Lowlife 24 - The Turks are Revolting

Lowlife 24

The Turks are Revolting

I see that the French are on strike, the Turks are revolting (or rebelling, as "revolting" could be taken the wrong way) and that the Royal Bank of Scotland Chief Executive Stephen Hester is abandoning ship, now he feels that he has done his bit for the bank, with an immensely generous golden handshake of £1.6m of taxpayers’ money and a potential £4m in shares to feather his nest with.

I feel sorry for the tramps in Istanbul as not only are the authorities planning to build on the locally revered Geki Park in the city but a law has now also been passed banning the sale of alcohol in shops after 2200 hours, so they cannot even drown their sorrows to lament the sad news of the Park’s development if they fail to get to the off licence on time. 

I can picture Turkish tramps waking up on park benches after impromptu snoozes and legging it to the offy to buy their medicinal nightcap just before 2200 hrs in a blind panic, with the booze devils chasing them up the street.  The image is akin to me leaving the Flagon & Gorses at one minute before midnight in the desperate hope to make the Rhareli Peking Chinese take away before the turn of the hour, when it shuts; the sight of the light to the shop being on when I turn the corner of the road is a highly welcome one, like a thirsty man sighting an oasis in the desert.  I understand that J.J. Cale penned his classic track, After Midnight, after the crushing disappointment of not making it to the Rhareli Peking before closing time.

On the BBC, RBS's Hester immodestly sang his own praises and then he then declared, "I've been in the trenches with my people."  To begin with I doubt he's been in the trenches, more like in battle HQ far behind the enemy lines, sipping Bordeaux and biting into quails eggs telling the other officers how he and Bunny once laid on a seventh wicket stand of 117 for Oxford University 2nd XII against the oiks from Birmingham.  "My people"?! Does Mr Hester think he owns the poor employees at RBS? Is he going to take them with him when he leaves and pack them into a card board box with the contents of his desk and the £1.6m in banknotes he's blagged? 

We've all heard the expression "laughing all the way to the bank"; well in this case the fortuitous Mr Hester will be laughing all the way from the bank.   I can just imagine him returning home in the evening and explaining to the wife, "the bad news dear is that I have resigned and no longer have a job.  The good news is that I have got 1.6 million spondoolies in my sky rocket, so forget those fishfingers you are cooking we are going down the pub to get ratted followed by a ruby at the Star of Bengal.  Jeeves, rev the Merc up my old son, I'm choking for a pint."

Hester and his like live in a completely different stratosphere to us mere mortals.  Apparently he owns a 350 acre estate in Oxfordshire and the garden, which includes an arboretum, was designed by Chelsea Gold Medal winning landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith and includes pleached limes and five of the first batch of Australian Wollemi pines ever brought to Britain.   Why anyone would want to own Australian Wollemi pines is beyond me with them being a singularly unattractive tree; they resemble my scraggy, cheap, plastic Christmas tree that I drag out of the cupboard under the stairs once a year which is so uninspiring it actually dampens the festive spirit as opposed to enlivening it.   Contrarily, a row of elegant pleached limes would go down a treat amongst the cat sh*t, stingers and weeds of my Codger Mansions garden.   Hester has expensive pleached limes but all I get is a pickled lemon, which Chilli Willy offered me in the Flagon the other night and I have to say it was truly disgusting.  The place for a lemon is in a gin and tonic, sliced, in my book, or distilled into limoncello, not soaked in vinegar in a pickle jar, which is more the domain of onions, eggs, gherkins and the like.  One thing is for sure, with £1.6m nestling in Hester’s wallet he is unlikely to be in a pickle.

I even have to weed the wall in the back garden of Codger Mansions as like charity street sellers in Birmingham City Centre, the damn weeds get everywhere.  The owners of the new tram line at Snow Hill in Birmingham have turned the whole thing on its head by actually inserting weeds into the freshly developed wall by the proposed tram line and it looks dreadful.  Every time I walk past the wall of weeds it reminds me that the Codger Mansions garden needs attending to so the whole thing has less to do with a tram trip and is more like a guilt trip.

I rarely keep up with current affairs, usually only hearing snippets of news in the Flagon & Gorses, which are mostly a version of the story distorted or misrepresented by the punter in question and heavily laden with the relater’s opinions on the matter.  However, I learnt of the France, Turkey and RBS developments after catching a few minutes of the news on BBC television.
 

People at work often ask me if I saw this or that on television last night but despite me replying repeatedly “no, I don’t often watch television” they continue to ask away and then tediously explain the contents of the goggle box programmes they watched the previous evening.  Some of them must dedicate their entire association time to glaring at insipid television programmes and what’s worse they totally ignore the odd programme of quality and interest that can be found, if one tries hard enough, such as the documentaries on PBS America.  There was such a broadcast on the channel last night, a two hour film about the two fabled bouts between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling in the 1930’s but alas I had to give it a miss as I had to dedicate time to writing this nonsense. 

Some people even switch the television on but do not watch it, which is a puzzling thing to do to my simple mind.  It would seem odd if a person put the oven on but cooked nothing, but switching on the television only to undertake a different activity, or even to adjourn to another room, is apparently a normal thing to do. 

My viewing is largely confined to football during the season, the odd bit of test match cricket and the Cartoon Channel when my son Kenteke is in the house.  As a money saving measure I have had Sky Sports switched off for summertime, after having had to wrestle with the difficult but cosmopolitan staff at Virgin TV to accept my simple instruction of disconnecting the channels.  I spoke variously to a gentleman from the sub-continent, a Scotsman and a lady of indistinguishable accent or origin before eventually losing faith in humanity and putting the telephone handset back on the receiver. 

A letter of complaint to the Virgin company secretary subsequently did the trick and the polite complaints manager that telephone me, who sounded like he is from the Home Counties, could not have been more helpful.  The smug faced Richard Branson might want to spend less time appearing in his irritating television advertisements and more time reminding his telephony staff they that are there to assist and not obstruct valued customers, who help to pay their wages after all (whether it be in sterling, rupees or Scotch whisky.)

Thankfully the television is rarely switched on in the Flagon & Gorses and when it is on it is confined to the back room, so it is not a nuisance if you are drinking merrily in the peaceful bar.   There is a rumour though that a new model is to be installed to replace the current antiquated set, which should be confined to the vaults of the British Museum.   All this modernisation at the Flagon is a little concerning though, as we do not want to lose the antiquated charm of the place and I cannot see the Pirate wearing the latest pair of Adidas training shoes with his trouser belt hanging half way down his arse revealing Calvin Klein pants.

Postscript

The other week in Lowlife 22 I failed to mention another culinary lowlight from my Fairfield Drive days. Prior to payday all I had left to eat was the residue of a stew from the night before but there was not an ample amount left to constitute a meal so I managed to form a soup out if it, which thereafter was known as the resi-stew.

© Dominic Horton, 14^th June, 2013.

Lowlife 23 - The Lesser Titted Mantitt

The Lesser Titted Mantitt

Things are so dire financially at the moment that in order to live I have had to defraud myself just to generate money.  When I find out what I have done to myself I am not going to be very happy.  It could spark an internal dispute in Codger Mansions.   I have also had to spend money that I have not yet got, which one can only do with great difficulty, using guile, cunning and skill.   I have even cashed in my Christmas club money and it is only June, which means it’s going to be a miserable festive season this year.    In stead of “Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat” it will be “Christmas is coming but the balloons are going flat.” 

Just to rub things in Lowlife has learnt that the lavish and gluttonous Willy Mantitt had two steaks for dinner last night, whereas I only get one dose of quality red meat a month at the Flagon & Gorses steak night, which fortunately falls just after pay day.  Mantitt tried to justify his covetous consumption by stating that as Mrs Mantitt is a vegetarian he always has to eat two of everything.   All this overeating means that Willy’s waistline is getting bigger, as are his man boobs, both of which he is keen to reduce so he can once more sunbathe in his garden, which will mean that a certain rare species will be able to be sighted on Willy’s lawn again: the Lesser Titted Mantitt.

Willy could of course freeze one steak or even better invite me round to dinner, where I could do him a favour and knock a hole in his booze stocks which presently represent an unwelcome temptation in his house due to his pledge of sobriety for the month of June (see Lowlife 21). 

Mind you, like Mantitt I will be dry today as I will be blessed by the presence of my wonderful son Kenteke later and besides my internal organs have organised a petition and are campaigning for a better deal which involves less alcohol and more oily fish; I could more frequently oblige them with the former but as for the latter they obviously don’t know the price of fresh mackerel.   It is usually my mind that is rebellious but now my body has followed suit meaning that (quoting a poem I wrote in 1989 entitled Return of the Soul Destroyer [yes I was cheery then too]) “all I have left is my soul, refusing to budge from the whole.”

Willy queried if I feed my rank sausage casserole gruel to Kenteke but I replied emphatically that I certainly do not as it would amount to child cruelty and I don’t want to be cruel with the gruel.  Kenteke would be straight on the blower to Esther Rantzen at Childline and I wouldn't blame him.

Esther Rantzen is now a senior citizen of course and according to the Observer a growing proportion of pensioners are p*ssed half of the time.   The Observer article was explaining how boozing is particularly bad for elderly people's health but I am sure most of them think that as they have made it to advanced years they may as well do what they want and enjoy the time that they have got left.  One senior citizen that will buck the trend is the Abdul as carelessly he has crocked his leg and he is not supposed to drink for a week give the strong painkillers he’s on, so he is stone cold sober for the first time in years.   Given my pension projections I will barely be able to afford to eat as a pensioner, let alone drink.  They are more like pension dejections than projections.  If I can’t afford to drink as a pensioner I might as well do myself in.

I sometimes think about what method I would employ if I was to end it all, not in a morbid or depressed way but in a practical sense and it helps to while away a sit on the toilet.  For a start I could not put my head in the oven as I haven’t cleaned it since I moved into Codger Mansions so it is so encrusted with charred remains that I would not be able to fit my head in there.  I found a charcoal of sausage in there the other day and it looked less than palatable.   A lethal injection is out of the question as I’m not a massive fan of needles after a disturbing trip to the doctors where he wanted to stick a little prick in me.    I would not want to employ the drowning method as I can barely swim and as a result it would not be very safe.   

If I jumped off a tall building I might not be very popular with the council as my large conk (yes, I said conk) would most likely ruin the pavement and the damage would result in the council tax going up, embittering all my associates to my memory and my funeral would be sparsely populated as a consequence.   I could shoot myself, but to do that I would need to acquire a gun and I wouldn’t be able to afford to buy one, my poverty being the reason as to why I would want to top myself in the first place.    Chilli Willy, the Flagon’s chef, could be politely asked to poison me but judging by his meals he has already tried to do that and it hasn’t worked. 

If I were to hang myself in Codger Mansions it might leave ghoulish omens for the subsequent occupants and the only other place I could do it is in the shed, but given the dilapidated state of the decrepit structure if would collapse under the weight of a cat let alone me.

 One person who will not have to contemplate doing himself in due to glum impoverished circumstances is Willy Mantitt's affluent boss, who once wrote a chapter in a book entitled How I Made my First Million.  If I was to write a chapter in a book on financial matters I think it would be called How I Made my First Wage Packet Disappear in Five Minutes Flat.

I am sure that Willy’s gaffer will expediently relieve him of his duties if Mantitt offers him some of the disgusting sounding coconut water that he has been procuring for the heavily pregnant Mrs Mantitt.   Coconut water sounds like something Robinson Crusoe would have mixed into his rum to take the edge off before thrashing Man Friday at cricket.    I would rather have some of the light and delightful Portuguese sherry that the Pirate poured me on Monday in the Flagon, which he served in was the most attractive, delicate little vessel I have ever imbibed out of.    Attractive and delicate are not words usually associated with the Pirate but if he is hung over he might be delicate but not attractive.

The Pirate’s sherry was a cut above the rank, cheap stuff I used to guzzle with my jovial accomplice El Pistolero at my old residence at Fairfield Drive many moons ago.  One evening, having only a few jingling coins in our roomy pockets and no banknotes in our wallets, El Pistolero and I ambled down the local off licence more in hope that expectation of exchanging our trifling amount of cash for sufficient booze to make us merry.  We relayed our comprised position to the shop assistant and explained we wanted maximum alcohol by volume for minimum expenditure.   To our pleasant surprise the assistant expertly suggested we purchase bottles of the cheap dry sherry that they stock, so we blew the dust off the bottles and transacted accordingly. 

After furtively hot-footing back to Fairfield Drive we tipped the sherry into pint glasses and looked forward to sampling the tipple.  After the first sip of the drink my face resembled that of a man biting into a fresh lemon but within a few more tastes the drink was revealed to be infinitely more appetising than expected.    The sherry went from being a skid row drink borne out of necessity to our beverage of choice from the off licence which we purchased even when we were flush, which was appropriate enough as one sip of it made one’s face flush.   The off licence in question finally closed down and that marked the end of our merry sherry experience, which in the long run was most probably for the best.

Postscript

Recently I attended a very enjoyable school re-union (to mark 25 years since we left the wretched establishment) organised by my good friend the Jolly Keen Giant and held in Brandhall Conservative Club (in Langley) that is run my long time crony Jonty Von Rossi and his wife, the lovely Lareina Von Rossi.  If you can ignore the political allegiance the Brandhall Conservative Club is certainly worth a visit.  

Anyway, prior to the re-union I met up with two other long time cohorts, Ted Stone and Si Clerr, for a swift one in the Flagon and to my great joy and surprise Ted produced the fabled “I did it Peapod” photographs that I referred to in Lowlife 17 (entitled I did it Peapod).  The photographs are shown above (in the paper and email edition but not the online edition – please shout up if you want a copies online readers.) Note the Farah trousers and the Adidas Samba trainers that I am wearing, which were schoolboy chic at the time.

Ted Stone is now a big cheese (or at least a medium sized cheese) insurance broker with a motor home bigger than my house whereas I am reduced to writing weekly witticisms about past fiascos and the inner life of the Flagon & Gorses, for nil monetary reward.  But Ted is to thank for the photographs as I tipped him off about the planned Peapod caper and with him being slightly more affluent than us Shell Corner kids, which was not hard, he had a camera and duly did the business, capturing the escapade forever for posterity. 

© Dominic Horton, 7^th June, 2013.

Lowlife No 22 - Fifty Shades of Sufferance

Fifty Shades of Sufferance

Poor old Willy Mantitt, who is (so far) stoically sticking to his ill conceived but admiral pledge to not drink from 1^st June until his second child is born, which is due at the end of the month. His promise culminated in him having to drink non-alcoholic lager at a barbecue, on the Sabbath as well, which in my estimation compounds the woeful misery of his situation by tenfold. I vowed to Willy that I would think of him many times today when I undertake my Flagoneering, one lament for his sorry state for each pint that I quaff in the Pirate's Pleasure Palace.  Flagoneering, the act of drinking in my holiday home of the Flagon & Gorses, is much like mountaineering but without the mountains, the rope and the crampons. It rarely feels like an uphill struggle in the Flagon, though at times the air can become rarefied, especially if the landlord, the Pirate, drops one of his avalanche-like stink bombs, one of which I had the misfortune of experiencing last evening.

As Willy has got rid of his Nobby Stiles (see Lowlife 20), his newborn daughter will be born to this earth to a sober and pile-less father which represents a good start to life for any child but if I were a betting man (which unlike my mentor, Jeffrey Bernard, I am not) I would wager that one of Mantitt's first acts on returning home from the hospital after the birth will be to savour a glass of the refreshing and delightful drink limoncello, being his favourite tipple.  If Willy complies with his covenant of sobriety the welcome contents of the glass will never have tasted so sweet.  After the happy event of the wee Mantitt introducing herself to the world if Willy informs me that he has complied with his pledge of dryness I will at first be amazed but also in admiration of his new found will power.  This will be quickly followed by a dawning realisation that he is a barefaced liar.

Talking of Willies, after Chilli Willy lost his bet to me regarding the completion date for the renovation works at the Flagon his determination is now such that he seems to have magically moved the project on even in absentia, with him and his beloved, Carla Von Trow-Hell having been on holiday this past week. The exciting development was revealed to me as I approached the pub last eve when I noticed that the building is now proudly sporting colourful new hanging baskets, which is entirely fitting given that the Pirate, is a renown basket case. Such was my surprise at seeing the resplendent baskets that I involuntarily exclaimed to myself, “blooming hell.” I thought momentarily that I had been transported from the Stourbridge Road into Shangri la itself. Given his ability to dictate proceedings from afar Chilli Willy is not unlike a Mafia don, though given his Lincolnshire quirks he is more like the Oddfather than the Godfather. As Chilli’s frame is comparable to Luca Brasi, Don Corleone's fearsome enforcer in Mario Puzo's book The Godfather, I'd better watch what I write about him as I may well end up sleeping with the fishes in the Dudley No 2 canal.

Alexander Sutcliffe joined me for a drink on Saturday evening, in order to recover from his recent trip to Falmouth and I made comment on the hanging baskets to him. Such was Sutcliffe's eagerness to wrap his chunky fingers around a pint that he said he had not noticed the hanging baskets at all.  Given that his powers of observation are at best negligible, Alexander is not a man that I would want to be accompanied by if I ever find myself as the lead in an American cop series consuming coffee and doughnuts on a steak out.  To his immense credit though Sutcliffe is without exception always good drinking company, the pub being his natural environment (or so David Attenborough explained in the popular BBC television series, Lowlife on Earth.)

On Sunday to celebrate my success of finally securing a cheap tin opener and to get over the harrowing experience of having to go shopping, I popped into the Flagon for refreshment and to see what’s what.   In the light of invaluable help that Fudgkins has given the Pirate recently, the Pirate described Fudgey in gushingly glowing terms and referred to him in aggrandised fashion as a “saint”.   I suggested that if we are to treat Fudgey as a saint we need to have a beatification.  In the past many people have wanted to beatify Fudgey to a pulp but he always wriggles away in imp-like fashion.   Bob being clean out of holy water, we decided we would use lager for the beatification procedure as we did not want to waste any of the decent beer.

I thought Fudgey was being beatified on Tuesday when the sounds of choir boys annoyingly rang around the office emanating from the television in the staff room, but it turned out that it was a ceremony to celebrate the 60^th anniversary of the Queen’s coronation. Such is this country’s obsession with tiresome soap operas that I originally thought it was a bash to mark the 60^th anniversary of Coronation Street.  Maybe the Street and Queen Betty could hold a joint celebration which would end with our ruler dancing at the disco to One Step Beyond with Eddie Yates.  

Late on Sunday evening in the Flagon Drew Monkey explained that a helicopter had been hovering over the M6 motorway all day and he queried why anyone would want to stay in the same position for six hours.   Little did Drew know that as I had entered the Flagon at tea time, like the helicopter, I had also occupied the same spot for six hours.  I didn’t so much hover though as take root.    Before you start painting yourself a mental picture of me supping beer, laughing and generally having a jolly decent time you should understand that I wasn’t so much drinking as undertaking invaluable research for this column.

Despite my elongated spell in the Flagon I felt quite sprightly on Monday morning, unlike poor old Barty Hook when he awoke on Sunday.   Given years of experience, if there’s one thing I have expertise in it is how to deal with a hangover but the excitable Barty Hook (who is responsible for Lowlife’s London office) chose not to heed my advice and he is now suffering the consequences.  After enduring a sixteen hour drinking session at the Epsom Derby Barty was in a state if disarray on Sunday, sick as a pig and as weak as a kitten.  Hook’s internal organs were playing merry hell and he stated that, and I quote, “I think my body is trying to eat itself.”

I strongly suggested Barty slowly start to re-introduce alcohol to his system before the point of no return, being 1600 hours, but to no avail.  Instead Barty chose a day of fifty shades of sufferance on his flea ridden sofa.  After a terror laden trip on Monday to the Victoria & Albert Museum Hook tried to claw back the situation by drinking six pints of Guinness, a drink which he undoubtedly chose just to annoy me (see Lowlife No 8), but it was a classic case of trying to shut the stable door after the horse had bolted.   I blame no one for ignoring 99% of what I spout forth but I would hope that next time in similar circumstances Barty will ingest my insightful guidance. 

On the morning of the Sabbath Hook was flailing around like a disorientated drunk in the dark trying to find the light switch as he was attempting to find the right foodstuff to ease the chaos in his stomach.  I recommended Barty chomp on Mini Cheddars, which are innocuous enough but hold great restorative qualities, which is a fact that can be verified by the Phantom. On a working Friday morning after a boozy Thursday night the Phantom and I can at various times be seen trying to tease Mini Cheddars out of the troublesome vending machine in the canteen, as something savoury is needed to settle the stomach.  The legendary Cheddars are like old Wild West tonics that cure all ailments known to humankind, though at a premium of 74 new pence per packet one is entitled to expect more than a regulation cheese flavoured snack.

Weston Superleeds was consuming Mini Cheddars in the Flagon the other day, but not to overcome biliousness but just because he likes them.  Later that evening in a heartening turn of events the gifted septuagenarian jazz guitarist Benny Kurrell presented to me a pleasant little piece that he wrote about being locked in his porch and he said he was inspired to write it after reading Lowlife, which was very flattering to say the least.  So Lowlife has its first inspiree.  And in the absence of anything better, I will drink to that.   

Postscript

Many congratulations to my good friend and work colleague the Phantom and the lovely Mrs Phantom on the birth of their beautiful little daughter Poppy.  The joyous news and subsequent photograph of the little wonder was greeted by a smile on my face as wide as the gulf between mine and Willy Mantitt’s respective incomes.

© Dominic Horton, 5^th June, 2013.

Lowlife No 21 - The Poor Old Pilchards

The Poor Old Pilchards

Excuse me for yawning dear reader but today finds me quite exhausted on account of me sleeping very poorly last night. At times I am a terrible insomniac. In fact what I mean is, at times I am a very good insomniac as if I were a terrible insomniac I would be able to sleep at will quite easily. At times ideas for this column come to me in the sleepless wee small hours and I feel compelled to make notes, for fear of losing the material in the meandering maze of my addled mind. The note taking of course makes the insomnia worse as just as I am about to nod off another idea might appear, too precious to not record. Invariably, by morning time I cannot read my own appalling handwriting anyway and the idea is lost, or my scribble is legible but I have no idea what I meant in the first place.

What I should explain is suitable ideas I have for content for this column are valuable as I am very limited in what I can realistically write, as it needs to be in keeping with the spirit of the thing, so it cannot be too gloomy and I cannot disclose many of the intimate details of mine or other people's lives or offend anybody (well, not too much at any rate). "Hang on a minute," I can hear a throng of readers say in indignation, "you have offended me in these pages and last week you disclosed that Willy Mantitt was suffering from the Nobby Stiles, how much more intimate can you get." Fair cop governor, I hereby concede that point but it remains the case that at least 80% of the things that I see and hear in the Flagon & Gorses, for example, I am unable, for reasons of taste, decency and fear of litigation, able to publish in this column. You would probably fail to believe half of it anyway. This all means that the highly inconvenient 0300 hrs note taking is an absolute necessity as things that fall within the limited parameters of what I can describe in Lowlife are very restricted.

Last night, prior to the compulsion to write down illegible and mildly bizarre notes in the early hours, the nightmares came. I have had the same reoccurring nightmare now for the past twenty odd years and I have come to view it as an old friend, one of the constants in my life. The repeat nightmare always surprises me with its enduring ability to terrify me even though at a conservative estimate I must have experienced it over 2,000 times. As much as I love the wonderful Ken Loach film Kes its ability to entertain me after 2,000 viewings would wear a little thin I would imagine. Incidentally, the title of the Barry Hines book that the film was based on was A Kestrel for a Knave, which is a romantic and evocative title for a film that I can imagine, so it puzzles me why on earth the film title was shortened to the infinitely less attractive Kes.  

I used to live by the Fairfield public house many years ago and my whimsical cohort Gusty Monsoon used to occupy the bedroom that adjoined mine.  My routine nightmare always used to end in fiasco as on hearing me scream in terror Gusty, in the neighbouring bedroom, used to start giggling which made me quickly follow suit once I had come round, so I farcically went from terror to uncontrollable tittering within a matter of seconds. My faithful teddy Alfie now comforts me during black nights of beastly dreams and I comfort him through his, which the poor bear is prone to have as a consequence of having to live with me.

One of the things I often do in order to reach a state of slumber is to think of what delicious food I would like to eat such as juicy cuts of sirloin steak, cooked rare and served with English mustard, or a fresh and inviting Greek salad. Sadly, the actuality of my oft gruesome diet is a far cry from such delicious delights. My diet is largely dictated by the meagre amount of funds I have to expend on foodstuffs, so one has to make do. Francine Jacks brought a nostalgic wartime cook book into the Flagon & Gorses last week, full of recipes to cope with rationing, and casually flicking through the book I realised that I couldn't afford to cook most of the meals in there.

Only I could further deteriorate an already grim batch of tomato and pilchard soup that I concocted last week.  Not wanting to waste some couscous that my son Kenteke had left on his plate (which is highly unusual for him, with him having the appetite of Big Bill Broonzy) I foolishly tipped it into the saucepan and this had the effect of enstodging the soup to such a degree that it turned to the consistency of play dough.  To make matters worse with it being the wrong side of pay day I had to chew my way through the rubbery soup over the course of three evenings to finish it off.  Those poor pilchards, they once swam gaily and freely in carefree fashion in the North Sea never thinking they would end up in an almost indigestible soup in the kitchen of Codger Mansions in the West Midlands.      

At least now my diet is a slight improvement on my early Fairfield days when Still-in-Fjord, who also lived at the property, used to look in disdain and horror at the vats of gruel that I used to make with cheap vegetarian substitute mince.  What I saved in money by using the inexpensive meatless mince I gained in flatulence, much to the disgust of my nose pinching house mates.  Save for the tomato and pilchard soup calamity the only meal that represents such a culinary low (due to fiscal embarrassment) since my Fairfield days is the paltry one egg omelette I cooked, which was a most unsatisfying meal but which at least gave the Phantom something to chortle about. 

Some of Gusty Monsoon’s culinary performances were even more abysmal than mine.  Monsoon used to buy fresh vegetables with the express intention of cooking them in their newly purchased state to form a healthy, tasty meal.  However, the days passed and Gusty would eat all sorts of stodge and convenient nonsense and ignore the vegetables, which festered away in the refrigerator until they reached a mouldy, shrivelled state just beyond the point of edibility, representing the exact juxtaposition of a caterpillar transforming into a beautiful butterfly.    At this point, not wanting to waste the decaying produce Monsoon would frolic around the kitchen in frivolous fashion cooking a foul gumbo.  He would normally do this when hung over on a Monday, so the rank vegetable concoction was the last thing he needed.

After pay day I thought I would lord it a bit so I bought a fresh chicken and on the way back from the butchers I thought about all the tasty things I could make with the deceased, weighty bird, resting in peace in my shopping bag. I decided to make a curry, save a portion for salads for the week and cut some decent chicken breast sandwiches.  I duly followed the cooking instructions to the letter but on taking the cooked chicken out of the oven I discovered to my dismay that it had shrivelled up to about the size of a sparrow.  The poor bird must have been so laden with water that she had simply evaporated.

The price of food is spiralling out of control.  I bought a packet of half a dozen bog standard tomatoes from Tesco in the week for a pound, so by my calculations that is extortionately nearly 17 new pence per tomato.   I have now cut back to using half a tomato on each salad and I have devised a cunning new method of chopping the semi-tomato up to make it look like there is a whole tomato on the plate.  It comes to something when you have to deploy psychological warfare on yourself in order to economise on dietary budget.  

It is no wonder that, according to the Metro, that half a million people are going hungry in Britain struggling to feed themselves in the light of unemployment, rising food prices and benefit cutbacks.  The Metro reported on Thursday that 350,000 people (126,000 of them children) had received at least three days help from the Trussell Trust, which runs nationwide food banks, a scandal in a country with such wealth, which sadly seems to be so inequitably distributed.

I hope the tin openers of such impoverished people do not break, as happened to me this week.  A trip to the supermarket revealed that tin openers were retailing for an exorbitant £6.  Needless to say I did not make a purchase.  At least without a tin opener I will save money on food as I will not be able to access the contents of tins.  Such tricks are needed in these times of austerity.    Though I bet in the Cameron household a full tomato is present on the salads. 

Postscript

All the very best of luck to two of my Australia based associates.  Firstly, best wishes to Dustin Scoffman, who has now arrived in the Antipodes to live a life of mostly leisure whilst half-heartedly looking for gainful employment and living off the earnings of the lovely Mrs Scoffman.  Secondly, good luck to my shambling, Dudley-bred cohort D G Depardieu who has quit his job as a teacher to become a full time writer of children’s books (or barman, depending on how things go). I highly recommend the books he has had published so far (being My Hamster is a Genius and My Hamster is an Astronaut), which you can easily purchase via internet retailers such as Amazon.

I doubt I will be in the desirable position of resigning from my job any time soon to become a full time writer as the only thing I seem capable of writing is the nonsense that fills this column and no self respecting publication is remotely interested in it - I even got turned down by The Oldie.

© Dominic Horton, 31^st May, 2013.