10. Autograph Albums

aka Pompous Verbal Gems

As I remarked in a previous yarn, sooner or later most people have a go at keeping a diary. The same applies, in a rather lesser degree, to an autograph album. I still have mine but I'm afraid that apart from the usual banal entries as:

"By hook or by crook

I'll be last in this book"

Auntie Nell

written on the last page, and:

"For better or worst

I'm sure to be first"

Dad 

 

written on to top of the first page, there are no world famous entries like:

"To Ed from his friend, Johnny Weissmuller".

 

The Walter Mitty in all of us makes most kids try to get the signatures of those they can see in themselves, and Tarzan was the hero of hordes of young fellows at who the Charles Atlas adverts were aimed, me and my mates included. We knew that we would never get a body like his, but we admired somebody who had. Even to the extent of dashing about the fields by the Welsh Harp*,

Pottinger

Weissmuller

dressed in the briefest of loin cloths, or in the nuddy if we felt like it, and attempting to swing on the branches of trees, there being a shortage of thick jungle vines at the Welsh Harp. We also discovered how Tarzan made his famous call. You try leaping about trees with nowt on, them snags catch you in some very dodgy places. 

The best imitation of Tarzan yodel I heard was when my mate Sam swung on a rotten branch which broke, and dropped him astride a quickthorn hedge beneath. His backside was the best advert for shredded wheat you could wish to see, and for weeks he walked about like Cheetah than Tarzan.

However, to come back to the album, no names which are a legend of their lifetime adorn it's pages. After all, who else but me, ever heard of Kipper Jonto, who wrote the verse about the young lad from Ealing on the middle page the filthy swine. I had to glue it to the page facing it in case my old man saw it. Or if Wicker Dean, so called, not because he had sticky fingers, but because the only trousers he ever had to wear were a pair of knickerbockers his old man discarded when he got the sack from the stable he worked at for a while. He was the author of the engaging poem on page two, which ran:

 "What a lovely little fish

The Sole is,

What lovely little fish

Are soles."

and so on for several lines, in the same vein.

My albums can be likened to a graveyard, full of names unknown to everyone, except the people who put them there. But there is one entry which in its 'profundity' could match any of the statements of Chairman Mao. It reads:

"Il ne fait rien remettre au lendemain"

and for all of you unfortunates who never got beyond 'La plume de ma tante' it means in English, as she is spoke:

 

"Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today"

It was written by one of our French teachers, who rejoiced in the nickname of Puncher Lac, owing to his habit of belting the inattentive on top of the bonce with a full bunch of fives, and I was very proud of what I considered to be a literary rose flourishing in the dungheap of banalities and lavatory graffiti that filled the rest of the album.

Some time later I realized he didn't intend that I should look at it every so often in later life, and resolve to be more industrious and enterprising than nature made me, but was knocking me about not doing the French homework he kept dishing out, and never got - anyway, not on time.

The average person has a few of these deep sayings tucked away in the back of his mind, and trots one out every so often when he wants to sound intelligent, and his cronies nod their little old nuts, and say "True, that's true", while all the time, at the back of their mind, they're thinking, "Bighead". And these old saws are quoted at you when they suit the quotee's requirements. I worked with a chap who was fond of saying , "Many hands make light work" when he wanted a digout, but when asked to give a hand, always said, "Too many cooks spoil the broth".

My old retired chippy, who lived next door, used to pass away the time by watching me work, whenever I did anything in the garden. Being a short-arse, he had to stand on a stool to look over the fence and was continually clicking his tongue and saying "Don't spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar", whenever I took a short cut to finish a job. One day I was fixing the roof of the dog kennel, I was making for our cat, who was on the big side, by banging in some nails, and this superannuated coffin maker was shaking his old grey loaf and muttering about doing the job properly with screws and the hoary old boat and tar cliché. When I said why didn't he come round and do it, he promptly got off his perch and came round. And do you know what he did? He brought a handful of screws, which he proceeded to slam in with an Irish screwdriver - a bloody great hammer. Still, the laugh was on him cos when he went back and clambered up on his stool again, it collapsed, and he fell on a tomato plant by the fence and broke it. When I looked over to see if he was alright, I noticed the leg of the stool, which had broken, had been fixed before. S'right, with a screw through the seat. No doubt by the old do the job properly and don't spoil the ship method.

But then we all come out with these corny sayings, which are fit only for autograph albums and Xmas crackers. Not long ago, when I had been giving my son a driving lesson and had been ranting on about keeping at thirty in built up areas, he said, "How come you always do fifty then?" Before I knew it I replied, "Don't do as I do, do as I tell you".

It just happens to suit the occasion, as all these pompous verbal gems do, and the dirty look I got for saying it, was all I deserved. 

* Note:  for The Welsh Harp see

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Reservoir

















9. The Chicken And The Eggs

aka The Egg And I

One of the funniest books I have read is Betty Macdonald's "The Egg and I". This is a true story of her life as a newly wedded young wife, suddenly uprooted from the warmth and security of a large family, living in a busy town and dumped on a derelict farm in the mountains of a remote North West state of America, where she and her husband settled down to raise chickens.

Her narrative of life among these feathered idiots is hilarious, and her opinions of the chicken certainly coincide with my own, as I too, when a young married man, kept a flock in our back garden. This was partly to provide nourishment for my family, food rationing being in force, but mainly to satisfy that urge to be self sufficient which is in the make up of most of us. I too, found that the idyllic vision of gathering fresh warm eggs from the nest boxes while the busy clucking hens pecked in the clean sweet- smelling litter for corn, at my feet, was only the gift wrapping around a long period of hard work and frustration from day old chicks to seven month old layers. The day olds, which we kept in a box in the airing cupboard with a hundred watt bulb for warmth, vied with each other to see who could crap the fastest in the nice clean food put down for them. No matter how warm and free from draught you kept them, when they decided to die, they'd stand and droop and die, helped on their way by the other fluffy members of the Mafia who trod all over each other in their eagerness to peck the eyes out of suicide sister, and hasten another 3/6d down the drain. We felt that they knew how much we paid for them and were determined to double their value, as half of them always died off, not from any known ailment but through sheer bloody mindedness. And as for mess, the only creatures equal to the chicken when it comes to converting the Garden of Eden into an overflowing sewerage are the hippo and the duck. If you've seen the hippo pool in any zoo and Mr. Hippo cruising about with his gaping maw, shovelling in everything that's floating, then you'll know what I mean, and Donald Duck, aided by his family, will turn any garden into a morass that would make Verdun look like the Chelsea flower show, if let loose in it for more than a day.

I once conned my brother into helping me clean out the chicken house, and as we shovelled and scraped the soggy, smelly layer of droppings from under the perches and off the house floor, he paused from filling his bucket, straightened his back, looked disdainfully at the dripping shovel and said, "I bet these birds hate your guts, it takes them all week to lay this nice comfortable layer of tom-tit, and you come along rake it all up and shove down a load of straw and disinfectant and make 'em start all over again". I said, "All week ? you must be joking, I cleaned 'em all out three days ago". "Three days", looking disbelievingly at the heap of manure, "I thought they were supposed to lay eggs, they don't have much time for that, do they ?". I assured him that they did indeed lay eggs but I presumed they didn't know when as something was always going on behind, as apart from all this food recycling effort, the randy old cockerel who ran with them, was forever trying to better his previous days' conquests and while they did lay their eggs in the nest boxes, they probably thought that they were a kind of indoor toilet created especially for constipation days.

We went into breakfast and for some peculiar reason, brother seemed to have lost his appetite after all that hard graft in the fresh air and turned down a lovely plate of eggs and bacon for a couple of slices of dry toast. He always had a delicate stomach, right from childhood.

The chicken can bring out the basic instincts of the nicest folk quicker than any other of God's creatures, great and small. I was horribly alarmed one day when I heard my wife shouting and screaming in the garden. What I saw and heard on dashing outside, shook me rigid. There was this delicate young Goddess, at whose feet I worshipped, this gentle and innocent creature who had to have the mildest of jokes explained to her over and over again because she didn't know the meaning of the swear words, chasing the cockerel round the garden, taking terrific swipes at him with a lump of wood, and calling him words I didn't think she'd heard.

David, me & Nanny and, err, not a chicken.  Best I could do. Sorry. c1975. 



When he'd finally taken refuge up a tree and she'd thrown the timber after him, I said "What's all that about?". "I just fed him and went to pick an egg out of the nest box, and he rushed in and pecked a bloody great lump out of my hand" she fumed, "just you get out there tonight and wring that sod's neck" and stomped indoors for elastoplast and aspirin. See what I mean about chickens ? Not only had he shattered some of the beautiful illusions I treasured, but looked like destroying the great big he-man image that I fondly hoped I presented to my wife, as I was now committed to wringing his damn neck and I'd never done that before. What's more, I was dead Chicken about doing it (what a terrible pun !). So, with nightfall, after making supper last for two hours, and mustering my rapidly shrinking courage, with an effort that made my throat feel like it had swallowed half a yard of sandy ballast, said "Well, better nip out and kill the cockerel for tomorrow's dinner", in a voice several times higher than normal, and strode out looking like a cave man off to supply a dinosaur for lunch. I think I had an idea that I could wring his neck while he was asleep, as I eased the door open quietly and carefully shone the torch along the perch and met the flare of his eyes looking straight at me. He must have known I hadn't come to tuck him in comfortably for the night, as he came off that perch like a rocket with a screech that made me drop the torch and slam the door hard as I could, and then lean against it while my stomach slowly descended from my neck back to it's normal position. His enraged squawks gradually died and when I picked up the torch, I saw he wasn't hollering in anger, but agony as he'd caught his stupid neck between the door and the jamb and had choked to death. I mentally crossed hit-man off my list of talents, tied his legs together and hung him in the shed for plucking in the morning. 

Going back into the house with the nonchalant manner of the trained poultry slaughterer I answered my wife's unspoken question with "No bother, he won't peck you no more", and retired to the kitchen for a cup of tea and a fag. 

Still, one ought not to make out that you are what you ain't, as the whole thing rebounded on me, cos, great big fearless he-man image now re-established in the eyes of Goddess on a pinnacle, made her tell everyone who kept chickens up our road, that I'd kill their birds off at Christmas as I could do it alright, no trouble at all. And I had to as none of the blokes fancied doing it either, and jumped at the chance to get it done for a packet of fags. 

Often wondered if she heard the cup rattling on the saucer when I drank that tea, cos I couldn't stop my hand shaking. Shouldn't think so, but as I said, that chicken does bring out the basic instincts in the nicest folk. 

 

       

8. Fear Of Heights 2

I have mentioned before about the fear of heights that is in most of us. I'm not talking about steeplejacks, scaffolders or similar types, who seem to have feathers instead of hair, but people as you and I, who feel undressed if they have to ascend a six rung ladder without a parachute.

This fear, I beg to report, is not lessened by meeting it face to face and going up places where you expect to meet angels.

No way!



 

That old feeling of panic and butterflies as big as bats in the tum still occurs, no matter how often you get yourself any higher than eyeball position. And no matter how self assured you sound when describing the wonderful view after you've got safely down again, to people who've got a darn sight more sense than you and refuse point-blank to go up and see for themselves, you know you ain't kidding no-one. Especially yourself.

 

You're in the same position as the bloke who, when standing on the edge of a river on a cold day, testing the temperature with his toe which has gone numb, accidentally slips in just as he's made up his mind to go home, get dressed and have a cup of hot coffee.

 

After he's got his breath back and frantically splashes about to stop rigor mortis from setting in, hollers to his mates who are laughing their stupid heads off from the comparative warmth of the bank side, "Come on in, the water's lovely".

 

There's no way he's going to kid them, cos they can see the goose pimples coming up like a rash of chicken pox all over him. He justs wants other people to suffer the same as him. He knows it, they know it, and he ain't kidding nobody.

 

I've been telling everybody who'll listen to me about the wonderful view that can be seen from the top viewing platform of the CN Tower in Toronto, and I know that while I'm talking to them, they're feeding a no-go programme into the memory bank of their brain telling them to avoid this structure like it was a dose of rabies. They can see the goose pimples that still come up when I think of it.

 

 

This architectural monstrosity is the tallest free standing structure in the world*, being 1815 feet tall, and looks like Cleopatra's Needle gone berserk, we said to our son, Mike, who possibly had thoughts on getting some own back for all the disciplinary injustices of youth, and had told us that we just couldn't come all the way from England and not go up it - what, up that! Where's the top?

 

Fact was, from where we stood at the bottom you just couldn't see it as it seemed to disappear in to the blue like it was trying to dig a hole in the sky.  He laughed and said "Come on, it's not so bad as it seems" and led the way to the lift.

 

The sadists who designed the lift must have bent over their drawing boards and muttered "This'll scare the hell outta any Limeys who go up". It was made of glass and shot up the outside of Tower like a vertical express, reaching the first viewing stage in 50 seconds.

 

This is around 1200 feet up and the girl attendant said "Don't worry about your stomachs, folks, you can collect them when we get down again. Ha-ha!" As my stomach felt like it was draped around my shoes  like a pair of saggy jeans waiting to be pulled up, I didn't think it was funny.

 

My wife and daughter-in-law made a bee-line for the bar to get a gin and lime which they obviously felt would be protective wall to peer over before daring to look out of the windows at the void below, and my son, recognising that this was the end of the line so far as they were concerned, said to me as I leaned nonchalantly against the bar, as far away from the windows as I could get, "Well we're going up to the top platform ain't we? Its only another thirty three stories up."

 

"Why bother" I said "the view's great here, the bar's open and the restaurants got some good grub and -"

 

"Come on" laughed old iron nerves, who I felt had missed his vocation as  test bed engineer and would have done better as a Spanish Inquisitor, "can't go home without going to the top".

 

So up we go again, this time in a coffin that belted up the middle of the building like a rocket out of a bottomless launching pad.

 

My stomach, which had been shakily clambering up to normal position, flopped like a dropped jelly back to the floor where it seemed to resign itself with an air of "If you're going to keep doing that , I'll stay here and wait for you to come down".

Worlds tallest postcard

 

 

We got out on the top viewing platform and began to circle the inside partition which was the furthest we could get away from the windows. That wasn't far, as it was like walking round an enclosed pin head.

 

I thought that so long as I'd got this high I might as well take a peek out of the windows , so edged over and took a tentative look.

 

The view was indeed something, as being a clear day you could see for miles in all directions, especially down. Or it seemed so.

 

I turned to say so to my son and he wasn't there, where was this carefree lad who'd conned his aged parent into ascending into the domain of eagles and angels?

 

Leaning against the inner wall with a sickly grin on his face as he said "I always get jelly legs if I get any height".

 

I thought "Great. You get me up this bloody monstrosity knowing what it does to you, and make out I'm missing something if I don't go up".

 

Should have know better. The same old case of the bloke in the drink trying to kid his mates into suffering with him.

 

Still, the view was terrific, but not if I sprout wings will I ever get used to looking down on skyscrapers and watching planes fly beneath me when I ain't in one.

 

However, if you're in Toronto, you really must go up the CN Tower. It's an experience you'll never forget, as the man said when he fell in the drink.

 

Come on in, the water's lovely. Brrrr.



* Not any more  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CN_Tower 

 



7. My Lady Nicotine

aka Giving Up Smoking

We've all met him, the character, who, when asked how he did it and didn't it ever worry him, looks at you as if you were a little bit of a feeble minded excreta that the cat had just dragged in and says in the bloody toffee nosed tone, no, he's never felt the slightest inclination to have another one and stopped no bother at all, let's see, seven years ago.

We've all probably looked at this super graduate of 'Know thyself' and wondered how the hell anyone can be so strong minded when you yourself have only given it up since yesterday morning and can think of nothing else but the utter ecstasy of having another fag and to blazes with the Government warning on the cigarette packet. I've always had a sneaking feeling that there's something odd about these blokes who are bursting with health and increased prosperity since giving up having a crafty spit and a drag in the bog during working hours, and can run up a flight of stairs like a gazelle, when the average bod with a good healthy smokers cough can't walk down them without getting out of breath. Something like a eunuch telling you that sex don't bother him, and he can't understand why your eyes stick out like organ stops when looking through the latest edition of 'Playboy'.

Mind you, I must say I have found it easy enough to give up smoking, so easy I once gave it up six times in one week, but I realised after the first attempt that it was not withdrawal from the weed which was the main obstacle one had to overcome. Far from it, there's the wife to start with.

She says she ain't going to influence you one way or the other, it's entirely up to you, but you must admit you have not been the same since you gave it up, have you? This always amazes, as you've been your normal cheery self and more than usually tolerant and loving towards your spouse and offspring, and immediately ask her what the hell she is talking about.

Well, says she, you have been a bit touchy, haven't you? This treachery from the one who has sworn to be your helpmate and comfort in moments of stress generally results in your slamming the door on the verbal battle that ensues, because you don't stand a chance of coming in a good second there and when the house has stopped vibrating her parting words of  "See what I mean" follow you down the garden to the shed, where you cool off by chain smoking the fags you left there when turning it in.

1970's ciggies

Perhaps there's something in what she has said as life settles down peacefully enough afterwards, you return to your hearty coughing on rising in the morning and she returns to her "You want to given up that filthy habit", and the circle is once more complete.

Then there is the question of what on earth to do with your hands when not rolling a fag or holding one between the fingers. Solve that and you are home and dry. When other blokes are tapping the ash into tea cups or flicking their dog-ends at the blind eye of the passing cat, you are aimlessly finger tapping on the table top or sitting on your hands.

I know a chap, who in sheer desperation to find something for his hands to do, learnt to crochet and became very adept at it. His home became full of beautiful crocheted chair backs, side board mats and table cloths, which his wife proudly showed to all her mates, who in turn got at their husbands quoting him as a kind of Guru of the crochet hook. It was only after she has entered a shawl he'd made for his old mother, in the homecraft section of the local show which took first prize, and he had to step up and receive it in the company of two ladies aged eighty and eighty-seven, who took second and third place, that he saw the vulnerable position his hobby had placed him in, and decided he'd be better off with a few tobacco stains on his fingers than crochet callouses.

And of course, the curse of substitution. All sorts of queer objects have been bunged into mouths deprived of the habitual occupant, the fag. Chewing gum, excessive food, match sticks, gobstoppers, you name it, and I'll bet it's been there.

I was taken back to my childhood the other day when a mate of mine, who was into the second week of self-imposed torture, turned up at work with what looked like a large stick insect between his lips. He said, when asked if he had gone weak and started on cigars, no, it was Spanish wood. Hadn't heard that name since I was a nipper and was cast back to the days of tiger nuts and locust beans.

Tiger nuts were identical to rabbit droppings except some were as hard as iron and apt to break off lumps of teeth while others were bad inside the skin and tasted like they looked, but most appealed to the taste buds of kids. Locust beans were like small flat bananas, mahogany coloured and just as hard, but lasted for hours even when you could bite bits off them, which was the reason for their popularity when income was counted in farthings.

And coming back to Spanish wood, it was a kind of edible bush sold in small sticks, which you sucked in the same way as cigarettes and the sap had a flavour reminiscent of weak lemon tea brewed in a Georgian chamber pot. While not a favourite buy of kids of yesteryear it was not without appeal mainly, as I said because it was cheap. It's main drawback was the soggy, splayed condition the end in your mouth got into, bits of soft wet splinters getting in between the teeth and stuck under the tongue.

Anyway, I did notice that after removing this repulsive titbit from his mouth a few times during the morning and gazing reflectively at the messy butt, he quietly tossed it into the gash-bin and lit up an old dog-end he had tucked away in his pocket.

My Lady Nicotine had once again triumphed as she mostly does, but it's nice to do battle with her now and again, if only for the same reason that having a row with ones beloveds has it's compensation. It's so nice when you make it up.

6. The Pepsi Flag

Among the plethora of ethnic insults that traffic in food - "Pepsi" deserves special mention. It's the only slur I know that is based on a beverage. The lexicography team for the Canadian Oxford Dictionary suggest the epithet derives from the belief that Quebec-anglos held that their French speaking counterparts swilled Pepsi because they were too poor to afford coke, which at the time was marginally more expensive*

They call us God-Damned Limeys, except when in a benevolent mood when they just say Limey.

Perhaps most of you don't know this, nor did I particularly, but I was brought in line with the facts of life when hailing a cab outside a shopping precinct near St Hilaire, about 30 miles from Montreal. Cabbie was a right little ray of sunshine, who looked as if his mother had conceived him simultaneously with an attack of dyspepsia. He stopped chewing on a large wad of gum long enough to grunt "Oui" when I gave the address Rue Mont Clair in my best French accent then swung the cab round with a squeal of tyres and a cloud of dust on the dirt road exit to get on the auto route.

I asking laughing boy if trade was good, he drove along moodily chewing the cud and looking as though he wondered where the next instalment on the cab was coming from, then, parking the wad in one unshaven cheek, replied "OK", and was about to start chomping again, when he said "You a Limey?" as more a statement of fact than a question. I was caught off balance as it hadn't occurred to me that I was, but I said that I suppose was whereupon he replies that he'd guessed as much, as I had a lousy French accent.

He then resumed his chewing. I guessed he wasn't brooding about any instalments but reflecting on the good old days of the tumbrel and the guillotine. Anyway, I waved the British flag for all of us Limeys by paying him the fare in quarters, which I'd been saving for the toll roads, and gave him a dime as a tip.

We had a very entertaining night at Old Munich, and enormous German beer hall in Montreal. The only table vacant was partially occupied by a Pepsi couple but as there were eight more seats, we sat down. Monsieur and Madame were middle aged, pot bellied (very) with backsides to match and both of them wore white trouser-suits. Madame wore a large blonde wig, had a chest any camel would be proud to have on it's back  and skin tight pants - looked like a ghostly egg-timer on stilts. Monsieur sported a large black droopy moustache which looked like a pair of diversion signs to his boots.



Old Munich Beer Hall - then(-ish)  (picture: www.vanishingmontreal.com)
 

Old Munich Beer Hall - no more (picture: www.vanishingmontreal.com)
 

They completely ignored us and primly sipped cognac, while my sons and I belted in to the excellent German wallop and the ladies of our family regaled themselves with the expensive and exotic drinks that our beloveds always order when asked if they would like a beer.

As the evening wore on, ribald Limey jokes began to flow round the table as the booze and lively music began to take effect. Mad. and Mon. grimly sipped on, no doubt thinking "God-damned Limeys", in French of course.

Suddenly the German band burst into a rousing Oompah tune and M. and M. looked at each other, Monsieur raised his arm, they stood up and began to dance around the table, stamping their feet on the floor, throwing their arms in the air and 'hotching' in rhythm with the music. Space was very confined so they had to keep near to the table, circling us like a pair of snowy vultures swooping at intervals to harass their prey, belting in to us with large posterior and belly in turn.

At the end of the tune they sat down sedately at the table, toasted each other with the remains of their drinks, said "Bon nuit" and went.

I felt they had waved the Pepsi flag far more efficiently than I had waved the Limey one.

* I wanted to transcribe all of these articles as Grandad wrote them, but the passage of time means  some of the language needs updating. This is one I had to rework slightly, and acknowledge Howard Richler's 2010 article "How a Soft Drink Became Quebec's Homegrown  Insult" (www.maisonneuve.org) that I  used in the opening paragraph. In others posts I may change a word or two here or there, but I'll note any material edits. 

5. A Figment Of The Imagination

aka Barefoot Ghost.

Like yourselves, if asked whether I believe in ghosts my immediate reaction is to laugh like a drain and say, "don't be daft, ain't no such thing, just a figment of the imagination".

You can bet your boots there's always some know-all git present who says, "ah, all very well for you to sneer but there's more things in Heaven and Earth than we humans understand". As if this profound statement was his own original thought which nobody had ever said before.

Of course there's things we don't understand. Nobody knows everything. It's an impossibility. If it weren't there'd be no point in having a Brain of Britain contest cos you couldn't ask anybody anything. We'd all know the answers.

What these guys mean is that because you don't know everything you're wrong to scoff at ghosts and things that go bump in the dark. Maybe they're right but by the same token it don't make it a definite fact that there are such things as ghosts and you and me are as right in our beliefs that there ain't, as they are in their inference that there are.

A lot depends on the environment. It's dead easy to believe in ghosts if you happen to be walking through a graveyard at midnight during a thunderstorm, but you try believing in them down Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning in bright sunshine. If you find that you can then you'll believe anything and better you'd better stick to graveyards as you'll be easy meat for the lads who flog their gear down the Lane.

Like I said before, the bogeyman is purely a figment of the imagination.

I once met a bloke who got this figment arse about face. He told me that he was a ghost. It happened like this :

Many years ago, when I was living in Paddington, I was involved in amateur boxing, being endowed with bags of energy and ample muscle and only a modicum of brain power, and used to do training runs around the quiet streets of Maida Vale during the late evenings after work. One evening, about ten o'clock, I was trotting along the road by the side of the canal which runs from Maida Vale to Little Venice, doing my snorting and puffing as I slung over left jabs and right crosses, when a guy riding a bike caught me up and, slowing down to keep pace with me, hollered out "Which way to Harrow Road, mate?"

"Left over the bridge and straight down" I said "It joins Harrow Road at the bottom. Which way are you going, Edgware Road or past Royal Oak?"

"Up to Kensal Green" said he.

"Turn right when you get to Harrow Road" said I "What road do you want? I know all the roads around here."

It was dark at ten o'clock and a bit difficult to find a road if you didn't know the area, which I assumed he didn't.

"That's alright, mate. Just going to the cemetery and I can't miss that" he said.

"True" I said "It's a big place, but you ain't visiting this time of night, are you?"

He said "I'm just returning the caretakers bike I borrowed this evening."

"Oh, I see" said I "It's no business of mine but how come you went for a bike ride without any shoes on?"  It was the first thing I'd noticed when he rode up to me. He was riding this bike in bare feet.

"Right" said he "It ain't no business of yours but I'll tell you anyway. I couldn't find them when I came out this evening and I've only got one pair. Must have put 'em on a shelf somewhere, I suppose. Anyway bare feet don't matter all that much and I didn't want to miss the chance of a bike ride as the keeper left his bike by the shed this evening."

"Well I don't fancy your luck walking home in bare feet" I said "Wait a minute though, how'd you get out of the cemetery if the keeper had gone home and come to that, how the hell are you going to get back in again?" The cemetery gates were about 10 feet tall.

"Well, I ain't got far to walk" he said, biking off in to the darkness. "And secondly, dead easy. I'm a ghost!"

He shot off down the hill laughing his stupid head off. I thought at the time that it was always the way, try to help out and you get the mickey taken out of you.

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A short while ago we took two of our grandsons to Kensal Green cemetery. Mainly for the reason of visiting my parents graves there but also because this cemetery is very extensive and the mausoleums and statues are very imposing and worth an afternoon of anybody's time.

Our family are confirmed graveyard joggers and the cemetery stroll is a favourite hobby of ours. We like to read the inscriptions that folk have put on their stones. Most are very touching but some are very humorous as you will remember I once wrote about*.

However, the enormous mausoleums that rich people have built to house their families are of particular interest, and we always do our best to find a broken pane of glass through which we can peer and possibly see the coffins. I suppose it's the macabre side of everybody's character coming out.

 

This time we were lucky. Vandals had paid their widespread visitations even to the resting place of the dead and had smashed a pane of glass in the solid iron door of one of the family vaults. When I say we were lucky, don't think I condone these activities. I don't, but facts are facts, the glass was broken and my not looking through would not have mended it again.

We couldn't see as much as all was darkness so I went back to the car to get a torch. Shining it through the broken window we saw into the interior of the resting place of the family whose vault it was.

Shelves were built around the vault, each shelf holding a coffin, all were covered with dust of the ages and the musty smell of the enclosed dead pervaded the air.

On the left side of the room a stairway led down to another chamber again lined with shelves carrying coffins. On the top coffin just by the top of the stairway stood, far away from the possible reach of anyone putting their hand through the window if the iron door - A PAIR OF SHOES.

I do not propose to conjecture how they got there. There was no possible way that someone could have opened the door and put them there. The door was thick iron and rusted solid around the hinges and lock, and had obviously not been opened since the last burial nor was there any other entrance. Dust was thick everywhere and had not been disturbed for many years.

Suddenly my mind switched back nearly fifty years and I saw a bloke biking off into the dark, laughing his head off and shouting "I'm a bloody ghost!".

Well, it's a load of rubbish ain't it? I definitely don't believe in ghosts, and as for a bare footed ghost riding a bike by the canal at Little Venice, I mean stupid, ennit?

No, figments of the imagination they are, but I'll admit to crossing my fingers whenever I say it.

*  People are Funny 23 - The Oomy Goolie Bird

4. Taken For Granted

An old saying goes "You can't see the wood for the trees". Meaning that we're so adjusted to certain things and conditions that we just don't see them. They're always there, performing some basic function or other and we ain't aware of them and the mind blanks off.

They're taken for granted and only when they're not there or not doing their prescribed duty are we aware of their existence.

Like parents, postmen, policemen, buses, eyebrows or hair up your nostrils.

For instance, the end of your nose can always be seen if you squint down but you never notice it. Why should you? It's always there doing it's job of breathing up air and smelling things. Why should you bother to look down to see if it's still there? You know it otherwise you'd be walking round with your mouth open or never have to wash any hankies, would you?

But you get a boil on it or have a bunch of fives give you a belt on it. Then you know you've got one and it's always on view because, in the first place it hurts and secondly it blocks your view when you're watching the box.

Same with your eyes. Only when you get a bit of dirt in one do you realise that the gift of sight you've hardly ever thought about is very precious and should never be accepted without giving thanks to God.

I had a mate who was a very ordinary chap. Sort of bloke you'd be hard put to describe if anyone asked you to. Nondescript is the word. Apart from the usual equipment like two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth, two arms and two legs, he had nothing that made him any different from anyone else. But in swimming trunks at the pool or the seaside he got folk giving him puzzled looks like they knew he was different but just couldn't put a finger on what it was. They knew somehow he couldn't be taken for granted.

It was simple really. He didn't have a belly button and where everybody had an umbilical dimple, he had a blank space, which gave the impression that his belly was winking at you.

I'm not claiming that I was matey with a bloke who was of virgin birth, he got an infection in his belly button and the surgeon got busy with his knife and cut it out, then did a bit of neat invisible mending on it. That's all.

This is all leading up to one of those things that the average bloke normally takes for granted. Grub. And why ? Cos he don't have to cook it.

All he see's when going home or into the café is a plate of nosh which it is his duty to wrap himself around because his stomach is hollering out for something to be shovelled in to it. When he's done that he stretches his legs, belches, and congratulates the little woman for her slaving over a hot stove with "Not bad, that, love. What's for pudding?" Or moans like hell because the chips weren't crisp enough or the cabbage was too soggy.

What never crosses his mind is how the transformation of all this grub from the raw to being edible was affected.

Why should he? His job is to do the hunting, hers to do the cooking. As did the caveman and the squaw. It's just taken for granted.

I'll admit to being the same myself. Until recently, when the woods suddenly manifested themselves in spite of all the trees, and my wife required full time nursing after a serious operation.

Then I realized that my knowledge of the culinary arts could be put in a thimble and still leave plenty of room for my thumb.

Not that I was entirely ignorant about cooking. I prided myself that I could whip up a fairly tasty fry-up with the best of them. After all, what had the Galloping Gourmet* got that I hadn't, apart from a few more frying pans. He fried everything, didn't he?



Credit: www.cookapalooza.org

However a constant diet of fried egg, bacon and chips, sausage and chips, tinned tomatoes on toast and tomato soup wasn't exactly conforming to the balanced diet sheet issued by the hospital.  Also did nothing to make the gastronomic juices bubble in anticipation. So it was a case of extending my knowledge of different ways to cook eggs apart from frying or boiling them.

And I had a bash at scrambled eggs for breakfast. Very tasty that. I beat up one egg and put it in a small saucepan and turned on the gas then popped in a couple of slices of bread in the toaster. Obviously one egg is not sufficient for scrambling as within seconds all that was left was a tiny pin head of what looked like plaster of paris stuck to the bottom of the saucepan.
 

So I upped the number to three and tried again. This time the ensuing result was more successful. With judicious spreading, what hadn't stuck to the bottom of the pan just about covered a small slice of Hovis brown loaf. At this rate it was going to take ten eggs to cover three slices which wouldn't exactly blow you out with over-eating but would soon create havoc with the housekeeping economy. So I decided until I got more knowledge on the subject I'd give scrambled eggs the elbow and have a bash at omelette.

I remember my wife telling me that three eggs is a minimum for a decent omelette, so three hen fruit well beaten up went in to the frypan of hot fat and rose very satisfactorily like a large fluffy pancake.

Great, I thought, and stuck it in the oven to keep warm while I got the coffee made.

Making my way upstairs with the breakfast tray I entered the bedroom with a flourish and said to my wife, "Voila, Madam, a piquant breakfast for vous zis morning. NOT (large emphasis on the not) fried!!" And laid the tray as gently as if it were a new born babe, on her lap and stood back to receive the acclamation of amazed bewilderment of my new found prowess.

She lifted the cover on the plate, peered beneath  and said "What is it?"

"That", I said, with due modesty "Is a triple egg omelette."

"Oh, is it?" said she "What happened to it?" and took the cover off.

Where once laid a large fluffy omelette now was revealed what looked like the skin of a large balloon which had been pricked with a pin.

"I must have done something wrong" I said, "Fancy a fried egg on toast?"

My wife said  "Thanks, I'll have some cornflakes."

The years of taking my grub for granted certainly needed remedying so it was back to the drawing board and a crash course on Mrs Beeton's cookbook.

However, since then, I have improved a mite and can now turn a fair dinner without the aid of bags of lard and a fry pan.

In fact, just recently  I excelled myself and dished up, what I felt was a good meal worthy of Fanny Cradock* on one of her better days.

Chicken breasts and appropriate vegs, marinated in red wine and cooked casserole style. This turned out a great success when we ate it for our lunch. The chicken was a tender as a babies bum, literally fell off the bone and the vegs were seeped in the sauce to perfection.

I felt that my days of shovelling food down my gullet without any thought of how it got to be acceptable to the inner man were over, and I was now aware of the facts of life.

And so I was, but this new found knowledge was mine alone and didn't extend to my son who naturally, as every other man who eats what is shoved in front of him without thought, and if he likes it, was still unaware of the wood for the trees.

When he came in for dinner I proudly put my culinary magic in front of him and said "What about that, eh?"  and he said "I don't like bloody stew. Ain't you got any eggs and bacon?"

Well, you can't win them all, can you?





 

* Note:  For the Galloping Gourmet and Fanny Cradock see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Kerr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Cradock