When I was at school we learned in history classes about the great British Empire and I’d feel a sense of entitlement. Like I had every right to go anywhere I pleased and use my British pounds to live like a king. That was until my friend Paul Baker pointed to one of the pictures in the history books and said, ‘Stephen, you look more like the slaves than the conquerors.’ I ran home and asked my mum and she said, ‘He is right. Now go and do the washing-up. Sweep the stairs. And clean up after your sisters.’
So when I took my first holiday as an adult it was quite the momentous occasion. And the great US of A was to be the destination. I’d been seduced by the movies and I wanted to see New York more than anything. Steam rising off the subway. Steaks as big as your fist. Harlem, hip-hop and graffiti. I was a young man of twenty-four and when I had the opportunity to go I seized it.
The only reason I could afford to go on this trip at all was because I’d taken advantage of a special giveaway offer. I had seen an advertising promotion in the national press placed by the famous vacuum cleaning company Hoover. They were offering two free tickets to America for anyone who’d buy a Hoover. Henry Hoover may look like a pleasant smiley face on the outside, but I knew him as the evil clown-face laughing at me as I attempted to clean the family home. Having moved out, I now wasn’t particularly interested in domestic chores and as such I was a bit of a slob in my own flat.
But when I read the advert in the paper, I could hardly believe what I saw. A free holiday to America! It was too good to be true! I went straight home from the newsagent’s promising to tell my flatmate Dustin all about it when he got home. Dustin and I had stayed living together throughout university and, once we graduated, we moved in together into a flat-share in Ealing. I really liked him and I’d have liked for more, if you know what I mean. Sadly, Dustin was totally straight. When he arrived home later that evening I pounced on him as soon as he entered the room. He was used to this kind of thing by now.
Although we had both enrolled in the same polytechnic in the same year, things hadn’t panned out exactly the same for us. Dustin had been a diligent student and had graduated with a good degree and already had a good job as a primary school teacher. Student life for me had meant missing lectures and going out for the day with my newfound friends. I remember the joy of freshers’ week. The thrill of discovering new mates and new activities was only equalled by the thrill of discovering the student bar. We put up with its ridiculous themed nights because of the cheap alcohol. In fact, you could even bring people from outside the college as long as you had your student ID. When it became common knowledge on my street that I had exclusive access to inexpensive alcohol, I suddenly had an army of new friends from Tooting who accompanied me wherever I went. It wasn’t just the cheap alcohol that made them want to hang out with me at the student bar. Oh no. They were also trying to pull the naive students (Charlotte was game).
Even though I had loads of part-time jobs as a student and a government grant, the money wasn’t enough to relieve the massive expense of books, travel, accommodation and the big bar bills. Looking back, I can see how it was a crime that banks happily lured all these eager young people who had just left school with cheap credit cards and overdrafts. This is the kind of luxury that should really be reserved for proper grown-ups. I passed my degree but didn’t go into barristers’ chambers, and indeed had to take any and all jobs to help me pay off my vast debts.
Because of the hefty credit card bills streaming through the letter box on a daily basis, air travel was well and truly out of my price range, which was why I was so excited about the prospect of taking a free holiday.
‘You’ll never believe what I found out today!’ I said like a puppy on amphetamines as soon as Dustin walked in the front door. I was so excited that he must have thought I was having some sort of episode. The confused look on his face said a thousand words – ‘get away from me, you crazy horny bastard’ was just a small handful of them. Reeling from my bizarre greeting, Dustin slowly put his bag on the floor.
‘What is it, Stephen?’
‘Hoover! You know Hoover?’ I sounded like some kind of child with learning difficulties. I was often trying to impress Dustin but usually came off sounding a bit like a knob head. ‘Hoover are doing a promotion!’ I was trying to get a flicker of reaction out of his stony face; I really was obsessed with him.
‘So?’ he said, nonchalantly.
I was dumbfounded. I was not expecting this lame noncommittal response and could barely contain my frustration. ‘Hoover are giving away two free return tickets to America. We could go to New York.’
Dustin’s face once again showed no excitement as he paused. ‘Do you have to buy a Hoover?’ he said, matter of fact. Imagination was not his strong suit.
‘Yes! But you get a free holiday to America,’ I repeated sarcastically.
‘Well, they’re not free then, are they? There’s got to be a catch, Stephen. There always is,’ he replied in a pedantic tone. ‘You’re an advertiser’s dream victim, Stephen. You get caught up in the hype. Remember when you bought those global hyper-colour T-shirts and magic-eye posters? All you got was a terrible headache and neon-green sweat patches. That was not an attractive look.’
‘This is totally different. It’s a win–win situation. Do you have any idea how much tickets to America are?’ I didn’t know how much they were but they had to be cheaper than a Hoover normally costs. Unconvinced, Dustin picked up his bag and headed to the kitchen.
‘We don’t need a Hoover,’ he said as he went. This exchange really floored me. I couldn’t understand why Dustin wasn’t excited by the prospect of going to the States with me. Plus we definitely needed a Hoover. I knew Dustin was well travelled by my standards, but surely this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. We had to get in there quick! I thought it was a no-brainer. Go out, buy Hoover; get tickets, go to America; job done. And I told him so.
I followed Dustin into the kitchen. ‘Well, how much is a bloody Hoover then?’ I shouted dementedly. Probably not the best way to get him onside.
Dustin looked at me sternly. ‘Stephen, we DON’T need a Hoover. You probably read the advert wrong. You’re going to end up buying a Hoover and getting a free ticket to York. What kind of an idiot would give away two free tickets to America for the price of a vacuum cleaner? Next you’ll be saying you’ve found a bag of magic beans.’
‘We can just get a basic one, it doesn’t have to be top of the range,’ I suggested.
‘It’s just a scam for people like you,’ he replied.
People like me? I thought. He thinks I’m a gullible idiot just because I bought a pet rock the year before. Now I had to teach him a lesson. ‘OK, I’ll get the Hoover. A top-of-the-range one. I’ll use it everyday. I’ll go to America and take someone else,’ I said confidently.
‘OK,’ he replied. That had backfired horribly in every way.
The next morning, after a restless night of dreaming about what I’d do in New York, I was in the queue of my local Argos store. If you’ve never been to an Argos, think of it as a poor man’s bookies; you go in, flip through a catalogue, write down your choice, take it to the counter to await your number to get to the top of a little screen and reach poll position. After around forty minutes, I was getting impatient with the large dole-like queue system. It was only then that I noticed most of the other customers were collecting Hoovers! Some large, some small and some extra-large. I began to feel nervous. Would I get mine? Will they run out of stock? Will there be enough tickets to America to go around?
My number was called; a lump appeared in my throat. Heading up the counter, I could see a long red box saying ‘Hoover’. It was emblazoned with ‘Flights to America Offer Inside’. I handed over a fistful of crinkled pounds and grabbed the box off the lady at the collection counter. I had my new vacuum cleaner.
When I got home, I eagerly ripped open the box like an overexcited child on Christmas morning. I was on a mission to find my golden ticket and I bare
ly took a second look at the suction device. It was a real Charlie and the Chocolate Factory moment when I saw underneath the contraption written in bold: ‘How to claim your 2 free tickets to the USA.’ There was a telephone number to call. Never has the purchase of a vacuum cleaner been a moment of such excitement.
I still wanted Dustin to come with me, but I didn’t want to come off needy and desperate by bringing it up again. So at six o’clock, when he normally got home from college, I made sure to be nonchalantly vacuuming the hallway carpet. Dustin came in and ignored me as I extravagantly Hoovered around the front door. He went into the sitting room and I followed dragging the vacuum cleaner body behind me. Dustin turned on the TV and made a point of ignoring me in spite of the hurricane of noise coming from the vacuum cleaner. It wasn’t until I actually began to vacuum the socks on his feet that he looked up. ‘Oh, so you got it, did you? Glad to see you’re putting it to good use. If you want to vacuum something else, my room’s a bit dusty. You know where it is.’
Switching off the machine, I was about to resume my persuasion tactics when the voice of Trevor McDonald came from the television screen. ‘Hoover, the great American brand of suction vacuum cleaner, is threatened by bankruptcy following an ill-fated promotion offering residents of the UK free tickets to America. Extraordinarily, the offer was made to anyone who purchased the vacuum cleaner in question. And there seems to have been no catches or caveats to the offer. Heads appear to be rolling in the offices of Hoover Europe amid claims the company will not be able to honour its no strings attached promotion. Kate Adie has more.’
The television cut to a woman wearing a flak jacket and helmet being buffeted from all sides by a massive crowd trying to get into the Argos superstore. Bits of Hoover and Hoover boxes lay destroyed and mangled in the background of the shot. It looked like a war zone. ‘See!’ I said, pointing to the television screen. I turned around but Dustin was already at the phone, dialling the number at the bottom of the Hoover box. ‘See!’ I said again with a satisfied grin.
‘What have you been doing since you got home? Just sitting around and waiting for me to come home to Hoover my socks? What if we’re too late?’
‘Oh. It’s we now. Who’s the gullible fool? Ay? Who is a sucker for hype, ay?’
Dustin looked at me like I was being a total idiot. ‘Great, Stephen. So, you’re right and I’m wrong and we may miss out on tickets to America because you didn’t pick up the phone the minute you got home. Are you satisfied?’
Actually, I was satisfied. To be proven right is always something that satisfies me even if in the end I lose out on something. Some call it pettiness, I prefer to call it justice. The phone rang and rang, but Dustin hung on the phone like his life depended on it. I did what I could to help out by making endless cups of tea for us to slurp. Then I started doing impressions of famous American stereotypes, trying out my Harlem walk or pretending to be a Texan oil baron and acting out famous scenes from Dynasty.
As the minutes stretched into hours, I started to make us margaritas – a very poor version of a margarita, bearing in mind I didn’t have the correct mixes and I wasn’t a cocktail barman. It was more like bitter lemon and vodka over crushed ice. I tried massaging Dustin’s neck, which was getting stiff from having the phone cradled against it for so long. I made us dinner. We ate it. I even started to vacuum the stairs just to pass the time. Finally, after about two hours, Dustin screamed out, “Turn the vacuum cleaner off! I’ve got through!”
I raced downstairs and listened in with Dustin as a very harassed-sounding woman spoke through the receiver. ‘Hoover free flights promotion. Can I help you?’
‘Yes! We’ve bought a Hoover and we want our free flights.’
‘Where would you like to go to?’
‘New York!’ we both cried in unison.
‘We’re a bit oversubscribed to New York. How about Alabama?’
‘In the Deep South? We’ve been on the phone for hours. New York, USA is what we want,’ said Dustin calmly.
‘And we have a brand-new Hoover right here!’ I shouted down the line. I switched on the power and waved the hose at the receiver. ‘Hear that? We want to go to New York!’
‘Yes, sir. You and about thirty thousand other people. And if you think holding the end of a Hoover up to the receiver and shouting at me is going to make me go any quicker then think again. I’ve already been here for fourteen hours today trying to satisfy our valued customers. Believe you me, sir, I’m doing my best, and I don’t even know if I’ll have my job at the end of the week. Maybe you’d rather I put you back on hold.’ Her voice was teetering between icy-cold hatred and the soft squidgy tremble of a nervous breakdown.
Dustin hit the end of the Hoover away from the receiver and glared at me. ‘I’m really sorry about my friend. He’s just very excited about the prospect of leaving the country. He’s been kept indoors most of his life due to being a hyperactive idiot. Please believe me when I say we really want this trip to New York.’
‘OK. What’s the point in hanging up? There’s only another thousand of you lot waiting to talk to me. Well, give me the serial number on the Hoover box. And there are a few conditions. Firstly, you have to pay for all your own flight taxes. That’s £200 for the pair. You’ll be covering your own expenses and we fly you in and out of Philadelphia International. It’s an hour and half out of New York. Don’t complain because that’s the best we can do. You’ve heard of flying coach? Well, because of costing issues you guys can only have one piece of hand luggage allowed. Checked bags are extra. What’s your date of birth?’
‘Sixth of September,’ Dustin shouted down the phone.
‘OK. The dates of your travel can be the sixth of March, the twenty-fourth of December, or the fifteenth of January.’
‘That’s not very convenient because I have work on the—’
‘Take it or leave it!’
I could see Dustin trying to think quickly, then his face went pale. ‘I can’t go, Stephen. Not on those dates! You’d have to be homeless or a student to make those sorts of dates.’ He looked desperate.
I grabbed the phone off him. Damn. The only people I could think of whose dates of birth I knew off by heart were members of my family. By now Mum had had one more child, Elizabeth, and then finally stopped having kids and so the Amos brood had stabilized. I started counting them off on my fingers. Stella wouldn’t be able to make it as she had a well-paid job in a laboratory. Albert was just getting married – he’d never come. Cordelia, Andrea and Elizabeth were still at school and Hoover wouldn’t issue tickets to minors. Chris was the only option. Chris the too-cool-for-school teenager had just turned eighteen. He’d be doing his A levels in March, so that was out. December? That was Christmas. But January was a possibility.
‘I can make it for the fifteenth of January no problem. Print the tickets.’ Chris wasn’t even twenty-one so how would we go drinking?! Whatever. I’d bought the Hoover and I was going to capitalize. The Amos brothers were going to hit the States. I gave his name and date of birth and sure enough the tickets arrived within a week to my flat. I later discovered that Hoover had lost £25 million as a result of this promotion and they had to sell the whole company to Whirlpool.
I hoped that Chris would be able to come with me in January. He might be at university or could even be working, but knowing him it was quite possible that he’d be doing neither. There’s a six-year age gap between me, Stella and Albert and the younger kids and something odd had happened to my parents in that time. The pressure put onto the younger kids by Mum and Dad was nothing compared to what we’d lived through. Those babies could get away with stuff that would have been unthinkable for us. The chances of Chris being forbidden from going on holiday to America aged eighteen was probably less than Mum and Dad giving me a hard time for taking the trip at twenty-four.
I might have to sack off the first week of work in the New Year but that shouldn’t be a problem. I figured I could just say that a distant relative had
suddenly died. One of the good things about having a huge family is that there is a long cast of characters who can have an accident befall them. This time it was going to have to be my sick great uncle who had suddenly died with a funeral to arrange and attend – I couldn’t use my grandmother again. By this time she had suffered so many calamities forcing me to take time off that in the employment agency I was affectionately known as Little Red Riding Hood.
For me, I was going to America and nothing was going to stop me! My next stop was visiting Grosvenor Square to sort out a visa. This was in the days before it was easy to go to the US by filling out the visa waiver form online. I had to queue for hours at the embassy to get my paperwork in order and they asked me a lot of odd questions. Like, was I a Nazi? That seemed like an off question since my Aryan credentials are somewhat lacking. It’s not easy to get through an interview like that when you’re a natural joker and I had to bite my tongue more than once.
I wonder at American intelligence agencies. I mean, why just come out and ask a question like that? Couldn’t they have tried to be a bit more sneaky? Like: What is your opinion of toothbrush moustaches? Or a how about a multiple-choice word association game to trip you up. Maybe: If I say the word ‘tikka’ do you think of a) Chicken, b) Lamb or c) Swas? Or how about: If I say the word ‘anschluss’ do you reach for a) A Kleenex tissue, b) U2’s acclaimed seventh album or c) Austria? I think things have tightened up since 9/11 but count yourself lucky that you don’t have to go to the embassy in Grosvenor Square any more. It was pretty imposing back then, but it’s a lot more imposing now they’ve installed vats of boiling oil on the roof ready to be chucked down at any invading foreigners.
I Used to Say My Mother Was Shirley Bassey Page 16