69. Raspberries

Caroline calls me a “raspberry”.  

In rhyming slang, “raspberry ripple” is a cripple.  Enfield Borough Council, which is more politically correct, nicer and much kinder than my wife, officially classes me as physically disabled and as a result I am entitled to have and to use a “Parking Card for Disabled People”, more usually known as a Blue Badge.  When displayed on my car’s dashboard, it allows me several parking concessions.

I am allowed, obviously, to park in disabled bays in public, supermarket and office car parks but I am also allowed to park on single and double yellow lines anywhere in the country except in the four London boroughs of City of London, Westminster, Camden, and Kensington and Chelsea. 

I always aim to use the disabled bays in car parks.  It is not the fact that they are near to the building that makes them essential for me; it’s the fact that they are considerably wider than ordinary parking bays.

When I bought my current car I intentionally chose one with only two doors. If I open the door as wide as it will go and slide the seat back as far as it will go, I can swivel on my bottom and simply step out. This procedure is reversed when entering it.

The driver’s door of my car is wider than the door of a 4-door saloon and therefore more space is needed to open it fully. Once out of the car I can walk fairly comfortably across the widest car park and back again.  As far as I’m concerned, disabled parking bays could be positioned anywhere in a car park.  They do not have to be close to a door but they do have to be wide.

There is a £1000 fine for the improper use of a disabled parking bay but that fact does not act as any sort of deterrent and I get very cross when fit and able people park in disabled bays.  If there is no blue badge showing on the dashboard and I come across the driver, I often say something.  Usually the person concerned is embarrassed and apologetic.  Sometimes they are not and sometimes they are very aggressive. 

“If you wasn’t a fucking cripple I’d beat your fucking head in.” 

This was the witty riposte from one charming lady recently. She certainly doesn’t suffer from L’esprit de l’escalier” (see Bon Mots) but that’s not exactly what I’d call repartee.  Often I am told to simply, “Fuck off.” 

I heard of a woman who has leaflets printed that look something like this: 

YOU HAVE TAKEN MY PARKING SPACE.

WOULD YOU LIKE MY DISABILITY TOO?

She leaves one under the windscreen wiper of any vehicle parked in a disabled bay without displaying a badge.  I suspect that the therapeutic effect they have on her is of more value than the effect they have upon the recipients.

I did some research at Sainsbury’s in Winchmore Hill on Saturday morning.  There are 24 disabled parking bays.  At 11:25 they were all occupied and so I had to drive around until one became free.  Upon inspection I found that 9 vehicles (8 cars and 1 van) had no badge showing. 

There is a highly visible notice at Sainsbury’s informing the shoppers that the Car Park is continually monitored and there is a £60 fine for people who park illegally in those bays.  Absolute nonsense!  In the eighteen months that I have been using those bays I have never seen anyone carrying out a check and I’ve never seen a ticket on a windscreen.

I also know that it is nonsense because for the three months I was waiting for my own application to be approved and following advice from my doctor, I parked in them and I was never challenged. 

Many people are in possession of a blue badge but only because a family member is disabled.  Those people are not entitled to use the badge unless the disabled person is a passenger in the car. 

It is also illegal for a disabled person to wait in a car in a disabled bay while a non badge-holder goes shopping or whatever it is they are doing.  I bet you didn’t know that!

We are having roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for lunch today and I discovered that we only had one egg.  I called up to Caroline who was working upstairs.  “I’m going to Sainsbury’s.  We’ve only got one egg.”

As soon as I said it I flinched because I knew what was coming.  In her Edith Piaf voice:

“Are you sure you need to go?  Isn’t one egg un oeuf?”  It’s her favourite joke and sadly, she never tires of it.

I went anyway.  As I got out of my car in a disabled bay at the supermarket a young man in an Audi pulled into the bay next to me, got out and strode off towards the store.  There was a blue badge on the dashboard but this guy was about as disabled as Usain Bolt. I had a brainwave.

You probably don’t know this either because you never see it but on the reverse side of all blue badges is a laminated photograph of the cardholder, his or her signature and the expiry date - of the card, not the cardholder.  (Oh dear. I’ve just checked on the Death Timer website and there’s not much in it.  In fact the card should last longer than me)

I took a twenty-pound note from my wallet called out after him, “Excuse me!”

He stopped. 

“Would you like twenty quid?”  I asked, holding it towards him.

“Yes,” he said.

“You can have it if the photograph on the other side of that badge is of you.” 

Guess what?  I’ve still got my twenty pounds.

68. Bon Mots

I’ll bet that you have often thought of something clever or witty to say to someone, seconds, minutes or even days too late for it to have any relevance or impact.  How many times a week do you come up with a pithy or witty comment but long after the moment has passed?  

It happens to me all the time.  I am regularly thinking of the suitable rejoinder I could or should have used but never in time for it to make the required impact.

The French have a name for this.  They call it “L’esprit de l’escalier” which translates as “staircase wit”. In other words, it is something that you only think of on the way up the stairs to bed.

Of course, when I get home and enthral Caroline with the story of an interesting episode from my day, I alter the facts a little so that instead of the anecdote ending, “… so I nodded and walked away,” which is what really happened, I tell her that what I actually said was, “… yeah, and I’ve got a Morris Minor!”  

Oh, how she laughs and I’m sure that she thinks to herself, “How lucky I am to have such a clever, sharp and quick-witted husband.”

Yesterday, something happened that enabled me to get in my retort at exactly the right time.  It wasn’t exactly quick-witted or spontaneous as I had been brooding and planning for more than two hours before the opportunity arose to say what I did.  

I warn you now that you may think that I don’t come out of this in a very good light.  If you have never met me, you may have formed the impression that I might be a nice person.  I am afraid that you will see now that I'm not.

My liver doctor told me some months ago that I should take more exercise and he suggested that I join a gym.  I did and I hated it.  Unhappily, I am contractually locked into membership for a year and I have to continue paying the monthly subscription until next May but I’ve stopped going.

Instead, I have started having golf lessons. Tiger Woods and Rory Mcllroy both started their coaching at the age of 18 months.  I am 64!  

I was aware of the warning given by PG Wodehouse: 

Golf, like the measles, should be caught young, for, if postponed to riper years, the results may be serious. 

I will continue for the foreseeable future though, because of something that was said by A.A. Milne:

Golf is the best game in the world at which to be bad.

I am not quite hopeless at golf but I’m certainly bad.  When I began and before I realised quite how bad I would be, I fantasised that I would be going round with respectable scores after a month or two and then would rapidly rise through the listings of a club to become a leading player within a couple of years.

After all, how difficult could it be?  I had spent over forty-five years whacking a cricket ball around and occasionally hitting it in the middle of the bat too.  

The cricket ball, weighing 5½ ounces, travelled towards me at speeds of between 50 and 90 miles an hour, was often swinging or swerving through the air.  Sometimes it was deceptively flighted.  When the ball hits the pitch, its onward path is not always entirely predictable either.  It can spin, veer either way, rear up or even keep unexpectedly low.  

Sometimes on a bad wicket (and I played on plenty of those) there was a real risk of injury.  12 players have died playing cricket since 1932.

No one has ever died from a golf injury but there nearly was a fatality in the spring of 1964.  The first time I ever hit a golf ball in anger was at Lowestoft golf club.  My friend, Richard Savage, was a member there and having been playing for a few years he was already a good golfer.  He suggested that I gave it a try and took me along to give it a go.

I teed up and whacked it as hard as I could but caught the ball with the toe of the club.  

Twenty feet away and at an angle of about 50° from us was a metal flagpole with the Club’s pennant fluttering proudly from it.  The ball hit the pole and rebounded back, head high and  right between us.  It came to rest some seventy yards behind the tee.  One of us could have been killed and so I nearly made history.

Unlike a cricket ball, a golf ball just sits there, motionless, looking up at you smirking and asking to be walloped.  How difficult could it be?  The short answer is, “Very.”  

As Caroline said to me two years ago after a disastrous attempt to cut my hair , “Cutting hair is a lot like golf – they’re both a lot more difficult than they look.”

My fantasies may not come to fruition for a reason other than my golfing ineptitude, however.  

I don’t think I like golf club members.  

Hang on, that’s not entirely true.  I have several friends who play golf and obviously as they are friends, I like them all – but they are men.  It’s the Lady Members with whom I think I would have a problem.  The ladies at this golf club all seem to be clones of the same prototype.

The first time I walked through the clubhouse on my way to the Pro’s shop for my first lesson, a woman stopped me.  

“Are you a member?” she demanded abruptly.

“No, I’m not,” I said and walked on.

Yesterday, on the same journey, I was intercepted twice and by two different women.

“Do you want something?” said the first one who was leaving the building by the door through which I was about to go in.

“No,” I said coldly and walked on past her.  Ten seconds later, as I left the building through the sliding glass door on the other side, yet another “lady” stopped me.

“Anything I can do for you?” she enquired.  I grunted negatively and walked on.  

My golf lesson went worse than usual.  I was inwardly fuming and instead of paying full attention to the advice I was being given by the Pro, I kept thinking of responses I could have come up with.  

We played a few holes and afterwards my legs were aching, my ankles were hurting and I was tired.  I sat on a chair on the terrace overlooking the first tee to rest before hobbling to my car.  

“Can I help you?”

Not again!  There she was.  Another stern-faced, middle-aged, sun-bronzed, grey-haired, heavily made-up, overweight, scowling harridan.  She was standing over me with that look that, after years of practice on her husband, was meant to intimidate.

I looked up at her and smiled amiably.  This was the moment I had been waiting for.  I couldn’t believe my luck.  Just when I had honed the perfect response, here she was – yet another interfering, officious busybody and she had walked right into my trap.

“No thank you my dear but perhaps I could help you.  Shall we see if we can find your Carer?” 

That is what I had planned to say, gently and with a look of genuine concern.  Except that’s not what happened and it’s not what I said.  

I really intended to.  It wasn’t that I chickened out.  She deserved it.  In fact, she probably deserved a lot more than that but maybe I felt sorry for her.  She obviously had nothing more interesting or fulfilling to do with her empty life than to wander about the terrace on a sunny afternoon searching for strangers to accost and harass.

“No thank you,” I said, “I’m just resting after a lesson.”

What a wimp I am. 

67. Will you spell that please?

Some time in June, Caroline decided that life in the private sector was not for her and she really wanted to go back to teaching.  After ten years of advising teachers how to teach effectively and informing schools how to organise their affairs, she wanted to see if all the theories and techniques that she had been advocating actually worked. 

She would return to the role of main scale teacher that she last performed nearly twenty years ago.  I think it’s rather noble and admirable of her - but barmy.

“Look at this,” Caroline said to me one afternoon in August, just before she started her new job.  “How do you think I pronounce that?”

I looked at the piece of paper she was holding and the word she was pointing at: Gerewarifucha.  It was one name in a list of names. 

Caroline told me that this was the name of one of the Year 7 maths class she would be teaching.  I could see the potential difficulty.  A lot hinged on the way she pronounced the last five letters.  Should the ‘ch’ be as in “church”, or as in “chasm”?  There’s also a boy called Xavier Kuntis.  She has decided to pronounce Kuntis to rhyme with Spoontis.

I suggested that she should do what I did some thirty-five years ago when I had to call the register in a class I had never come across before.  As I was calling out the names, I looked ahead and saw that someone was called, “Kamaljit”.  I recognised that this was an impending problem.  How should I say it so that it sounded nothing at all like “Camel Shit”?  My solution to this looming disaster was to deliberately leave it out.

“Is that everyone?” I asked breezily, when I had finished.  “Did I miss anybody out?”

“Yes, me,” said a tiny girl.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said.  “What’s your name?”

“Camelshit.”

Some Irish names are only there to confuse and make life difficult for the English.  The first sixth form class I ever met at Creighton School had in it a girl called Badb.  She let me try about six times to get it right and eventually told me that it was pronounced Bibe, rhyming with jibe.  In later years I taught Niamh, pronounced Neeve and Cian, pronounced Keen.

Hindu and Turkish names often caused me problems.  Pronouncing them as they are written is usually the right way but it always made me feel uneasy. 

Ufuk is a Turkish name and there is only one way to say it but the secret is to say it in a tone that does not make it sound like a statement or a question.

We had a Japanese girl at the school some twenty years ago called Fuku but she was never put in the same group as Ufuk.  I was worried that if they ever came too close to each other they might behave like magnets.  The outcome could have either been highly embarrassing or even, possibly, repelling!

Some parents are so far off the wall as to be possibly certifiable.  I told you in “Poetry in the Raw” of the school in Cayman that had twin brothers both called Jamal Whatmore after their father.  I never met those boys and nor did I ever meet the brothers Lord-Peter and Sir-Paul Rollinson that a friend of mine tried to teach.  Apparently, they both (egged on by their mad mother, I suspect) insisted on being called by their full names.  My friend always referred to either one of them as “Rollinson”.

I went to visit another school once for a discussion about something or other with the Headteacher.  When I arrived, he wasn’t ready to see me. 

“He’s having a tather difficult meeting,” his secretary told me.  “But he shouldn’t be much longer.”

Eventually the door opened and out came a huge woman with tattoos all over her shoulders and neck.  Behind her was a boy aged about 11, wearing a tracksuit and with a skinhead haircut.  As they walked away the Head called out to him.

“This is the last time, Spike.  If there’s a next time you’ll be excluded.”

Spike!!!  That poor kid never had a chance.  Some people shouldn’t be allowed to breed.  Are some parents so insensitive that they don’t foresee the problems that they cause for their children? 

I was at school with Vincent Drury and his younger sister, Victoria.  I have to initial something at least once a month.  I bet Victoria was keen to get married.  I consoled my mate Paul Drummond by telling him that the reason Vicky would never go out with him was because of his surname and he told me that she wouldn’t go out with me in case she ended up as a car!

Caroline once taught A-level maths to a class that included an Indian boy called Hardeep.  How could that ever be a problem?  Easily! 

Every time she said his name when calling the register, the rest of the boys sang the next words of the Bee Gees song “… is your love, how deep is your love?” 

She tells me that they were perfectly in tune and even after a couple of years they never tired of it.

Caroline was a student at Birmingham University and students there obviously found little to do in their spare time as she and her friend Gabi collected the names of students doing name/appropriate courses.  They knew:

Sue, who was reading law,

Beryl, who read geology,

Carol and Melody in the music department,

Mark, who was studying to be a teacher in the education department,

Oscar reading drama,

Esther, who was studying chemistry (look it up) and best of all

Nick, who was reading applied criminology.

This ‘game’ started when Caroline found that in her maths group there was a Max and a Min - an English boy called Maxwell and an Indian student called Minesh.  The rest of the group insisted that they always sat together with Max on the left and Min on the right.

We never played that game at Durham but I did study geography with Clifford Hill.  By shortening his first name you have two geomorphological features.

Caroline met the class with Gerewarifucha in it today.  She did as I suggested and left her out as she read down the list.

“Is that everyone?” she asked when she had finished.  “Did I miss anybody out?”

“Yes, me,” said a girl.

“Sorry,” she said.  “What’s your name?”

“Gerry.”

“Is that your full name?” asked Caroline.

“No, but I’m always called Gerry.”

“So what's your full name?”

“I don’t really know.  It’s a long name and nobody ever uses it.  I don’t even know how to spell it.”

When I was five and in my infants’ class and had disappointed the teacher, she would refer to me as ‘Terence’.  I was ‘Terry’ only when I was good (which was most of the time, honestly).  

I have suggested to Caroline that if Gerry ever achieves less than she could or if she ever misbehaves in any way, she should convey her displeasure by calling her ‘Gerry-Wary-Fucker’.