Stairlift to Heaven (21 page)

Before anyone else could snaffle it up I immediately called in on Atkins, and twenty minutes later we were in the shop asking to see the idiot-proof camera. The assistant got the camera out of the window and placed it on the counter for our consideration. “There you go.”

I put on a doubtful expression. “It is idiot-proof, is it?”

“Oh absolutely.”

Atkins looked at the camera in wide-eyed wonderment then turned to the assistant and said, like a little boy in a pet shop asking if he could hold a puppy, “Could I pick it up please?”

“Jimmy is on day release from the psychiatric wing of the hospital,” I explained, in suitably sympathetic tones.

“Ah.” The assistant nodded knowingly. He didn’t know anything, poor bugger. “Of course you can pick it up, Jimmy,” he said to Atkins, treating him to an avuncular smile.

Atkins picked up the camera, examined it briefly in wide-eyed wonder, then smashed it down as hard as he could on the counter top. The first time he did it probably rendered the camera beyond repair, and didn’t do the counter much good either, but just in case it hadn’t he repeated the treatment two more times in quick succession, and dropped it on the counter. It sat there looking like something that had just lost an argument with a sledgehammer.

Atkins looked at me in surprise. “It broke, Arthur,” he said. “Camera broke.”

My brow furrowed in a frown. “Yes, Jimmy.” I turned to the assistant. “I thought you told me it was idiot-proof?”

The man was in a state of shock. He just stood with his mouth open, looking at Atkins and pointing at him.

“I said I thought you said the camera was idiot-proof,” I persisted, this time allowing a little testiness to creep into my tone of voice.

“But….but he smashed it,” the assistant said, still quite unable to believe what he had witnessed. “He smashed it to bits.”

“Well of course he did,” I said. “He’s an idiot. That’s what idiots do.”

“I’m an idiot,” grinned Atkins. He picked up a piece of the camera and examined it. “Camera no good now Arthur,” he pronounced, wisely.

“Not much good in the first place if you ask me, Jimmy,” I said, with a meaningful look at the assistant. “And certainly not idiot-proof, as claimed.” I took Atkins by the arm. “Come along, we’ll try Boots, I believe they do a good throw-away camera.”

“Can Jimmy throw it away?” said Atkins. “Jimmy likes throwing things.”

We left the shop without looking back. Five yards down the road I thought I heard a shout of “Hey, come back here!” from the shop but I probably imagined it.

****

August 22 .
2009.
VACU VIN.

I don't know how many sad people there are in the world but it is over twenty five million. I don't mean sad ‘miserable’ I mean sad ‘pathetic’. How do I know this? Read on.

Having picked up a magazine in the doctor's waiting room yesterday and reading that Mafeking had been relieved I looked around for a periodical that might be a bit more up-to-date. Finding one and glancing through it I saw an advertisement for a Vacu Vin. If you have never heard of a Vacu Vin, and I sincerely hope you haven't and never will, it is apparently a device that you insert into the neck of an opened wine bottle in order to prevent the wine from oxidising if, in the words of the manufacturer of the Vacu Vin, ‘you don't want to finish the bottle’.

If you don't want to finish the bottle? Bacchus would turn in his grave. I can honestly say that I have never once in my sixty-eight years on this Earth, forty-odd of them as a regular wine drinker, opened a decent bottle of wine and not wanted to finish it. Furthermore I can't visualise the time when I ever will open a decent bottle of wine and not want to finish it. Indeed if you were to try to stop me finishing it once I had opened it you would have to fight me, and you'd better be good because if in danger of losing my bottle of instant happiness I would fight you tooth and nail. Only the intervention of death would stop me finishing a decent bottle of wine once I'd opened it, and even then it would have to be a quick death or I would breathe my last along with the dregs from the bottom of the bottle.

Conversely I have quite often opened a crap bottle of wine and not wanted to finish it. Sometimes because it was oxidised, but more likely because it was some Australian rubbish I had been conned into buying through reading an over-enthusiastic review from some wine writer who should know better. However in those cases whilst it is true to say I didn't want to finish it, it is equally true that I didn't want to keep it either, I wanted to pour it down the sink, so why then would I need a Vacu Vin?

Surely nobody had been daft enough to buy such a totally useless article? When I got home I got Vacu Vin's number from what passes as Directory Enquiries nowadays and gave them a ring. I asked them if they'd ever sold any. They had. Up to press they “had sold over twenty five million of them, worldwide, since they were first introduced.”

And that's why I know there are over twenty five million sad people in the world; because what else would a person be if not sad if they didn't want to finish a bottle of wine once they'd opened it?

Writing this has made me sad, (sad 'miserable', not sad 'pathetic'), so I am now going to open a bottle of wine and drown my sorrows in it. And I will definitely not be needing a Vacu Vin as it’s a nice burgundy I’ve tried before.

****

October 21 2009.
THE PLUMBER.

I handed the plumber the cheque. He had repaired my leaking hot water cistern three weeks after the date he’d promised and his bill was only two and a half times more than I thought it would be, so all things considered I’d got off lightly. He put the cheque in his wallet, pushing aside a wad of notes thick enough to choke a donkey to make room for it, then went on his way as happy as a sandboy, or maybe that should be as happy as a plumber since plumbers are probably a lot happier than sandboys nowadays, leastwise they should be the prices they charge.

If I were asked to offer just one piece of advice to schoolchildren on which career to take up on leaving school I would tell them to rid their minds of all thoughts of entering the world of Information Technology and other computer-based vocations, and become a plumber. The advice, should things carry on the way they have been doing for the past fifteen or so years, would be ignored. I don’t have access to the official figures but I would be very surprised if they weren’t something like ‘School-leavers wishing to sit at a computer with a mouse, thousands upon thousands’, ‘School-leavers wishing to sit at a cistern with a monkey wrench, nil’.

Why is this? Plumbers have got everything, but everything, going for them. The customer is entirely at his mercy. He can come and go whenever he pleases, and does. He can tell you that he’s definitely coming on Monday and turn up indefinitely on Friday, and does. And if and when he does come he can charge you as much as he likes, and does. He can make a fortune, and does. Mine turned up in a brand new BMW with a ‘My other car is a Rolls-Royce’ sticker in the back window and I’m not at all sure he was joking.

And becoming a plumber is comparatively easy. It takes no great talent. It isn’t, as they say, rocket science. Just a very basic knowledge of mathematics, a reasonably fit body, a little mechanical aptitude and the ability to drink gallons of tea. Even a plumber with only the most basic plumbing skills can make a very handsome living indeed, especially if he’s mastered the only thing absolutely necessary if one is to become a success at his trade – the sharp intake of breath. This is the device which allows him, without question, to multiply the cost of whatever he is doing by a factor of between 2 and 10, depending upon the degree of sharpness exhibited in the intake of breath, and how much shaking of the head and tut-tutting accompanies it. We’ve all been there –

You: “So how much is it going to set me back then?”

Plumber: (A SHARP INTAKE OF BREATH ACCOMPANIED BY MUCH SHAKING OF THE HEAD AND TUT-TUTTING) “Well it’s a much bigger job than it looks, Squire.”

Goodbye to that weekend in the Lake District you thought you could afford and hello to rip-off time.

About a minute after the plumber had left he was back at the front door. He had his bill in his hand. I thought I’d paid him an arm and a leg but I was wrong, I’d only paid him an arm. The leg was to come. It came. “I forgot to put the VAT on,” he said. “Sorry.” Not as sorry as me he wasn’t.

****

December 12 2009.
CHRISTMAS CAROLS.

It’s Christmas time once again, and of course with the season of goodwill to all men comes Christmas Carols.

Once upon a time when the world was a more innocent place and people were less devious carol singers would start to sing their carol outside your door, then after a few lines (of the carol, not cocaine, these were innocent times remember) one of them would ring your bell. You then had a choice - to answer the door, listen to their merry carolling, then give them a Christmas box and perhaps invite them in for mince pies and sherry. Or, much more likely, pretend you weren’t in, thus saving yourself a few bob.

Nowadays this isn’t possible. Nowadays carollers, wise to the fact that you will probably try to pretend you aren’t in, ring your doorbell and wait until you answer the door before they start singing, thus putting you in the position of having to give them a Christmas box or trundle out some excuse about not having any change and subsequently having your front door kicked in or your doorstep shat on or your garden gnome beheaded and thrown into your goldfish pond or some other act of wilful reprisal.

I have put in some thought over the past twelve months as to how I might overcome this problem, and at the eleventh hour - well it was around three-o-clock yesterday afternoon actually, but that doesn’t sound as exciting - I came up with the answer. Just in time it transpired as the first of this year’s carol-singers arrived tonight, later than usual as it happened as when the first of them arrived last year it was still November.

The doorbell rang right in the middle of Coronation Street when Sophie, or maybe it was Rosie, was having a go at Sally. I left her to it and answered the door. Four carol singers were without, although not without those Santa Claus hats beloved of bus drivers and football fans at this time of the year. I opened my mouth and began to sing –

Good King Wenceslas looked out

On the feast of Stephen

When the snow lay round about

Deep and crisp and even......

I sang the carol all the way through. Two of the carol singers looked at me throughout in something approaching awe. The other two eyed me as though they were looking at someone who should be in a rubber room at the happy farm.

I ended the carol and then held out my hand. Either going along with the flow or scared that I might attack him if he did otherwise, one of the ones who thought I was mad put his hand in his pocket, produced a pound coin and thrust it into my hand. I thanked him, wished he and his friends a very merry Christmas, closed the door on them and returned to the living room. Sophie, or maybe it was Rosie, was still having a go at Sally.

****

January 2 2010.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
.

“Shall we go for a walk?” I said to The Trouble yesterday. “We usually do on New Year’s Day.”

She looked doubtfully through the window. “The weather looks a bit dodgy don’t you think?”

She was right, it did look dodgy, the skies as murky and grey as an Afghan’s underpants. But I fancied a walk and bravado had its usual victory over common sense. “No, I’ve seen it like this before,” I said confidently. “I’m sure it won’t rain for hours.”