Stairlift to Heaven (5 page)

We eventually did make it to her beachside property where we spent the next four days making love and relaxing in the Californian sunshine. Four days might have become four weeks but on the fifth day, whilst I was taking an early morning stroll along the beach, guess who I should meet? Greta bloody Garbo. That’s right, the same Greta Garbo who once ensnared Peter Cook. All thoughts of a life with Natalie were put on hold when Greta told me she wanted to be alone with me, and of course the moment she was alone with me we made love. We spent a blissful, passionate, six days together but then sadly it was time for me to return to England as I had exams coming up.

As is the case with Rosemary Kingsland and Richard Burton I have never told a soul about my affairs with three leading Hollywood film stars until now. Again as with Mrs Kingsland I was never seen with my lovers and nobody knew or found out about us. A final coincidence is that my lovers too are now dead and unable to either confirm or deny any affairs we may have had in the past. But Rosemary and I know the truth.

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November 3 2006.
BEST BEFORE.

There
can’t be many people who can boast that they have their own beefsteak maturers, but happily I am one of them. Actually everyone in the country has their own beefsteak maturers but very few of them are aware of it. Let me explain.

In my home town, as is the case in many other towns up and down the country, we have a Co-op Late Shop. Why it is called a Late Shop is a moot point. The majority of people, but by no means an overwhelming majority, maintain it’s called a Late Shop because it stays open later than most retail outlets, in fact until 10 p.m. each day. Others however, Atkins and myself amongst them, hold that it’s because the check-out queues move so slowly that whenever you shop there it makes you late for whatever you intend to do next. Atkins further maintains that the ‘Late’ part of the name is probably a synonym for dead, as the checkout queues are so long and inert that one could die whilst waiting in them. On one occasion when I was in a Late Shop queue I thought this had actually happened when the woman in front of me collapsed to the ground in convulsions, but it turned out she was a diabetic who had been in the queue for so long she’d missed her insulin injection.

However the Co-op Late Shops, for all their faults, and death by check-out queue is but one of them, have the saving grace of being superbly efficient steak maturers. They are not aware of this of course, otherwise they would immediately put a stop to it and make themselves inefficient in this regard too, so as to bring it in line with everything else they do. In the meantime though, for the reader who wishes to avail him or herself of their unbeatable steak maturation service, here’s how you go about it: -

Never buy any of their cuts of steak at the full price. Wait until they reach their ‘Best before’ or ‘Sell-by date’ and have a ‘Reduced to clear’ sticker attached to them. By this time the steak will have lost the bright red colour it had when first put on the shelves about ten days previously and will now be a very dark red, almost black colour, fully matured and ready to eat. These steaks are not only very easy to come by but have the added advantage of having been approximately halved in price - typically a steak that started life at £3.99 will now be priced at £1.99.

One might be tempted to think that given the choice of un-matured bright red steak and matured dark red steak at half the price that people would jump at the mature steak. The truth is that the majority of people wouldn’t buy the dark red mature steak at any price, as they equate its colour with the steak having gone off. In fact the reverse is the case as the dark red colour of the steak is the signal that it is now ready to eat.

Indeed the ‘Best before’ date is a misnomer and should if anything read ‘Worst before’. This is not my opinion but a fact. Many years ago I asked the owner of an excellent restaurant how it was that his sirloin steaks were always so tender whereas the steaks at many other restaurants, and the steaks I cooked at home for that matter, were nowhere near as succulent. I suspected he had access to some secret outlet of superior steak but this turned out not to be the case, the steak he bought being of good quality but no better than could readily be obtained by anyone. He took me into his kitchen and through to a cool, dark pantry. Hanging on hooks from the ceiling were thirty or so full sirloins and other cuts of steak. They ranged in colour from bright red to almost black. “These are fresh in,” he said, pointing to the bright red sirloins. Then he indicated the ones that were almost black. “In about two weeks they’ll be that colour. And when they get to that colour, and not a moment before, they’ll be fit for the table.”

I’ve never forgotten that lesson and over the years it must have saved me hundreds of pounds. Not only that, it has meant that the steak we have at home is always wonderfully tender and juicy. So the next time you pass through the butchery department of a supermarket and see steaks with a ‘Reduced to clear’ sticker on them don’t turn your nose up at them, snap them up.
Bon Appetite
.

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November 17 2006.
AN EVENING WITH JOAN COLLINS

In the
Sunday Times Culture section yesterday I spotted an advert in the forthcoming concerts pages - ‘An Evening with Joan Collins. UK Tour 2006. With special guests 4 Poofs and a Piano’. Below the heading was a list of venues where Miss Collins and the 4 Poofs, along with their piano, would be appearing. I wondered briefly how the 4 Poofs have been able to resist a slight change of musical instrument in order that they might call themselves ‘4 Poofs and an Organ’.

Miss Collins’s nearest port of call to me is Manchester Bridgewater Hall on 10th May. I shan’t be bothering. I’ve already spent an evening with Joan Collins, or part of one. Furthermore it wasn’t as a member of the audience but seated right next to her.

The occasion was when we were both guests, along with others, on the radio programme ‘Saturday Night at Quaglino’s’, a live chat show that was broadcast in the early eighties from Quaglino’s night club in London’s West End, and hosted by Ned Sherrin. Whether Quaglino’s, or indeed Ned Sherrin, is still around, I’ve no idea, but probably not.

I was on the show because at the time I was a scriptwriter on the News Huddlines and we’d recently published a book of scripts from the show. Along with another Huddlines writer Laurie Rowley I was there to plug it, which we did unmercifully and at every opportunity.

I’m not sure why Joan Collins was there, but the late Leonard Rossiter was a guest also (before he was late of course), so it might have been something to do with the Cinzano television commercials. I forget.

I was seated next to Joan, along with the other guests, at a large round table, set more-or- less in the middle of the night club where all the night clubbers could get a view of us. It crossed my mind that here might be an opportunity to progress from being a humble scriptwriter to a film star if I could impress Miss Collins in some way.

This was around the time of Joan’s soft-porn movie ‘The Stud’, and it crossed my mind that if I were to perhaps unzip my fly and get my dick out under cover of the tablecloth and draw her attention to it she might consider me for a part in ‘Stud 2’. Then I realised that if I were to do this it would be more likely to land me a role in a remake of ‘The Smallest Show on Earth’ so common sense prevailed and my trousers remained zipped.

This was over twenty years ago but I swear that Joan looked exactly the same as she does today. Dog rough. No, that’s unfair, because I couldn’t really say what she looked like due to the entire year’s production of a small cosmetics factory having been trowelled on her face. She was white. Not just white, but white ‘white’. A charitable person might say her faced looked like it had been fashioned out of porcelain, an uncharitable one from Polyfilla. However she must have been over fifty at the time so I suppose she felt nature needed a helping hand even then.

As a person though she was charm itself, no edge with her at all, and I won’t have a word said against her. Even though I never got to be in ‘Stud 2’.

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November 22 2006
. FORGETFUL.

I am a few months shy of my sixty-sixth birthday and today is the first time I’ve ever been upstairs and forgotten what I’d gone up for. I’ve done surprisingly well by some accounts; it started happening to The Trouble before she was sixty and I know several people younger than me who it happens to on a regular basis.

“What are you stood there like that for?” said The Trouble, coming out of the bathroom.

“Like what?”

“Just stood there staring at the walls.”

That was all I needed; she’d given me something I could build on. I built. “I was just thinking it was about time they were decorated,” I said. Well I wasn’t going to admit I’d forgotten what I’d gone upstairs for. It’s the one thing I have over The Trouble in the ‘things that happen to you when you’re older’ category. She’s still got twenty/twenty vision, I have to wear glasses to read; she’s still got all her teeth, I’ve got hardly any of mine; she’s still got all her hair, ditto any of mine.

Of course my pride or vanity or whatever you want to call it is going to cost me whatever Hughes & Son, the painters and decorators we use, charge me for decorating the landing, because The Trouble instantly agreed with me and said she’d get them on the job right away. But then everything has a price, or, in the case of Hughes & Son, a fancy price.

When The Trouble went down the stairs I gave it a minute to remember what I’d gone up them for. I didn’t remember it. I gave it another minute. I still didn’t remember it. I did remember someone saying, Atkins I think it was, because it happens to him, that immediately you go downstairs again you remember what you went up for, so I went downstairs. Atkins doesn’t know what he’s talking about, as per usual, because I still didn’t remember. The Trouble came out of the living room on her way to the kitchen. I went back upstairs again before she could ask me what I was doing stood at the bottom of the stairs and I managed to lie my way into having to have the hallway re-decorated along with the landing by the mercenary Hughes and his mercenary offspring.

I gave it a minute at the top of the stairs, in case the trip back up had jogged my memory and I remembered what I’d gone up for in the first place, but no such luck. I was determined it wasn’t going to beat me. I knew if I gave in that it would just be the start of my going upstairs and forgetting what I’d gone up for - at my age I recognise a slippery slope when I come across one, alcohol, cigarettes, other women, so I was determined to beat it. I thought of all the possible things it could be that I’d gone up the stairs for. To change my shoes? For some money? For a book? I thought of about fifty things. None of which I’d gone up for. The Trouble came upstairs again. “I can’t make up my mind between off white and avocado,” I said, giving the walls a good coat of looking at prior to the exorbitantly-priced coats of paint Hughes & Son would soon be applying to them. “We’re having it peach,” she said.

I had to go back down again as I’d no excuse to be standing there now she’d sorted out the colour scheme but when she came down again I went back up again. An hour later, an hour’s racking my brains, and I still didn’t know what I’d gone up for.

The Trouble came back upstairs. I was just about to tell her I was having trouble with peach and would she compromise with primrose when she suddenly stopped and stood there, looking thoughtful. “Now what did I come up here for?” she said.

“You must be getting old,” I said, and went back downstairs.

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December 14 2006.
BLIND MEN.

There aren’t too many advantages in being old, and many disadvantages, but one of the few benefits that we coffin-dodgers have over younger people is that we can get away with things a lot easier as allowances are made for our advanced years. “Oh take no notice of him, it’s his age,” they say, in that condescending way, never for a moment suspecting that the artful pensioner might sometimes be using the cover of his age in order to get away with something that he otherwise might not have. Such as Atkins and I do when we play one of our daft games; because I’m quite sure we wouldn’t be tolerated or excused as easily if, say, we were in our thirties. Take the game of ‘Blind Men’ we often play, and which we have never yet failed to walk away from without insult or assault being visited upon us, where similar antics from younger people would probably bring down the wrath of the public on them. In fact I remember playing a version of Blind Men as a child and often receiving a slap round the ear-hole for my pains. However the adult version of the game is a bit more refined, as indeed are Atkins and I.