Lowlife 67 – Lol-ed into a False Sense of Security

Lol-ed into a False Sense of Security

By Dominic Horton

It is odd what curious thoughts and images flow through our heads in idle and vacuous moments.  In the Flagon & Gorses the other Sunday, with my recent viewing of the superlative television series Rome fresh in the memory, I fleetingly but involuntarily pictured Gary Sitting Bull, Pat Debilder and Arthur Chedeurvalie as Roman governors sitting in the Senate encasing their wisdoms in flowing togas. The thought fled as quickly as it had arrived and was but one of hundreds of such flighty images that sped through my psyche during the day.  For the most part people do not articulate such adventitious and momentary thoughts through fear of feeling foolish or silly but given the on-going whimsical nature of this column I might as well fire away as no doubt my fellow Flagoners perceive me as a peculiar sort of chap anyway.   And I am certainly in no position to disagree with them.

Or maybe it is just me that has strange irregular thoughts like this during the day (and most of the night come to think of it).  It could be accounted for by me drinking too much, which is a distinct possibility.  But how does one break the enduring cycle of boozing and ignore the bewitching calling of drink that softly and seductively whispers, “submit yourself into my soft and warming arms and all will be well and all of your worriment and quandaries will be forgotten”?  When I played football it bought discipline to the proceedings and kept me more or less on the straight and narrow.  Association Football is a young man’s game though and it is beyond me now as for me to play again would take a more miraculous comeback than Christ’s on the day after Easter Egg Day or Elvis Presley’s in Las Vegas in 1968.  Legendary characters both but I think that in Blackheath Elvis’s comeback just shades it over Jez’s resurrection in the popularity stakes.  But if you compare Jesus coming out of a tomb looking a bit peaky and asking if anyone has got a spare fag to Elvis tearing into a rip roaring rendition of Arthur Big Boy Crudup’s That’s Alright Mama there is clearly no competition.

 

Adam Brown as Ori, in the Hobbit

Anyway, football doesn’t seem to be a goer for booze diversion tactics so maybe procuring a girlfriend would be the answer but with me on the prowl I can see the concerned women of Halesowen quickly forming a resistance group.  I did date a nurse recently but it ended up being another romantic calamity.  She had a habit of ending all her text messages with the increasingly popular but irritating abbreviation “lol” regardless of the content of the message.   She gave the impression that all was going swimmingly well but she eventually contacted me and said she just wants to be friends.  You could say that she lol-ed me into a false sense of security. 

Maybe if I cooked a meal for a prospective suitor it might impress her sufficiently to offer me a second date; then again given my industrial one pot cookery skills (where lean, tender meat and fresh, vibrant vegetables are transformed into stodgy gruel in a reverse butterfly manoeuvre) it is more likely to lead to a Crimewatch reconstruction.   Carla Von Trow-Hell at the Flagon & Gorses will no doubt campaign for the actor Adam Brown to play my part in the reconstruction as she cruelly suggested that I look like the character that Brown plays in The Hobbit, being the dwarf Ori.  I can’t see the likeness myself; Ori is far better looking than me.   I will have to leave my Codger Mansions dwelling and move into one of the Hobbit homes on Long Lane in Blackheath.

On the subject of matters culinary, things such as cooking an entire brisket without tenting or making a soufflé are often bandied about as being the hardest things for a chef to do but to my mind the task in cookery that requires the most skill is to is to defrost bacon in the microwave.  The thin ends of the rashers end up cooked while the fat ends remain frozen and stuck together.  They should challenge the contestants of MasterChef to defrost bacon in a microwave the morning after having drunk their weight in beer in the Flagon & Gorses.   I can just see Greg Wallace assessing the end result and proclaiming, “you have had a nightmare there kidda, if I dare eat that sandwich I’ll have to take War & Peace to the karsi with me as it will give me a severe dose of trichinosis.”

Hobbit homes in Blackheath

Whilst on the theme of food, I’m having preliminary thoughts about trying to grow a few vegetables in a little patch in the Codger Mansions garden, like Tom Good.  Mind you they will have to be hardy, as the only things that seem to survive there are weeds.  The garden seems to have the ecosystem of Chernobyl.   Willy Mantitt suggested that if I do become green fingered that by the end of May I might be able to enter the Chelsea Flower Show but I would imagine that one of the fundamental requirements of the competition is that your garden boasts flowers.  There isn’t a single flower in mine, so that rules me out.  If there was a competition called the Chelsea Weed Show I would be a gold medal winner as there are varieties of weeds in the garden that are unique to the Codger Mansions environment; I found three new types yesterday that have developed over the winter.   Anyway the chances of any success of the cultivation of vegetables is minimal given that the back garden at the Mansions is darker and damper than Windy McDisco’s aris the morning after he has had a skin full and a Vindaloo with the Pirate.  

But whether I grow vegetables, capture a girlfriend or enter into some other improbable occupation the weekly routine of drinking then drying out needs to be unequivocally broken and replaced with something a bit less acute at both extremities; this is especially the case as growing into my 40’s I am conscious that from a health perspective that I am marching into stroke/ heart attack/ mental breakdown/ midlife crisis territory; the latter two I have experience of but the former two have hitherto not called to say hello and if they did they would be unwanted guests.  Hangovers, the filthy post-booze terrors and lost weekends are bad enough but a major health incident would be more unwelcome than the Pirate at the Queen’s Garden Party.

Arthur Big Boy Crudup

But why all the drinking in the first place? Is it just habit, so enduring and persistent that it is just second nature, a way of life which I submit to unthinkingly? Does it fulfil a meaningful purpose? Is it just a side product of being single and spending my association time in the Flagon & Gorses? I was going to deliberate over these questions at the Great Western beer festival on Saturday but being in the eye of the storm is probably not the best time to ponder on these matters.   So in the dead of the night last evening, during my weekly first-sober-night-of-the-week-sleepless-terror-ride (which is like being on a ghost train at a 70’s fairground where the structure has been hastily and unsafely assembled with Peter Sutcliffe as the station master) it dawned on me that a prevailing sadness drives me to the pub.  The following day the drink compounds the sadness which propels me back to the pub once more, like a sick, pervasive boomerang, until enough becomes enough and I sharply apply the breaks for an emergency stop and effect a three point turn back to sobriety.   After the passing of a few dry days the sadness is steadfastly insistent in its occupation of my existence so it is a case of, what the hell, I might as well go and have a drink and make merry and the whole sorry rollercoaster starts its journey again.

And I don’t like rollercoasters, ever since I was on one as a kid with my Brother the Albino in Blackpool when we went round a sharp bend and I hit my head on a wooden white post at the side of the track.  It was only the fact that I was wearing a ‘Kiss me quick’ hat that saved my young life.  Another painful memory from that holiday was when on a roasting hot day my Grandad Charlie gave my brother and I bottle of Corona orangeade and told us not to guzzle it as when we had drunk it there would not be another.  Disastrously either my brother or I dropped and smashed the bottle (I forget who) and we were reduced to drinking warm water from a water tower.  So maybe I now guzzle beer regularly through fear of it disappearing or running out.  Well, that’s my excuse anyway and I am most definitely sticking to it.

© Dominic Horton, April 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.

Lowlife 66 – The Leader of the Gong

The Leader of the Gong

By Dominic Horton

Following my second round of mild-graines a few weeks ago my health has far from been fully restored to such a degree that I have been in bed by 2100 hours many evenings and I have also avoided the Flagon & Gorses for a whole week as I thought I would go dry to see if it made any difference; it has not so I think I can rule out booze as a cause of my ailments (meaning they are not ale-ments.)  So it was back off to the quacks to see what he could do for me.   Being burdened with a chivalrous nature I offered my seat up in the packed waiting room to three women all of whom refused my offer; none of them struck me as being offended feminists so they all must have been thinking, “I’d rather endure standing up than put my aris anyplace that you have been.” 

Like my Dentist Mr Shulman, Dr Mangolatta is a young man of Asian descent and, also like Shulman, he also arrived at work a minute before he was due to start, unshaven and a little slovenly.  But Mangolatta inspires confidence in the same way that Shulman does, with his contemporary medical knowledge and easy manner and I have complete faith in him and given that my eyes passed their recent test with flying colours it is not blind faith either. 

 

Derek Wilton

Mangolatta explained that my blood tests revealed that all my major organs seem to be in decent fettle and I have no obvious illness to explain my symptoms, so he opined that my malaise is most probably down to post-viral fatigue.  When doctors have no idea what is up with you they diagnose a virus and when you have had a virus but you are still ill they state that it is post-viral fatigue; they must learn this trick in week one of their medical training and it sticks with them throughout their careers.  Mangolatta also said that I have an ear infection so prescribed some antibiotics.  At the pharmacy I was shocked to find that the price of a prescription has penetrated the £8 barrier (oddly the price has been set at £8.05) so before we know it you will get no change out of a tenner.  It will be cheaper to buy a bottle of vodka than pay for a prescription so it will be like the days of Soviet Russia when in the absence of any proper medication doctors would prescribe Vodka for all illnesses, even those that were caused by the excessive consumption of the spirit in the first place.

So I was hoping that the gong bath that I attended last Friday (on the kind invitation of Greenetta Redhead) would cure my unwelcome ills.   For the uninitiated (as I was prior to Friday) a gong bath involves someone banging Oriental gongs for an hour or so, while you lie motionless on the floor with your eyes closed, following which the gongmaster fleeces you out of a tenner.  Despite the gong bath not being a usual Lowlife activity I was keeping my mind open about it and I was looking forward to the evening.   My only prior experience of gonging was when I was a child, staying over at St Helier guest house in Llandudno with my grandparents and my brother when the landlady, Betty, would bang a gong to signify to the guests that breakfast or dinner was about to be served, so I didn’t know quite what to expect at the gong bath.

The gongmaster, Phil the Gong, is a Derek Wilton look-alike and wore a Chinese style white ice-cream man’s jacket but I refrained from quipping “two choc ices please”, as it didn’t seem appropriate in the circumstances.  After my introduction to Phil was complete, I lay down on my roll mat, in unison with all of the other gongees, ready for action, or inaction more like.   Before he started the gonging Phil the G said “let us say 'ohm' three times”, which was fitting as being very nervous that is exactly where I wanted to go (I realise that this weak gag only works here in the Black Country.)   Then I closed my eyes and the gonging started and I have to say it sounded unbelievably enchanting, the sound seemed to envelop me and reach to every part of my body and soul.  After a few seconds I opened my eyes to make sure Phil was actually banging the gongs personally as I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t playing a BBC soundtrack whilst sitting in a chair swigging on a can of Special Brew with his feet up, reading the Sporting Life, tab on.

The Acme Thunderer Whistle

Suddenly the gong music changed slightly and became dark and sombre and it reminded me of the spooky soundtrack in Apocalypse Now when Willard is sailing down the jungle River to find Kurtz and it put the wind up me a bit and gave me the woollies.  It didn’t help that shortly afterwards the old bloke lying not far from me nodded off and started snoring loudly, so it felt more like being in a hospital ward at night than a relaxing Eastern experience.  At least the snoring signified that the old fella was still alive, which was reassuring, as I am sure Phil the G wouldn’t have wanted to have a fatality on his hands.    Shortly after I was taken out of my mystical plain again and brought back to reality after I heard a rustling and it became clear than one of the brethren had broken rank and stood up, presumably to attend an impromptu call of nature.  You can always hold a wee in for a decent amount of time but if you need a Tom T*t and it becomes pressing then you have no choice but to go, so I had empathy with the gongee in question. 

Back to the gonging.  Some Percy Edwards style bird imitations were followed by Orca the Killer Whale and I was getting fully into the swing of things but then an odd but very calming thing happened.  As part of my on-going illness I have had flashing lights in front of my eyes, like the Aurora Borealis almost, but gradually under the influence of the gong the lights formed into slow moving decreasing circles (that Richard Briers would have been proud of) that gently floated across the inside of my closed eyelids.   I felt a sort of soothing bliss, a rapture; this feeling only lasted a second or two but it was an incredible sensation and it was almost miraculous given that I am a sufferer of anxiety disorder and generally more jumpy than a junkie who is walking through an eerie forest in the dead of night whilst going through cold turkey.

Before Phil the Gong set about his business he informed the gathering that the proceedings would be coming to an end when he started to play percussive instruments followed by the sound of the cymbals but when this eventually happened I was unsure as to whether things were at a close and I kept opening and closing my eyes to check.  To avoid doubt I think Phil would be better off signalling full time by the tried and trusted method of three sharp blasts on an Acme Thunderer whistle. 

Percy Edwards

Prior to leaving the building I approached Phil to thank him for the exceedingly enjoyable gong bath and he shaped up to hug me so I had to quickly thrust out a hand in panic for a handshake to ward off his proposed over familiar bodily contact.   I waved my tenner under Phil the G’s nose but he seemed most perturbed by this as if to say that he’s a Buddhist and money is of no consequence – he informed me that I had to drop the cash in a basket on the way out, which I suppose is his way of dissociating himself from the vulgarity of the monetary transaction.

To reflect on my gong based experience I retreated to the Flagon & Gorses to partake in what are more familiar Lowlife relaxation techniques.   After an hour or so, while I was propping up the bar with Richie Ramone, to my surprise in strolled Phil the Gong himself and ordered a pint of Bathams Best Bitter.   It was a case of East meets West Midlands.   I suppose being a gongmaster is thirsty work and no one could argue that Phil the G had earned his refreshment.  Phil said hello to me and I felt a lot more at ease, being in my natural habitat. 

There was only one way to finish off this most Oriental of evenings so after the Flagon I scraped into the Rhareli Peking Chinese takeaway just before closing time.    Instead of my usual I ordered schezwan beef and fried rice and the Baby Faced Assassin seemed so thrown by this that for the first time in my memory his perma-grin fell from his face and he seemed somewhat distressed.  This was probably due to the fact that he wasn’t looking forward to asking the chef Mr Ping to knock up the dish with only seconds left before close of play.    I was going to tell the Assassin about the gong bath but I thought better of it as if he attends the next session and subsequently gives someone food poisoning he might be arrested for gong related crimes.  And we don’t want that now do we. 

© Dominic Horton, April 2014.

(See http://www.philresound.co.uk/index.htm if you are interested in information on the gong bath.)

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.

Lowlife 65 – The Best Things in Life are Free

The Best Things in Life are Free

By Dominic Horton

In the song Money (That’s What I Want) Barrett Strong explained that the best things in life are free but ultimately he wanted hard cash.   We are told that money makes the world goes round but according to Mark Twain the lack of money is the root of all evil.  One thing is for sure and that is you do not truly appreciate the value of money until you are on your uppers, which, like many others, is a state that I am in more often than not, in my fragile fiscal existence.   I realise that things could be a whole lot worse, especially as essentially I am at least not in debt (well, not in the monetary sense anyway.)

One person who doesn’t want money, who has actively rejected it, is Mark Boyle, the Moneyless Man, who spent a year living without cash, growing his own food and foraging whilst living in a caravan in a farmer’s field.  Boyle organised everything in a most clever and efficient way for his cashless existence and was a model of green, ecologically friendly living.   The approach that Boyle took is without doubt admirable and we can all learn lessons from his experiences (which can be read in his book The Moneyless Manifesto, which you can read for free online) but freezing in a dark caravan in mid-winter and half starving to death (due to my general inability to grow anything other than my modest overdraft and my waistline) and wiping my aris on the local newspaper is not my idea of fun.  But in all earnestness Boyle’s experiment gives us food for thought and allows us to critique our often linear view of money, what it is and how it affects all of our lives.

Barrett Strong

Growing your own food could be seen as being increasingly important given that researchers from University College London last week explained that in their view we would be better off eating seven portions of fruit and vegetables a day instead of five.  The Pirate, the vivacious landlord of the serene retreat being the Flagon & Gorses, misunderstood the “7-a-day” advice and he has been quaffing seven pints of Nottingham Don’s Pale Ale daily.   By following Boyle’s example of providing food by foraging and growing your own it would at least mean that one would not have to suffer the indignities of valiantly (or potvaliantly more like) trying to digest the offerings of the chef Mr Ping at the Rhareli Peking Chinese takeaway.   I would most definitely advise you to not go foraging in the bins of the Peking as you never know what horrors you might find; it would most likely even wipe the perma-grin off the boat race of the front of house man the Baby Faced Assassin.

I should only write kindly words about the dear old Pirate in this edition as he has had a difficult time recently after suffering from a heavy cold. I told the Pirate not too worry, that the cold will soon pass and like Gloria Gaynor he will survive but he responded, “it is more a case of the record’s B-side, I’m F*cked but I’ll have a Go.”  Tuesday last he self-medicated by prescribing Nottingham Don’s Pale Ale to dry up his runny nose and Mount Gay Rum to make him forget why on earth he prescribed Nottingham DPA to dry up his runny nose.  While the Pirate worked his way through DPA/ rum/ tissues Theo Atrical kindly offered to clean up the beautiful, antiquated rose air vent that sits in the centre of the ceiling in the bar of the Flagon.    The Pirate was grateful to Theo for his offer and he commented that the air vent is an old, ornate feature of the pub that substantially doesn’t work, to which I retorted, “Pirate, it sounds just like you.”

Mark Boyle, the Moneyless Man

Back to the loose thread of this week’s offering, being money, which was at the at the forefront of my activities on Saturday evening, when I was given the night off from the Flagon & Gorses for good behaviour, as I attended a screening of 97% Owned, a documentary made by an organisation called Positive Money. The film is about the financial industry and its role in the economy.   The screening was organised by Transition Stourbridge, an environmental group based around the aforesaid town.   As he introduced the film a member of the group explained that free potatoes, artichokes and plants could be found in the foyer if attendants wished to take some on the way out; I waited for him to say that hooky fags, McSporran whisky and dubious pork chops would be flogged on the cheap after the film but such a comment was not forthcoming. 

The film was fascinating and thought provoking and proffered its view that the control of issuing new money is largely in the hands of the big commercial banks by way of lending and not under the jurisdiction of the state, who only issue 3% of all new monies by means of issue bank notes via the Bank of England.  This means that whatever policies the government choose to employ they cannot properly control the economy.   For interested parties you can view the film via the internet and it is certainly worth a watch.  A discussion followed the film where the audience could proffer their views and members of Positive Money clarified points made in the film.  At the end of the discussion we were invited to take tea and cake and I had a stark moment of clarity when I realised it was Saturday night and I found myself in a Quaker meeting hall with a load of hippy types which is without question terra incognita as far as Lowlife is concerned, so after a quick bite to eat it was off to the Flagon & Gorses before my withdrawal symptoms became irreversible. 

The Bisto Advert

Whilst scoffing my brunch on Sunday I pondered on a much quoted statistic which was repeated by Mark Boyle in The Moneyless Manifesto, which is that in Britain a third of all food is wasted, which is a dreadful state of affairs, especially given the increasing number of people in the country that rely on food banks, which I have discussed in this column before.  There is never much food waste in my Codger Mansions headquarters, which can lead to some strange concoctions at times but to use up some vegetables and garlic that was on the turn on Sunday I made a wonderfully rich tuna and tomato ragu, which would saw me alright for supper but which has stank the house out ever since given that it was slow cooked; on my return to the Mansions from the Flagon it was the exact opposite to the luring aromas of the Bisto advert of yore and I nearly did an about turn and headed for the Peking.   I am eternally thankful to myself that I didn’t.

My spendthrift attitude towards food waste is partly due to economic necessity and in fairness to my dear Mother she sagely forewarned me in her own way when I was a teenager that frugality is a trait that I would require in life after she advised, “you will never have any money.”  Such words were not a dire forecast of my future prospects in life but a liberating statement as the subtext said, “you will never have any money so you might as well not worry about it and enjoy life for what it is” which I have often heeded to my advantage.   That said when you are boracic lint you cannot exchange advice for a drink in the Flagon, which makes us all slaves to money to one degree or another.  Except for the Moneyless Man of course.

Another piece of invaluable advice that I have benefitted from came from my Auntie Anne, my mother’s sister, when I was a child, daunted by a number of onerous tasks that my Granddad Charlie had set me in his garden.   Like many people of his generation Granddad grew his own vegetables but unlike Mark Boyle it was not for ideological and ecological reasons but initially due to post-War austerity.   There was always a lot of work for us grandchildren to assist Granddad with and I fondly remember sitting in the garden after the work was done with a cup of tea (made with tea leaves), a digestive biscuit and a warm, satisfied glow. 

Anyway, seeing that I was not exhilarated about getting stuck into the gardening Anne simply said, “just do a bit” which was pure genius as things no longer seemed so overwhelming and Anne knew that once I made a start I would soon get through the jobs at hand done, which indeed turned out to be the case.   Throughout my life I always hark back to the “just do a bit” advice when faced with burdensome undertakings to complete, such as the writing of this column for example.   So if you take any pleasure from reading this balderdash, you have not me to thank, but my dear old Auntie Ann for offering me such shrewd advice, which cost me nothing.  This proves the point that, contrary to Barrett Strong’s desires, the best things in life are indeed free.

© Dominic Horton, April 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.

Lowlife 64 – Failing to Deliver

Failing to Deliver

By Dominic Horton

I was disappointed to not have the opportunity to read the Halesowen News this week after the errant paperboy failed to deliver the publication to Codger Mansions.  The News fills in the gaps in my knowledge of happenings in the parish that I do not hear about in the Flagon & Gorses and as such it is a vital resource for a writer of a column such as this, so its absence can be costly.  Mind you I can hardly complain as when I used to deliver the News as a boy I regularly overlooked delivery to a house on the basis that it was a little way away from the other dwellings on the round.  The elderly occupants of the house were always efficient in lodging their complaint to the News offices and I always used to wonder why anyone would want to read such a boring local newspaper in the first place.  Karma has it that I am now in the position of the pensioners in question and my keen anticipation of receipt of the local newspaper means that unwittingly I have officially slipped into middle age.

Paper rounds then were effectively child slave labour (and I would imagine that the position has not improved greatly in the intervening years) and lugging hundreds of papers around in two bags over both shoulders was tantamount to child abuse but in those days children did not have the luxury of getting on the blower to Esther Rantzen.   Things took a drastic turn for the better though when the Poison Dwarf decided to quit his Sunday morning paper round at Tasic’s newsagents on Shell Corner and he bequeathed the round to me.    The round was seemingly so well paid that the Dwarf used to deliver the newspapers in his car, him being seventeen and all, and I wondered how this could be so but soon enough all was revealed.  

 

The shop that was formerly Tasics

The pay for the paper round was the going-rate pittance but the key to its profitability was the fact that you had to collect the money for the papers plus the delivery fee off the punters as you walked the streets of your round.   Some customers were happy to rise early and pay you in person once your knuckles had rapped their front doors but others preferred a lie in and would leave the monies for their papers in hidden, secretive nooks and crannies such as under a welcome mat or in a plant pot in the porch.  

At the end of the run through of the round the Poison Dwarf had a pocket bulging with the change that he had collected from the customers and he explained that Tasic never counted the loot but simply slung it in the till.  So the Dwarf advised me to continue with his practice of relieving the pile of coins of all the gold nuggets and also of the fifty pence pieces in an effort to supplement the meagre wages.   This practice yielded such a fruitful return that the overall remuneration for the round was such that eventually I sub-contracted half of it out to my friend Scouse Stuey (who had a touch of the James Dean’s about him).   I didn’t have a great deal of guilt about outwitting Tasic out of a few pennies as the Polish newsagent was unscrupulous enough himself to sell a match and a fag combo to underage smokers and besides I was a street kid from Shell Corner with a living to hustle.

The Dwarf also counselled me to get to the shop no later than 0630 hours to start the round as at that time Tasic had not packed the paper bags so you could do it yourself; Tasic was happy with this as it saved him a job but the benefit of self-packing, continued the Dwarf, was that while Tasic was not looking you could slip a few top shelf magazines into the bag and flog them at school to make a few extra bob, which was a good little side-line.  Things went awry on this front one Sunday though when I had sneaked a copy of Razzle between the pages of a Sunday Mercury and subsequently forgot about the matter.  I unwittingly put the Mercury through the letterbox of an old man who paid exclusively in pennies, which he left in a pot in the porch; his front door was primarily made of glass and as the Mercury hit the ground on the other side of the door to my horror the Razzle slid out of the newspaper and came to rest besides it.  I could hardly knock on the door and ask for the magazine back so I chose to just let sleeping dogs lie.  Luckily for me there was no complaint to the shop and the old fella must have simply thought that the Sunday supplement was unusually racy that week.

James Dean

One bloke always answered the door in a highly dishevelled state after having seen off a gallon of beer the night before and it was clear that each week my knock on the door had interrupted his restorative slumber; he always answered the door in tight red briefs and if I was lucky he had hastily thrown a garment on his potbellied upper body but more often than not he went bare chested.  He would rifle through his wife’s purse (after shouting to her up the stairs “where’s thee puss?”) for sufficient coins to settle his bill while loudly imploring his kids to stop playing on the Stannah stair lift behind him, which they used as a fairground ride.  I suggested to the bloke that he could simply put the monies under the doormat next week to save him having to arise from his pit but he always decided against this option, offering apologies and promising that he would be up in good time next Sunday.  This of course is the classic drinker’s deluded belief that everything will change for the better and be different tomorrow, but of course it never is.

The last drop of my deliveries was to an elderly gentleman named Horace, who was a disabled wheelchair user and I had to knock on his kitchen door which was accessed via his garage.  The garage housed an immaculate Ford Granada in metallic gold and every week I checked the mileage but it never increased and I wondered why Horace didn’t flog it off as it would have fetched a few quid but maybe he secretly harboured a thought that one day he might drive again but sadly that was never going to happen. 

I would always tap on Horace’s kitchen door but more often than not he failed to respond.  Through the frosted glass I could see Horace sitting motionless in his wheelchair and I always feared that he might have given up the ghost and shaken off his mortal coil.  When banging harder on the door reaped no dividends I would gingerly enter the kitchen, which would always smell like death, and place a hand tentatively on Horace’s shoulder whence to my eternal relief he would wake with a start before coming to the realisation that it was only me and there was nothing to worry about.   Old H would then put the kettle on and he would always offer me a two fingered Kit Kat (which made a pleasant change from a two fingered salute) and we would chat about Saturday’s football results for half an hour or so, which he seemed to appreciate given that he lived alone and seemed housebound.

 

A metallic gold Ford Granada 

I was earning more on a Sunday morning than other kids at school who did a morning, evening and Sunday paper round but eventually the halcyon days of the scams came to an end after Tasic sold the shop to an Irish couple named Sean and Mary, who introduced a record book to keep track of the money I collected.   Sean never failed to be cheery, even before dawn on cold mornings and Mary never failed to be miserable, even when Sean tried to draw a smile out of her with his wisecracking blarney.  By employing creative accounting I managed to retain a cut of the collection monies for a while but eventually I realised that the game was up after increasingly rigorous audits by Sean were introduced so with a heavy heart I packed in the round as the reduced income was making my position untenable.

On my final Sunday I told Horace that I would not be visiting anymore and I introduced him to the new paperboy and although he seemed to take it well enough I could tell that underneath he was wistful and forlorn that our little Sunday morning chats were coming to an end and in all honesty so was I, as I enjoyed and looked forward to them.   As I was about to go Horace said, “follow me” and beckoned me into his front room and there to my surprise and delight I found a magnificent fully working train set that filled the whole of the room and Horace let me play with it for a while.  Eventually I departed with a fond farewell, leaving behind Horace, the red pants man, Sean and Mary and it was full steam ahead into my next dubious career.

© Dominic Horton, April 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.

* Lowlife is dedicated to the memory of the late Jonathan Rendall.