Odds And Sods - The Pun Appeal 2

Sign of the Times

In periods of high unemployment the state of the economy is often reflected in the struggle of many small shopkeepers to keep going when people haven't got the money to spend.

A most poignant remark on the adverse effect of that general trend of affairs was having on his business, was shown in the window of a shop in one of the more depressed areas of London.

In the middle of a bare window which displayed absolutely nothing at all, hung a sign which simply stated:

"Customers Wanted . No Experience Necessary"

DIY

Must tell you about the bloke who sang so off key that he couldn't get anybody to sing with him.

Went out and bought himself a duet yourself kit.

Now Here's A Funny Thing

Recently an American dealer acquired a small painting at an auction at Sothebys for a world record price of $2.5million. All dealers have their own method of bidding. Some raise their eyebrows, some make a slight movement of the fore-finger, others a barely noticeable wave of their catalogue. The American made the successful bid with nods of his head. 

Which goes to show that when at an auction, even though the goods are valuable you can get something for nodding

Encore

Have you heard of the new entrant who thought that rebate was putting another worm on the hook?

Datsun Cogs

'Arry got a job as a cleaner at the Datsun Car Assembly Plant and was told to sweep up the yard around the loading bay. 

He was busy sweeping when a fork lift truck, stacking crates of flywheels, dropped one which burst open, scattering its contents dangerously near him.

Going back to the foreman he asked to be given another job.

"Finished that already?" asked the gaffer "That was quick"

"No I ain't" said 'Arry "but I'm not working out there anymore. Its raining Datsun cogs"

Don't Panic

Heard a yarn from Dave Bywater about a friend of his mother's which you would like to hear.

The lady packed some salmon sandwiches late one evening for her husband to take to work next day. Having some salmon left over, she put it down for her cat, to eat for it's supper, who, as is the nature of cats, ate it up with great relish.

Next morning, fairly late-ish, she went out front to bring in the milk, and found one dead cat on the doorstep.

Immediately she thought the obvious. The salmon she had fed it had been off and had poisoned the cat. Then, horrified thought of her husbands sandwiches.

She phoned his work to warn him not to eat them, but he already had. They rushed him to hospital, where he was put under treatment for food poisoning, and kept in for observation.

Returning home, the lady was making a cuppa to calm her shattered nerves when the doorbell rang. Opening the door she was confronted by the milkman who said "I've been trying to see you but you must have gone out. I've called to see how your cat is"

"The cat" said the lady "it's dead. But how did you know about it?"

"Well I didn't know it was dead, and I'm sorry about that" said Milky "but when I delivered the milk this morning it got under my feet and tripped me up, and I dropped the crate of milk on him"!!!

Hubby's comments after being told are not available for print.

Leak Before You Loop

The young pilot was about to take his test in aerobatics. To bolster up his confidence he had imbibed a few jar of wallop and had forgotten his instructors strict order to go to the toilet before diving all over the sky.

"Keep a clear head and an empty bladder, my lad" had been his repeated advice.

All went well until he performed a figure of eight, when he felt the beer exiting and spreading over his uniform. On landing, he clambered out of the plane and stood to attention as the inspector strolled up, took one look at his sodden trousers and roared-

"If you don't want to break your bloody neck in future, you'll learn to leak before you loop"

Mind Shrinker

The psychologist made his patient comfortable on the couch and said "What I propose to do, to help you understand what is worrying you, is to show you some pictures. Immediately I show you one, I want you to tell me the first thing that comes into your mind"

He held up a photo of the Taj Mahal and the patient said "frilly knickers"

He held up a photo of Buckingham Palace and the patient said "black silk stockings"

He held up a photo of Windsor Castle. The patient said "see-through nighties"

The psychologist said "The answer is fairly obvious. You're trouble is that you're a sex maniac, although you don't realise it".

The patient sat up and said "I'm a sex maniac? Looks who's talking. Who's been showing me all those dirty photos then?"

The Things We Take For Granted 

We don't realise our blessings until we get something go wrong. For instance, until you get a bit of dirt in your eye you don't appreciate what a marvellous thing sight is.

I was talking to Ernie Negus, one of our one-armed lads, soon after he resumed duty from a long spell off sick recovering from his unfortunate fall when he broke his existing arm. 

I said that it must have been a relief to be able to do all the things that he normally does, like handling tools etc (he's a great mechanic), and he said yes, it was, but the thing he was most happy to be able to do was being able to wipe his own backside again. Most embarrassing, he said.

True, its the little things that count.

Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention

An invaluable hint for motorists on how to get home in an emergency an be learned from PS Terry Savage when his radiator sprang a leak miles from anywhere t'other day. Stopping near a pond he ensured a continual supply of topping-up water by filling up his wellies which he happened to have aboard. Full marks for ingenuity, Terry, but a word of warning to other travelers in a like situation. Be very careful how you word your reply should a member of the fuzz stop you and ask what you've got in the boot.

Poetic Justice?

In our job there's always the bod who craftily works the mail for awkward delivery points on to the day mail officer. Like top flats, long driveways, etc etc, and the man on the double wonders how come he always gets all this stuff on his walk.

Heated words were heard the other morning between the night mail officer and the day mail officer of the walk which delivers to the Harrow Football Club, which is one of these points

Apparently DMO accused NMA of deliberately leaving this stuff for him, whereas NMO insisted that it was an agreement between the rotates that is should be worked this way.

After many uncomplimentary references to each others parentages and dire threats as to the eventual fate of either officer, NMO backed down and agreed to take any mail that turned up in time for the first delivery. Which he did the very next day and got bitten three times on the arm by the caretakers dog.

DMO was heard to remark that it was bound to happen and NMO was a stranger to the dog, but it took no notice of the DMO cos he was always bloody well going up there, wasn't he?!

29. The Barbershop

aka Old Fashioned Barbers

The conservationists are continually on about preserving England's heritage and blow their tops whenever anybody threatens to chop down a tree or pull down a tumbledown old building.

No matter whether the tree is rotten and liable to be blown over with the next gust of wind, or the house will collapse if the tenant slams the bog door a bit too hard, somebody will plead that Bonny Prince Charlie hid in it's branches or Liz the One once kipped in the front bedroom.

Generally speaking, they do a good job for if the developers had their way we'd all be living in concrete jungles like the Chalkhill Estate in Wembley, and Mothercare would be flogging cement mixers to young parents instead of prams.

So I would like to bring to the notice of the people who are so concerned about retaining parts of Merrie Old England's heritage, of a fast disappearing trade, and it's environment, that is as dear as the British pub to the hearts of all true Britishers, no matter what part of the globe they happen to hail

from originally. 

I'm talking about the good old fashioned short back and sides barber and his barber shop, which should be in the back room behind a confectioner and tobacconist, if it is the genuine article.

They are few and far between and have been swamped by the malignant growth of Unisex salons and His 'n Hers parlours, which grew from long hair, the burning of the bra, and equal rights.

All democratic men are agreed that women's place is not solely in the home, but wherever it is, it certainly ain't in the barber shop. They are as out of place there as a monk in a nunnery.

The days when a chap could be happy in the thought that should he feel the need to escape from female tantrums, there existed a haven where he could claim sanctuary, over the threshold of which no woman would dare to cross, are almost gone. The most exclusive man's club in the world is practically non-existent.

The barbershop I went to many years ago, was not behind a sweet shop, as were most barbers, but was on the ground floor of a tenement house. People lived above and underneath but it was completely isolated from them as it had it's own steps outside leading to the shop door, over which a barber's pole stuck out, and a sign stating that Alf Mantel, barber, cut Gents hair, trimmed moustaches, and shaved with the finest honed razors.

Alf had three blokes working with him and a lather boy. The lather boy is an extinct species now but was as inevitable in a barber shop as eggs are to bacon. His job was to apply a thick layer of shaving soap to the chins of customers wanting a shave, ready for the barber to shave off. As it only cost tuppence most gents had a shave, especially on Saturday afternoon in readiness for the evenings activities, and he was kept on the go all the time, lathering, working the green solidified brilliantine in the hair of finished customers for the barber to comb, sweeping up the piles of cut hair and being a general dogsbody.

Alf's boy was named Reggie and he always wore a cloth cap with his ears tucked under the sides, even while he was working. 

He was unmercifully bullied by the barbers and teased by the herbs who pinched his cap and threw it to each other when he tried to get it back. He got very upset and tearful which made the lads tease all the more until Alf got fed up with the noise and scuffling and finished the joking by snatching the cap

from whoever had it saying "Pack it up. If you want to sod about, do it outside" and tossing it back to Reggie, always said "If your earoles ain't back in bed and this bloody floor swept up in two minutes, you're sacked " As this happened several times a week it was purely a ritual, but Reggie never got used to it and was haunted by fear of getting his cards.

I felt sorry for him, as he lived down my street and I knew he lived alone with his mum as his old man had scarpered when he was at school, and he had to give her the 10/6d a week he earned there.

The only money he got for himself was the odd penny tip he got, and they were few and far between, as the crafty barbers did the final brush up of the coat to make sure they got any dropsy going, and

who could blame 'em ? They was only on a couple of quid a week.

Funny enough, it wasn't until his dad hopped it that Reggie started tucking his ears under his cap. Wonder what the mind shrinkers would make of that ?

Anyway, did a roaring trade, did Alf, what with all the kids during the week, and there were thousands of 'em, there being no telly in them days and folk had to do something to pass away the time; and all the herbs on Sats who came in for the three S’s in readiness for the evening festivities like taking a bride up the pictures, going to the local dance hall, having a few jars round the boozer, or simply having a roll round the town in the hopes of having a bit of luck where the birds were concerned. Leastways, a lot of them did that, as Alf sold a hell of a lot of the old packets of three which hung on cards next to the mirrors in front of the chairs. The three S's, by the way, were what you asked for if you wanted a complete going over, being literally interpreted as a s---, shave and shampoo.

Like a beehive it was with all the yatter of blokes arguing the merits of their local teams, favourite fighters, or fancied horses. Every topic under the sun came up in discussion but no aggro occurred as Alf, with one of his finest honed razors in his mitt, could have sliced an earole on any troublemaker before he shaped up. And would have, and all, cos many a lad went out with plaster stuck on his earlobe and Alf's stock apology of "Sorry mate, but what do you expect if you don't keep your loaf still" after having said something that he hadn't liked.

It was always a bit dodgy sitting in Alf's chair after you'd been chatting football with someone. If you'd been taking the mick out of Millwall, who he supported, it was odds on that he'd have heard you, and you got yourself a bloody collar. But it never stopped blokes going there as in the room behind the shop were a couple of tables where you could sit and get a cup of tea and a saveloy or have a go on the pin tables and one-armed bandits round the walls, after your trim up.

Another of Reggie's jobs that was, dishing out the char and serving the savs, which he had to stop in a hurry when one of the barbers hollered through the door "Lather up " or "Brill on." or Alf shouted "Get the hair off this bloody floor, it's up round our knees"

Like I said, there ain't many of the good old S.B.& S's shops around, which is more the pity, and the conservationists should fight tooth and nail to preserve those that still exist.

When a chap wants his hair cut, if he wants a shampoo to follow he'll tell the barber so. He don't want some scissor-wrangler to tell him "I couldn't possibly cut your hair without washing it first, darling" 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an anti long, hair style fanatic. Everyone is entitled to wear his loaf the way he likes it, and if he desires to let it spread all over his boat race, that's up to him. I don't exactly agree with my brother, who once said to me "Can't understand why young fellows today, go to such pains and expense to grow on their face what grows in profusion and for nothing round their backside".

But I know what he felt.

And I plead for the preservation of some the places where old fashioned blokes as us can still be asked "how would you like it, sir ?" and no matter what you say, you still get a short back and sides.

The barbers I go to is one of these peaceful backwaters behind a Tob. and Con. shop, where you're as likely to see a female as you are a Rabbi at a Catholic jumble sale.

The chap who runs it calls it "The last of the Summer Wine" I'm not sure whether he means the shop or the piles of grey hair which is over the floor. Or the customers. But I don't think anything could be more aptly named.

28. Rubik's Cube

I'm waiting to read of the youngster who has been put into care for smashing his parents home to pieces with a sledgehammer and attempting to murder the cat by putting it into the spindryer.

          

His parents will be reported as saying that they have no idea what came over him, as up to date he had been a good boy of high intelligence and a happy disposition, and so far as they knew had no vices. Not even the odd bit of glue sniffing which some of his mates were known to indulge in behind the school bog.

They will be honestly mystified as to their son's lapse from civilised behavior, although will recall, at the court inquiry, that he had recently had a few nightmares from which he had awoke screaming "Left, Right, Left"

I haven't actually read of such a case but, like the riots that have recently plagued Liverpool, Brixton and other British areas, it is inevitable that it will occur when you study the contributary factors which spark such events. This case will have nothing to do with ethnic minority suppression, three million unemployed, lead poisoning or the envy of folk who could only afford a registry office wedding and a honeymoon at Southend after having a recent more expensive do shoved down their gullets until they got sick of it. This case will be due to parental indulgence and pride.

As the average Mum and Dad quite naturally thinks that their pride and joy is the only one that's been cast from the mould and should have no less than any other kid, and is far more capable of succeeding with it than the rest, they got him one.

You must know what I'm on about by now.

Rubik's Cube of course.

This bloke Rubik has a lot to answer for and it's quite possible that his diabolical invention will be the final straw that breaks the finely balanced mind of Homo Sapiens and we shall all do a lemming type Hari-Kari and leave the dolphins to take over planet Earth. 

And the epitaph of Man will not be the mushroom shape of nuclear explosion, but the six sided figure of Rubik's Cube. 

This puzzle can be done, of course, and they sell a book of instructions telling you how. What they don't tell you is how to understand it. They naturally assume you have the qualifications to be able to do so. Like a degree in in higher maths or chess movements of the world masters. The trouble with this puzzle is that it is compulsive, like eating peanuts.

You just can't stop once you've started. 

After a while of twisting and turning the sections and getting nowhere, you put it aside, take some aspirins and turn on the telly. Then as you get up to go for a pee you pick it up and have another go in there. Half a dozen more tries and a couple of dozen aspirins later you sling it aside promising yourself that you'll really settle down and solve it later when you've got time. Anyway, there's no point in wasting time doing something that don't achieve anything, is there ?

Better let sonny have a go. After all you bought it for him and it'll improve his mind and his concentration, which is a good thing ain't it? 

You know that you could do it if you really tried. Just that you ain't got the time right now.

So - sonny cops it. Poor little sod.

And sooner or later the result imagined at the top of the page will almost certainly happen, cos little pride and joy hasn't got Dad's ability to  convince himself that he can do something which his inner self knows he bloody well can't. Not in a month of Sundays.

I suppose Rubik can't be wholly blamed for lumbering the world with such a diabolical toy. Kids toys are so advanced these days that there isn't much joy in any of them, and he just jumped on the bandwagon.

Parents are slightly bewildered when Junior mopes around looking bored and saying he don't know what to do. 

Course he's bored. He's surrounded by masses of electronic equipment designed to make him think and to instruct him. No fun at all. 

He don't have to take off his socks when he wants to count over ten. He just presses buttons on his calculator.

He wants toys he can play with, not instructional manuals designed to make him a genius, which is what most of todays toys aim to do. 

We had none of this problem when I was a kid.

We weren't expected to be adult minded, at least not until we could earn some money by doing a paper round when we had to be knowledgeable enough to realise that any income thus come by was to help out with the family income and not to be frittered away on toys But I don't think that the kids of yesteryear were any the worse for that.

We kept ourselves busy with games that were primitive compared with todays and reading material that was designed to be enjoyed, not to instruct.

Most homes could boast a pack of cards which were in continual use in games of Old Maid, Beat your Neighbour, Chase the Ace, Sliding Donkey, Cheat, Rummy, Banker and Pairs. To name just a few.

If you wanted to gamble it was Pontoon or Brag for buttons.

Games that were easy to understand, but what's more important, games that did not leave you with an inferiority complex or uncontrollable frustrations.

If your brother or your mate beat you at Ludo or Draughts you could always punch him on the nose (if he was smaller than you), or accuse him of cheating (again if he was smaller). If he wasn't then you kept your mouth shut and tried to cheat him, but whatever the outcome of any game, kids weren't left with homicidal thoughts towards other peoples property or the first O.A.P. who happened to cross their path.

The trouble is that you just can't cheat most modern toys. Some of them have even got printed circuits which tell you, through an amplifier, when you've boobed at spelling or doing a sum or whatever, and if all a nipper gets when he wants to enjoy playing with his toy is – “ You are wrong. Do it again. " he's quickly going to learn the satisfaction of saying the first word of Colonel Bogey and jumping on his birthday present.

He don't want to be a genius when he's playing or reading, and he'll mature intro a responsible citizen if he reads The Beano in bed instead of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

I suggest that Rubik be entombed in a pyramid of his blasted cubes and be left to figure his way out of that one.

figure his way out of that one. Without aspirins.

You may have gathered that I've been having a go at it and you'd be right.

It nearly sent me round the twist and that's why I'm worried about the effect it may have on nippers. Well I was until the other day,but now I'm not so sure.

My little grandson, aged eight*, came up to me and handed me a cube with all the colours on their correct sides and said " Mess it up Grandad. Get all the colours mixed up"

I thought he'd done the old trick of taking the squares out and putting them back in correct order instead of turning complete sections as you're supposed to do.

So I twisted and turned the sections  until it was completely jumbled and said "Here you are then. Now lets see you do it", getting ready to calm him with sweets when he went berserk with trying.

He did it in just under five minutes right in front of me, and I'll take anyone who don't believe me round to him and let him do it. 

Well, it's understandable really. He don't stuff his bonce with all this electronic facts and figures rubbish and has inherited some of his Grandad's brains by reading the Beano in bed.

I only ever read about Billy Bunter when I was a kid.


Notes:
* Which helpfully dates this piece to 1981.

Special thanks to Paul Rose for the slight cheat on the photo of said grandson.

If games, retro or otherwise, are your thing, check out Paul's work here Digitiser 2000 You Tube and here https://www.digitiser2000.com/

27. The Greenhouse

I beg to report that my greenhouse is still standing and has successfully withstood all the buffetting of the torrential rains with which we have been blessed since March.

Even the automatic opening window in the roof has decided to live up to makers advert and open up when the inside temperature reaches the degree to which it has been set. 

For a while it was obstinate and refused to open at all, but after some persuasion with a hammer and a few choice four letter adjectives, felt that it might as well cooperate and started to open at 40F which would have given any plants therein a touch of frostbite of the stalk. However a few more whacks of the old persuader stopped it being bloody minded and it has since behaved as per guarantee.

While on the subject of things not going right first time of asking, do you suffer likewise? I feel that I can't be peculiar in this respect. It seems that there must be an inbuilt perversity in the scheme of things which states that no ways in anybody going to get a smooth ride by having things go right first time out.

Everybody must suffer from it. Or is it only me?

All you want is a quiet life. Just do the job, get it over with as quick as possible, get your plates up in front of the box and take it easy with a fag and a pint.

How come there's always this hassle with fate even with the simplest of jobs such as bunging a nail in a lump of wood? It never goes in like it should do straight away. Either bends over or splits the wood, which means getting it out again, straightening it and glueing the split before attempting to whack it in again.

Point is, it always goes right the second time of asking, so why no the first time?

I remember once having to replace a faulty rote arm on the motor. Now what can be easier than that? Just remove the distributor head, take off the old arm and put on the replacement. 

Simple. 

So I did just that, but when putting on the new one, dropped it.

You know what? I never did find that bloody rote arm. It wasn't under the car and I searched every nook and cranny I could find on the car. Nowhere. I figure it must have sprouted legs and run like hell on hitting the deck or disguised itself as a nut and dropped off after I got another one on and got the car going.

Now why couldn't it go right first time? No bother. After all can't be me all the time, can it?

Anyway, about this greenhouse I got. 

Apart one one flesh wound and a stiff neck got through working in a cold wind, everything was all systems go, and I thought that at last I'd done something right first time. It was windproof, watertight and as cosy as Uncle Tom's cabin.

Great!

Well, apart from one little item which caused a slight doubt in my mind. It wasn't the knowledge that I'm no gardener, I'm well aware that what I know about gardening could be put in a thimble and still leave plenty of room for my thumb.

Also the title of Little Green Fingers don't apply either, Doctor Death could have picked up a tip or two from my hands when it comes to plant life, I've seen poison ivy struggle to get into next doors garden after starting in to mine when I've come along.

No problems there as my wife was appointed O.I.C. Greenhouse with full vested authority to direct and supervise any labouring that would be required to be done by me. So why the misgiving when everything was covered with a fully comprehensive insurance?

Well. I gather that the main function of a greenhouse is to raise plants, from seeds preferably, in order to save the expense of buying them from a retailer who will charge 45p for each little plant when you can expect to raise perhaps fifty from each packet of seed you've bought for 30p.

Right? OK.

We got all our seed boxes, soil, packets of seed etc and sowed according to instructions, carefully spraying with sun-warmed water at nights. Visions of unlimited supplies of tomatoes, cucumbers, marrows and flowers kept my wife and I nursing those boxes of earth like they were triplets, and we were all set for the good life.

This is where the doubt came in. About me doing something right first time.

After some time we felt the gestation period should now be over and little plants should be thrusting their little bonces through the surface, anxious to grow big and bear fruits, as is their destiny. And what have we got?

Several miniature deserts of earth looking as fruitful as an octogenarian spinster. 

So we decided to do a bit of investigation. Maybe we'd put the seeds in too deeply or upside down. We started with the tomatoes. 

Result of investigation - nowt. Not a seed to be found.

The marrows?  - likewise

We moved to the cucumbers - ditto.

Flowers? No hope. Either vanished completely or as dormant as they were in the packets. 

So we started again. With fresh seed but this time with carefree abandon. Each seed box was blessed with the benediction of the true gardener -

"Right, you got two chances, you sods, live or die and see if we care"

And with the true perversity of nature they all did - live. Each seed booming upwards, elbowing their mates aside in an effort to get more growing space. 

Now why couldn't they have done that in the first time of asking? Beats me.

Anyway, time has progressed, as have the seedlings. They've grown in to plants and have been potted out, hardened off and bedded out to permanent sites, and we felt that at last we'd done a good job with the greenhouse and its functions.

Well, maybe. There's still some doubt, cos this thing about nothing going right first time is continuous, and while we got the greenhouse to perform its function after successful erection, we forgot that there's many phases between the first bite of the fruit from the sowing of the seed. All prone to the rule of the first time failure.

This year, which is known as the Year of the Disabled*, is a misnomer.

All this rain we've had has raised an army and it should now be called the Year of the Slug. 

We've been invaded by millions of the ugly back slimy abortions and are now involved in a battle of extermination armed with salt and pellets to try and save a few of our cherished plants which they're gobbling up like a plague of locusts. 

I've got a feeling I should have a bought a shed.

* which helps us date this piece to 1981.

26. The Successful Person

If there's anybody who makes you feel sick, it's the person who is  a success. By success I mean anyone who can make money, or decisions, or their way in the world, or progress.

Yeah I know its not a motorbike, but it was the closest I could find - see later on

Usually they only things they don't make are mistakes. Leastways, according to them they don't.

The average person is a bag of indecisive phobias, and usually has as much natural talent and purpose as a jellyfish without a sting. Or is a natural disaster area when it comes to making or mending anything. How many of us are the type that fixes a shelf only to have it fall down that moment it get dusted? And on to your foot, as a rule.

Or plants in the garden only to see it wilt and die before your eyes as if you'd sprayed it with battery acid.

And don't you hate the bloke who gives you a large bag of the reddest tomatoes you've ever seen, weighing about a pound each because he's got so many that he and his family will never be able to eat them all? You know, and he knows that your plants have got an average of three miserable, wizened, puny nubbins on each, trying hard to make up their minds whether they're tomatoes or greengages. And are going to end up as green tomato chutney, which is muck you can't stomach anyway, cos the only way they'll ripen to red is if you happen to cut your finger on the pruning knife and bleed all over them.

He's a success. You ain't. And you hate his guts.

When the car breaks down, do you get out, lift the bonnet and stare at the works trying hard to remember what the hell makes it all tick, with a mind as blank as a petrified eyeball? Is your first instinct to walk home and leave the bloody thing? Hoping that some mechanical Rumplestiltskin will have mended it during the night and all you'll have to do in the morning is get in and drive it away. That is, if you ain't lost the keys.

                                                 

You're like that ? Well, don't worry. You're one of the great army of incompetents. The average bloke who can't knock a nail in without hitting his thumb or smashing the hammerhead in to the wall.  It's these geezers who turn every quid they get in to a million, who can look a fierce Alsatian in the eye and make it back off with its rudder slotted between its rear legs , who can put the stars in the eyes of beauty with a few well chosen compliments, who don't admit that such a word as fate exists; they're the ones out of step. We're the naturals, the folk who, when they get a quid back a loser with it, if confronted by a poodle get bit, when trying the old Don Juan stuff with a bird are told "Get knotted, buster", and are ruled by fate and all the other four letter words in the language.

                                                  

So, if you're a cesspit of despair and every other situation is a O one (Oh dear, what the hell am I going to do about that?) be comforted by Robbie Burns famous words - "The best laid schemes o'mice and men, gang aft aglae" - which translated into English means that even the super-beings who can't a put a foot wrong, even when walking through a field of cows suffering with diarrhoea make a cock up of things now and then.

A lovely example of this happened during the fireman's strike*. A unit of the army, who had taken over emergency firefighting, were called out to rescue an old lady's cat who had got stuck up a tree, which they did with trained efficiency.

Afterwards, having thanked her, they trooped out, got on their Green Goddess and drove off, running over the cat and killing it. Happens to anybody, don't it?

                                                 

And should you think that only you are the ultimate in total incompetence, ponder on the guy who achieved an Everest peak in cock-ups, both metaphorically and literally, when having a bit of nooky in the back seat of the lady's mini. His back gave out and froze solid and no ways could he move, nor she.

In desperation she attracted assistance by pressing on the hooter with her right leg, which was draped elegantly over the drivers seat. Eventually they were freed by the fire brigade who got them out by removing part of the car.

The lady seemed less worried by the star turn being in full view of a lot of gleeful firemen than what she would tell her husband when he wanted to know how the back of his car got cut off.

Another example of making a cock-up of things actually happened to me when taking a motorbike test many years ago.

This I took on a moped, which you could in those days. A pass qualified you to ride anything from a 50c.c. to a 600c.c. which was a stupid state of affairs. But no matter, after riding god knows how many times round the block, first one way, and then the other to show that I could turn right and left, I was told to ride around till he jumped out and waved his arms and I was to do an emergency stop. I rode around for so long that I thought he'd gone home and forgot me, when he suddenly appeared waving his arms like a windmill in my path. I didn't know where he came from but I saw where he went. Straight back in to the cafe where he'd probably been swilling tea while watching me, with one tremendous leap to get out of my way as I shot straight at him at 30 because I'd put on the anchors so hard that I snapped both the handbrake cables.

Funny enough he gave me a pass, possibly in case I reported him for being in the cafe, which shows messing things up ain't the end of everything. After all, man's real genius lays in being incompetent. Most of us are good at it and if you're like me, with a head which is useful only in keeping your ears apart, don't worry you're doing a good job. Have compassion for those people who've got it all. They're in the minority. Gosh, I hate 'em. Don't you ? 

Notes:

* That'll be 1977  Firemans Strike 1977

25. Memory Lane

The old days when a person could reckon on a good long convalescent period after an operation have long gone by the board. The method used these days is to get you up and active almost before the blood has stopped dripping.

Mind you, this is nothing new. Women who work in the paddy fields have always given birth to their offspring on location, and carried on turning out the daily quota of rice with the one hand whilst smacking the new-born's rump with the other.

This is positive thinking, for the longer we don't use any part of the body, the more chance of it becoming permanently redundant. Jogging is a direct result of this result line of thought, but it is not intended to be an exercise to keep perfect our aging muscles, but to stop them disappearing down Memory Lane, never to return again.

Some people I have seen jogging have obviously reached the point years ago and are only on one sure thing. A heart attack, cos the only muscles they've got left are those that push their eyes out like organ-stops. The rest is flab and bones which they cultivated when they took to winding up their watches in front of an open window for their daily exercise.

When I was in my teens I used to go swimming in the Serps early in the morning before going to work. Summer and winter. During the winter, diving in the water was like a cross between getting a belt between the shoulder blades from Mohammed Ali and having a fakir's bed shoved up your swimming trunks. Made you gasp for breath while all your skin tried to climb round your neck to get away from the icy depths.

Now most of the chaps who regularly swam there were elderly men who looked as though they would have been better occupied supping a cup of hot tea in bed while they scanned the obituary column in the paper to see if their name was there.

The point is that it never affected these blokes cos they'd always done it. Never had stopped using their muscles and their resistance to cold water. Whereas I have, and if I tried it now it'd be curtains.

Use of the brain is just the same as the use of the muscles. If you don't use the old loaf, eventually you just can't.

Especially the section which acts as a memory bank. Retention of facts and figures has to be practiced just like weight-lifting. Of course there are things that the brain never forgets. Like the date of the Battle of Hastings and the word that springs to mind when a military band strikes up Colonel Bogey. But this is like the minute bit of gristle on your arm which is all that is left where a bicep used to be, if you ain't used it for a long time.

Mind you, it isn't disastrous if the memory don't work like a computer. These people who can remember everything they've ever read aren't always better off for it.

Remember the bloke who got the title of Brain of Britain when winning the final of "Mastermind"? He could remember everything he'd ever read but a fat lot of good it was to him when it came to earning some bread. He was unemployed.

The only fund-raising project he could conjure up was to offer himself as a stud to any lady who wanted a child with a super-IQ. A bit dodgy really, as although he probably got some work alright, there was always a chance that he could be sued if the end product didn't meet the Trades Description Act.

For all that, it's nice to be able to call on your memory when it's needed, and it can play tricks if not kept up to scratch as I found out one day at Heathrow.

We'd been seeing off our son and family after they'd been over here on holiday from Canada, and were strolling through the lounge in Terminal Three, when we passed a unit of the Old Bill, who gave me a very queer look. So much so, that I looked back after a few more steps and he was still giving me this eye.

Then slowly, but very purposefully he walked towards us. My first reaction was to run for it. I seem to have a well developed guilt complex as I always feel that I must have cheated should I ever complete a game of patience, even if I ain't.

This feeling of being guilty even when I haven't done anything must have come from childhood when we played football in the street. I was nearly always posted as lookout at the end of the road, and at the first sight of a police helmet had to yell "Copper" to enable the teams to bolt for it. Football in the street was frowned upon the  law in those days, and a constant vendetta was waged between the Fuzz, who were determined to stop it, and the hordes of herbs who had nowhere else to play.

After hollering "Copper", I invariably ran for it, although I hadn't been playing anyway. Thus the urge to scarper when Nick Nick approached.

He said "I had a feeling I knew you when I saw you, but I couldn't remember nicking you so couldn't place you for a moment". I searched through the memory bank but no go. Bit awkward, you don't like to tell a man that he could be the invisible man as far as your recollection goes. He could have been the bloke who let me off with a caution for speeding along Greenford Road, and wouldn't take it kindly if I didn't remember a friendly gesture and the face that went with it.

"You don't remember me" said he. "Do you?"

"Course I do" I said "Just for a minute I couldn't, er, sort of, er, think of where".

"You don't, do you?" he insisted.

I said no I didn't.

Turned out that he was an ex-postman who I used to do a station service with on late turn. Nothing to it really, but it illustrates my point that if you don't use any part of your body it'll go rusty and eventually die on you.

There's a saying that a starving man's stomach shrinks through disuse, so be warned, as I hate to think of what happens to the bloke who has been celibate for a long time.

24. April Fool's Day

One of the dying traditions of Merrie Old England is the art of the practical joke, April 1st appears unfailingly every year eager to fill the air with shouts of 'April Fool' and inevitably slinks unrecognised and unmourned into the dawn of April 2nd, forgotten and unfulfilled.

When I was a lad, April Fools day was vibrant with expectancy, everybody on their guard against being caught napping. At the same time ready and willing to get somebody to do something which would label him 'April Fool'.

Nobody was exempt and nothing was sacred and only one rule was rigidly kept. You had to make your catch by midday. Any ploy after that time reversed the procedure and the joker was the fool.

The necessary ingredients for the manufacture of a well built practical joke are a convincing manner to put over an outrageous suggestion to make it seem logical, and a victim who is of an impressionable nature, preferably under some sort of pressure so he is apt to act without thinking.

Schoolboys were notably uninspired in their inventiveness as indeed were most artisans.

At school the Headmaster's door continually thundered with knocks from lads sent there by other gleeful herberts.

"Hi Jonesy, the Head wants to see you right away"

And usually ended with Sir dishing out lines to every lad who fell for it. "I must not believe everything I'm told without checking it's true" one hundred times after school hours.

At work the new apprentice doing his stint as tea-boy, was inevitably sent to the bakers at tea-break for a box of pregnant tarts, or half a pound of maternity cake. Or to the stores for a left handed screwdriver or a rubber hammer.

One thing was sure, year after year young lads fell for all the time-honoured gags, however corny they may had been, but sadly the joy of fun in folk seems to have lapsed.

So I urge for a revival of the practical joke, a rebirth of April Foolery. A renaissance of the British love of Kidology. We're all getting too serious and too anxious to go for our guns.

The well constructed practical joke need not be built on April 1. Any time will do but full bonus marks will be given if successfully erected on that day.

Harrow P.O. was at one time constantly enlivened by the inventiveness of the practical joker, which had the two-way effect of cheering the work force when they heard of it and reviving their sagging morale if recalled during times of stress, such as lack of docket periods or inclement weather days.

May  I recall for you the urgent phone call from a driver requesting that the A.H.P. ops be told that Wealdstone Bridge had collapsed and traffic delays were likely.

Wealdstone Bridge. Credit: www.instantstreetview.com

I merely report facts by saying that an official notice was stuck on the P.H.G. counter instructing all drivers to avoid Wealdstone Bridge as it had fallen down. Which they all did until someone cottoned on that it was April 1.

There was the case of the A.I. who, answering the phone one morning, was asked by a gentlemen speaking with a pronounced Indian accent, if he would be kind enough to direct him to Pinner docks.  The conversation went something like this:

A.I. "Pinner docks? You mean Pinner station?"

Caller "No, no, no, I am wanting Pinner docks where the boats come in"

A.I. "This is Harrow here. Perhaps you want Harrogate?"

Caller "No, no, I am wanting Pinner in Harrow"

A.I. "There are no docks in Harrow. Do you mean Harwich?"

Caller "I am wanting Pinner docks in Harrow. I am meeting my family from India who are coming on the boat but I am not knowing the way so please to tell me where is situated Pinner docks, please"

A.I. "Listen. There are no docks in Pinner. Its miles from the sea and you can't sail a bloody boat up Pinner bloody High Street"

Caller  "There is no need for blaspheming. Please telling me where is Pinner docks and I will go"

The A.I, who was turning a deep shade of purple started to holler - "For Chrissake can't you understand..  " - when uncontrollable, hysterical laughter from the caller's end suddenly brought understanding and he tumbled and slammed  down the phone receiver. What's more, being of a serious nature he failed to see the funny side of it, and remembering who could do an Indian accent, accused him of insolence towards a superior officer and disciplined him accordingly.  Caller put it down to occupational hazard.

Pinner High Street - docks just out of shot. www.instantstreetview.com

A  classic example of practical jokery was staged one night when two gents from Region were visiting the office. The only thing that failed to gain top marks award was that it was not April 1st. 

An A.I. on duty was called to the phone and asked to be connected to a responsible officer. Naturally he asked if he could hep and was told that the Region men had a very important appointment after the conclusion of their tour at Harrow and a helicopter would be landing in the yard to pick them up. It was urgent that the yard be cleared of vans and landing lights be arranged to guide the 'copter down. Caller suggested a torch in each hand waved above the head would be ideal. 

The late staff of Harrow P.O. were treated to the sight of an A.I. standing in the middle of an empty yard guiding down an imaginary helicopter by waving two bike lamps in the air.

The two top brass left later, after explanations had been made, highly delighted with their evening. We're all boys at heart. 

The case of the Vulcan bombers was a practical joke which just failed to make the grade. A request from Wealdstone station for a special collection to collect a consignment of Vulcan Bombers which had arrived in recorded packets nearly fooled the Organising Inspector who took the message and was on his way to lay on a driver.

Passing through the Inspectorate he startled them all by stopping short in his tracks, and saying out loud to himself - "Vulcan Bombers? Wait a minute, they're bloody great planes!" and turned smartly about and hurried back to his office. He had suddenly remembered the date. It was a near miss.

Many more have been played at Harrow, far too numerous to mention here, but sadly the art seems to have died the death. A pity as we are all the more happy for a good laugh, with the possible exception of the victim. 

When a young family man I was eager to carry on these noble traditions with my family and used to set all manner of catch for them before I left for work on April 1st morning.

The kids thought it great fun but as they got older, entered in to the spirit of the game with all the carefree abandon of youth, and it got positively dangerous I considered myself lucky if I got through the day with only a flesh wound.

After nearly pitching headlong down the stairs tripping over a string that my boy had tied across the top step and narrowly escaping getting concussion when a pile of heavy books, which my daughters had balanced on top of the bedroom door, smashed on to my head as I opened it, I decided it was time to call a halt to the fun and games.

My wife said at the time that it was not fair telling them that it didn't count after noon as I'd gone to work before they got up, and they didn't have a chance of catching me unless they did it at night. So I'd better take my aspirins and shut up moaning. 

Well maybe occupational hazard does get a bit too hazardous at times, but I still urge a reincarnation of April Foolery.

So you may get a fracture here and there, or your dignity could get offended but someone will get a good laugh out of it and that's what life's all about, ain't it?

Notes:

I have no clue what the Post Office acronyms used here mean: AI, PHG, AHG ops. Any ideas ?

For more on April Fools Day see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_April_Fools%27_Day_jokes