Stairlift to Heaven

by Terry Ravenscroft

  “You’ll soon get used to it,” she said for the second time that night, but now with a little less conviction. She was right though, because when I woke up about an hour later for my second pee of the night I clearly remembered there was a new route to the bedroom door. However by the time I’d had my pee, five minutes later, and made my way back to the bedroom I’d forgotten about it again. This time when I collided with the bed I didn’t fall on the floor I fell on top of The Trouble, waking her up again of course. She snapped on the bedside lamp and looked up at me. I said the only thing it was possible to say in such a position: “Well since we find ourselves like this, how about making love?” And we did. And it ensured optimum happiness for me. But I don’t think it had anything to do with the position of the bed.

  ****

  August 10 2007. DUCK.

  When I ordered duck I wasn’t aware that Atkins couldn’t abide other people eating it when he wasn’t eating it himself. Not that it would have stopped me ordering it if I had known, far from it, I still haven’t got him back for giving my address to the Zimmer Frame throwers.

  There were eight of us at the meal to celebrate Ted Burrows’ birthday; The Trouble and I, the aforementioned Atkins and his wife Meg, The Parsley-Hays, and Ted and his wife Caroline. The waiter had handed out menus and ten minutes later had asked each of us in turn what we would like. I was the last to be asked.

  “Duck,” I replied.

  “Fuck!” said Atkins.

  “Sacre bleu” said Caroline Burrows, who is learning French and tries it out at every opportunity.

  “That means I’ll have to have it now,” Atkins complained.

  “Have what?” said Ted Burrows, not having heard the foregoing exchange, being more interested in the wine list.

  “Duck,” said Atkins, his face like a wet week in Wigan. “I was going to have braised beef and savoury suet dumplings but now I’m going to have to have duck.”

  “He can’t bear to see anyone eating duck when he’s not having it,” Meg Atkins explained to the rest of the party. “He can do without duck. He can cast duck completely from his mind. It could be as though there were no such creatures as ducks, as though ducks had never been on the face of the earth. But only if someone else isn’t having duck.”

  “I was really looking forward to having braised beef and savoury suet dumplings as well,” griped Atkins, giving me a dirty look.

  The Trouble appealed to me. “Can’t you have something else?”

  “Well I could,” I said, “but I’m in a duck mood.”

  “They have bouef bourguignon,” coaxed The Trouble, “You like bouef bourguignon.”

  “No I’ll stick to the duck if it’s all the same to you.”

  “The guinea fowl in brandy and juniper berry sauce is excellent,” cajoled Robert Parsley-Hay. “Jill and I had it the other week. It’s very much like duck in fact.”

  “In that case I might as well have duck.”

  “It wasn’t all that much like duck,” said Jill Parsley-Hay, trying to retrieve the situation.

  “No good for me then,” I said, “I want something that definitely tastes of duck. Preferably duck.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be my friend!” accused Atkins. Atkins was once a member of the local amateur operatic society until they banned him and can get a bit melodramatic at times.

  “Friend, not wet nurse,” I said, sticking to my guns and my duck.

  “I really had the taste for braised beef and savoury suet dumplings,” moaned Atkins. “But now it’s got to be duck.”

  “So why are you complaining then?” I said. “You like duck.”

  Atkins fumed. “I’m complaining because I fancied bloody braised beef and sodding savoury suet dumpling.”

  “Calme toi, Monsieur Atkins, calme toi,” said Caroline, demonstrating her command of the French language, but not necessarily when to use it.

  “Bollocks,” said Atkins, demonstrating his command of the English language and exactly when to use it.

  I decided to rack up a few brownie points to be cashed in at a later date. “Oh all right then. Anything for a quiet life. I’ll have the bouef bourguignon.”

  Atkins was overjoyed. “Really?”

  “I wouldn’t have ordered duck in the first place if I’d known,” I lied.

  Meg Atkins was grateful. “Thanks, Terry.”

  Atkins added his gratitude.

  The food arrived in due course. Atkins was the first to be served, with his braised beef and suet dumplings, and quite mouth-watering it looked too, in fact I wished I’d ordered it myself. The waiter served the rest of us. Last to be served was Ted Burrows. The waiter placed a plate before him. Sitting on it, invitingly, was half an extremely succulent-looking crispy-skinned duck smothered in a rich orange and whisky sauce.

  “I ordered the pork medallions in cider,” said Ted.

  “Sorry, sir,” said the waiter, making to remove the plate.

  “No, it’s all right,” said Ted, “I quite fancy the duck now I’ve seen it, it looks quite mouth-watering.”

  “Fucking hell fire!” shouted Atkins, and without so much as another word got to his feet threw his knapkin onto the floor and stormed out.

  We shared his braised beef and savoury suet dumpling between us. Well I had about half of it actually. It was as good as it looked.

  ****

  August 17 2007.BEARD

  This morning I happened to glance through the windows of the local gents’ hairdressers. His price list caught my attention. It read as follows: -

  MAN - £9.00

  BOY TO 16 - £8.00

  STUDENT - £8.50

  OLD MAN 65-90 - £6.50

  HEAD SHAVE 1,2,3,4 UP - £10.00

  VERY OLD MAN 90 Plus - Negotiable

  BEARD - £4.00

  LONG BEARD - Negotiable

  HAIR WASHED - £7.00

  HIGHLIGHTS - From £15

  I just had to go in. The shop was empty, except for the barber, who was reading the Sporting Chronicle whilst waiting for someone desirous of having a Head Shave 1,2,3,4 UP that would maybe supply the £10 for his £5 each way bet at Lingfield Park. On seeing me he immediately laid aside the Sporting Chron and sprang to his feet ready for action.

  “Good morning. What will it be?”

  “How long is a long beard?”

  “A long beard?”

  “Your notice says the price is negotiable. I’d like to negotiate .”

  He looked at me closely with suspicious his eyes. “You haven’t got a beard.”

  “I’m thinking of growing one. The thing is I’d quite like a long beard - a bit like one of the Gillette Brothers if you’ve ever seen a photo of them, or maybe Karl Marx - but not if it’s going to cost me substantially more than just a beard. I mean what’s the cut-off price? If you’ll pardon the expression. At what point does a Beard become a Long Beard?”

  “Two inches is a Beard. After that it’s a Long Beard.”

  “And how do you charge for a Long Beard?”

  “Fifty pence an inch.”

  “So if I have a two foot beard it will cost me twelve pounds to have it trimmed.”

  “Right.”

  “What if I’m 90 Plus?”

  “What?”

  “Well if you’re 90 Plus you get your hair cut more cheaply, I was wondering if that applies to Long Beards as well?”

  “But you’re not 90 Plus are you.”

  “I will be by the time I’ve grown a two foot beard.”

  The barber looked at me even more suspiciously but after a moment said, “I’ll knock you a couple of quid off.”

  “I’m a student too. Open University. Media Studies.” I opened my wallet and flashed my bus pass. “My student’s union card. A hair cut is cheaper for students; does that apply to beards too? ....I can see from your face that it probably doesn’t.”

  “Are you taking the piss, mate?”

  “Not at all. So we’ll leave it at that then shall we.
Do I have to make an appointment? When I’ve grown my beard?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Right.”

  I fucked off. I wasn’t about to argue the toss with a man who has access to a cut-throat razor.

  ****

  August 24 2007. SHIPMAN.

  A couple of years ago, whilst I was travelling by car to take part in a bowls match, one of my team mates pointed out a white painted stone cottage set a little back from the road. “See that house,” he said. “That’s where Shipman used to live.” We were in the Gee Cross area of Hyde, Greater Manchester, and the Shipman in question was Dr Harold Shipman, the notorious mass-murderer who did for at least 218 and quite probably as many as 459 women between 1971 and 1998. I use the road fairly often and I’ve never been able to go past the house since without looking at it and I don’t suppose I ever will, morbid curiosity getting the better of me as it does almost everyone.

  Yesterday I returned to play bowls at the same venue, the Grapes Hotel. After I’d played my game I chatted for a while with my opponent, Ted Grundy, as we drank our pints of bitter. It turned out that Ted made his living as a house clearer. I asked him how was business? He said it was steady, and went on to tell me that, notwithstanding hypothermia in very cold winters, the house-clearing trade wasn’t subject to great swings, there was always a steady flow of clients requiring houses to be cleared of furniture and effects. “Well usually,” he added, with an odd smile.

  I prompted him. “Usually?”

  “Well in 1996 business suddenly started to go up. And stayed up. Not to a great extent, but enough to be noticeable. I didn’t think too much about it at the time; I’d only been in the business a year or two and I thought maybe it was because I was doing a good job, that people I’d cleared houses for had recommended me to others. But it wasn’t that, because a couple of years later it went back down again as suddenly as it had gone up. And do you know why? I’ll tell you. It was Shipman. It was at the height of his activity; he’d been murdering all these old women - and I’d been following him round a week or two later clearing the houses of those who had been living on their own! It was all down there in my records. The police file of the scenes of his crimes was my order book a month later.”

  It immediately dawned on me that if Ted had twigged on what was happening earlier he might have saved dozens of lives but I wasn’t going to mention it, the poor bloke might not have been able to live with himself if he thought that. Eerily, as though he had read my thoughts, Ted said, “If I’d have twigged on earlier I might have saved dozens of lives

  “Right,” I said. Obviously he could live with this knowledge.

  “Of course,” he said, “whether I’d have told the police is another matter.”

  What did he mean, ‘if I’d told the police’? Why would he not have told the police?

  “I mean if the police had collared him earlier my business would have suffered,” he explained.

  And then he cracked a smile, informing me that he was only joking. At least I think he was only joking.

  ****

  September 13 2007. MR WOO

  Yesterday, six weeks to the day since our bed was given the Feng Shui treatment, the well-upholstered blonde who had talked The Trouble into going along with all this Feng Shui nonsense in the first place arrived at our house along with the Chinaman who had talked the well-upholstered blonde into going into it. The purpose of their visit was to check whether The Trouble had placed various items of our furniture in the most conducive positions according to the dictates of Feng Shui.

  I wish The Trouble had warned me beforehand as it would have saved me the embarrassment of walking in on them in just my boxer shorts on my return to the bedroom after my morning shower.

  “This is Mr Woo,” said The Trouble, indicating the Chinaman, presumably in case I might be thinking the well-upholstered blonde was called Mr Woo.

  “Shouldn’t he be outside cleaning the windows?” I asked.

  “Cleaning the windows?” said the well-upholstered blonde, officiously. “Why should Mr Woo be cleaning the windows?”

  I gave her a quick burst of George Formby’s Chinese Laundry Blues, accompanying myself on air banjo: “Oh Mr Wu, what shall I do, I’m feeling kind of Limehouse Chinese Laundry Blues.”

  That was Mr Wu,” said The Trouble, with a ‘u’. “This Mr Woo spells his name W..O..O.”

  “Oh, Mr Wooooo,” I said. “Like a puffer train.”

  “No, Woo,” said the well-upholstered blonde.

  “Take no notice of him,” said The Trouble, then, to me: “Mr Woo is a Feng Shui expert.”

  Mr Woo smiled at me. “Nice underpants.”

  “You’re not moving them,” I said, my hands going involuntarily to the sides of my boxers.

  “Mr Woo has come along to check if your bed is in the correct place,” explained the well-upholstered blonde.

  “I can save him the bother then,” I said. “It is in the right place. In the bedroom. Where else would you put a bed, in the greenhouse?”

  “You’re embarrassing me,” said The Trouble, giving me a look that would have frozen Birds Eye’s annual production of peas.

  “I’m embarrassing you?” I said. “I walk into our bedroom in just my boxers to find you and your barmpot of a mate and a Chinaman who looks suspiciously to me like the one who keeps the Chinese chippy on Market St and I’m embarrassing you?”

  The well-upholstered blonde immediately leapt to the Chinaman’s defence. “He doesn’t look suspiciously like the one who keeps the Chinese chip shop,” she glowered. “He is the one who keeps the Chinese chip shop. He is multi-talented.”

  “He is not,” I said, “he can’t cook chips for a start, he’s fucking hopeless at it, they’re always soggy.”

  I had overstepped the mark, of course. Although the F-word now seems to be more or less compulsory in conversation between the sexes when spoken by the young it is still taboo for people of my generation when in the company of women. (Except in London of course, or when you are in the company of just your wife and no other word will do.) My choice was simple. I could apologise or face the silent treatment for God knows how long. I apologised.

  After much deliberation and tut-tutting Mr Woo moved the bed about two degrees to the north. Having spent a night in it I can’t say I felt any happier in it. However The Trouble said she felt much happier in it and that the two degrees had made all the difference. I said that if the Three Degrees had been in it I would probably be happier, but if she was prepared to black-up that would do, but she just turned over and went to sleep, possibly because she’d have had a job getting hold of some burnt cork at eleven-o-clock at night.

  ****

  October 22 2007.FAT CHILDREN.

  At the age of sixty six years and seven months I have just written only my second letter to a newspaper. (My first was to Uncle Ben of the High Peak Reporter when I was ten, complaining to him that my entry in his ‘What I did on my holidays’ competition was far better than the entry that won. It was totally disregarded, and is probably the reason I haven’t written to a newspaper since.)

  The reason for abandoning my letters-to-the-editor stand was a newspaper article about Walkers Crisps. I wrote thus: -

  ‘I read that in addition to encouraging Gary Mogadon to make those puerile TV commercials (as if we didn’t see enough of him already on Match of the Day and other programmes that the BBC for some unknown reason thing he’s good enough to present), that Walkers are to re-launch their ‘Free Books For Schools Programme’. ‘Since the scheme was launched in 1999 it has provided more than 6 million free books to schools across the country’, we were proudly informed by a Walkers spokesman.

  Nothing of course is free, and in this case free means that Walkers will provide one book per one school for every five hundred tokens saved from their crisps packets. I hope one of the books is called ‘How To Lose Lots Of Excess Blubber’ and another ‘What To Do When People Start To Call You Fatty’, because th
ere are surely going to be lots of grossly overweight children around if they have to munch their way through five hundred packets of crisps every time they need a new schoolbook.

  Walkers of course are not the only food company who bribe schoolchildren to eat their products in exchange for educational materials. Cadburys are another, with their internet-based ‘Cadburys Learning Zone’, which offers, and I quote, ‘exciting and challenging materials for both school and home learning with online and download activities, fascinating facts and illustrations’. This must be the first ever programme that teaches children all about chocolate whilst at the same time teaching them how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, thus enabling them to calculate how many teeth they’ve lost due to eating the chocolate they’ve learned all about.

  Cadburys also operate a scheme similar to that of Walkers and will benevolently stump up for sports equipment for schools in return for tokens collected from their range of confectionary. This of course encourages children to eat even more chocolate than they are already eating, and having eaten it presumably to take part in sports such as Five Ton-a-Side Football and The 100 Metres Very Low Hurdles Because If They Were Any Higher The Kids Wouldn’t Be Able to Jump Over Them Because They Are So Grossly Overweight, Better Make That Just Fifty Metres Then, these being the only sort of sports activities their bloated frames will allow them to participate in.

  Naturally our old friends McDonalds have been into this sort of thing for years. In fact in yesterday’s paper there was a photograph of Newcastle and England footballer Kieran Dyer passing on tips to a clutch of schoolboy footballers who were wearing training bibs with a large McDonalds logo plastered on the front. Presumably Kieran Dyer himself eats McDonalds, and following his woeful performance in his team’s thrashing by Manchester United last Saturday you would have thought that both he and McDonalds would want to keep quiet about it, but no, footballers along with food companies were seemingly on the front row when brass necks were handed out.