118, Nutter

What is it about me that attracts nutters?  If you read Brief Encounter (click to read) in November 2010, you may remember the nutter who accosted me on Winchmore Hill Station.

It’s happened again.  I was sitting on a bench by the checkout at Waitrose last Saturday morning.  Caroline had taken the trolley to the far end of the supermarket where “Ladies’ Things” are kept.  

A woman, who is probably about the same age as me, joined me on the bench.  She immediately asked me where I had got my walking stick with its ergonomically designed handle.  I told her that I had bought it from a shop in New Oxford Street at the southern end of Tottenham Court Road in London.

“Oh, I know that shop,” she said, “It’s near the pub where De Gaulle spent the war sitting on his fat bottom.”

“Really?” I said.  “I didn’t know that.  What pub?”

“I think it’s called the French Pub, or something like that now.  It changed its name because of De Gaulle. Overrun in four weeks.  Some General!”

(I’ve done some research and I think that the pub she was referring to is ‘The French House’ in Dean Street, Soho.)

“That was hardly De Gaulle’s fault,” I said.  “The French were fighting against forces with better equipment and larger numbers.   In a military sense, the Germans were superior to them in every way.”

“Nonsense!  The French didn’t put up any sort of fight.  They were more interested in protecting their historic buildings from damage than defending themselves.”

“Nowadays,” she went on, becoming quite animated, “apart from Germany, most of Europe is failing and Germany’s got itself into problems by welcoming in millions of migrants.  Thank God we didn’t take up the Euro.”

“Something tells me that you’ll be voting to leave the EU in the referendum this summer,” I suggested.

“Of course I will!  Why do you need a walking stick anyway?” she suddenly demanded.

I was somewhat disconcerted by the sudden change in subject and amazed that for the first time in my life I had been defending the French.  

I told her about my ankle and that I was expecting a reparatory operation that could possibly mean that I wouldn’t need the stick one day.  On hearing this, she came out with another dogmatic pronouncement:

“I don’t trust doctors but I do trust and I do use, reflexologists.”  

“Homeopaths too?”

“Of course.  You should try one.  Then you’ll see I’m right.”

I may have laughed a little.  I told her that there wasn’t much that a homeopathic doctor could do for my arthritic ankle bones.

She wasn’t interested in any kind of discussion on that topic but informed me that if the recent stories on the news were correct - stories such as those about a possible cancer cure and of stem cell research that enables the paralysed to walk again, we were all going to live to be a hundred.  

On top of that, she told me, it looked as though babies born today would live for hundreds of years and some of them would, maybe, never die.

That bombshell was slowly sinking in but, before I had time to consider it in any detail, she hit me with an opinion that took her out of the classification into which I had previously consigned her - that of being a bit of a “Nutter”, into a group I’ve never come across before.  

In future, before you dismiss anyone of being a racist, just try and work out how he or she measures up to this woman and her attitudes, views and opinions.

“If we in Europe and America are going to live for hundreds of years,” she almost shouted at me in her fervour, “what do we need the third world for?”

I just stared at my walking stick handle, wondering what was taking Caroline so long.  I was lost for words and silently cursing my stick for getting me into this mess.

“Well?” she demanded after a few seconds, “What do we need them for?  What good are they?  What purpose do they serve?  We should just leave them to get on with it.”

“That’s outrageous,” I said.  “How are all those things connected?  By your reasoning, what good am I?  What am I needed for?  I’m non-productive and I’m a drain on the NHS.”

“Yes, but you’re different,” she said.  

“No, I’m not.  How am I different?” I asked.

“Well for a start, you’re British.”

“You mean white, don’t you?”

“Oh no.  That’s not what I mean…” but before she could tell me more, Caroline arrived with the trolley.  

“Credit card please.”   

Consequently, I never found out exactly how I was different or what I was good for.  

33. Foxes, Lions, Keys and Poo,

Occasionally, something happens that makes me think of Cayman and so I feel compelled to write about it.  

Ever since we moved back into our house, we have had a daily problem that we never had in Cayman.  Mosquitoes could be a nuisance in Cayman and occasionally the odd cockroach would be seen striding across the floor but that was about as far as problems with wildlife went.  

There were snakes in the grounds but none was dangerous.  Friends of ours living alongside the canals, which are actually inlets cut from the shoreline, would occasionally find scorpions in the house.

The only problems caused by wildlife were in the sea.  There was always an almost insignificant risk of being bitten be a barracuda or stung by a lionfish.  At certain times of the year, when the jellyfish larvae were in the water, there was the risk of contracting ‘sea itch’ which was very irritating and painful.  The last recorded shark attack was in 1850.

Bats are the only mammals indigenous to the Cayman Islands.  Some other species have been introduced in the last hundred years or so, such as the agouti, a kind of long legged rat.  There are an increasing number of feral dogs which can cause problems but there are no foxes.

However, there are a lot of foxes in North London.  There were a lot of foxes around in Winchmore Hill when we lived here before we went to Cayman.  We would often see one stretched out on the roof of our shed, basking in the sun but they never left little presents for us the way they do now. Having their excrement is bad enough but where they deposit it makes things worse.  It is always left on the paving slabs just outside our back door.

I’ve been on to the Internet and found out that this behaviour is common and is a way that the male fox marks his territory.  Joanna, Caroline’s sister has supplied us with a possible answer to the problem. 

In Islington (where else?) there is a Garden Centre that sells LION POO. I suppose that they get it from London Zoo.  

According to Joanna, once some of it has been scattered about, there will be no more foxes.  Apparently they smell it and think, “Bloody Hell!  A lion!  I’d better keep away from there,” but how foxes in North London recognise the scent of lion poo is a matter that I shan’t investigate too deeply.  Watch this space.  I’ll keep you up to date with developments.

Recently, we have been thinking about the security of our house and car. We have super-dooper locks on both our front and back doors as well as state-of-the-art window locks.  We have some kind of tracker device fitted somewhere in the car so that if it is ever stolen, the police will be able to find it almost immediately.  It’s all so different from life in Cayman.

We had locks on the doors and the windows of our seaside cottage but we hardly ever used them.  When we went out during the day the doors and windows were usually left wide open to allow the breeze to blow through and to keep the house cool.  

The alternative was to close and lock everything and to leave the air conditioning on.  That was very expensive and so it was cheaper and simpler to just leave the doors open. In five years we never had a problem.

At night the doors were shut but not always locked.  I locked them if I remembered to but there was no ritual about ‘locking up’ as there is now.

Things were the same with the car.  I wore shorts all the time and a bunch of keys was heavy and uncomfortable and so I usually left them in the car after I had parked and the car was therefore unlocked.  Twice this did cause a bit of a problem.

One evening Caroline and I were invited to a “Do” at Grand Old House, a restaurant on South Sound Road.  We arrived at 6:30 p.m. and I left the car, with the keys still in the ignition, in a disabled parking bay by the main entrance.  Five hours later when we were ready to go home the car had gone. 

“Didn’t you lock it?” asked one of our friends who was leaving at the same time.  Feeling a bit silly I admitted that we hadn’t and gratefully accepted his offer of a lift home.  He and his wife were very sympathetic and admitted that they rarely locked their car either but they did say that they didn’t usually leave the keys in as I had.

We walked across the car park and there, two away from his, was ours. It had been moved.  Not only had it been moved, it had been driven too. The radio was tuned to a station that I never listened to; there was an empty Burger King box on the passenger seat and the driver’s seat had been put back about three inches.  

Someone (a tall someone) had taken it joyriding and then kindly brought it back.

The first car we had on Cayman was a bright red Hyundai Atos.  It was small, cheap and reliable and there were quite a few of them around as Budget Car Rentals had sold off their old fleet. One morning I drove to the supermarket and came out with a trolley full of plastic carrier bags.  I pushed the trolley over to the car, opened the boot, loaded the shopping and drove home.  Upon arriving at home I carried the bags into the house, put the car keys on the shelf in the kitchen and put away the shopping.

Three or four hours later I went for my routine afternoon kip.  As I took off my shorts I heard a rattle.  I put my hand into the pocket to see what caused it and found that it was the car keys.  

The penny dropped.  

I scurried back to the kitchen and there on the shelf was a set of keys, which on inspection, I realised, was not mine.  I had two sets of Hyundai keys.

I hurried out to the car and saw immediately that it was not mine.  I rushed back to the supermarket and there, just where I had left it, was my car.  I locked up the other one – the car I had taken the shopping home in – and went in to customer services with the keys.  They were expecting me.  The owner of the other car had seen mine close by and put two and two together. He had left his contact details with the store and taken a taxi home.

I offered to reimburse his taxi fare but he wouldn’t hear of it.  He found it all very funny and that’s another way that Cayman is very different from England.

29. Mistaken Identity

In the years before I retired I had thought little about what I would do with all the free time that I suddenly would have.  On the day that Caroline rang me at work and asked how I felt about living in the Cayman Islands, I thought that retirement was still at least two years away.  Five months later my life had taken an enormous change and I was a man of leisure living on a tropical island.

After about a year of living an idyllic, lazy life of complete self-indulgence, Caroline began nagging me (no, I’ll be nice – urging me) to help in any way I could at our local Infant/Primary School on a voluntary basis.  I was a retired, qualified, experienced teacher who had been cleared in the UK in a number of checks designed to keep perverts and dodgy characters out of schools and away from children.  (That’s important. Remember it!)  She thought that I had a lot to offer and a school could benefit from my experience.  Early in September 2009 I arrived, a little apprehensive, for my first day.

At 8:35 I was taken into the assembly hall where 320 smiling children chanted.  “Good morning Mr Terry,” in the way children do there and everywhere.

The first week was interesting.  I had never been in a school with children younger than eleven before and I had a number of new and mostly enjoyable experiences.  They ranged from the look of disbelief on the face of a very perceptive 8-year-old girl who said, “You can’t be.  You look too young,” when I answered her question about how old I am, to the look of haughty disdain I was given by a 10-year-old girl when I asked her if she knew what ‘similar’ meant.  The lowest point came on Thursday when I felt pressure on my arm and looked down to see a 4-year-old boy wiping his very runny nose on my sleeve.

I went home on at the end of the week feeling I had done a good job and had possibly “made a difference.”

Something happened on the Saturday morning that spoilt everything.  All she had to say was, “short, fat, white, old and ugly” and they would have got me.  There are only 55,000 of us on island. Take away women and children, black men, slim men, average and tall men, good-looking men and any man under 55 and who are you left with?  My neighbour, Bernard and me. Unfortunately, he was in the UK at the time and as he’s got a really bad stammer, he wouldn’t have deflected interest away from me for very long anyway.

That Saturday morning, I was on my own in the supermarket.  Caroline was too busy to come. She was playing Bejewelled Blitz on Facebook. I was slowly pushing a trolley around when a very pretty little girl aged about eight, stepped in front of me, gave me a huge, genuine, beaming smile and said, 

“Hello Mr Terry.” 

I did not recognise her but I realised that she was a pupil to who had seen me at school.

“Hello,” I said. 

She carried on smiling at me but said nothing.  She was obviously expecting me to say something, so I said, “It’s hot today isn’t it?”

She mumbled something like, “Yes, it is.”  The smile was slipping from her face and looking a little disappointed, she said, ”Bye” and wandered off.

I felt pretty bad and told myself that I should have made more of an effort to talk to her. All was not lost, however, because a few minutes later I saw her on tiptoes bending over the frozen food compartment studying a packet of broccoli.  I went over to her.

“What’s your name?” I asked breezily, with the friendliest smile I could muster.

She stood up straight and said, “Keela.”

“Hello Keela.” I said. “Do you live near here?”

She flung the broccoli back into the freezer and ran off down the aisle.  I was not surprised because I realised immediately why - it was a different girl! 

I was terrified. What should I do? Should I find the manager and tell him I’d made a little mistake or stand there and wait for the sirens to start and the doors to self- lock?

I did neither but finished the shopping and went home. I was greeted by a very happy Caroline who told me she had some great news. “Good,” I thought. “I need some.”

She had set a personal best score of 317,300.