70. Disappointment

To be disappointed, your expectations have to be thwarted and until a few days ago I don’t think I had ever been disappointed.  Sometimes, of course, things haven’t turned out as I had been hoping.  

I suppose that when Norwich City Football Club, a 3rd Division South side, lost to Luton Town in the FA Cup semi-final of 1959, it was a disappointment but really it was more of an anti-climax after the wonderful run they had enjoyed up until that point.  Of course I was saddened, but that wasn’t real disappointment as I had never expected Norwich to win.  I just hoped that they would.

I thought that the general election result of 1979 was regrettable, but its inevitability prevented it from being a disappointment. 

I have just been watching England play against Scotland in the Rugby Union World Cup.  England played appallingly.  I can’t say that I’m disappointed because England have been awful for the last three games and I wasn't expecting anything better but I am certainly frustrated and dissatisfied. 

Last Tuesday I had my last golf lesson.  I shall have no more.  It’s not that I no longer need them, far from it.  The sad fact is that I have gained nothing from those lessons.  I realised on Tuesday that after six lessons I am worse than I was before the first one and I have made no progress at all.

I am genuinely disappointed.  Six weeks ago, I told you in ‘Bon Mots’ that I had visions of playing golf regularly and often over the coming years.  I expected to.  It would give me something enjoyable to do with my copious leisure time but alas it is not to be.  I wrote that, “I am not quite hopeless but I’m certainly bad.”  That is not the case anymore.  I am definitely hopeless and I am consequently, for the first time in my life, genuinely disappointed about something.

However, I am much better off than Sophie who was only 12 years old when in 2004, she experienced deep, scarring disappointment.

Sophie was a pupil at Fortismere School and one of my students.  Her parents are from Cyprus and her grandparents still lived there.  Sophie told me that they owned and ran a family restaurant in Paphos.

Caroline’s parents own a house in Paphos and before moving to live in the Cayman Islands, Caroline and I would go to stay in their house during August when the temperatures were highest and her parents sought refuge in the cooler climes of England.

One morning in August 2004 when the temperature had reached 39°C (102°F) and it was too hot to do anything outside, I sat under the air conditioning unit inside the house, with the Paphos edition of Yellow Pages on my lap and looked for the restaurant.  I thought I found it and later that evening we went there to have dinner and discovered that it was indeed the right place.  

When I told the who I was, Sophie’s grandparents were absolutely overjoyed to meet us and they made a huge fuss, plying us with unlimited amounts of food, wine and Filfar – a Cypriot liqueur made from oranges.  By the end of the evening, we were well and truly filfared.

They told us that Sophie and her parents had moved up into the Troodos mountains to escape the heat, but they would all be back on Sunday for Grandpa’s birthday party.  

He was to be 80 and we had to come too.   It was a lunch party that would start at around eleven in the morning.  They insisted that we came and told us how surprised and delighted Sophie would be to meet her teacher.

I wasn’t so sure about that but it would have been rude and even churlish not to say “yes” to the invitation and so accept it, we did.

We didn’t want to arrive too early and so we turned up at noon.  I parked the jeep and we went in through a gate in the middle of a long wall that ran along the side of the courtyard.  Directly opposite us and at the end of a ten-metre path was a long series of tables with about 60 people in total sitting along both sides.  Facing us, with two empty seats in front of her, was Sophie.

Grandpa saw us and let out a welcoming yell.  60 people looked at us and started applauding.  I was very embarrassed.  I gave Sophie a little wave and smiled at her.

Sophie certainly looked surprised but not at all delighted.  She nodded towards me and gave me a sort of half smile.  Caroline and I took our seats opposite Sophie and her parents and for the next seven hours or so we had a wonderful time.

It was just getting dark when I found myself talking to Sophie alone for the first time since we arrived.

“What did you think when you saw me come through the gate and walk down the path?” I asked her.

“I was surprised but a bit disappointed,” she said.  “They told me to sit there in that seat and keep an eye on the gate and I’d get a nice surprise.  So I did and then you came in.”

“Oh, I see.  I’m sorry.  I wouldn’t have come if I thought you’d be upset.”

“Oh no, that wasn’t the reason,” she said, before adding wistfully, 

“I thought I was going to get a donkey.”

Now that is a degree of disappointment that neither you nor I can imagine.

 

36. Not Funny

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 24^th 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!