I’m sitting in the passenger seat travelling south down the M6 toll road while Caroline drives. It’s 9:15 on Saturday morning and as it costs £4.50 to use this bit of motorway, the road is fairly empty. The speedometer needle is hovering on 120 mph. and the engine is purring quietly. There is no tyre noise and I am listening to Capriccio Italien by Tchaikovsky, on Classic FM. I can see for more than a mile ahead and there is only one vehicle in sight. Despite the speed, I feel perfectly safe.
“According to the book, the top speed of this car is a hundred and fifty five,” I say.
“Don’t be silly,” says Caroline, “Even though it’s a toll road, there’s still a seventy miles an hour speed limit.”
Then she glanced down at the speedometer.
********
On January 24th in ‘Life’s Ironies’ I told you about a fabulous put-down I received from Sandra, the cashier in the Cayman bank I used. Yesterday I received another, much better one. It was superb and especially so because it was spontaneous. It was not calculated to offend or upset me but it did and I’m still brooding on it.
If there is such a thing as a ‘Put-Down Hall of Fame,’ then this should go straight in. What makes it so brilliant is that my own wife said it and although it was deeply hurtful, it was said with sincerity and was not meant to upset me. Indeed, remove two little words, just five letters, and it would have been a wonderful compliment.
We have been staying at Caroline’s parents’ house in Wilmslow, Cheshire. Five years ago, just before we left for the Cayman Islands, we put three boxes of personal items into their loft for safe keeping. Yesterday we were going through them and came across photographs taken during our holiday in Cyprus in 2002.
As you do, we were commenting on every photo - comments like, “Why did you wear that hat?” and “Do you remember how hot it was there?”
We came to one of me on the beach. Caroline stared at it for several seconds.
“My God,” she said wistfully, “No wonder I used to fancy you.”
Take away, “used to,” and I’d have been flying down the M6!
********
We’ve been having dreadful problems with our Internet and telephone ever since we moved back into our house here in Winchmore Hill. We decided to go with the package offered by Virgin but we have never been able to get a proper wireless connection. We have been very lucky that our neighbours at number 27 have allowed us access via their wireless router.
Yesterday, we realised that we were not receiving incoming phone calls either. Sandy rang me on my cell phone and told me that she had given up trying to reach us on our landline. I phoned Virgin.
“Who have you been unable to receive calls from?” a nice young man from the call centre in Mumbai asked.
I thought for a moment. “Well, David Cameron hasn’t rung today,” I said, “but he’s probably been very busy with his new baby. Neither has Naomi Campbell or Gandhi but he’s been dead for 60 years and so that probably explains why he hasn’t rung.”
Smart-arse remarks like that got me into trouble once in Cayman.
The “Strata” administer Prospect Reef, the complex of about 20 dwellings where we lived in Cayman. Every homeowner pays a monthly Strata fee of $500 and this money is used to pay for the buildings’ insurance, the maintenance of the grounds and the upkeep of the swimming pool and the tennis court.
Our Strata fee was one of the lowest on the island. Most other Strata on the island employ a professional administrator. We didn’t. We did everything ourselves and my duty was to take the 25 cent coins from the washing machines in the communal laundry to the bank.
The last time that I visited the bank was to deposit exactly $500 into the Strata account. On the same visit I also put $5800 in cash into my personal account which I had received as payment for a car I sold.
I had the kind of experience that just couldn’t happen in England. I rather brought it upon myself I suppose and so I probably deserved the aggravation I received.
I had to stand in line for nearly 20 minutes until a clerk became available. When I arrived in the bank I counted and saw that I was fourteenth in the line to be served. There were no chairs. I had to stand while I waited.
There were eight booths to deal with customers but four were closed. I suppose that as it was 12:45 the clerks were out for lunch!
At last I approached the counter and lifted the extremely heavy bag on to the top and took the bags out, one at a time, counting them as I did. “Five hundred dollars,” I said to the girl. In the past, that would have been the end of the transaction. She would have written out a receipt and off I’d go. Not that day.
She took one bag containing 100, 25c pieces ($25), emptied them, spread them out, studied each one and then, counting them one at a time, put them back into the plastic bag that they had come from. Then she took a second bag and repeated the process. When she had investigated three bags I asked her what she was doing.
“I’m checking the amount and looking for American quarters,” she said.
“Why, are they valuable?“ I asked. “The amounts have already been checked,” I said. “Why don’t you just weigh them?”
She ignored me and reached for the fourth bag. I had already been standing for over 30 minutes by now, my knee was very painful and there were still 17 bags to go.
I’d had enough. Time to bluff!
“I’m a mathematician,” I said, “and I can tell you that a 20% sample gives a result statistically significant to four decimal places.”
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Well, if four bags taken at random from the sample show no differential variation in the Gaussian context and content, you can be certain, to one part in ten thousand, that none of the others will either and if it does, it’s very easy to put right, simply by reversing the polarity of the terminal condenser.”
She looked at me blankly.
“That is if you accept the validity of Fermat’s last theorem, which I am sure you do,” I added helpfully.
She looked doubtful. Then she gave me a look that was almost of pity and reached for the next bag. Half an hour later she had finished and she handed me a receipt for CI$500.
All the time this had been going on I had been holding an envelope containing my $5800. I put that on to the counter top. The cashier was staring at her computer screen. I took the money out of the envelope and it sat there - a beautiful thick pile of banknotes.
“I haven’t finished,” I said. She looked up. “I would like to deposit this please.”
“From where that come?” she asked.
“That envelope,” I answered, pointing at it.
“No. Where from it come?”
“From my pocket,” I said, smiling brightly, trying to be helpful.
“Where you get the money from?” she said again, beginning to lose patience with me.
“Nowhere. It doesn’t matter. It’s just my money,” I said.
She just sat there and glared at me, stony faced.
“All right,” I said, “I robbed a bank a couple of months ago and this is what I haven’t managed to spend yet.”
Her glare became more intense and her face became even stonier.
“OK, sorry,” I said, realising that I might have gone a little too far, “I sold a car yesterday and this is the money I got for it.”
She picked up the pile of notes and walked to the back of the room where a man in a suit was sitting at a desk. They entered into earnest conversation and every few seconds he looked over at me. After a couple of minutes he got up and ushered me into a side room.
“From where this money is? He demanded.
“From the sale of a car,” I muttered meekly.
“Huh! You say that now but earlier you say you rob a bank. Which it is?”
I was getting pissed off. “Guess,” I said.
“We not here for fun, you know. We have work to do.”
“Do you want my money or not?” I asked him.
“What bank you rob? You know we have you on CCTV here.”
“I am not a bank robber!” I sighed. “Look at me. I can hardly walk. I’ve got an arthritic knee and an artificial hip. I was trying to be funny. I’m sorry that it wasn’t funny but I was getting very fed up standing for an hour watching your clerk counting out five hundred dollars, twenty-five cents at a time. I won’t do it again. Promise.”
“Hmmph,” he said. “You not funny, man.”
Two days later that branch was held up and robbed.
It wasn’t me!
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