ME: Hello?
BATS: Is that Mr Ravernscroff?
ME: No.
BATS: It isn’t Mr Ravernscroff?
ME: No. It is Mr Ravenscroft.
BATS: I am doing a survey, Mr Ravernscroff , and I....
ME: (BUTTING IN) Call me back when you’ve learned how to pronounce my name properly.
Then I put the phone down. However on this occasion the BATS somehow managed to pronounce my name correctly, thus getting over the first hurdle and giving himself the chance to fall at the second, which he promptly did.
My ploy whenever a BATS successfully clears the first hurdle is to say “Hang on a minute will you there’s someone at the door.” Then I leave them hanging on the phone until it finally dawns on them I’m not coming back - anything from a couple of minutes to twenty or so, although I once had one supreme optimist hang on for an hour and a quarter - then, when they hang up and my phone starts making that awful noise it makes which tells you the line is still open, I too hang up. Sometimes, depending on how I’m feeling at the time, when I answer the phone I just say nothing and simply replace the receiver.
Occasionally I will let a BATS go on a bit, allowing him to think he has hooked me, before I deftly slip the bait, usually by telling him that thanks to his chatter I’ve allowed the chip pan to catch fire. And sometimes I pretend I am very hard of hearing so they have to shout so loud they’re in great danger of straining their vocal chords. However the mood takes me.
As luck would have it when the BATS who called today rang - a rare Englishman - I was at a bit of a loose end, my usual Saturday afternoon at the football match having been called off due to a waterlogged pitch, so I allowed the call to go on for much longer than I normally would. Here is the gist of it –
BATS: Hello? Is that Mr Ravenscroft?
ME: Speaking.
BATS: We’re doing a survey, I wonder if....
ME: Are you selling something?
BATS: No, we’re just doing a survey.
ME: What about?
BATS: Food preparation in relation to cooking facilities.
ME: You’re selling kitchens.
BATS: No, we’re just doing a survey into....
ME: (BUTTING IN) Oh, shame. You see I’m in the market for a kitchen at the moment. But if you’re not selling them I might as well hang up. Bye.
BATS: No! Don’t hang up! I’m selling kitchens.
ME: Excellent. So then, how much are your kitchens? I’m not interested in anything cheap, mind. It’s quality I’m looking for. The best.
BATS: The best?
ME: That’s right, you’ve struck gold; you’ve hit the mother lode. So how much is your very best kitchen going to set me back?
BATS: Well our top of the range kitchen, in the average-sized home, with all appliances, would cost you, ball park ( I let it go this time), about twenty two grand.
ME: I’ll take two.
BATS: ....What did you say?
ME: I’ll have two. You see my daughter lives next door and it’s her twenty-first soon, I thought I’d surprise her. That’s all right is it, you can do two?
BATS: Well, yes. Yes, of course.
ME: And when can you deliver?
BATS: Six weeks is the usual.
ME: Excellent. Have you got a pen, I’ll give you my address.
BATS: I’ve got your address, 17 Lingland....
ME: No. That’s my brother’s address. Terry Ravenscroft. I’m Tom Ravenscroft, I’m staying with Terry at the moment. And my address is 27 Woologongong Springs, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Have you got that? Hello?....Hello?
****
February 14 2010. COSMETICS.
“Would you mind getting me a potato peeler, one of the French sort?” I said to the woman about to enter Boots. She looked me up and down with suspicion, probably wondering why I wasn’t getting it myself. “I suffer from Pharmophobia,” I said by way of explanation, “A fear of chemists’ shops.”
Looking far from convinced the woman nevertheless took the five pound note I proffered.
“I may be some time,” she warned, rather like a female version of Captain Oates but without the snowshoes and frostbite.
“Take all the time you want,” I said, magnanimously.
Earlier on that morning The Trouble had said, “If you go anywhere near the precinct call in at Boots and pick me up a potato peeler, would you? One of the French type. I can’t find mine anywhere.”
“No problem,” I assured her.
However there was a problem, but it had been so long since I’d been in Boots I’d forgotten all about it. The problem was, and is, that I find it hard to go in Boots without bursting out laughing at the bizarre appearance of the assistants behind the cosmetics counter. And as the cosmetics counter is the first thing you encounter on entering a Boots you can’t really miss it, and with it the grotesques lined up behind it. I don’t know what time these creatures have to get up in the morning in order to put on their make-up in the lavish quantities they do but I would have thought that, unless they had the advantage of a plasterer’s float, it would hardly be worth their while going to bed in the first place.
Atkins has the theory that as an incentive to maximise sales they are made to apply each morning any make-up not sold on the previous day, and he could be right.
One might think that in order to avoid collapsing in mirth on entering Boots I have only to keep my eyes to the front and ignore the cosmetics counter, but that’s much easier said than done, because it seems to draw you. It’s rather like being on a train seated opposite a pretty woman whose skirt has ridden up to reveal thighs and underwear - you try not to look but you just can’t help yourself.
I was with The Trouble the first time I realised I had this problem. The assistant in question opened her mouth, a crimson gash that I can only liken to a pig with its throat cut. “Good morning madam, what can I get for you?” she smiled. She had to smile, she had no choice in the matter, she was wearing so much foundation cream and face powder that her face was set in a fixed grin. She would have been smiling if she’d said, “Good morning madam, a mad axe man is just about to bring his axe down on your head.”
I didn’t laugh at first, managing to contain myself to a barely-contained grin. It was when The Trouble noticed me grinning and said: “Take no notice of him he’s got a feeble mind,” that I started to laugh, aware that people with feeble minds can get away with anything and cashing in on it.
Ever since then I’ve kept out of Boots, confining myself to a quick look through the entrance every now and then confirm that the cosmetics counter staff still make me laugh, in the hope that they don’t, as I’d quite like to go into Boots sometimes. However they still do.
Twenty minutes after she’d gone in the woman came out potato peeler-less and handed me back my five pound note. “They’re sold out,” she said, then, helpfully, “But they sell them at Debenhams, I bought one there a week or two ago.”
I thanked her and trotted off to Debenhams. And I was actually in Debenhams before I realised that they, like Boots, have their cosmetics counter hard by the entrance. I saw the cosmetics assistants, clones of those at Boots. Naturally I laughed.
“Did you get that potato peeler?” said The Trouble, the moment I got in.
“They were sold out.”
“Good. No matter, the other one turned up. Sorry to have wasted your time”
“That’s all right,” I replied. “Actually it was a bit of a laugh.”
****
March 3 2010. DRUG TRIP.
My anal pain continues to plague me. It hasn’t got any worse but then it hasn’t got any better. It’s a bit like having Jonathan Ross come to stay for a week - I could just about put up with it but I’d far rather do without it. I thought I’d tried everything in my efforts to rid myself of it, but no; apparently there was hope in the shape of space cakes. Also in the space cakes, along with hope, was something else, for space cakes, I have since found to my cos
t, are chocolate brownies with the addition of a quantity of cannabis resin.
My nephew Glen suffers from multiple sclerosis and I had learned that he regularly takes doses of cannabis to ease the pain of this condition. I wondered if it would do the same for my anal pain and asked him. He confirmed what I had been told, highly recommended it and offered to furnish me a supply. Glen explained that he took the cannabis rolled up in cigarettes along with tobacco, a concoction known as a spliff I’m told, but I said I didn’t want to do that as it took me ages to give up smoking and I didn’t want to take the risk of it starting me off again. No problem, Glen would get his fair wife Lorna to bake me some space cakes. A couple of hours later I returned from Glen’s with a brown paper bag containing eight of the so-named cakes.
The following day The Trouble had gone to visit her sister so I had the house to myself. Armed with the space cakes and the new David Lodge book I made myself comfortable on the settee. My favourite author’s intelligent prose was very soon way beyond my comprehension, in fact I doubt very much if I could have managed to make sense of the ‘Mr Men’.
I had asked Glen how many space cakes I would need to take. He advised that a certain amount of caution was required and that I should first try one, and if nothing happened have another one. I tried one. Nothing happened. I tried another. Whether something would have happened if I’d waited a little longer for the first space cake to work I will never know, but what I know for certain is that something definitely happened about two minutes after I’d eaten the second space cake.
It was a good job I was seated because the room suddenly started to go round and round. And kept on going round. Faster. For about two hours. I’d never wondered what it would be like to be in a spin-drier set on maximum but if I had that’s what it would have been like. After about two minutes of the two hours the sound effects started up in the form of a big drum being beaten at about the rate of one beat every second. It was very loud but at the same time seemed far away and sort of hollow, ethereal, funereal even. After two more minutes I became totally consumed by abject fear. For the life of me I couldn’t say what I was frightened about, either now or then. What I can say is that I was ten times more frightened than I’ve ever been in my life, and then some. Maybe it was the wallpaper that frightened me, previously an off-white with a light brown and green bamboo here and there, now purple and emerald stripes with orange stars here and there. I will never know.
And that was it for the next two hours, at which point I began to feel slightly better, inasmuch as I was then only scared shitless.
Throughout the two hours I had been absolutely, totally helpless. If someone had told me they would give me a million pounds if I raised one of my arms in the air I wouldn’t have been able to do it. If someone had told me Kristin Scott Thomas was mine for the asking she would have remained unasked for. Whether or not the space cakes had done anything for my anal pain I have no idea, but very probably, as I’m pretty sure that if someone had hit me over the head with a lump hammer I wouldn’t have felt a thing, let alone a pain in my bottom.
My mouth now began to feel dry. Within seconds later it was absolutely parched. The Gobi Desert isn’t drier. I had to have a drink of water. I tried to stand up. I would have stood more chance trying to poke half a pound of butter up a hedgehog’s arse with a red hot needle. After another fifteen minutes or so I just about managed to roll off the settee and onto my hands and knees. I don’t know how long it took me to crawl from the living room into the kitchen but it seemed like two years.
I made my way to the sink and managed to drag myself up far enough to get my mouth under the tap and turn it on. I must have drunk at least a gallon of water before my thirst was quenched. I sank to my knees. It had now been over two hours since I’d had a pee, a long time for me, especially as I’d just drunk a gallon of water, and now I had to go to the toilet. I dragged myself up the stairs one at a time. I will skip the job I had having a pee after I eventually made it to the bathroom as it is far too embarrassing but a mop was later involved. When I’d finished I just sat there on the bathroom floor, not daring to go downstairs in case I had to go back up again.
It took the best part of five hours before I was anything like back to normal. I phoned Glen and told him what had happened. He just laughed and said that I’d slightly overdosed and been on a trip. It was a trip I will never be going on again and to make sure I didn’t I threw the remaining space cakes in the bin. When The Trouble returned a bit later on I was sat on the settee reading my book. “I hope you haven’t been sat there all day,” she said.
“No, I had a trip out earlier,” I said.
****
March 16 2010. BREASTS.
The Sunday Times TV listings tells me that on BBC 3 tonight there is a programme called ‘My Breasts and I’. I thought at first it might be a new situation comedy, about the Breast Family, Joanne Breast, her thick husband George Breast, their children Jason and Samantha Breast who keep coming through doors and grinning like loonies, and their next-door neighbour Jeremy who is so thick that if he fell into a barrel of tits he’d climb out sucking his thumb; sort of like ‘My Family’ but with laughs. But no, apparently it is a documentary about female breasts.
The Sunday Times writes of it - ‘More than you could possibly want to know about how the former Atomic Kitten Jenny Frost feels about her bosoms (‘Two tea bags after they’ve been dunked’, is how she sums them up). Plus how lots of other women (among them Joan Collins) feel about them, and a bra-fitting from the Queen’s corsetiere (though not, as you might guess, with an appearance from the Queen)’.
I don’t know the feelings of others on the subject but a glimpse of the Queen’s breasts is not high on my list of things I am aching to see, so the news that we won’t be seeing the royal nipples is by no means a disappointment. Having said that there is no reason to suppose that Elizabeth Regina’s knockers might be, like Atomic Kitten Jenny Frost’s, like two tea bags. On the contrary there is every reason to suppose that the Queen’s breasts will be firm and pert, their nipples pointing outwards rather than at her feet; after all, her hairstyle hasn’t altered since she was an eighteen-year-old so why should her breasts have changed? Her hair has changed colour of course, from brown to grey, so maybe she has grey breasts now, or breasts with grey hair on them, but I’d wager quite a bit that they’re still the same shape.
I should of course know for a fact if the Queen’s mammaries are the same shape, God knows there’s been enough pictures of her in the newspapers and on television over the years to enable one to form an opinion, but since I was old enough to think for myself whenever I see a picture of the Queen in the newspapers I move quickly on to something less boring, without taking the trouble to examine the latest state of her breasts.
There is still an Atomic Kitten’s tea bag tits to look forward to seeing though, in addition to those of Joan Collins, whose tits by now must also look like two tea bags, or if they don’t it can only be because she’s had them pumped full of silicone.
Thank Christ I won’t have to watch it.
****
April 4 2010. WHEELIE BINS.
“I’d like a picture of a pizza.” I said to the man at the pizza shop.
He frowned. “A picture of a pizza?”
I pointed to a picture of a pizza Napolitano on the wall. “That one would suit.”
“You don’t want a pizza?
I explained. “We only have one every couple of weeks or so and we had one last week. Very nice it was too. A Four Seasons with extra garlic. But today it’s just a picture of one that I want. I’ll quite willingly pay for it.”
“Why do you want a picture of a pizza?”
I told him and five minutes later walked out with a rolled-up picture of the Napolitano under my arm, free of charge, and a bag of chips in my hand which I didn’t really want but which I’d bought because the pizza man had been so nice about letting me have the picture for nothing.
About a cou
ple of months ago the town council had delivered a green wheelie bin to my door, a companion for its black brother. With it came a list of things I could throw into it and which I would no longer be allowed to throw into the black bin. I would be given a month to get used to the new system of only throwing certain things in one bin and certain things in the other bin, thereafter if I put a certain thing in the wrong bin the bin men would refuse to empty it. There was no mention of uncertain things, such as something for the green bin which had become contaminated by something for the black bin, such as a shoe box with the remains of the Sunday dinner in it, but I suppose the council can’t think of everything. There was also no mention as to how the bin men would know if someone ignored the new system and just carried on putting all their refuse in one or other of the bins and used the other bin as a mobile water butt or something. I asked.
“The refuse collection operatives have been instructed to look inside your bin from time to time,” said the council official. “And in answer to your other question, who would be daft enough to put the remains of a Sunday dinner in a shoe box?”
“Me,” I said. I paused, giving him the chance to apologise for calling me daft. No apology was forthcoming, so, pausing only to mount my high horse, I went on. “There was nothing daft about it. Both as a method of maximising available bin space and as a means of keeping the inside of the wheelie bin free from encrusted food it was quite the reverse of daft, it was eminently sensible.”
“Well it isn’t eminently sensible any more, it is contravening our new refuse disposal guidelines,” he said. I didn’t argue with him. I know when I’m beaten.
One morning last week I answered the door to one of the bin men.
“There’s a cardboard box in your black wheelie bin,” he said.
I didn’t argue with the bin man either. He was right, I realised as soon as he said it. A couple of nights previously The Trouble and I had dined on a takeaway pizza. Just as we were about to eat it a friend of The Trouble’s brought round some home-made apple pie, still hot from the oven, and to do it justice we’d left a good half of the pizza, which I then threw into the bin along with the box.
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