned down because over the course of the next five years there wasn’t one publisher I sent it to who didn’t reject it. Not all of them turned it down out of hand; in fact some were quite complimentary about it. One went as far as to say “This is the funniest book I’ve read in ages. If you were Ben Elton I’d publish it tomorrow. But who is Terry Ravenscroft?’ (Publishers, along with most people I would guess, don’t read the credits at the end of television programmes or he might have known.)

That’s the way things are in the book publishing industry I’m afraid, even more so now, in 2008 than it was back then. Publishers nowadays aren’t selling books, they’re selling names. There is no doubt that if Victoria Beckham were to announce she was planning a book called ‘The Thoughts of Victoria Beckham’ publishers would be falling over their cheque books in the rush to offer her a million pounds advance. That ‘The Thoughts of Victoria Beckham’ would be an exceptionally thin book containing just one chapter entitled ‘Shopping’ wouldn’t affect their interest in it in the slightest. ‘Kylie Minogue’s Road Kill Recipes’ would be welcomed with open arms.

Eventually I gave up the ghost and published Dear Air 2000 myself, a relatively inexpensive and easy matter nowadays with ‘print on demand’ technology. But publishing it, I was soon to discover, was the easy part. Trying to sell it was a different matter entirely. Amazon stocked it (they stock nearly all published books, bless them), but W H Smiths, Waterstone’s and Borders didn’t want to know, possibly applying the ‘Ben Elton who is Terry Ravenscroft’ principle’.

To promote the book I sent a copy to eighty commercial radio presenters, asking them to read it and if they liked it to give it a mention on their show. I don’t know how many did but seven of them liked it enough to give me an on air interview. The book started to sell on Amazon.

I was convinced it would sell in bookshops too, and because of its subject matter especially so in airline bookshops, if only I could get it on their shelves. I decided to find out for definite. I was going on holiday and arrived at Manchester Airport an hour earlier than I needed to. As soon as I’d checked in I discreetly placed five copies of Dear Air 2000 in a prominent position on the shelves of W H Smith’s air side bookshop and stood by to watch what would happen. After forty five minutes five people had picked up the book and glanced through it. Four of them had gone to the counter to buy it. They weren’t able to of course because the bar code wouldn’t scan. The first time this happened the assistant called for the manager. Heads were scratched and apologies made to the prospective customer. Telephone calls, presumably to head office, were made. In the meantime a second customer arrived at the counter wanting to buy the book. Money did eventually change hands and two satisfied customers departed with copies of Dear Air 2000. How the sales were accounted for I have no idea, nor did I care; I had made my point.

It had been my intention to get in touch with W H Smith on my return from holiday to report what had happened, but on arriving home a letter was waiting for me. It was from publisher Michael O’Mara Books, from Michael O’Mara himself no less. He had come by a copy of Air 2000, he wanted to publish it himself, he would give me a substantial advance, was I interested? Does the Pope shit on Catholics? Dear Air 2000 was re-published as ‘Air Mail’ and sold in bookshops with a gratifying degree of success.

I hadn’t the heart to tell Michael O’Mara that Michael O’Mara Books had turned the book down when I had offered it to them two years ago, along with all those other short-sighted publishers.

****

March 16 2008.
AN AMBITION FULFILLED.

My front drive is fourteen feet wide, exactly the same width as the local canal at its narrowest point. Using the edges of my drive as a guide I had chalked lines across the pavement to represent the canal. Now I walked along the footpath for some twenty yards, turned, ran back at full pelt, hit the first chalk line, leapt, and landed about a foot beyond the second chalk line. I retraced my steps and did the same again, putting a little more effort into it. This time I cleared the second chalk line by a good two feet, a leap in excess of sixteen feet. I then jumped across the lines in the reverse direction, with the same result. It was then that Atkins happened by, on his way to buy his morning newspaper.

Don't tell me,” he said “you asked The Trouble to dress up as a schoolgirl and she told you to take a running jump.”

He wasn't far off the mark as far as The Trouble telling me to take a running jump was concerned as I was in the doghouse for telling her Feng Shui instructor to clear off when he called round to rearrange our furniture again and she wasn’t in. “I'm going to jump the canal,” I said.

Atkins was impressed. “Really?”

“Really.”

“When are you doing it? I want to be there,” he said eagerly, no doubt hoping the same disaster that befell him when he went goose-hunting would befall me. “I'll act as your second. Carry a dry set of clothing for you and a towel.”

“There'll be no need for that,” I said, “It's a done job.”

Jumping over the canal at its narrowest point (known to everyone as ‘the narrow hole’) has long been an ambition of mine. In fact I've wanted to do it since I was a boy. During my schooldays I was a fair athlete, I always won the hundred yards in my age group at the school sports and the long jump with it, and could jump over twenty feet when I was fifteen. Jumping over the canal should have presented no problem at all. But I never did it. I’ve jumped in it. And over the years I’ve walked by it, fell in it, paddled in it, peed in it (both while I was paddling in it and from the towpath), fished in it, skimmed stones on it, skated on it and made love on the grass verge which separates it from its towpath. But never jumped it.

Lots of my schoolmates jumped it, nearly all of them, boys who couldn't jump anywhere near as far as I could. Two girls had even jumped it. The only casualty had been Bucktooth Dawson, and even he cleared it, the casualty being when his impetus on landing kept him running and he ran into a tree and knocked his front teeth out. (Disappointingly for him people still called him bucktooth. He pointed out that he now hadn't any teeth and therefore his nickname should now be Buck, which he would have enjoyed as he liked cowboy pictures, but nobody took any notice of course, children being children.

I never did jump it. Something always stopped me. The fear of falling in and making a fool of myself I suppose, even though I knew I was more than capable of clearing it. But I never forgot it, and many times since I've sworn that one day I
would
do it. So today, at the age of sixty-seven, after satisfying myself that I could still easily jump the fourteen feet required, I set out to do it. I allowed Atkins to accompany me but spurned his offer of videoing the occasion for a potential 'You've Been Framed' clip.

I didn't mess about when we got there, I just backed away from the water's edge as far as I could, ran, then soared over the canal like a gazelle, landing on the other side with a good three feet to spare. Atkins was most impressed, and applauded, but failed to hide his disappointment.

When my schoolmates had jumped it all those years ago it wasn't really a proposition to jump back as the land on the opposite side of the canal sloped away quite steeply and was composed largely of grass tussocks and the occasional cowpat, making a return jump much more difficult. So having leapt the canal the way back was down through the fields and return via the footbridge some hundred yards or so down the canal. Which is what I intended to do. Except that I now found out I couldn't. In front of me was not an open field but a housing estate, and my way was blocked by a ten feet high back garden fence.

I pointed out my predicament to Atkins. “Just climb over the fence,” he called.

“You must be joking.”

“You'll have to jump back over the canal then.”

“You must be joking.”

“You'll have to stay there and starve to death then.”

This is where my National Service survival training came in. “There are some planks in my garage. Nip back and get a couple of them to make a bridge over the canal.”

Atkins nodded. “It's as good as done.” Good old Atkins, I thought, a friend in need.

Four hours I waited there. He eventually returned just before dark, two planks over his shoulder. Naturally by then I was fuming. “What the bloody hell kept you?” I demanded.