The Squashed Man Who Married a Dragon (3 page)

Now it's all very well for a young husband to ogle his brand new wife, standing by the stove in a short mini skirt and tall heels, looking like the best Christmas present he will ever have, while she tries to conjure up something to eat. She looks fabulous – but what she finally serves up on the plate won't yet match his Mum's cooking by a long way.

First came a series of burnt offerings and a few dodgy dishes. These are tender moments when a saint like husband will treat his wife with compassion and patience. Vicki's early repertoire and her favourites – God knows why – included yellow fish drowning in a sea of hot milk and a sort of minced beef in a very thin soggy gruel with sloppy mashed potato. These were ultimately to be replaced with real food — thankfully she found her cooking form, in time to save us.

My dear old Mum always, without fail, cooked the family a proper fried breakfast of eggs, bacon and fried bread every single day. When I started work she got up extra early so that I left the house, walked across Wigan – to catch the 8.22 train to Manchester – with something hot inside me.

The light of my life had other ideas, whether or not this was entirely her own or with mother-in-law's help I don't know. The ways of women are conniving but she cooked for me every morning, fried eggs, crispy bacon and fried bread. No new husband could ask for more and even first thing in the morning she always looked fantastic.

Breakfast just got better and better along came mushrooms, windy beans, tomatoes and after a week or two, black puddings and extra fried bread joined the plate. What a girl!

The cunning trap was baited, set and after eight weeks of it I couldn't look another fried breakfast in the face. She'd won…and for life too!

Now the kitchen, although the hub of the home is not often a safe place for me, I don't do cooking – yet a few of my male friends are really very good at it, then they have to do it again and again. I limit myself to toast with scrambled eggs or with cheese or baked beans. I can do these dishes in all sorts of mouth-watering combinations but beyond this – No! – except breakfast which is my signature dish which is handcrafted and served up wherever the lucky girl happens to be and not without some well earned bonus points.

She first has a cup of very hot water – this she can do herself – but I bring her fruit juice in a quiet and servile way, followed by toast very lightly buttered and smeared with a small amount of honey (set honey)! Not that she is pernickety you understand – just bloody fussy.

Now we come to the clever bit – I cut the toast into all sorts of different and romantic shapes: pyramids, diamond, heart shaped, modern art and even once with the aid of a toothpick and a piece of paper I put sails on her toast fingers.

This is accompanied by very, very weak tea, so weak that no one else counts it as tea. It has by decree to be poured within seconds of being made. I know, I'm just a fool to this woman – but then there have been times when it has paid off. So I keep saying this to myself like a sort of mantra – “It will come good in the end.” I should have guessed by this time that Vicki was not normal; some strange, alien creature was what I had married.

Love changes so many things but the unbelievable and most cruel of all, after we had been married a short while, she deliberately and on purpose grew another two inches in height! I suddenly realised, she was looking me in the eye, more or less on a level. To me, every inch of height advantage is precious. I looked down in a loving and guiding way on the chosen one, all gone! In high heels, I won't say she towers over me but all the physical higher ground advantage has almost evaporated.

I like to dance ‘the smoochie ones'; with a precocious, smallish, warm, gentle sexy soul, clinging to me, in the secure protection of my loving arms. I don't need an Amazonian, suffragette, battle hardened woman, shouting equal heights. God knows what's going to happen next.…she will be reaching things down, from lofty shelves for me, or lifting me up to see over the wall. This is no way for the Head of the house to live.

After some careful searching of the countryside, just out of town, we found a little stone built cottage, two up and three down, next door to a small country pub. This had been bought by a widow, with the idea of refurbishing it and to downsize into a snug country home. For some reason no progress had been made, the house was empty for quite a while and had started to deteriorate. In order to keep tramps and dossers out, it had a council condemned Keep Out notice stuck to the front doorway, on the other end of this ‘des res' was a tiny stone built, one up and one down tenanted cottage, the two together could be ideal.

The first and larger cottage I could buy from the owner, and on a private mortgage. The tiny end cottage belonged to another lady, who would sell it to me if her close friend and adviser, yet another woman, who lived in a caravan nearby, would advise her to do so! I spent quite a few dark winter evenings in the caravan sipping weak sherry, whilst I wooed the adviser round to sanctioning the deal. At last loves sweet path could open up, and for less than seven hundred pounds we bought the two cottages.

Next followed eighteen months of hard graft, most nights after work, I arrived home, changed my clothes, had something to eat – then went out for the evening shift. Drive five miles or so and start my DIY work on the cottage, lit by candles and oil lamps at first. Leaving number one girl and baby Angela in the flat, then back around eleven, tired and dirty, but having taken the restoration on a bit further. Sometimes I don't think lover girl realised just what superhuman efforts were required, when on occasions she would comment on being left alone without me. As then I hadn't worked out how to be in two places at once. Weekends we worked together on our newly acquired property and Angela slept in an old wooden drawer, out of harm's way. We achieved many and mighty works, until our first home was ready for occupation.

From the outside there was a very small, trim, front garden raised up from the road, complete with a new rustic porch and climbing rose. It was almost chocolate box good! We got the bright idea of getting a sandblaster in to clean up the stone work, not the nice old weathered outside, but inside the house.

Here we had knocked off all the old dodgy plaster on one wall, from floor to upstairs ceiling. After sandblasting it took three weeks to very carefully point up between the hundreds of irregular shaped stones.

Then our good friend Rob made a natural wood, open tread staircase. This went against the now lounge stone wall which continued up in stonework to the ceiling in the bedroom above. This looked very effective, and at night the carefully positioned spotlights made this wall and stairs into something of a really special feature.

Tom Davies, a neighbour and benevolent friend, who lived near the flat, was a contracts manager for a large local construction firm, and when a dance hall was being demolished he arranged, and delivered as a present, a load of sprung maple floor boarding. This was very much needed and appreciated because, although the cottage had floor joists, it had no upstairs floor boards at all.

Another friend, Brandon, a playmate and next door neighbour from early childhood, lent his strong back to the cause by squatting in the open fireplace, with a very large slab of sandstone on his shoulders, whilst I fiddled around with the side stones. Together we created a very simple but attractive feature fireplace.

Although I shouldn't say it the place came together very well, our hard work and ideas were well rewarded and next door to a pub too!

The boy was coming good and only forty seven more years to go……my pin-up girl had struck gold.

At this stage in life, I had just cracked £1,000 a year barrier, and with a firms car too. It was amazing what you could do on twenty pounds a week.

We had married on a humble fourteen pounds a week, five pounds went in housekeeping – rather handsome I thought and I tried to keep it to five pounds for as many years as possible. I do remember going to Blackpool with my brother Martin to look at the newly opened TVR works (he being single bought himself a TVR Vixen in kit form) but I spotted an unfinished fibreglass speedboat hull tucked away in a corner of the factory. Twelve pounds and it was mine. Englishmen have sailing in their blood; even those of us who live nowhere near water and don't know the first thing about sailing whatsoever. I could see this hull finished, painted up, engine installed, all for next to nothing and in no time at all. Back home, it somehow lost some of its appeal and, it was harder to justify the capital outlay. The next day, I slunk back to renegotiate the ownership of the boat with a very understanding Mr TVR.

The double whammy that followed was first going out to work did not really appeal to Vicki and, after working for nearly a full year, retirement beckoned. Secondly, the thought of a car for nipping around in did appeal, who would have guessed that?

So in a generous and weak minded moment I said ‘of course – just as you wish', that's exactly what blind love does for you. She looked so pretty – never much make-up – so naturally beautiful I could admire her all day long.

I even took her to Blackpool in its more upmarket shopping days, I don't know how or why but we found ourselves gazing in admiration at fashion boots. Those very shiny black leather high heeled thigh boots in Vernon Humpage, the name is burnt forever into my wallet, costing more than a week's wage, but those boots, a miniskirt and her legs…what's money anyway, to a man on a thousand a year?

So while I committed myself to a lifetime of earning the family bread, a car – a small economical family car was a burning need. Something to get the shopping, transport Vicki, Angela, our baby, and pram, etc., and for visiting grandparents and friends. So I found myself in a car showroom in Chorley, second-hand and continental cars, owned by a friend of ours.

Peter said they could find something that ‘would fit the bill' but there in his showroom was a fabulous, lovely early Porsche sports car, open top, dark blue, rear engine, very low, very sleek, the early ones weren't very fast. The gear lever was like a knitting needle and the interior was even a little Spartan – but for around eight hundred pounds or maybe less. I wanted this car badly, Vicki would love it, Angela wouldn't care – the pram and the shopping wouldn't fit in anywhere. ‘Oh' I knew this was a heaven sent investment opportunity, a collector's classic par excellence. Dragged to the back of the garage and there into the real world, Peter showed me a pale blue Renault 4L, a sort of utility estate type vehicle. It needed some work done, but it would be vastly less money and would be an ideal low cost first family car.

When I got back home and told Vicki what I'd arranged – all was well – for a while favours were bestowed upon lucky me and even if I left a dirty mug on the wrong side of the sink I only received a minor ‘bollocking'.

The problem was that the Renault took longer and longer to appear. It was always next week, ‘we are waiting for a new bit or something'. If pushed ‘you want it to be safe don't you' was raised. The truth was I had screwed Peter down to a very low price and his father, who owned the business, realised this was a nonprofit transaction for a friend, so urgency was never on the cards. It seemed to take so long, and Vicki gave me so many third degrees ‘when is this car coming'. At long last it arrived, thank heavens! The 4L proved to be a very practical, reliable and economical vehicle with masses of luggage space, a great first family car.

Within a very few years I'd bought her an old, tired, pale blue MGB sports car – not at all practical or economical, but she loved it to pieces and no moans about lack of space at all.

It does cross my mind that the Porsche might have been OK after all.