Stairlift to Heaven (19 page)

“Warsaw,” I repeated, a little more firmly, taking a fiver from my wallet and waving it. “Come back Englands”

“We don’t go to Warsaw,” said the Conductor, speaking slowly for my benefit. “We only go to Piccadilly.”

“Piccalilli? Nice on Spam.

“Piccadilly! It’s the terminus!”

“Terminus?”

Atkins came to the rescue again. He pointed to me. “Pole.” Then he pointed to himself. “Pole.” Then he held up two fingers. “Three Poles. No spik English gut. No understand.”

“Warsaw,” I said, pushing the fiver into the conductor’s hand. “Come backs.”

“For the last time we don’t go to fucking Warsaw,” said the no longer cheery Conductor.

Atkins’s face lit up. “Understand Fucking,” he said. “Fucking awful weather. Fucking Monday morning again. Fucking scouse bastards!”

“Warsaw,” I said. “No Piccalilli.”

The Conductor spelled it out slowly. We…do…not…go…to…Warsaw! Go…Manchester!”

The Conductor’s slowly enunciated words obviously made sense to my fellow Pole because Atkins now gave a huge beam. “Go Manchester!” he said. The Conductor smiled. Atkins continued. “Go Manchester United! Man United go! Go Wayne Rooney, Go Ryan Giggs, Please don’t take our Socks Jar away.”

“Red Navy!” I said.

“Army,” said Atkins.

“Army Navy!” I said.

“Army Navy Store,” said Atkins.

“Oh fuck this for a game of soldiers ,” said the conductor, and went on his way.

We got away with the fare too.

****

April 10 2009.
BABY ON BOARD.

Today I saw another of those ‘Baby On Board’ stickers that clutter up the back windows of cars. What purpose do they serve? Does the owner of the car maybe expect you to stop them and ask for a look at their darling little pride and joy?

“Why have you stopped me?”

“I’d like a look at your baby.”

“A look at my baby?”

“Well why else would you be advertising that you’re carrying your baby in your car if it isn’t so people can stop you to have a look at it?”

Maybe it isn’t that. Maybe the stickers are designed to influence the decision of the driver in the car behind as to whether or not they should crash into the car in front of him.

“Oh look Ethel, I see there’s a ‘Baby on Board’ sticker on the car in front, I was about to recklessly plough into the back of it but now I’ve been warned there’s a baby on board I’m going to take avoiding action.”

I don’t think so. For surely anyone about to plough into the back of a car would already have taken all the avoiding action they can, whether the car in front is sporting a ‘Baby on Board’ sticker on the rear window or not.

When I first saw one of the stickers I thought it had perhaps been put there to warn the driver of the car behind not to get too close as in addition to any other people who might be on board there was also a baby, therefore one should be especially careful. But I soon dismissed that theory, common sense telling me that if you’re near enough to a car to read the sticker you’re already much nearer to it than safe braking distance will allow, even at only thirty miles-an-hour.

In fact, women being the way they are about babies, you might think a ‘Baby on Board’ sticker would be more likely to cause an accident than prevent one - for what woman does not like to look at a baby? And if that’s the case what then are the chances of a woman driver, on observing that the car in front is displaying a ‘Baby on Board’ sticker, and in her eagerness to see the baby, getting too close to it and crashing into the back of it? I don’t think BetFred would give you very generous odds against it happening.

“You’re driving too close to that car in front, Ethel.”

“But I want to see the baby.”

CRASH!

“I think that’s it there, Ethel, the one with the busted head and the rattle.”

On thinking about it I’ve reached the conclusion that it must be some sort of announcement - the mother, now swollen with pride instead of the baby, proclaiming to the world that she has now had the baby, but at this moment isn’t out with it showing it off to her friends, or pushing it around in its trendy three-wheeler pram, or has it slung to her front like some tiny mountaineer trying to scale the twin peaks of Mount Tits, but has her new pride and joy in the car with her, where it can’t for the moment be admired by everyone. So she has to tell everyone. “Baby on Board!”

I noticed recently that there are now adaptations of this ubiquitous sticker. One such is: ‘Small Person on Board’. The first time I saw one I thought at first it meant the car was being driven by a midget and was a variation on the Long Vehicle/Short Vehicle sticker joke, but on looking inside the car saw that the small person referred to was a toddler. Since then I’ve seen quite a few ‘Small Person on Board’ stickers. And two or three ‘Cheeky Little Monkey on Board’ stickers. I have not however, as might be expected, all children by no means being little angels, see any ‘Little Horror on Board’ or ‘Whingeing Little Twat on Board’ stickers. There is obviously a gap in the market here. I don’t suppose it will be long before someone fills it.

****

April 25 2009.
THE WOMAN FROM GLOSSOP.

On a flight home from Lanzarote, due to a mix-up at the check-in desk, The Trouble and I were split up and I found myself seated next to a Woman from Glossop who spent the entire flight telling the man seated the other side of her all about her timeshare apartment in Puerto del Carmen, the main resort in Lanzarote.

Like me the Woman from Glossop had been split up from her spouse on the flight but apparently this had been arranged by design rather than by accident as “We always sit apart on flights as we see enough of each other while we’re in Lanzarote.” I have little doubt it was the Man from Glossop who insisted on these travelling arrangements, indeed if I had been he not only would I have insisted on a separate seat but it would have been on a separate aeroplane. Prior to the flight I knew next to nothing about timeshare apartments, which is about as much as I want to know, but by the time we’d landed at Manchester Airport about a million hours later the Woman from Glossop had ensured that I knew much more about them than I wanted to know, to the power of ten.

Her current apartment, ‘south-facing, veranda, two bedrooms both with en-suite, loads of storage space and a communion pool - I think she meant communal pool, but you never know, perhaps the timeshare complex has a resident vicar and they have a ‘Baptism ‘n Barbecue Night’ - was her third, all of them in Puerto del Carmen, the present one acquired in 1999, the first - no en-suite unfortunately, but a bidet - acquired in 1985. At first the Woman from Glossop had just the one week’s timeshare entitlement per year but by now she and the Man from Glossop were up to six weeks per year, in two week segments. During the last twenty-three years they had never been anywhere else for a holiday other than to their timeshare apartment in Lanzarote.

Now I’ve got nothing against Lanzarote - you’re certainly not going to die from over-excitement there but in a clean, easy going, always nice weather, not-too-many-Germans sort of place, it is ideal. But six weeks there every year? While places such as Provence and Tuscany and the Greek Islands remain as unvisited as a virgin’s vagina?

I learned that for the remaining forty-six weeks of the year the Woman from Glossop and the Man from Glossop spend their time in Glossop, saving up like mad to spend the other six weeks in Lanzarote. They never go anywhere else, so the Woman from Glossop informed the Man not from Glossop seated the other side of her, because if they did they wouldn’t be able to afford their full quota of six weeks in Lanzarote. Now I’ve been to Glossop, and while it is by no means the worst place I have ever been to – I once went to Rotherham - it is certainly not the sort of place you would wish to spend forty-six weeks of the year in.

Yet this couple have deliberately chosen to live out their lives in it for forty-six weeks in every year, and the other six weeks in Lanzarote. Nowhere else on Earth existed for them. Their entire life consisted of being in Glossop, or in Lanzarote, or on the twenty-five mile stretch of road between Glossop and Manchester Airport, a road only slightly more enjoyment-fulfilling than the road to perdition.

Can anyone credit this? They had deliberately consigned themselves to a world without France and Italy and Greece, a world where the Lake District and the Cotswolds and the Yorkshire Dales don’t exist, a place where Edinburgh Castle and York Minster and Stonehenge might just as well be on the Moon. What sort of person can do this? The mind boggles. Mine did, on the flight back. And whilst it was boggling I fell asleep and thankfully didn’t wake up until we had started the descent to Manchester Airport. When I did The Woman from Glossop was telling the Man not from Glossop that next year she and the Man from Glossop hoped to be going to Lanzarote for
seven
weeks. Still, looking on the bright side, that’s one less week in Glossop.

****

May 27 2009.
THE NATION’S FAVOURITE.

Once again I have been lumped together with all the rest of the people in Britain and informed that someone is my favourite something or other. You know the sort of thing, you read it in the newspapers all the time – ‘Trevor McDonald, the nation's favourite newscaster’, ‘Cilla Black, the nation's favourite auntie’, ‘Sean Connery, the nation's favourite Scotsman’; not forgetting the one we used to get once a week on average until she popped her clogs, ‘The Queen Mother, the nation's favourite granny’.

I once read that Michael Barrymore was ‘the nation's favourite funnyman’. I doubt very much if he was the favourite of the poor sod who died in his swimming pool and while he was drowning he thought it was funny.

This time it is Cliff Richard, who I am informed is ‘the Nation's favourite Oldie’. Well I am a member of our nation and he certainly isn't
my
favourite oldie. I know a lot of Oldies who I prefer to Cliff Richard. In fact I know a lot of Richards who I prefer to Cliff Richard - Keith Richards, Viv Richards, Little Richard and
Richard Branson,
being just four of them. Nor is Trevor McDonald my favourite newscaster (John Suchet), my favourite auntie Cilla Black (my Auntie Annie) nor Sean Connery my favourite Scotsman (Billy Connolly). And the Queen Mother was certainly not my favourite granny. In fact had there been ten million grannies resident in Britain when the Queen Mother's extravagances were still a drain on the taxpayer then she would have been my ten millionth favourite granny, and only then because there weren't ten million and one grannies, even if the additional granny had been Granny 'Chainsaw Anna' Hargreaves.

****

June 2 2009.
POTTERING ABOUT.

I don’t know in which book I first came across the expression ‘pottering about in the garden’, but it was probably in one of the Just William books or maybe The Famous Five series I read when I first became interested in reading when I was aged about twelve. I was attracted to the phrase at once; it sounded such a cosy, English, way in which to occupy oneself, and I couldn’t wait until I was a grown up and would be able to potter about in a garden myself (I assumed that children couldn’t potter about in the garden because whenever I came across the phrase it was always being done by an adult, invariably an old one).

In those days I couldn’t even pretend, as children do, to potter about in the garden; we lived in a mean terraced house which didn’t have a garden in which to potter, just paving stones at the front of the house and a backyard hardly big enough to swing a landlord in. So when I married The Trouble and we eventually got a house of our own, with a small garden, I was naturally eager to get some pottering time in.