52. Discomfited?

Last Tuesday, I had to go to Hemel Hempstead to deliver a package.  I saw it was becoming unwrapped when I arrived and so I went into a newsagent to get some glue.  

As I entered, a woman was coming out. She turned to the shopkeeper and said, “Look after Mona for a couple of minutes, will you?  I’ve got to pop next door.”

She went out leaving the three of us in the shop - the shopkeeper, a fat little girl who was about eight years old and me. The lump of a girl stood staring at me, all the while stuffing her mouth with sweets. 

The shopkeeper went off to search for the glue I had asked for.  The girl continued to stare and stuff even more and more chocolate into her mouth.

“Hello,” I said. “Why aren’t you at school?”

She said nothing but put another sweet into her fat little face.  Then she wandered off about fifteen feet away to look at the display of comics.

The shopkeeper returned and handed me the glue.  “She’s been to the dentist,” he told me.

“Hmph,” I grumped.  “If she ate less chocolate she’d have better teeth and she wouldn’t be so fat.”

Her mother returned from next door.  “Come on Mona.  Let’s go.  Say goodbye to Dad.”

I have not often been embarrassed.  I’m probably too lacking in self-awareness to be embarrassed and also, when you’ve been in hospital for nearly four months and been subjected to virtually every indignity that it is possible to experience, very little else is really embarrassing.  

That’s why, to Caroline’s embarrassment, I sat in Miami airport for two hours after I had finally been discharged from hospital, waiting to catch the flight home to Cayman, wearing only my pyjamas.  Nobody said anything.  Maybe no one noticed.

There are two other instances, however, that I still remember clearly when I was embarrassed.  One happened fairly recently and the other happened about twenty-five years ago.

I had my liver transplant in October 2008.  I was very ill for about eighteen months and confined to bed for most of that time.  During that period of inactivity, having to eat only hospital food, I lost a lot of weight.  I dropped from 183 lbs (13 stone 1 lb) to 132 lbs (9 stone 6 lbs) in a year.  What do you think of that Weight Watchers?  It’s not a weight loss strategy that I recommend though.

Most of the weight I lost was muscle, due to the liver disease and atrophy.  Occasionally, I had been referred to as a “fatso” in the past but no more.  My legs and arms were stick thin and my bum had vanished.  I was not a pretty sight - but then I never was.  My legs were so weak and my arthritis so bad that they were not strong enough to support even my reduced weight.  My recuperation was slow and painful.

In September 2009, eleven months after the transplant and five months after a hip replacement, I had an experience that was probably my most embarrassing moment ever.

I would go to George Town hospital every fortnight for blood tests and the room where the blood was taken had two chairs so that patients could have blood taken from them, two at a time.  Just as I was having a piece of plaster put on my small puncture wound, a man aged about thirty, sitting in a wheelchair, was wheeled in by a lady whom I assume was his wife.

Three months earlier I had gone everywhere by wheelchair.  First, I had to be pushed and then, as my arms became stronger, I could wheel myself.  Then I progressed to a walking (Zimmer) frame and after that I hobbled around using a stick.

As I passed the man in the wheelchair I gave him my friendliest smile and said,

“You could be like this in two or three months time.” He smiled and shook his head.

“Oh, come on,” I said, “be positive.”

“That’s difficult,” said his wife and then she bent down to lift the sheet covering his lap to reveal that he was a double amputee.

“Oh,” I said.

One Sunday in July, about 25 years ago, Finchley Cricket Club held an intra club game.  We used to hold these games about once a season and they were always played very competitively.  No one wanted to fail against his clubmates. Usually the game would be something like Married versus Singles or Under 35s v Over 35s.

I was sometimes described dismissively, as a ‘leg side’ player.  That’s only one step up from being called a slogger.  Totally leg side players lack the finesse and skill to place the ball accurately on the off side and in the world of batsmanship they are second-class citizens.

Anybody seeing the field set for the first ball I received that day would have been in no doubt of the reason for that soubriquet.  There were eight fielders on the leg side and just one on the off side.

If you have no idea of the fielding positions in cricket, think about is as a clock face with me, the batsman, just below the centre.  The deep fielders were on the boundary at 3 minutes to the hour, 9 minutes to the hour, 14 minutes to the hour and 20 minutes to the hour while the four near to me on the leg side were in the gaps between the deep fielders. The solitary offside, slip fielder was behind me at 25 minutes past the hour.

There was a huge arc of 170° on the off side with absolutely no fielders. 

I glanced around and grinned. It was clear that they were taking the piss and the best way to deal with that was to bat properly and not rise to the provocation.

I looked at the fielders and saw eight of them chortling away on the leg side.  I wished a ‘good afternoon’ to the wicket keeper and to the slip fielder.

The first ball was slower through the air than I was expecting and it was a full length and on off stump.  Whatever field had been set and whatever the match being played, that ball had to be driven into the off side.  The fact that there was something like 7500 square yards of empty space on the off side removed all risk and any doubts that I might have had.  

I decided not to be greedy.  I would just push the ball into the vast acres of untenanted steppes and jog an easy two runs.

For the first, only and probably for the last time in his life, Mike Milton got one to turn. It flicked the edge of my bat and went waist high to Kus Bahradia, the slip fielder, who caught it nonchalantly and tossed it back to Mike.

Although I was embarrassed, there were about 100 other people who thought that it was one of the funniest things they had ever seen. 

Even I thought it was fairly funny.

51. That won't do nicely!

I was in a black cab going down Regent Street in central London.  We reached Mappin and Webb.  I got out and handed the driver £15 to pay the £14.40 fare.  As I turned away from the taxi I felt a smattering of objects on my arm.  The cab driver had thrown coins at me.

“Keep ‘em mate.  You need it more than me.”

GRATUITY: Something given voluntarily or beyond obligation, usually for some service.

That dictionary definition of a gratuity or tip seems pretty clear to me what it means. For years in the UK, they were a part of my life that I gave little attention to but in the five years that I lived on Cayman gratuities became a big part of my daily activity.  Not only were tips expected at the usual places but the bar staff expected to keep the 50 cents change from a $3.50 bottle of beer.  They expected a tip for doing what exactly?  Their job!  That’s all.

Percentages are not subject to inflation.  Things may have changed a little but in London in 2005, 10% was the standard addition to a restaurant bill and the usual tip for a taxi ride too.  Occasionally 12% was added to a restaurant bill but it was the exception.  It was not always printed on the menu as an expectation of payment either.  When I left a tip, I didn’t work out a percentage.  I gave the amount that I thought was appropriate.  Anyway, why should a waiter be tipped more for bringing a plate of lobster to my table than for bringing a beefburger of equal weight?  It doesn’t make sense.

Why tip anyway?  Gratuities in restaurants in France and Italy are not overtly expected nor requested.  In France, by law a 15% service charge always included in the price wherever you eat or drink.

Tipping in Italy is by and large an exception, not a rule.  It’s something you give to reward exceptionally good service. If the service is normal, then tipping is neither necessary nor expected.  The ‘coperta’ or cover charge and the ‘servizio’ or service charge is included in every restaurant bill.

Gratuities here in the UK have been described as, “arbitrary, antiquated and discreditable,” but in the States they are part of the fabric of society because waiting and bar staff are paid so appallingly.

It has been argued that countries with more “extroverted” and “neurotic” people give tips to the greatest number of services and also tipped the largest amounts and that America’s brash, extrovert culture encourages tipping.  But how then do you explain the lack of tipping in Australia and New Zealand, where the big-mouthed, extroverted, drinking culture (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) rivals America’s?   The answer is, I think, that Aussies, in the service industry, don’t depend so much on tips for their income.

In Japan, where the culture is in many ways the antithesis of America’s, tipping is not required and in fact may cause embarrassment or offence to those tipped.  If you tip, it could be seen as a mistake on your part.  A friend, recently returned from Tokyo, has told me of a waiter who chased him down the street to tell him that he had left money on the table.  When the porter stood an extra moment or two in his hotel room, he was not waiting for a tip.  He was waiting to make sure everything was satisfactory.  This is just good customer service.

I had lunch in a restaurant on Ocean Drive, South Beach, Miami in December 2009.  When the check came the gratuity had been added at 22%.  Before I paid I checked the menu and could find no mention of the gratuity rate on it. I asked the waiter where the 22% figure had come from and he told me that it was the standard rate along the strip. “If 50% were standard,” I asked, “would I be expected to pay that?”  He became angry and flounced off saying, “OK don’t pay it.  I’ll work for nothing.”

Later I asked him what he meant by, ‘working for nothing’.  He told me that his pay was $1.00 (63p) an hour and he depended on the tips to survive.  Of course, I relented immediately and then probably I overtipped him.

This situation is outrageous.  I would much rather have paid $25 for my crab salad and not have had that experience, than pay $20, feel cheated and then partly humiliate the poor guy who was just doing his job.  Restaurant and bar owners in the US and the UK should pay a living wage to staff and put it on to the prices of their products.  In the US the restaurant owners can get away with this because the only people in the States who can legally make less than the minimum wage are people who receive gratuities.

I have never checked but I am pretty sure that I always leave more when a bill has, “Gratuity not included” printed on it. There is a restaurant in Cayman that has no fixed charges.  Patrons pay what they feel is the right amount for the food, the drinks and the service that they have received.  There is a similar place in London and it is always full.

In Cayman, there is the phenomenon of “Mandatory Gratuity” printed on the menu.  WHAT?  If ever there were an oxymoron, this must be it.  Those words are printed on the menus of several very expensive restaurants in or near George Town.

A couple of years ago Caroline and I were in one of these expensive restaurants.  We ordered our main courses and waited for about twenty minutes.  Eventually the food arrived.  That would have been fine – we could cope with a wait that long – if Caroline’s order had not been totally wrong.  She had ordered shrimp but was presented with lamb.  My plate had been left in front of me and as it was getting cold, I started to eat.  I had finished by the time her food arrived.

I took 15% off the grand total and paid the exact amount in cash.  As we were getting up to leave the waiter returned and demanded the missing $20.  I explained that I was not paying it and why.  Then the manager came over and the two of them harangued me while the other diners stared open mouthed.  We tried to go but they blocked the doorway and wouldn’t let us leave.  This stalemate lasted for 5 or 6 minutes while I tried to explain the nature of a gratuity to them and only ended when Caroline made a big show of phoning the police.

In the States, calling the police might not have worked.  In November 2009 a restaurant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, actually had two people arrested for refusing to pay a mandatory 18% gratuity.  The couple had to find their own napkins and cutlery while their waitress went outside for a smoke; they had to go to the bar themselves to ask for refills and then had to wait over an hour for salad and wings.  That sounds like terrible service and if I were put in that position I would have simply walked out 30 minutes after ordering.  I’ve done that twice in the UK. 

It’s hard to believe that the police took them away and they had criminal theft charges filed against them for failing to pay a mandatory $16.35 gratuity but that’s what happened.  It doesn’t mean they didn’t have options available to them.  They just chose the wrong one.  The case was eventually dropped and didn’t come to court.

Sometimes I am keen to give a gratuity.  When two deliverymen struggled in oppressive heat to carry heavy kitchen goods into my house in Cayman, I had a real problem getting them to accept the $20 I thrust upon them when they had finished.  Certainly they were being paid by the company to do it but their enthusiasm, good nature and general niceness had brightened my day.

Where is the line drawn with tipping? Why do we tip hairdressers and not dentists?  They both spend about the same length of time using their skill to work on a part of your head.

Why don’t we tip the cashier at the supermarket; the post office worker who hands you a parcel; the assistant at Wendy’s who serves you a coffee or the policeman who takes your statement after a traffic accident?  Why do we give the dustmen a Christmas bonus but not the postman or the street cleaner?

It’s an embarrassing, anachronistic nightmare and I hate it.

50. Losing it?

I worry a little these days that I may be ‘losing it’.  How do you know when you start to ‘lose it’?  I suppose that other people know before you do and I guess that, because there is not much that can be done, they just keep quiet about it and you never get to know. 

I’ve just seen a BBC news reporter who may have ‘lost it’ already and that’s sad as she’s only in her mid twenties.  She was standing on the beach at Bognor Regis and she was there to report on a partial eclipse that would be visible as the sun rose over the sea. 

“To see the eclipse you need to be as close as possible to the horizon,” she informed us with some assurance and authority. 

That conjures up an interesting scenario.  “Will you sail a little closer to the horizon please, Captain.  I’d like to get a better view of the eclipse.”

When my father was only four or five years older than I am now, he began to lose it.  He became a little vague and forgetful and he struggled with names.  My mother’s name was Pat and my brother is Peter and whenever he spoke to me during those years my father, in his confusion, always called me, “Peter-pat-terry.”

The first time that Caroline accused me of being senile and possibly ‘losing it’ was about three years ago as we were sitting together under a large parasol on a beautiful, hot Saturday morning at the Cracked Conch bar/restaurant by the sea on Grand Cayman.  Ten metres from us was a set of metal steps going down from the outside bar area into the beautiful clear water.  We watched numerous divers embarking on or coming back from their dives.  Two young boys went down the steps.

“Look at that,” I said, anxiously.  “Those two lads are going diving without scuba gear.” 

Caroline gave me a sad look.  “They’ll be snorkeling then.”

Twice in my life though, I have had a moment of insight that made me certain, for a minute or two at least, that I had special mental powers.  The first time was in February 1967 in the kitchen of a flat in Edinburgh.  It was about eight o’clock in the morning and my friend Ian and I had hitchhiked overnight from Durham.  I can’t remember now why we were there but I do remember that there was a pack of cards in the kitchen.

I took a card from the pack, held it to my chest and said to Ian, ”What card am I thinking of?”  He stared at me intently and then after about ten seconds said, “Five of clubs.”  It was!  We tried to repeat that phenomenon for the next hour but never did.

Some twenty-five years later, at about one o’clock in the morning, I was with Ian again but also with Roger and their wives.  We’d been eating and drinking for the previous five hours.  I left the room for a few minutes and when I returned I was told that they had a story and I was to unravel it by asking questions to which they could answer only ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Does the story concern me? Yes.

Does it take place in Hertfordshire?  Yes.

Is it set in Borehamwood?  Yes.

There it was: “Borehamwood in three.”  Pretty impressive I thought.  I had managed to narrow down the place, out of all the millions places in the world where the story could be set, in just three questions.  Psychic?

No.  They had agreed to answer “Yes” to any question, the last letter of which ended A - K and “No” to a question that ended L – Z and see how the story developed.  Oh how we laughed (and still do)!

Yesterday I said something that produced that same look of pity and concern from Caroline that she had given me at the Cracked Conch. 

“We’re going to be rich,” I told her.  “I’ve had an idea for a gadget.  It’s brilliantly simple, has no moving parts and although no one but me realises it yet, it’s something for which the world has been waiting for a hundred years or more.  All I’ve got to do now is to produce a stereotype and take it on to ‘Dragons’ Den’.”

I put it down to all those years teaching students in the Peoples Republic of Haringey where we always had to actively suppress any thoughts of stereotypes.

It’s a good job that she had left for work and wasn’t at home this morning.  I had installed a new Cable Box for my television and then I phoned the company to ask them to activate it. 

“What can you see in the display panel at the moment?” the woman asked me.  “PL70,” I said.

“OK, that’s good.  Now, it takes about twenty minutes to activate but when it says 999, it’s ready,” she said but forty minutes later I was still waiting for 999.  I phoned again.

“It’s not worked,” I told her.  It says 852.  No, it’s just changed.  Now it says 853.  This is going to take hours.”

She sighed.  “That’s the time you’re looking at.  Press the red button.  What’s it say now?”

“999,” I muttered

I spoke to Mark on the phone on Wednesday. “Did you do that test I sent you?” he asked.

“What test?”

“The one that I sent you a few days ago.”

“Was it an e-mail?”

“Yes.”

A bell was ringing but it was only a little tinkle.  I vaguely remembered something. 

“No,” I said confidently.  “You never sent me anything.  I never got it.  You never sent me anything.”

“Yes I did - on Saturday.”

“No, I haven’t had an e-mail from you for weeks.” 

“Yes I did send you one.  It was about colours.  Hang on a minute and I’ll go to my ‘Sent Box’ and see if it’s there.”

There was a short pause while he must have been looking at his computer screen.  Colours?  Yes, maybe I did remember something about colours but what was it?

“Yes, there it is.”  Mark had left his computer.  “I sent it to you at the same time I sent it to Nigel and he told me he’s done it.  You have got it.  I bet you’ve deleted it without reading it.  Look in your ‘Deleted Box’.”

My computer wasn’t on so I kept quiet for about fifteen seconds, pretending that I was looking.

“No.  It’s not there.”

“OK,” Mark sighed.  “I’ll send it again but I bet you did get it.”

“No I didn’t,” I insisted, grumpily.  Maybe I was wrong but I didn’t remember getting it. 

“What’s it about anyway?”

“It’s a test to see if you’ve got Alzheimer’s,” he said. 

49. Where are all the pork pies?

As some 32% of the readers of these accounts are from outside the UK and many of the UK readers are from outside London and as it is possible that more than half of you have no interest at all in the English Premier Football League. I think that we may need a:

GLOSSARY

Arsenal Football Club              

It was founded in 1886 in London. It was the first club from the south of England to join the football league and is now the third most valuable football club in the world, valued at $1.2 billion. Currently 3rd in the Premiership.

Emirates Stadium                   

The current home of Arsenal FC. The stadium opened in July 2006 and has an all seated capacity of 60,355.

Gooner                                    

An Arsenal fan. Global fan base estimated at 27 million.

(Deranged Gooner)                  

Classic example of tautology.

Manchester City                      

The other Manchester Club. Currently 2nd in the Premiership.

Blue Scousers                        

Everton Football Club.

Tottenham Hotspur                 

This is the other North London club and the rivalry is intense.

White Hart Lane                      

Tottenham’s ground which is less than four miles from the Emirates.

Winchmore Hill                        

A suburb of North London.

The Yids                                              

Racist term applied to Tottenham FC and their supporters by Gooners.

I always find it very hard to buy a present for Caroline. From the beginning of March, I am constantly on the lookout for any clue as to what she would like for her birthday in June and then, after that, it’s a constant worry about what to buy her for Christmas.  I on the other hand am very easy to buy for.  Any gadget will do for me and that’s why the automatic pepper mill was my best present at Christmas.

Last November and by then desperate, I gave up searching for clues and I asked her outright, “What do you want for Christmas?”

The trouble is that Caroline has everything she needs and she wants for nothing. “I’d like to go to a football match,” she said. “I’ve never been to one. But I don’t want that as a Christmas present,” she added quickly. “I want something I can unwrap.”

Every time we travel into London from Winchmore Hill on the train we pass about 100 yards from the Emirates Stadium, the home of Arsenal Football Club. 

I looked at the fixture list and discovered that on January 5th they were playing there against Manchester City.  Caroline has always told me that if she is a supporter of any football team it is Manchester City.  She was brought up in Alderley Edge only a few miles from City’s ground.

I asked her some questions to find out how keen she was.  “Can you name any Manchester City players?” I asked her.

 “Yes – Francis Lee, Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee, Denis Tueart, Joe Corrigan,” she rattled off effortlessly.

I was impressed.  “Would you like to see Arsenal play City?” I said. She was thrilled.  “Will Dennis Tueart be playing?” she asked.  “I doubt it,” I told her.

I went online to buy tickets - £340 for two.  The tickets were £94 each but service charge and handling fees added over £150. 

We agreed that was ridiculous and much too expensive.  I mentioned this to Julian the Butcher across the road and the next day he told me that he could get me two tickets for £140.  I didn’t ask any questions.

The kick off was at 7:45 on Wednesday evening and I arranged to meet Caroline at 6:00 in a pub on the Holloway Road only a quarter of a mile from the ground.  I was early.

As I approached the door two Heavies stopped me.  

“Let’s see your ticket!” 

“I haven’t got one,  My wife has them and I’m meeting her here. Do I need a ticket to come into a pub?”

“Arsenal supporters only in ‘ere. Where’re you from?”

“Winchmore Hill,” I said.

“Is that Manchester?”

Eventually they were persuaded that this short, overweight cripple leaning on his walking stick was neither from the north, nor likely to start a fight and so I was allowed in.

The Emirates Stadium is magnificent.  It is actually quite beautiful and there is so much space everywhere.  There is even a lift/elevator that took us up to the level of our seats.  By 7:00 p.m. we were sitting ready to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the pre-match entertainment but there was neither.

Twenty years ago, I used to go to White Hart Lane to watch Tottenham and to the old Highbury Stadium to watch Arsenal.  The differences in the experiences then and today are colossal. 

Now, everyone is seated. There was no singing or chanting and in fact at 7:25 most of the seats were still empty, as people seemed to be in the bars behind the seating areas.

Ten minutes before kick off the place started to fill but it was still very quiet. Even when the game began there was no ‘Wall of Noise’ as I had been expecting and had warned Caroline about.

The people on both sides of us and behind us, continued their conversations. They were obviously paying very little attention to the game and I was quite distracted as I listened to a list of the problems to be encountered when sailing in the estuary at Maldon. 

Some of those near me were still in the suits that they had been wearing in the office at work. At half time I was tempted to go and look for the vol au vents and quiche stall but I didn’t as I expected there would be a long queue. No wonder there is no atmosphere in the stadium!

 “Where are all the hooligans?” Caroline asked me. “No one has thrown anything and I haven’t heard any bad language – except from you.” She was right. It was like being in the crowd on a cold day at Lord’s cricket ground.

It reminded me very much of the crowd behaviour at the Busch Baseball Stadium in St Louis where Caroline and I had seen the Cardinals play the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2006.  No one there but us seemed to be watching the game either and there was a constant hubbub of chat.  People were constantly getting out of their seats and going to the bar or to the food outlets.

We were sitting behind the goal at the Clock End about two thirds of the way up. Every time the ball came into the penalty area, everyone in front of us stood up blocking my view and so I had to stand up too. I stand up more slowly than most people and I kept missing the goalmouth action. For the rest of the time the view was fantastic.

The enmity and hatred towards Tottenham is tangible. That evening they were playing two hundred miles away on Merseyside but, “Stand up if you hate Tottenham,” was the regular chant and everyone who heard it, did and so I did too.  Otherwise, all I could see was the back of the person in front of me. This chant was uttered whenever there was a lull in play and as a result I was up and down about thirty times in the first half.

Our favourite chant was an exchange between those to our left and those to our right.

LEFT              Who do we hate?

RIGHT            Tottenham

LEFT              Thanks very much

   RIGHT        Thass’all right

Poor Tottenham! At the end of the game I was informed with some glee by a deranged Gooner that, “The Blue Scousers had fucked the Yids.”

It was a 0 – 0 draw and it wasn’t a very good game but Caroline had loved it and so I suppose that was the important thing.

Sadly for Caroline, Dennis Tueart, her favourite player, didn’t play. That was a shame because his direct aggressive style on the right wing was just what the game needed.

Glossary(continued)

Denis Tueart                            

Along with Francis Lee, Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee and Joe Corrigan, he was a star Manchester City player in the 1970s when Caroline was a girl.

’48. THE KING' and Cricket

My grandchildren came for lunch on the Sunday before Christmas.  William and Annie and their parents, Lucy and David, stopped off on their way back to Yorkshire after spending the weekend in London with friends.

Caroline decided that at 2 years and 8 months, William is old enough to enjoy the taste of mango juice.  He drank it but I’m not sure that he enjoyed it.  He did like the glass that it was served in, however.  I can’t remember where it came from but it has a coloured picture of Elvis Presley on it.

“Who’s that, William?” Caroline asked him, pointing at the picture.

“Don’t know.”

“It’s The King, ah-ha haa,” said Caroline, dropping her voice an octave for the, “ah-ha haa.”

“Who is it?”

William said nothing but just smiled.

“It’s, The King, ah-ha haa,” repeated Caroline. 

This went on for a minute or two.  Eventually William would answer that it was "The King" much to Caroline’s amusement but he was reluctant or unable to growl, “ah-ha haa.”

This coaching/training/prompting of infants is something that many people seem to do.  I suppose that it’s marginally more useful and slightly more interesting than teaching a dog to fetch a stick but any benefit or reward seems to be more in favour of the adult than the child. 

I was once guilty of similar behaviour myself.  When my son Tom was the same age as William is now, I taught him to say, “eleven,” after I’d prompted him with, “What’s seven plus four?” and to answer, “Seventeen,” after, “Eight plus nine is?” 

There were several people at the time, including two old ladies at the checkout at Waitrose in Barnet, who thought that they’d met a genius.  The two women were so convinced  that he was a prodigy, they spent five minutes trying to persuade me that I should allow them to contact the BBC. 

Like the good educationalist that she is, Caroline spent a lot of time on Sunday afternoon reinforcing William’s learnt behaviour. By two o’clock, all Caroline had to do was to point to the picture of Elvis and William would say, “The King” after which he would bow his head and a second later mutter, “ah-ha haa.”

Then Lucy went too far.  “Curl your lip when you say ‘ah-ha haa’ William, like this.”  But William couldn’t.  Just as some people can’t curl their tongues, so I suppose, the curling of the lip is a gift that is not bestowed on everyone.  I can’t do it either.

*********

Caroline’s brother and his wife gave me a fantastic Christmas present.  It’s an automatic pepper grinder.  When I first opened the box, I thought that they’d given me a present intended for Caroline but I soon realised that it wasn’t what I thought it was.  It looks like a green, tapered cylinder with an outlet at the side at the top. 

To use it you pick it up and tilt it. Inside there must be some kind of gravity switch and as soon as it reaches a certain angle the grinder starts and out comes freshly ground pepper. It’s great because it means that you can carry on shovelling food into your mouth, or at least always have a free hand, while adding pepper.

Caroline got a high-tech present too which she thinks is fantastic. My son, Tom, gave her a pair of gloves with the ends of the thumbs and index fingers missing.  This means that she can use her iPhone without having to take her gloves off. 

We are both very easily pleased.

********

It was Christmas Day yesterday and I was so tired as a result of the activities I indulged in during the day, at eleven o’clock I went to bed.  It was not an easy decision and I made it despite the fact that the fourth test match between England and Australia was to start in half an hour but that just shows how tired I was.

However, I was awake at 5:15 this morning (Boxing Day).  A minute after that the television was on and I was ready to watch the last hour and a half of the cricket.

63 – 0 was the score.  England were doing well.  A good job I went to bed, I thought.  There must have been rain for most of the day.  I’ve had a good night’s sleep and I’ve only missed 15 overs.  Then I had another thought: “What’s the time in Melbourne?  Maybe play has ended for the day and I’m watching the highlights.”

I turned on the radio and heard the commentary matching the television pictures.  Actually it was five seconds ahead of the television pictures as usual.  Why is that?  Therefore the cricket was live and so it must have rained after all.

Then the bombshell: Cook hit a boundary and I was informed that England were now only 25 runs behind Australia’s first innings total of 98. Bloody Hell !!! I’d missed one of the best day’s cricket ever. 

Now, upon reflection, I realise that I hadn’t really.  What I had done was to sleep through the most important six hours of

THE BEST DAY EVER IN THE 

HISTORY OF THE WORLD

Unless you’re Australian of course.  Tee hee!