Stairlift to Heaven (18 page)

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December 1 2008.  
A BIZARRE INCIDENT
.

It was without any doubt the weirdest thing that anyone has ever said to me.

“I’m Harrop,” the man said by way of introduction. “Harrop the Rapist.

I was travelling home on a train from Romiley, a small town a few miles away. The man got on at Marple, the next stop down the line. The carriage was almost empty, just two or three passengers. I’d chosen to sit at a seat with a table so I could rest my newspaper on it whilst doing the crossword. Despite their being plenty seating availably, including seats at an empty table, the man chose to sit opposite me. As he did I looked up from my crossword, we made eye contact, and he smiled and said it. “I’m Harrop. Harrop the Rapist.”

I wasn’t quick enough. Had I been I would have come back with, “I’m Ravenscroft. Ravenscroft the Man Who Goes about Cutting the Bollocks off Rapists with a Rusty Knife.”

But his remark took me so much by surprise it rendered me temporarily speechless. I wondered what was the point of his saying it? To distinguish himself from, say, Harrop the Window Cleaner or Harrop the Travel Agent, maybe brothers of his, in much the same way that people in Wales are in the habit of calling themselves Jones the Butcher and Jones the Greengrocer, to set them apart from all the other Joneses.

He had said the words as though he spoke them often, and brightly, business-like, with no little pride in his voice, as though he might have done if he was telling me he was Harrop the Brain Surgeon or Harrop the Mountaineer, of Everest fame.

Thinking about it I suppose he said it because it must be his only claim to fame. The poor bastard. I almost felt sorry for him. Only almost, though.

I was considering giving him a hefty kick under the table, then apologising, saying I couldn’t help it, it was an ailment I had, named after me in fact, ‘Ravenscroft’s Kicking Twats under the Table Syndrome’, when he got up and got off at the next stop.

****

December 3 2008. 
PIG SICK.

Atkins
is a dab hand at shooting rabbits, his skill with the twelve bore shotgun having provided dinner for The Trouble and me on numerous occasions. Consequently he spends a good deal of his leisure hours in the heather and gorse-strewn countryside that surrounds our little town in making the local population of rabbits a little less abundant.

Unfortunately some of the surrounding countryside, in addition to the heather and gorse and rabbits, also contains farms, and it was at one of these farms a couple of days ago that Atkins, in addition to bagging a rabbit, also bagged a large pig that happened to be careless enough to be standing directly behind the rabbit when he let rip with his shotgun. It was a complete accident of course, but conscious of the fact that the farmer might not take too kindly to the premature slaying of one of his porkers Atkins hopped it from the scene of the crime without further ado, but with great haste.

That might have been the end of the matter but apparently someone observed the dastardly deed and reported it to the farmer. Subsequently the farmer, seeking compensation for his loss, took Atkins to task about it. Naturally Atkins denied all knowledge of the matter, telling the farmer that at the time of the alleged incident he was with me, some ten miles away, on a fishing trip. He knew that the farmer would waste no time in calling on me to confirm his alibi, so once the farmer had departed Atkins called me, told me about the escapade, and asked me to support his story. I agreed of course; Atkins was a friend in need.

I am not a great fan of farmers. I don't much care for the way they are always pleading poverty whilst availing themselves of the very latest in 4 X 4 off road gas guzzling ego- massaging wank tanks. As Atkins succinctly once put it himself, “You don't see many farmers riding around on a bike.” So there was never any question that I wouldn't back up my friend's deceit, and in doing so get him off the hook. Until the time the farmer came knocking on my door this morning I had scarcely stopped thinking about poor old Atkins shooting the pig. I just couldn't get it out of my head and had several times burst out laughing at the image it conjured up. When I tried to read my book the words just disappeared to be replaced by a picture of Atkins and the pig. I even tried watching a play on TV, Martin Clunes in some nonsense or other, but even then I kept getting this vision of a pig on the screen every few minutes, a situation not helped by Martin Clunes, an actor who has taken on an increasingly porcine-like appearance the older and more famous he has become.

This morning at breakfast I was still chuckling about it. The Trouble asked me what it was I found so funny and when I told her she couldn't stop chuckling about it either, and set me off chuckling again. Consequently when the farmer called, in a 58 plate
Range Rover
of course, I could barely keep my face straight. The farmer’s face was very straight, but then he'd just lost a pig. He came straight to the point. “Do you know a Richard Atkins?”

“Ah,” I replied immediately, “You mean Atkins the pig shooter.”

Why I said it I will never know. I certainly didn't want to get Atkins in any more trouble than he was in already. The only thing I can put it down to is that over the last couple of days I'd thought so much about Atkins shooting the pig that when his name was mentioned I immediately associated it with his pig shooting exploits. And that, coupled with the incident the other day with Harrop the Rapist, had perhaps led me to automatically attach a wrong-doers crime to his name.

Anyway the upshot of it was that I had to tell Atkins I'd accidentally shopped him. He was quite livid, as could be well understood. However after I offered to go halves with him on the compensation demanded by the farmer he came round a bit, but our friendship may be a little fragile for a while. And we claimed the pig of course. We’ll be eating pork for weeks.

****

December 16 2008.
POLES.

Just recently our town has seen an influx of Poles. Not poles as in telegraph poles or flag poles or even the poles that nubile young ladies use in the performance of erotic dancing for the amusement of randy businessmen, but Poles as in natives of a large, cold, East European country. The attraction for British factory owners is of course cheap labour, and for the Poles the chance to earn a decent living without the risk of having their extremities frozen solid whilst doing it.

We’ve welcomed about a hundred of them thus far and all have soon found jobs, a good proportion of them at the local sweet factory, Swizzels/Matlow. Swizzels are of course the manufacturers of the famous ‘Love Hearts’, the sweets that have mottos such as ‘I Love You’ and ‘Be My Angel’. Or at least they did when they were first introduced. Nowadays along with the original messages they also bear more risqué mottos such as ‘Hello Big Boy’ and ‘Lovely Bum’. With the addition of Poles to the workforce I don’t suppose it will be long before we see the introduction of a ‘Lick My Pole’ Love Heart. But at least the Poles won’t be opening up restaurants like the Indians and Chinese and Italians, not unless the British public suddenly develop a taste for beetroot, cabbage soup and lard sandwiches that is.

I came across my first Pole yesterday, although I didn’t realise he was a Pole at first. He was half of the two-man team at a recently opened hand car wash. I found out after he and his mate had washed my car and his mate had gone off for change from the ten pound note I’d offered in payment.

“Weather’s bucking up a bit at last,” I said, passing the time of day as you do. He just smiled at me. I thought maybe he was a bit shy. I tried again. “Not doing too well at the cricket, are we.” Nothing. Not even a smile this time. Not a cricket fan then. I tried a third time. “Who’s going to win the Cup this year then?”

“No spik Englis,” he said. “Pole.”

What could I say? The only word I know in Polish is ‘Polish’ and I’m not at all sure ‘Polish’ is Polish in Poland, it could be Polszkygnkzch or some other such name with very few vowels and loads of k’s and z’s. I thought about and finally pointed to myself and said: “No spik Polish. Englis.”

He smiled and offered his hand. I shook it. Contact had been made. For some strange reason it made me happy. I must be getting soft in my old age.

****

December 20 2008.
THE SONIC YARD PROTECTOR.

The advert in the small ads section of the newspaper read - ‘24 Hour Protection against Unwanted Animal Intruders. Simply place the Sonic Yard Protector in your garden and repel foxes, dogs, cats, rabbits, squirrels, rodents, insects and more! The new Sonic Yard Protector broadcasts a powerful, continuous ultrasonic pulse that will irritate animal pests and drive them away. It also has a built-in PIR motion detector which will sense any animal intruder’s movement and activate the system to emit an owl sound’.

I read it twice. There was something wrong with the advert but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Not to worry, I thought, the Sonic Yard Protector is just the sort of thing I need to keep the neighbourhood’s cats out of my back garden, which they have recently taken to using as a meeting place, and promptly sent off for one.

I should have worried; although, true to its promise, the Sonic Yard Protector kept away everything it claimed to keep away. In fact since I erected it we have had in our garden not a single, cat, dog, rabbit, squirrel or fox, leastwise not during the hours of daylight. What we have had however, and still have, is an owl. A particularly loud owl. And when we got the owl I realised what it was that was wrong with the advert; for if, as it claimed, the Sonic Yard Protector kept out all uninvited cats, dogs, etc, why then would you need its built-in PIR motion detector to sense any intruding animal movements and activate the system to emit an owl sound? Because if the Sonic Yard Protector was doing its job there wouldn’t
be
any intruding animals to protect against.

The Trouble and I were first woken by the hooting of the owl at one-o-clock in the morning. Well at least we knew the owl sound worked, we consoled ourselves. We knew it again when it woke us up again an hour later. The following night it woke us up at 12.30 a.m. then again at half past three. The second time it woke us up there wasn’t one owl hooting but two. I looked out of the bedroom window. There, as large as life, was an owl perched on the garden shed, |next to the Sonic Yard Protector. The bloody thing had attracted it! The following day I took the Sonic Yard Protector down before the owl found a way of mating with it and we ended up with a garden full of owls. But now the owl keeps coming back. Looking for its mate I suppose. So now we are awoken in the middle of the night by a real owl. And during the day we have a garden full of cats again.

I believe that owls are a protected species. All I can say is I hope the protection comes in the form of a bulletproof vest because if it keeps coming for much longer I’m going to get Atkins to shoot it.

****

December 22 2008.
POLE-AXED.

Thanks to my meeting the friendly Pole in the car wash a few days ago Atkins and I have a new daft game. It’s called ‘Pretending to be Polish’ and we played it for the first time today during the half- hour train journey to Manchester.

During the off-peak hours the trains are emptier than a politician’s promise so as usual we had the whole coach to ourselves.

The game started when the conductor came round shortly after we’d boarded the train. “Tickets please,” he announced cheerily. He didn’t stay cheery for long.

“Warsaw,” I said, taking out my wallet.

“Pardon?”

“Warsaw. Come back Englands.”

“Return,” Atkins explained. “He mean Warsaw return.”

“We don’t go to Warsaw. Manchester, that’s where we go.”