Stairlift to Heaven (16 page)

Margaret: “Well you can’t fault it environmentally.”

Victor: “Bugger the environment, it’s taken me six weeks to force that rhubarb through.”

Margaret: “It isn’t taking the elephant that long.”

Margaret tells Victor he must get onto the circus immediately and get someone to come for the elephant. However Victor has designs on the £5000 reward. He fears the elephant might make off before its owner arrives, so decides to take it back himself as the circus winter headquarters being only a mile up the road. He ties a rope round the elephant’s neck to lead it away. It won’t budge. Margaret suggests that as it’s a circus elephant it might be more inclined to move if he were to get on its back and ride it.

Victor: “Who do you think I am, Sabu?”

Margaret: “Well you certainly look like Sabu!” (The reader will recall that Victor is still dressed in a towel round his waist and has another towel wrapped round his head like a turban.)

Victor still can’t budge the elephant and eventually adopts Margaret’s suggestion. Lo and behold it works and Victor, atop the elephant, sets off for the circus. A hundred yards down the road a police car stops him.

Policeman: “Who do you think you are, Sabu?”

Victor: “Don’t
you
bloody start!”

The policeman smells alcohol on Victor’s breath and breathalyses him. (You will also recall that quite recently Victor had a large brandy.)

Victor: “I
do
believe it - you bloody people would breathalyse someone if you suspected him of sucking a beer mat!”

The breathalyser turns green and the police take Victor to the police station....with hilarious consequences, as they say.

Piece of cake.

****

May 18 2008.
SHIT GARDEN OF THE YEAR.

In the front garden of the house was the complete back axle assembly of a large lorry, a car wing, a supermarket trolley with the wheels missing, a pram with the wheels missing, two bike frames, a bath, half a WC, a roll of carpet, two live hens and sundry other bric-a-brac including paper, polythene packaging and dead leaves. All except for the two hens were partially submerged in what was once a lawn but now resembled elephant grass. The front door bore traces of the last three colours it had been painted and had ‘Piss Off’ in large letters written on it in spray paint. Atkins and I approached it. Atkins knocked on it. It was answered by a man who hadn’t troubled himself to put on a shirt that day, relying on just his filthy vest to impress any callers.

“Congratulations,” said Atkins. “You have won the ‘Shit Garden of the Year’ trophy.”

“For the second year running,” I added, holding up the trophy, an old car tyre that Atkins had sprayed metallic gold.

 “Oh it’s you two twats again, is it,” said the proud winner. “Why don’t you fuck off and mind your own business.”

“Cluck cluck,” said one of the hens, as if in agreement with its master’s sentiments.

“It
is
our business when your garden brings down the whole tone of the neighbourhood and wipes God knows how much value off the properties in the immediate vicinity,” I said.

“One of which is mine,” said Atkins meaningfully.

“There’s no law says I have to keep my garden tidy,” said the man. “This isn’t a council house.”

“Obviously, otherwise you’d have been turfed out of it years ago,” I said.

“Fuck off,” the man said, and slammed the door in our faces.

I threw his trophy on the pile of junk already in the garden. It increased it in volume by about one per cent and in value by about fifty per cent.

“Looks like it will have to be Plan B, Terence my boy” said Atkins.

****

May 25 2008.
LEG OF LAMB.

“This leg of lamb,” I said to the young girl assistant in charge of the ‘reduced to clear’ gun at the Co-op Late Shop. “I see it reaches its sell-by date tomorrow.”

She looked at the label. “That’s right. May 26.”

I was making an attempt at getting a supermarket assistant to put a ‘reduced to clear’ sticker onto something that hadn’t yet outlived its shelf life. Not wishing to be too brazen about it by asking her to reduce the price of something still some way to being out of date, I had picked on something that would soon be receiving a sticker in the normal course of events. I checked my watch. “Well it’s nine forty-five p.m. now and you close at ten,” I said, “So it’s very unlikely that anyone will buy it now. And tomorrow you’ll be putting a ‘reduced to clear’ sticker on it. So I was wondering, if it isn’t too much trouble, if you could see your way to putting one on now?”

I was going to write ‘You would have thought from her expression I had asked her to show her arse in the High Street’ but it occurred to me that most girls of her age do now show a good proportion of their arse in the High Street in the normal course of events, and to show all of it wouldn’t make a great deal of difference; so I will just say that she looked at me with absolute amazement. “I can’t do that!” she said.

The answer I’d been expecting so I was ready for her. “I am not a rich man,” I said, “as you can see from my clothes.” (I had taken the trouble to dress in the oldest clothes I could find and before entering the Late Shop and had lain down and rolled over in their car park, which added to my shabby appearance.) “So lamb is a luxury for me, unless it’s a bit of scrag end. However it is my dear wife’s birthday tomorrow and ever since we were married forty-odd years ago I have cooked for her a leg of lamb dinner with all the trimmings to celebrate the occasion. Sadly I lost my job five years ago and have been unable to find employment since. Even B&Q turned me down. Things have been a bit tight to say the least. Despite that I have always managed somehow or other to scrape together enough money to buy a leg of lamb for my wife’s birthday treat. And I managed to do so again this year but this morning the gas man called and threatened to cut us off if I didn’t pay an outstanding bill. I hadn’t got enough to pay it without the leg of lamb money so I had to use that. Besides, if I hadn’t we wouldn’t have had any gas with which to cook the leg of lamb, and at least by paying the gas bill we would have heat to warm our brittle old bones in the twilight of our years, even if we were hungry.”

“You could have cooked it in the microwave,” the girl said, helpfully, after a pause.

“Re-possessed long since with the barbecue,” I replied immediately, and added, just in case she should suggest them, “Along with the electric frying-pan and the Primas stove.”

“What a shame,” she said, with genuine concern.

“Yes,” I agreed. I went for the jugular. “But a greater shame is that this is the last time I would ever be cooking a leg of lamb for my wife’s birthday, as the doctor has given her only six weeks to live.”

A tear actually ran down her cheek. She looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was looking, then quickly put a ‘reduced to clear’ sticker on the leg of lamb and wrote ‘£1’ in the price column. Then, with the same eye that had moments before shed a tear, she winked at me, kissed me quickly on the cheek and was gone.

The leg of lamb was lovely. The Trouble did it with a butter, breadcrumbs, garlic and fresh rosemary crust along with roast vegetables.

****

June 19 2008.
SHIT GARDEN OF THE YEAR 2.

Today saw the culmination of Plan B of ‘Shit Garden of the Year’. The plan was put into operation two weeks ago when I phoned the owner of the aforementioned shit garden. The call was answered by the titleholder’s wife.

“Hello?”

“This is the High Peak Borough Council, Mr Lloyd speaking, Public Affairs and Events,” I lied. “Could I speak to your husband?”

“What for? Only he’s doing his pigeons and he doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s doing his pigeons.”

“Well whatever he’s doing to his pigeons, legal or otherwise, I can assure you it will be worth his while to tear himself away from them for a short while.”

“I’ll have to see what he says.”

“It will probably be ‘Coo’,” I said, but I think she’d gone. Half a minute later the man of the house, Mr Broadhurst, came on the line. “What do you want?” This uttered in a tone as suspicious as a milk bill.

“Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, is visiting the borough two weeks hence and Her Royal Highness has expressed the desire to visit a typical house within the borough. We held a raffle and your house came out of the hat.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Hello? Are you still there?”

I heard the woman’s voice in the background. “What is it? What’s the matter, Norman?”

“Two fucking princesses are going to visit our house!”

I saw where he had gone wrong and put him right. “No, it’s only the one princess. Princess Anne and The Princess Royal are the same person. And I don’t think she’ll be doing any fucking either, this isn’t Fergie we’re talking about here.”

“No.” A pause, then, “What do we have to do?”

“Not a thing. Her Royal Highness has expressed a wish that you shouldn’t go to any special trouble. I believe it’s usual to offer her a cup of tea. And maybe a cucumber sandwich.”

“Get a cucumber next time you go to the Co-op, Deidre.”

“And perhaps she could partake of the refreshments in the front garden if the weather is clement?”

“Right. In the front garden.”

“Now you’re not to go to any special trouble,” I warned. “The Princess is quite adamant on that point and wouldn’t like it.”

“No. No special trouble.”

“And a word to the wise. Keep it to yourself. We don’t want the neighbours gawking.”

“Right.”

“I’ll confirm the arrangements to you by letter.”

Atkins and I went round to the Broadhurst’s house at the appointed hour this afternoon. The garden, of course, was immaculate; vultures working round the clock couldn’t have stripped it off the sundry detritus more efficiently. To complement it the exterior of the house had been cleaned up and newly painted, the windows sparkled. Red, white and blue bunting decorated the façade. It looked a real picture. A small crowd, maybe about a hundred and fifty, many with small union jack flags, had gathered. The owner of the ‘Shit Garden of the Year’ and his wife were at the open doorway, all smiles, he wearing a shirt and tie for the occasion, awaiting the arrival of Princess Anne. I don’t know how long they waited, Atkins and I gave it five minutes then left, a job well done.

****

July 2 2008.
PANACHE.

If I have to make the short journey into the town centre and don’t fancy walking I quite often use the local half-hourly bus service. Not only is it free to pensioners but it saves getting the car out and allows me to indulge in one of my favourite pastimes - listening in to people’s conversations. Very often this is unrewarding, unless you’re interested in the latest state of someone’s haemorrhoids or the price of minced beef at Morrisons, but occasionally you hear a gem. I heard one this morning.

“Oh I like your hair,” said the old dear.