Sunday 24th January and I am still struggling along with my redemption. I am sitting up more but still get an excruciating pain when I stand up. I have been walking up to the shop – not very far I must admit but nevertheless a walk it is and it is uphill. I can also nearly walk to the club but that is downhill and I don’t think I could make the journey back which is obviously uphill.
The singer in the club last night had a Eurovision song fetish and now Boom – Bang – a –Bang keeps going through my mind which must rank as (boom) one (bang) of the worst bloody (a-bang) songs ever written. I quite like some of Lulu’s songs but that one wants Boombangerbanging where the sun don’t shine! That and Cliff with Congrat-u-bloody-lations!
I managed to fill the screenwash bottle and check the oil levels on the car and I have driven around the block and took Irene down the shops. It’s all progress but I still feel apprehensive as to exactly where I am going to finish up. It still feels like I have got something stuck up my bum like a nappy and now all the dressings have nearly all gone I know that I will have to live with it for the rest of my days. But talking of the rest of my days I now know that I will at least have a very good chance of at least having many many days. There are so many of us living under a death sentence and it is so unfair.
There was a restaurant that we used to go to in Herne Bay that was ran by a Cypriot. The locals nickname was Greasy Jim but he cooked the most fabulous steaks that were never greasy. He did massive T bone steaks that my cousin’s husband described as elephant’s lugs.
When I was about eight and we were staying at my grandmother’s I was playing in the alley at the back of her house and Jim’s father-in-law Tony shouted up and asked, “Hey does Grandma want a chicken?” I went in and asked her and she said that she did and I told Tony who chased the live chickens in the yard, grabbed one and chopped its head off and handed me the carcass by its feet dripping with blood and wings still flapping. I ran indoors in tears and my grandmother was upset as well. My uncle Tim went round and told Tony not to do that again. Tony used to ride a very old scooter up the alley and bang the back gate open with it and then down the wooden steps into his back yard where he used to jump off it and throw it to the ground. I don’t think it had any brakes and the throttle was a piece of wire tied to the scooter body which worked the carburettor that he worked with his foot.
We used to go to Jim’s regularly and he used to be in his kitchen either singing or shouting and swearing depending on his mood. After the massive storm of 1976 when I was on dayshift but couldn’t get to work, I walked down to the seafront to survey the damage. The pier, the second longest in the world, was gone but the pier end café was still standing and is still there today. The concrete of the promenade was heaved up and the beach shingle was everywhere. Jim was shovelling beach out of his restaurant. The storm had broken the windows and the sea had washed everything out of the restaurant and café. “You wanna steak?” asked Jim. I asked him when he thought he would be open again. “You wanna steak now?” He pointed out to sea. “That white thing floating out there is my fridge. You swim out there – plenty of bloody steaks in there!”
Sadly Jim died from liver cancer. shortly after he sold his restaurant for redevelopment and retired.
