Stairlift to Heaven

by Terry Ravenscroft

  “So we’re not moving it,” the bin man smirked.

  It was the smirk that did it. If it hadn’t been for that I would have put my hand up, maybe even apologised, offered to separate the pizza from the box, put them in their respective black and green bins and let the matter go. But there are certain things I won’t stand for and one of them is public servants, whose wages are partly paid for by me, smirking at me.

  Two days later me and the man from the council who had put me in my place made our way to my black wheelie bin.

  “I can see how your refuse collection operative made the mistake,” I said. “Especially as at that time in the morning the light wouldn’t have been too good.”

  I swung back the lid of the wheelie bin. At the top of the assorted household rubbish was the pizza box. I had previously removed the pizza from it and in its place had put the picture of the pizza Napolitano kindly donated to me by the man at the pizza shop the day previously. “As you can see, he was wrong. Furthermore there was no need for him to take pleasure in informing me that I had transgressed your regulations and I insist that you to take him to task about it.”

  “I’ll have a word with him,” said the man from the council. “And please accept apologies.

  The lengths you have to go in order to stay ahead of the game.

  ****

  June 2 2010. THE NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL.

  A month ago to the day the Pollitts moved into the house next-door-but-one that had been empty and up for sale for the last six months, following the death of its owner Mrs Linney. I didn’t know immediately that the Pollitts were Neighbours from Hell, but early indications were that you wouldn’t bet against it. That they arrived in an old off-road vehicle, the transport of choice of Neighbours from Hell in my experience, was a pointer I failed to note at the time.

  There are five Pollitts in all, four if you ignore the baby, which Mr and Mrs Pollitt are obviously in the habit of doing as they left it crying for the entire three hours it took them to move in, after first securing it to an ornamental stone bird bath in the back garden. Two minutes later they tied their dog to the birdbath alongside the baby and thereafter it was a toss-up which of them was making the most noise.

  Mr Pollitt’s low forehead gives him a distinctly Neanderthal appearance. Low foreheads invariably indicate low intelligence whereas high foreheads indicate high intelligence, and although either Ant or Dec - I’m not sure which, I’ve never been able to watch them for long enough to find out which is which, but the least short one - disproves the high forehead/high intelligence theory, I suspect that in Mr Pollitt’s case it would stand up to the closest scrutiny.

  Mrs Pollitt could best be described as a cross between Janice Battersby of Coronation Street and a pit bull terrier, but nowhere near as refined. She was wearing a sort of giant pink babygro, multi-coloured Wellington boots with flowers on and a facial expression like a smacked arse.

  The boy is about fourteen, that magical age when a teenager goes from knowing hardly anything at all to knowing absolutely everything. He has no visible skin on his face so far as I can tell, the spaces between his acne and his tattoos being taken up by a collection of ironmongery consisting mainly of rings and metal studs.

  The girl, at a guess a year younger, is at the age when a girl’s periods arrive, along with a large helping of attitude. Her general demeanour indicated that she had recently taken delivery of these twin curses, the latter in spades. She wore a pair of green cycling shorts under a purple tutu and a crop top with the words ‘Too Drunk to Fuck’ written on the front.

  The dog is of indeterminate ancestry. It certainly has some collie in it, although what was in the collie, or what the collie was in, isn’t clear, possibly an Old English sheepdog or an Irish wolfhound. It is a sort of muddy grey, or mud and grey, its fur matted, and has two dreadlocks hanging down each side of its head.

  Of the six of them the dog looks by some distance to be the most intelligent, but as even the most intelligent dog in the world would be incapable of fashioning its own dreadlocks it is obvious that one of the Pollitts must have plaited them into its fur. And if they’re capable of doing that what else are they capable of? I shuddered to think.

  Mr Pollitt is called Wayne. His wife is not called Waynetta, although she might well be, but Liz. The boy is Keanu. The girl is Catherine Zeta. The baby has been blessed with the name Honey Nectarine. The dog is called You Twat, if Wayne Pollitt’s instruction to it to ‘Get from under the bleeding feet you twat,’ and Catherine Zeta Pollitt’s ‘Stop trying to shag my fucking leg you twat’ are anything to go by.

  Judging by their accents Pollitt is probably from Manchester, his wife from London, the kids from Hell. I didn’t have to ask their names. They could be heard clearly by anyone within half a mile of their back garden, even the deaf. The dialogue went something like:-

  Wayne Pollitt: “Liz, for fuck’s sake give Honey Nectarine her fucking dummy.”

  Liz Pollitt: “I’m tryin’ to wean ‘er off it ain’t I.”

  “Keanu’s just fumped me again, Mum!”

  Keanu Pollitt: “Well she were tickling t’ dog’s bollocks.”

  Catherine Zeta Pollitt: “He likes ‘avin’ his bollocks tickled.”

  Liz Pollitt: “All males do, Caffrin Zee-ah, all males do.”

  Keanu Pollitt: “The slag already knows that.”

  Catherine Zeta Pollitt: “Fuck off you!”

  Etc. Mercifully they all went out in their yobmobile in the afternoon. Except for the dog that is, which spent half the afternoon in the back garden, barking. The other half it spent howling.

  I could see the dog, tied to a clothes-line pole, from our back bedroom window. In an effort to shut it up I opened the window, took a small ornament we could do without from the window bottom and threw it at it. My hope was that even if I missed the dog it might take it as a warning and stop barking in case the next one hit it, or if it did hit it give it something to bark about. It landed about a yard away. The dog ate it. Or at least it attempted to eat it, before spitting it out in disgust. Then it carried on alternately barking and howling until the Pollitts returned.

  The following day all the Pollitts went out early; Wayne Pollitt and his wife Liz presumably to work, Keanu and Catherine Zeta to school, or more likely to hang about the local shopping arcade possibly dealing drugs; the baby, Honey Nectarine, probably to a childminder, or maybe a kennels. The dog was not placed in kennels and was left out in the garden to howl and bark like a demented Dervish all day.

  I could see the way things were going so I wasted no time in reporting the situation to the Environmental Health people, who promised to send someone round. However if I knew them it would be in their own good time, so what to do about it in the meantime? I write my books every morning for three or four hours - I was into the last couple of chapters of ‘Inflatable Hugh’ at the time - and I wasn’t going to be able to write a word with that racket going on. Perhaps if I were to sneak up on the dog armed with the carving knife and cut off its dreadlocks it would get the message, much as Delilah had quietened down Samson when she cut off his hair? A nice thought, but improbable. Far better to cut off its testicles with the carving knife; there would be more and louder howling initially but it wouldn’t last for long. In the end I decided to take a less direct, more diplomatic route, and reason with the Pollitts, so when they had all returned to their lair that evening I called round.

  Pollitt answered the door, surliness personified. “What?”

  “I’m your next-door-but-one neighbour. It’s about your dog.”

  At this his bottom lip jutted out even further. “What about it?”

  “It’s been in your back garden all day long barking and howling.”

  He cocked an ear. “I can’t hear anything.”

  “That could be because it isn’t barking and howling now. Possibly because you’ve fed it.”

  “Nobody else has complained.”

  “That’s because everyone else g
oes out to work during the day. They wouldn’t be able to hear it while they’re a work. Unless they’re unfortunate enough to work within a five mile radius of your back garden. Anyway I want you to put a stop to it.”

  “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  “Well one way would be to keep it in the house, not out in the back garden.

  “If we do that it shits in the house.”

  “Well train it to shit somewhere else.”

  “We have, we’ve trained it to shit in the garden.”

  “But if you leave it in the garden it barks and howls all day. Probably because it’s up the arse in shit. But whatever the reason it’s not good enough and I insist you put a stop to it.”

  “Tell him to fuck off and mind his own fucking business, Dad.” Catherine Zeta had joined her father. She turned her attention to me, and reiterated her advice, lest her father hadn’t heard her. “Fuck off and mind your own fucking business.”

  “You heard the little lady,” said Pollitt, and closed the door in my face.

  I rang the Environmental Health people and reported the conversation. The man there said he had every sympathy but it would take about three months to deal with. “Initial letter. Follow up letter in stronger terms when they ignore the initial letter. Then, if they ignore the letter in stronger terms, a letter threatening them with County Court.” I congratulated him and his department for pulling out all the stops. Without a trace of irony in his voice he thanked me for my kind words and said they were only doing their job. I told Atkins about the situation with the dog and he offered to shoot it for me. I was tempted but told him I wasn’t that desperate yet.

  The following day, having paced out the distance from the end of my house to the middle of the Pollitt’s house, I found that the nearest point of our back garden to the clothes-line post to which the Pollitt’s dog is tethered to be 26 yards. I estimated that the chain by which the dog is hitched to the clothes-line post to be eight feet in length. This meant that I would have to throw an eight ounce minced-beef and crushed-sleeping pills ball a distance of 26 yards and land it in a sixteen feet diameter circle. A piece of cake. Or rather a piece of minced-beef and crushed- sleeping pill.

  The Trouble came into the kitchen “Why are you making meatballs?”

  “They’re for the Pollitt’s dog.”

  “You’re going to try feeding it? In the hope it will stop barking?”

  “In the certain knowledge it will stop barking.”

  I put The Trouble in the picture as I added the six crushed sleeping pills to the pound of beef mince and formed it into two eight ounce balls. I half-expected her to raise some opposition to my plan as she used to be in the RSPCA until the day she swerved to miss a cat and suffered a whiplash injury and went off animals, but none came. No doubt she was as heartily sick and fed up with the Pollitt’s dog barking and howling as I was. “Right,” I said, “get yourself upstairs and watch out of the back bedroom window and tell me if I hit the target.”

  “Aren’t you going to cook the meatballs first?”

  “No, they might disintegrate in flight if I cook them.”

  Her latent RSPCA connection emerged. “You’ll give the dog worms, feeding it raw meat.”

  “That won’t worry it, it’ll be asleep. I shouldn’t think the worms will be too active either.”

  The Trouble went up to the bedroom and I went out into the back garden. The dog was howling fit to burst. I’d already been down to the park for half-an-hour’s practice to get my range - no sign of the Zimmer Frame team practicing so they might by now have abandoned the idea - but even so I decided to take the precaution of having a practice throw in situ with a large pebble the same weight as the meat ball. I took up my position and tossed the pebble into the Pollitt’s garden. The howling increased.

  “You’ve hit the dog,” said The Trouble, from the bedroom window.

  “Good.” Having found my range I then expertly tossed the first of the meatballs. The barking stopped. I looked up to The Trouble. “Did it land in the target area?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s happening? Is the dog eating it?”

  “It’s sniffing at it.”

  I waited a moment or two. “Well?”

  “It’s still sniffing at….no, no it’s turned its nose up at it; it’s turned away.”

  “Shit!”

  “I said you should have cooked it, the trouble with you is you don’t listen.”

  I had to admit she could be right. After all the meat in tins of dog food is cooked. I decided to leave things as they were for the time being in the hope the dog would change its mind and eat it. If it didn’t I would have another go with a cooked meatball at the next available opportunity. The barking continued until the Pollitts arrived home so it looked like the dog had continued to ignore the meatball, either that or it ate it and it’s got a stronger constitution than I’d given it credit for.

  After cooking the second of the spiked meatballs, in fact deliberately overcooking it in an effort to make it as solid as possible and thus less prone to disintegrating in flight like one of Barnes Wallis’s early attempts at the Bouncing Bomb, and after allowing it to cool down sufficiently, I took it out into the garden and prepared to propel it into the Pollitt’s back garden.

  The Trouble was out so this time I had to manage without her assistance, but as this also meant managing without her criticism I wasn’t too put out about it. Once again I tossed a trial pebble before unleashing the meatball. On Friday the pebble had hit the dog. Unfortunately this time it didn’t, leastwise the dog didn’t start howling any louder. Confident I’d judged the distance correctly I quickly followed the pebble with the meatball. By the time I’d gone upstairs to check on the result the dog was champing away hungrily on the meatball. I looked on in the certain knowledge that it would soon be taking forty winks, or more likely four hundred winks, and that I’d soon be able to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet again and get on with Inflatable Hugh. I got my binoculars out to get a better sight of the beast departing for the Land of Nod. However, as well as the dog my binoculars picked out something on the ground nearby. At first I thought it was a large dog turd but then recognised it as the raw meatball I’d thrown the day before. It had been there all day without any of the Pollitts noticing it, or more likely noticing it and wrongly identifying it as just another of the dog’s multitude of turds, as I had. Having finished the meatball the dog stood there salivating and licking its lips. Then, no doubt having acquired a taste for beef mince meatballs it set about eating the previously ignored raw meatball. Making it a dozen sleeping pills it had swallowed. Having quickly polished that off as well the dog stood smacking its chops and looking around hopefully for another meatball.

  Once the dozen sleeping pills had kicked in I expected it to start getting drowsy, and maybe stagger about drunkenly for a bit before giving up the ghost, lying down, and going to sleep, but no, after about thirty seconds it simply dropped to the ground like a stone. There was a single violent twitch from its hind legs as it rolled over onto its back, then no further movement, not so much as a flicker. I watched it for a good ten minutes and it didn’t move a muscle. It looked as dead as a doornail to me, which could very well have been the case after swallowing a dozen sleeping pills all at one go. It’s certainly quietened it down though.

  It was still in exactly the same position when I looked again about six-o-clock. The Pollitts had all arrived home by this time but none had apparently noticed the lack of life in the dog; either that or they’d noticed and didn’t give a toss. Probably the latter.

  The following day I answered the door to an angry-looking Wayne Pollitt.

  “What do you know about what happened to our fucking dog?” he demanded.

  I am an accomplished liar when the occasion demands, especially when faced with an irate man big enough to eat me for breakfast I, so I feigned complete innocence. “Has something happened to your dog?” I said, a picture of neighbourly concern.<
br />
  “It’s been asleep since yesterday and all day today. The vet says it’s in a fucking.”

  “I see.” I thought for a moment, as if addressing myself to the problem of bringing the dog out of its coma. “You could try singing to it.”

  “What?”

  “What’s its favourite piece of music? ‘How Much is that Doggy in the Window’ perhaps?” I searched my brain for other dog songs. “‘Old Shep’ maybe?”

  His bloodshot eyes bore into me. “Are you fucking mental?”

  “Not at all. It’s a proven fact that if you play their favourite pieces of music to people in a coma it quite often brings them back to consciousness. There was a case in the papers only the other week. A couple constantly played James Blunt songs to their mother and she came out of the coma after three days. Mind you it put the couple and one of the nurses into a coma but….And if it works for people there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for dogs.”

  Pollitt eyed me balefully. “Anyway, what do you know about what happened to it, Mr Clever fucker?”

  I remained cool. “What makes you think I know anything about it?”

  “Because you’re the twat what complained about it, aren’t you.”

  “I regularly complain to the window cleaner that he’s missing the corners but I’ve never yet felt the need to put him into a coma for it.”

  He made a fist and brandished it under my nose. “If I find out it was you had anything to do with it I’ll fucking well chin you.”

  “Very well. But you won’t. Have a nice day.”

  The following day brought good news and even better news. The good news was that the Pollitt’s dog had finally come out of its coma. Whether this had anything to with Wayne Pollitt or any of his clan singing ‘How Much is that Doggy in the Window’ or ‘Old Shep’ into its earhole isn’t clear; probably not. More likely it was one of the other methods the Pollitts usually employ to stir it into action, such as kicking it or tickling its testicles, which brought it back to the land of the living. (The reader might be surprised to learn that I consider the dog’s return to consciousness as good news. However, although an intolerant man when it comes to dogs barking I am not an evil or vindictive person, and I certainly didn’t want the dog to die. Granted I could have done with it staying in a coma for a little longer - about five years would have been nice - but then I’m only human.)