33. All Or None

I expect you've noticed how things have a habit of going from one extreme to the other.  Our weather is one of the best examples of this as any postman will know.  Many a walk has been started by a furtive character disguised as the Ancient Mariner battling his way from door to door against the driving rain and wind, and finished a couple of hours later with sweat pouring down his face and back because the sky has cleared and the sun is doing it's best to fry him through his mac.  And how many times has a "double" been started with mac's and hats airily discarded, to enable a clear sky and balmy breeze be enjoyed as much as possible, and finished by the happy, laughing postman moodily squelching across the office floor leaving a trail like a snail up a garden path, Dr. Martin's filled to the brim and trousers flapping soggily against his legs.

There is always some nit who wants to know if it's raining outside, mostly when a delicate operation like trying to extract the bits of yellow pulp that were once registered receipts from a pocket full of bits of string, elastic bands, dog-ends and rain water is under way.  This infuriates me, but is getting off the theme of things going from the sublime to the gorblimey.

London Transport do their best to conform in this respect. There's not one of us who hasn't cooled his heels at a stop for half an hour or more, then in desperation started to walk and when a couple of hundred yards along the road had to belt back like mad to catch any one of the four or more buses which have suddenly appeared in convoy.  See what I mean? All or none.

I was reared in Paddington and like all of my mates lived in a tenement house of three storeys and a basement, I don't mean we occupied all of it , only two rooms and a basement scullery. They were all gas lit, draughty, and very damp with a communal lavatory on one of the landings, which was shared by all the families, from each floor.  No such concession to bodily hygiene was made by builders of these mansions when it came to bathrooms. 

There just weren't any and cleanliness was achieved in a tin tub in front of the kitchen fire, or an up and a downer at the sink.  This was down with your shirt off then up with your pants ditto.  The problem of personal toiletry was rather difficult when lumbered with an ailment as, for instance stomach enteritus, which we knew as the runs.

My mate Charlie was at one time thus severely afflicted and had set up an all time record by being in the "lav" queue seventeen times in a day.  Now Charlie had one all consuming weakness. "Pancakes".  Not the paper thin wafers that masquerade as such, but monsters about an inch thick crammed with currants and raisins, which he always cooked himself. After the seventeenth visit he felt rather empty and thought a couple of his favourite fruit were indicated.  On returning to the two rooms and scullery his family occupied, he found the place in darkness and his mother out.  Apparently the gas had run out. So, not having any money to put in the meter, he decided to mix up the pancakes in the dark and cook them over the fire in the grate.  So he got all the ingredients from the cupboard in the scullery, made the mixture in a basin and had just finished eating the two great thick cakes when his mother returned.

She told him that she'd been to the shops to buy a bag of flour as she knew he'd fancy some pancakes after his stomach upset, and when Charlie said he'd already had them, she said that there wasn't any flour in the cupboard that's why she had gone out to buy some.

After lighting the gas they went to the cupboard to see who was wrong and found what he had made his pancakes with. A bag of starch, which was standing on the same shelf. Charlie got a stomach as hard as a board and never got in the "lav" queue for another week.

See what I mean?  All or none.