The Darling Buds of June (6 page)

Recently it has
been rumoured that Ming Hoi and his family are moving to a posh
mansion in Oversley Green; committee members all agree that they
are too nice to drown (and we don’t want the Chinky to move there
and be rendered underwater), and have all decided that if this is
found to be true, to stop, with some effort, eating leftovers of
the previous night’s Chinese meals for breakfast (better than
cereal), and eat greasy stale chips instead, i.e. stop eating
Chinese food and go to a boring, cod killing chippy: in order to
financially gazump Ming Hoi, making him poor, and cause the
residents of Oversley Green, to get a petition up and walk around
with billboards stating their displeasure at the lowering of the
tone of their posh patch. You see, the FAT B’s collectively are
masters of strategy. Anyway, the seeding solution!

Ming Hoi said
that he used a powerful herbal sleeping pill called ‘Dead to the
world’, in order to stop the Mayor waking him at 3am as he sang his
way home drunk, and thought it might be a good idea to crush a few
and feed the powder into the Oversley water supply, in order to
keep the residents happy in unconscious limbo until the deed was
done (either that or nail their doors shut?). He said that they
would be unaware of wetting the bed in their prolonged sleep, but
wouldn’t be at all bothered about it, and would simply turn over
and return to sleep or more to the point; a short term, fatal
hibernation. Nice.

This was voted
on and passed! In fact, he received a free strip of raffle tickets
for that suggestion, and won some Paper Mache tableware which is
made by Edna (75). It was actually a Paper Mache water jug and
cups, in Edna’s famous ‘read it’ style, which means you can still
read the newspaper articles on the jug and cups. Ming said he would
keep the set for special guests when he moved to Oversley Green
(perhaps the poor chap doesn’t understand English too well? Or
simply doesn’t listen?). He was too polite to mention that Edna had
not actually varnished any of the fine pieces, especially on the
supposedly ‘water retaining’ insides, but never mind, the raffle
tickets were free.

Len, now in a
better mood (and a bit of a mischievous smile), accepted the offer
of unspecified lifts from Ming Hoi (Len has a brother in Scotland
who he visits regularly). Everything was cool amongst the FAT Bs;
order was restored. Incidentally, Len won a raffle prize with his
£1.00 strip of tickets … a takeaway box packed with the previous
night’s Chinese leftovers, handpicked by Ming himself from the
three boxes he found on the pavement outside his shop. King Prawn
chow mien, egg foo yung, and some curry. Yum!

Other
Business.

It was found
that nothing had been done to ‘resurrect’ the gravestone of Gillian
Wakespeare, Alcester’s great poet and playwright, and her husband
Stan Stashaway. The last one if you remember, had been stolen by a
gang from Stratford Council to make sure the Plagiarist William
Shakespeare kept all the tourists with his ‘re-works’ of Gillian’s
works. You see, as far as they were concerned, no gravestone in
Alcester … no poet/playwright. Well, maybe the non-FAT B townsfolk
and the council like to complain about Stratford, but don’t want to
play the game?

Pity. A
proposal was put forward to really give the clouds headed for
Stratford some real attitude with the dry ice in the Winter,
because, if we did it in the Winter and produced snow, wouldn’t it
take them back to the ice age? As it is, with their litter problem,
and violence on the streets at night, the ice age shouldn’t be a
too big of a mental leap … from the Stone Age.”

***

“It was also
mentioned that the Stan Stashaway Pottage has not yet appeared …
don’t watch this space ...”

***

THE NAUGHTY
DRAUGHTS BOARD.

“It’s worth
mentioning here that Arnold (who won the draughts board) was rushed
to hospital a week ago. Apparently, he had been sat on the settee
playing the game with his wife, and every time he went to move a
draught, the draught, with his finger on it, began to move round
the board by itself? This phenomenon was followed by various doors
in the house opening by themselves and slamming shut, with the
windows following suit, and then something pushed over the
grandfather clock which was sleepily ticking away behind him, and
it landed on his head. He is now in traction.

I met Helen
(who donated the board) in one of the local pubs a couple of days
later. After we had bought the Mayor a drink, she told me that the
board had originally been an Ouija board, which she had purchased
from a rather strange looking woman (all dressed in black with a
deathly white complexion) at a car boot sale in Stratford (they’re
secret, as they don’t want to admit to such common behaviour). She
also told me that as she handed the money over, she happened to
glance in the rear window of the woman’s hearse … a vampire bat was
flying against the glass and gnashing its teeth ‘and’ looking at
her very meanly. That isn’t actually true, it appeared in my mind
courtesy of my muse (bit of a naughty on is my muse). She had
bought it because she wanted to explore the psychic world with a
few friends who craved answers to questions such as ‘life is fun,
but when am I going to die? And how?

She had
lovingly converted it into a draughts board after her suspicious
late husband Ralph had messed about with it one night with no good
intentions in mind. Apparently, naughty Ralph had walked past the
bottom of the stairs to check for burglars, as the kitchen door had
opened and slammed shut; the grandfather clock which couldn’t
possibly have fallen down the stairs, had fallen down the stairs …
and landed on him. Both movements were wrecked, his and the
clock’s. X Rays show that he has a second hand embedded in his
brain. His wife now won’t argue with him at ten am and ten pm,
because he’s right twice a day at those times (not a bad
effort).

I believe it is
now in a local shop on sale, at a bargain price. Buy it if you
dare! There is one positive effect with it too, so, if you ever
come across it and it’s for sale, buy it. The thing is, when
something falls on something living, immediately afterwards there
is a disembodied laugh which is a bit chilling, but has happy
overtones and a few undertones and the odd harmonic. This laughter
is a good pick me up if the owner is having a lousy day, like that
bag of laughs or the laughing clown at Blackpool. It is therefore
worth having and putting a fish on your living room floor. An iron
can be placed on a table so it is directly above it and some string
leading to your hiding place. When a neighbourhood cheeky cat comes
in to get the fish, you can wait until the opportune moment and a
quick yank will ensure a cheery laugh to brighten up your day.

Hi! Me again!
An idyllic posh end of Alcester … and I don’t mean hers! (Although
she’s probably ‘powsh’). I wasn’t going to say anything, but the
second I pressed the shutter, the lady bottom-burped. There was a
great cave-like echo produced by the idyllically designed street.
Imagine the eerie laugh if the iron was placed on the windowsill
above her and the string yanked as she bends down to pick up one of
those tissues that looks like a tenner. Ok, if that’s cruel, we
could settle for a plastic bucket full of icy water.

***

Month 6

SAM TULIP,
COVENTRY AIR AMBULANCE HELICOPTER PILOT ‘EXTRAORDINAIRE’

It took a
couple of weeks, but Sam Tulip, the Air Ambulance pilot did turn
up, and after hovering over the river for a while, eventually,
thankfully!, landed on the area of parkland next to the River
Arrow. I say eventually thankfully, because Sam is, if you recall,
cross-eyed.

Sam’s landing
patch. To him there are two benches.

He was hired by
the NHS management because he was on the DSS, and therefore cheap.
Apparently his wife, who doesn’t get on with him (hates him), had
booked him in for some helicopter lessons at Helicentre Aviation
based at Coventry Airport. He told me that he’d had three, and then
the instructor (who was by then living in terror because of the
lessons, and whom had decided that someone with little talent as a
pilot and cross-eyed, was just too scary to co-pilot with) … had
gone on the sick, and no one else was prepared to teach him. Poor
Sam. He had then endeavoured to master the ‘dashboard’ as he called
it on some computerised Vietnam War game.

When he had
signed onto the DSS, and was asked by the stressed out, fed up
clerk ‘what occupation he was looking for,’ Sam replied “Helicopter
pilot.” After a double take, the clerk, deciding that Sam was mad
but ‘refreshingly different’ entered those details into the
computer. Cool is the sheep which will face the sheepdog, although
the other sheep probably look on thinking ‘nutter! Why doesn’t she
just comply? Who does she think she is?!’

After a while
of ‘no jobs available’, Sam had to go on a Job Start course. There
was a computer there with an ‘easy use’ programme, which asked a
few questions about you, and then gave a list of suitable jobs.
Now, you’d expect, ‘chicken packer’, cleaner … and not, Brain
surgeon or doctor. That programme still exists. Sam however was
driven by it, and took it on himself to write to the hospital,
offering to be their Air Ambulance pilot, cheap!

The management
wrote back saying that they had considered his offer, and so would
be happy to interview him; and were over the moon that he had had
three lessons at the Helicentre Aviation at Coventry airport, and
had had a mess (so to speak) on a high definition computer game
with great graphics. He cheated at his interview by wearing dark
glasses. They should have guessed after (or during) his bumping
around the room looking for his chair. However, the interviewers
didn’t see Sam, they saw figures and graphs, and he was hired.

“Hi! Moley
here! He’s actually missed the small landing pad at the hospital a
few times, and gone to the City’s Pool Meadow bus station on the
roof of the number 27 bendy bus, but, at the beginning of the day,
were grateful that he came to help us destroy our enemies. Thanks
Sam!”

***

OPERATION
NOAH

“It was decided
that, in order to fulfil the correct flooding level for our soon to
be scuba lake, that Sam would nip over each lunchtime, for ‘40
days’, and sprinkle the clouds 20 miles away. Out for the count
powdered sleeping pills would be put into Oversley’s water supply
by George (44), who was a pump engineer at the local water board.
It was decided to have some winter snow in Stratford and freeze
them all to death, which would mean ... no more Shakespeare! OUR
Gillian would rule! Sam would land on the green by the river Arrow,
and be handed a bucket of dry ice and a sieve which had been put
through Eleanor’s blender (the ice, not the sieve. False teeth are
one thing, but let’s not get daft).

Ok, we got a
little keen (a trait which comes with enthusiasm), and didn’t take
one important thing into consideration … the weather report isn’t
always terribly accurate, and it was British weather, and winds do
change (and we’re assuming that Sam did actually seed the clouds
over England and not Wales?). A few hours after that first seeding,
there was no rain in Oversley Green, although there were downpours
in Grimsby, Bognor and Mabelthorpe, and STUDLOOOY! Aviemore in
Scotland did a roaring trade with some extra skiing too!

The residents
of Oversley Green seemed to have the best night’s sleep ever so we
heard … so really; we did everyone a favour, except ourselves (know
that feeling?).