Terry Ravenscroft's Blog: Stairlift to Heaven

Here’s an extract from my forthcoming book Sawyer the Lawyer, out on Kindle on Sept 1.

 

Thursday 12 June, 2014.

Both Clive and the flat look respectable. Let’s hope I’m luckier this time. I’ve already had one piece of good fortune in spotting the advert in the early edition of the Manchester Evening News and am the first to view the flat. ‘First time advertised’ the advert said. ‘Will be snapped up immediately’. Well I don’t know about snapping it up immediately but it is quite promising, and only £400 a month including council tax,

shared between two.

The living room is quite spacious. Voicing my thoughts I ask if the bedrooms are equally roomy, particularly my bedroom.

“See for yourself,” says Clive.

He beckons me to follow. At the bedroom door he stops, taps on it politely and in not much more than a whisper says, “Mrs Shepley? Mrs Shepley, is it all right to come in?”

I think that perhaps Mrs Shepley is the cleaning lady and she doesn’t like to be disturbed while she’s cleaning.

“Come in,” says a sad voice from behind the door.

Clive eases the door open. We step into the bedroom. The first thing I notice – well this sort of thing does tend to draw attention to itself – is an open coffin set on two wooden trestles. Sat beside it, dabbing at her eyes with a large handkerchief, is a woman, who I take to be Mrs Shepley as there is no other person in the room, apart from the dead body in the coffin that is. Quite naturally this gruesome tableau stops me in my tracks.

“It’s Kevin, her son,” Clive whispers in reverent tones. “My former flatmate, before he passed. Did I mention that?”

He did, when I rang up about the flat. He also mentioned that the bedroom was available because Kevin had met his Maker after being knocked down by a bus. What he omitted to say was that he was ensconced in a coffin in my future bedroom.

“It’s only until after the funeral,” Clive assures me. “Next Wednesday. St George’s, if you’d like to come. No flowers by request, donations to Brake, the road safety charity.”

It occurs to me that so far as Kevin is concerned sending donations to Brake smacks a little of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, but I don’t say anything.

“I’ll be putting a nice spread on,” adds Mrs Shepley temptingly. “There’ll be sandwiches and sausage rolls. And canopies.”

“Canapés,” Clive corrects her, possibly thinking I might be expecting the sandwiches and sausage rolls to each have a cloth covering suspended over them.

“Isn’t it usual to lay people out in the mortuary?” I say to Clive.

“I’m not having no son of mine in a mortuary,” interjects Mrs Shepley before Clive can answer. “Them places bring you bad luck.”

If you ask me Kevin already had a large slice of bad luck when the bus ran him over but I don’t point this out in case it distresses Mrs Shepley further.

“I’m keeping a coffin-side night vigil until they bury him,” she says, then adds as an afterthought, “But I don’t mind you moving in before in the meantime.”

Sleep in the same room as a stiff? I don’t think so. I’m not exactly overjoyed about sleeping in a room where a stiff has recently been a resident either, and am about to tell Kevin that the accommodation isn’t quite what I’m looking for when he says, “You’re in luck, we’ve just paid the three months in advance the landlord demands, so you’ll be living rent free until the end of August. If that’s all right with you, Mrs Shepley?”

“Oh yes, it’s fine with me.” Mrs Shepley pauses in thought for a moment then says to me, “I’d like you to come to the funeral though if you feel you could manage it. Kevin didn’t have many friends so there won’t be all that many people there, although the bus company have promised they’ll be well represented.”

I wait for a few seconds. I don’t want neither Mrs Shepley nor Clive to think I’m too eager. “There’ll be sausage rolls, you say?”

“Two sorts. Pork and beef. And there’ll be cheese on little sticks too. I was forgetting the cheese on little sticks.”

“Excellent. I’m a big fan of cheese. What sort of cheese will it be?”

“I’ll be doing the white, the orange and the yellow.”

I don’t think we’re talking Farmhouse Cheddar and Camembert here. But you never know.

“I’ll take the flat then,” I say to Clive.

“Would you like to see Kevin close up before you go?” says Mrs Shepley. “It isn’t a bit scary. The undertaker did a lovely job on him. He looks better now than he did when he was alive. He was always pale when he was living, that’s what night work does for you, but he’s got lovely rosy cheeks now.”

How can I refuse?

Sawyer the Cheese Lover.

The post July 23 2014 SAWYER THE LAWYER appeared first on Stairlift To Heaven.

Yesterday the Manchester City footballer Yaya Tourse said that his club disrespected him by failing to wish him a happy birthday and because of this may very well not play for them next season. Apparently the club not only forgot Yaya’s birthday but also failed to send him a card, let alone gold Ferrari F12 Berlinetta. Neither did they send him a ‘I am 31 Today’ badge and throw a party for him Sergio and Samir and all his other little friends at McDonalds, with lots and lots of jelly and blancmange and ginger beer and a clown dressed up as Ronald McDonald.
Of course many people might argue that it is Yaya’s birthday every day and that on each of these days he gets two hundred and fifty thousand birthday cards in the shape of pounds sterling, and that he should man up and get on with his job of playing for Manchester City. Unfortunately however the lack of birthday celebrations in Yaya’s honour is not the only bone of contention he has to pick with his employers.
For one thing there were the three occasions during the last football season when the City manager Manuel Pellegrini (or Da Da has Yaya calls him) not only didn’t tuck him up in bed and read him a bedtime story but also failed to give him a goodnight kiss. On one of these occasions Pellegrini wasn’t around when Yaya woke up in the night and called downstairs for a drink of water. Naturally this upset Yaya tremendously and caused him to wet the bed.
For another thing Yaya is still deeply upset that his employers have only supplied him with one bottom wiper. While it is true that the bottom wiper is available to wipe his bottom twenty four seven there was an occasion when the bottom wiper called in sick and Yaya had to wipe his own bottom. As he is not used to doing this he didn’t make a very good job of it, which led to him smelling of poo. Whilst it is true that smelling of poo resulted in Yaya being able to run through the opposition’s midfield even more easily than he usually does, and contributed in no small way to another City victory, as this was at the expense of one of the opposition’s players calling him ‘smelly arse’ and another holding his nose every time he attempted to tackle him Yaya was far from happy about it.
I won’t even go into the matter of the person the club supplied to wank him off when he can’t be bothered to do it himself, the one with the rough hands, who has since thankfully been replaced, but it should never have happened in the first place.
Real Madrid or Barca next year?

The post May 21 2014. HAPPY BIRTHDAY YAYA. appeared first on Stairlift To Heaven.

As a seventy-three-year old it really cheers me up whenever I hear about yet another way we old people are being looked out for by wiser heads; when these experts come up with yet another wheeze that will help me squeeze out a few more years of life.

The latest of these wiser heads to advise we coffin-dodgers on the best way to keep both our feet on the ground, and not six feet under it in the aforementioned coffin, can be found at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. This learned body recommends that the safe limits for alcohol consumption by older people should be drastically cut, and that anyone over the age of sixty-five should confine their intake to 1.5 units a day. Why this should be has left me a little confused as I have been consuming a bottle of wine a day, which is about 10 units, since I was sixty-five, and I’m still above ground and in fairly reasonable nick.

Personally I would have thought that psychiatrists would have been better confining themselves to what is going on in people’s heads and leaving what is going on in their bodies to those better qualified, but then my brain is very old now and probably no longer capable of rational thought. The psychiatrists’ advice also begs the question: ‘Why would anyone want to go on living beyond age sixty-five if they are confined to only 1.5 units of alcohol a day?’ I certainly wouldn’t. However these are not things I need concern myself with: the brainwork has already been done, the calculations made, the decision arrived it, the sound advice given.

More sound advice was given to me only a couple of weeks previously when I was told that all my years of eating five pieces of fruit and veg a day was fruitless (apart from all the fruit I’d been consuming of course) and that the correct amount is seven. Again the report said that older people would benefit most by this increase. People who would definitely not benefit are those who happen to be standing anywhere near an old person who has consumed an apple, a banana, an orange, and portions of carrots, peas, turnips and sprouts, as such an old person will be farting for England, if they’re anything like me and have only occasional control of their gaseous emissions.

The following day I was warned in the Saga Magazine, which I’d picked up at the dentist’s, where I’d gone to have my teeth checked in readiness for the extra acid they would have to cope with from the seven pieces of fruit and veg a day, to ‘Watch out for dehydration!’ Apparently, because of physical changes, older adults are more prone to dehydration. To deal with this the  advice was to drink plenty of fluid, even if you don’t feel thirsty, because if you’re not getting enough water you’re not going to be as sharp and your energy will suffer.

I’m afraid I had to take a piss on – sorry, a Freudian slip there – a pass on that one; with the state of my waterworks dehydration is what I’m looking for, not trying to get rid of. A ten mile walk in the Sahara? Bring it on. At least I won’t have to stop for a wee every ten minutes. Of course my prostate condition applies to many, many other old people too. I would have thought an organisation like Saga would know that. Still I’m sure they meant well.

As did the perpetrators of a recent article in the newspaper that advised ‘Laughter is strong medicine for both the body and the mind. It helps you stay balanced, energetic, joyful, and healthy at any age, but especially in old age when you are more prone to depression’.

I was feeling a bit down at the time and decided to avail myself of some of this strong medicine. But where to obtain it? I noted that  Live at the Apollo, a stand-up comedy show I sometimes watch, was on TV. I switched on. Michael McIntyre was in full flow. I watched for a couple of minutes. It made me so depressed that I opened another bottle of ten units of wine.

The post May 9 2014. THE NINNY STATE. appeared first on Stairlift To Heaven.

Back in June 2007, one of the pieces I wrote for the original Stairlift to Heaven book was entitled, ‘The Best of It’. It was a nostalgic reverie in which I wrote that I was lucky to have been born at the perfect time, a time beyond the era when you could be hanged for stealing a loaf of bread but short of the present era, at a time when there were no such things as diversity and outreach officers, a time when a race card was a list of the runners and riders at Kempton Park and not something played by someone of an ethnic minority to gain an unfair advantage, a time when people who ran banks were known as bankers not wankers. Now, in 2014, I am not so sure. I have come to realise that for all its shortcomings, being born in the second decade of the third millennium has a few advantages that weren’t available to me all those years ago. Take hairstyles for example. When I was a boy of seventeen it cost me dearly to keep up my Tony Curtis haircut (which, to my narcissistic eyes, was a better Tony Curtis haircut than Tony Curtis’s), both in the cost of a fortnightly visit to the barber and the countless hours spent in front of the mirror primping my crowning glory and teasing the quiff to get it just so, and the even more hours admiring myself when I had got it just so. Today’s youths have no such costs: they can of course visit the barber to have their hair styled in the modern manner, and many of them do, but all they need do to achieve the same effect is place half-a-dozen exploding fireworks in their hair and light the blue touch paper. Ties are another necessity that I had to put up with which men of today don’t have to bother with. Suits, likewise. Hardly anyone wears either today, except for weddings and funerals, and often not even then. (The last funeral I went to one of the mourners turned up in a tracksuit, excusing his appearance by saying that he’d had to fit the funeral in with his daily five mile jog. He claimed that the deceased wouldn’t have had it any different, but of course the deceased wasn’t in any condition to verify this.) And you certainly don’t have wear a tie and suit if you’re going for a job interview. Precisely the opposite; a tie and suit are the last things you need. Even if you wanted to wear a tie and suit you wouldn’t dare wear them, for fear of getting on the wrong side of the man interviewing you, the man probably dressed in a tee shirt, jeans and a pair of loafers, and quite possibly sporting a couple of tattoos and a ring through his nose. Then there’s this business of celebrities. As is the case today, back in the 60s everyone wanted to become a celebrity. Although not perhaps with such burning ambition. The difference between then and now is that then to you used to have to work hard if you wanted to become a celebrity, and were prepared to work hard. Nowadays everyone wants to be a celebrity without doing anything in order to become a celebrity. What’s more, many of these star struck nonentities do become celebrities. The first of course was Jade Goody, now dead, bless her, who became famous for being thick, on the programme Big Brother. Many, many more, no less lacking in the grey matter department, have since followed in her footsteps, on ‘reality’ programmes such as The Only Way is Essex and Made in Chelsea and their like. (Although if it is reality they are portraying it is a reality I have never come across.) And what of all the role models today? When I was young there was no such thing as a role model. If you wanted to grow up to become somebody half decent you had to behave yourself and treat others as you would expect to be treated yourself. Now there are more role models than you can shake a stick at. Mostly they consist of the aforementioned celebrities, along with rock stars, footballers, film stars, et al. However, if you are looking for a good role model to follow nowadays, someone who will help you in your quest to becoming a valued, upstanding member of the public, the very best you can do is look at how an average politician conducts their life. And do precisely the opposite.

The post May 2 2014. THE BEST OF IT? appeared first on Stairlift To Heaven.

Here’s another extract from the forthcoming audiobook of Stairlift to Heaven.

BALL PARK PRICE

The post April 27 2014. BALL PARK PRICE appeared first on Stairlift To Heaven.

Here’s another extract from the forthcoming audiobook of Stairlift to Heaven.

BALL PARK PRICE

The post 27 April 2014. BALL PARK PRICE appeared first on Stairlift To Heaven.

Here’s another extract from the forthcoming audiobook of Stairlift to Heaven.

WORST GARDEN OF THE  YEAR – 2

The post April 20 2014. WORST GARDEN OF THE YEAR – 2 appeared first on Stairlift To Heaven.

A SMALL SHOP. THE SHELVES LINING THE WALLS CONTAIN NOTHING BUT CANS OF DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF BEANS. A HUGE SIGN SUSPENDED FROM THE CEILING SAYS ‘BEANS’. Other signs say ‘GET YOU BEANS HERE’ and ‘WE SELL BEANS’.

THE SHOPOWNER IS BEHIND THE COUNTER. A CUSTOMER ENTERS AND STROLLS UP TO THE COUNTER.

 

SHOPOWNER: Yes sir, what can I get for you?

 

CUSTOMER: Do you sell beans?

 

THE SHOPOWNER SPREADS HIS HANDS IN A HOPELESS GESTURE BEFORE ANSWERING PATIENTLY.

 

SHOPOWNER: Yes.

 

CUSTOMER: Tin of beans then.

 

SHOPOWNER: What sort of beans?

 

CUSTOMER: Doesn’t matter. Any sort.

 

THE SHOPOWNER LEANS OVER THE COUNTER, GRABS THE CUSTOMER BY THE COLLAR AND PULLS HIM CLOSE.

 

SHOPOWNER: Let me tell you a little story. The day I took over this shop a man came in and asked me for a tin of kidney beans. I didn’t have any. Consequently I lost a sale. I vowed it would never happen again. If a customer wanted kidney beans I would have them. And any other sort of beans. And now I have. I’ve got baked beans, french beans, kidney beans, runner beans, butter beans, string beans, green beans, red beans, black beans, pink beans, cranberry beans, soya beans, pinto beans, lima beans, cannellini beans, borlotti beans, calypso beans, chilli beans, cranberry beans, adzuki beans, corona beans, flageolet beans, kidney beans, lupine beans, mung beans, navy beans,  broad beans, narrow beans and kidney beans. I’ve got sausage and beans, bacon and beans, hamburger and beans, beefburger and beans, limburger and beans, peas and beans, rice and beans, spice and beans, twice fried beans, thrice fried beans, and beans with ham, lamb, spam, ram and jam. I’ve got nothing else but beans! (PULLS HIM NEARER SO THAT THEIR FACES ARE ALMOST TOUCHING). So what sort of beans do you want?

 

CUSTOMER: Er….well since you put it like that. (THINKS ABOUT IT FOR A MOMENT) I’ll have a tin of beans and frog.

 

SHOPOWNER: Beans and frog?

 

CUSTOMER: If it isn’t too much trouble?

 

SHOPOWNER: No trouble at all.

 

THE SHOPOWNER TAKES A CAN FROM THE SHELF BEHIND HIM AND PLACES IT ON THE COUNTER.

 

SHOPOWNER: One tin of beans and frog.

 

HE BANGS HIS FIST ON THE TABLE, CAUSING THE CAN TO JUMP UP AND DOWN A COUPLE OF TIMES.

 

SHOPOWNER: Very fresh, as you can see. Anything else I can get for you?

 

CUSTOMER: Yes. (THINKS ABOUT IT FOR A MOMENT) I’ll have a tin of beans and camel.

 

THE SHOPOWNER TAKES A CAN FROM THE SHELF BEHIND HIM AND PLACES IT ON THE COUNTER. THE TOP OF THE CAN HAS A HUMP ON IT.

 

SHOPOWNER: Tin of beans and camel. (HE NOTICES SOMETHING WRONG) Sorry, that’s dromedary.

 

HE PUTS THE CAN BACK AND REPLACES IT WITH ANOTHER. THE TOP OF THIS CAN HAS TWO HUMPS ON IT.

 

SHOPOWNER: There you are, tin of beans and camel. Anything else?

 

CUSTOMER: (THINKS ABOUT IT FOR A MOMENT, AS THOUGH TO COME UP WITH SOMETHING MOST UNLIKELY) You did say you do beans with everything?

 

SHOPOWNER: Everything.

 

CUSTOMER: Very well, I’ll have a tin of Leg of Madagascan Leaping Bush Whippet.

 

SHOPOWNER: Right leg or left leg?

 

SHOPOWNER: Right leg or left leg?

 

CUSTOMER: (LOSES HIS TEMPER) Oh….knickers!

 

THE CUSTOMER MAKES FOR THE DOOR.

 

SHOPOWNER: Oy!

 

THE CUSTOMER STOPS AND TURNS TO HIM. THE SHOPOWNER POINTS TO ONE OF THE SHELVES.

 

SHOPOWNER: French knickers, camiknickers, tie-side knickers, skirted knickers, bikini knickers or thong?

*

 

The sketch above, which I wrote for the Two Ronnies, was inspired by Mr Bhatti, the Pakistani owner of the corner shop not far from where I live, the same Mr Bhatti who yesterday scrutinized with suspicious eyes the twenty pound note I handed him to pay for the bottle of bleach The Trouble had asked me to pick up on the way back from my walk.

It was not bleach but a can of beans & sausages that I needed from Mr Bhatti’s shop all those years ago.

Mr Bhatti, who had recently taken over the shop from its previous owner, had given a sad shake of his head on hearing my requirements. “Sorry, I do not have cans of beans & sausages.” However, brightening immediately he said, “I have cans of beans, and I have cans of sausages. But not in the same can.”  Then, showing the sort of entrepreneurial spirit that has made Pakistani owned corner shops successful where the same shops run by British people have failed miserably he said, “I can open a can of each and make for you one can of beans & sausages. My wife and I will have the other one for our tea.”

Can you imagine a British shop owner making such an offer? I think not. Only because I would have felt a fool walking up the road for half a mile with an opened can of beans & sausages did I turn Mr Bhatti’s offer down.

He wasn’t fazed at all. He just smiled and said, “I understand one hundred per cent. But please call again. The next time you do I will have cans of beans & sausages. I will have cans of beans & sausages by the lorry load.”

Well I don’t know about by the lorry load but Mr Bhatti certainly had beans & sausages the next time I called. He made a point of telling me.

“I have cans of beans & sausages,” he said, proudly pointing them out on the shelf behind him no sooner had I walked into the shop. I had called in for just a bottle of bleach but I bought a can of beans & sausages off him as a reward for his enterprise.

I was rewarded myself a couple of days later when, whilst searching for an idea for a sketch, I recalled the incident.

Now, having completed his intense scrutiny of the twenty pound note and finding it not to his liking, Mr Bhatti held it up between thumb and finger as though it were radioactive and said, “This no good.”

“What do you mean it’s no good?”

“It is good for nothing. It is good only for arse wipe. I show you what I do with notes like this.” Without ceremony he picked up a red marker pen and wrote on the note in large letters. “There!” He turned the note round to show me what he’d written.

“Forgery?” I said.

“Forgery,” he said. “Counterfeit. Is dud.”

“Yes but you’d no need to write on it,” I protested.  “It’s neither use nor ornament now.”

“It was neither use nor ornamentel before. Is forgery!”

Mr Bhatti had presented me with a dilemma. If he hadn’t written ‘Forgery’ on it in indelible red marker pen I would simply have passed it on to someone else. Well why not? After all someone had passed it on to me. It was my bank actually; the note was one of three I’d withdrawn from the hole in the wall earlier that morning. However I knew there would be nothing gained by taking it back there as nowadays banks are bigger rogues than the counterfeiters making the notes and would undoubtedly have denied all knowledge of it.

Thinking quickly I said, “So if you’ll just replace my twenty pound note, Mr Bhatti, I’ll be on my way.”

“Replace your twenty pound note?” he scoffed. “Your twenty pound note is a forgery, is worth nothing.”

“Yes but it isn’t my twenty pound note any more, is it. It’s your twenty pound note now.”

“What do you mean is my twenty pound note now?”

Using my ‘British Official’ voice I explained. “The moment you started writing on it you took possession of it, Sale of Goods Actm1946, Section Three.”

Using his ‘Pakistani Unofficial’ voice Mr Bhatti said, “Bugger Sale of Goods act!  Bugger you too!”

I could see there was no point in arguing with him so I left. However before I did I told him that I had clearly been out of order and offered him my sincere apologies; for I had had an idea, and wanted to leave him on good terms. In a day or two I will be going back to his shop and will ask him for something which he doesn’t stock. Not Leg of Madagascan Leaping Bush Whippet, because that would be impossible, so something expensive. Canned Grouse in a truffle sauce

perhaps? And then the next time I go and he tells me he now stocks it I’m going to tell him where he can stick it.

 

The post April 15 2014. BEANS WITH EVERYTHING. appeared first on Stairlift To Heaven.

Here’s another extract from the forthcoming audiobook of Stairlift to Heaven.

WORST GARDEN OF THE YEAR

The post April 13 2014. WORST GARDEN OF THE YEAR. appeared first on Stairlift To Heaven.

Here’s another extract from the forthcoming audiobook of Stairlift to Heaven.

PANACHE

The post April 6 2014 PANACHE appeared first on Stairlift To Heaven.