The Demise of Roland Ratso: Chapter one hundred and nine

Sunday night and I have a major indiscretion with a bottle of Merlot followed by half a bottle of Spanish plonk that Jonathan made me drink! What I forgot to tell you was that when we were in Bruges when the sing song was going on on the Tuesday evening there was a very young girl probably three at most who was dancing to the music and attempting to copy ballerina’s steps. Suddenly she got quite a crowd around her and she started to dance and then turned round and wiggled her bum at everyone. Hilarious. We sat in a restaurant and next to us were a young French couple. I was able to make out that the lad was telling the girl all about mussels and that she MUST try them. The two pans of mussels duly arrived and the young man started to eat them with great gusto. The girl screwed her face up as soon as the mussels arrived. The young man tried to show the girl how to eat them. Open the shell up and then pick the meat out with a fork. I personally use an empty mussel shell as a pair of tweezers. Finally the lad opened up a mussel and took the meat out with his fork and gave it to the young lady. She put it in her mouth and her face was an absolute picture. There was no way she was going to eat any more! On Saturday I decided to go to Morrisons for the weekly shop and just to make sure I put my card in the machine to get a balance. Zero funds available. Very strange. I did a bit of shopping and paid cash and then went on-line to check my account. There was a direct debit of £538 which I did not recognise. On checking I found that it was to paypal for a Applemac laptop which I allegedly ordered while we were in Belgium. Someone had hacked into my paypal account. This is not the first time this has happened – someone tried to buy a £2500 plasma TV in January and then someone else tried to access on-line casinos. In January and February I had eight different debit cards issued as someone kept cancelling my card so that when I went shopping with it it was invariably retained by the shop. Anyway I made a complaint to Paypal and they came back virtually straight away and that my bank account would be credited within the next three days. Better than nothing but who has got my dosh for three days? The next step was go to the bank because I had gone overdrawn which was not authorised. They told me that I had an unauthorised overdraft fee and high interest on that unauthorised overdraft. I asked to see someone in charge and he said that I might have actually made the purchase and was trying to get out of paying their fees. Cunning plan mark 772 came into being. I had printed off the emails from paypal confirming that they were going to reimburse me. The bank man came over all apologetic and then instructed the young lady on the counter to see if she could bounce the direct debit – which she did. My £538 should be back in my account tomorrow but I am not holding my breath. Another “during the pit” finger amputation tale. Ossie was a banksman in charge of one of the shafts at Asfordby which was being sunk. He was a born again Christian and his shift boss was a pig of a man who abused Ossie continually. He never rose to the abuse – he would often tell the shift boss on the tannoy after he had been abused for a long time “Thank you for your messages – if you have finsihed abusing me I would like to carry on with my work unless there is anything else you wish to swear at me.” It was a Sunday afternoon and I was waiting to go down the shaft but Ossie was slinging girders to go underground. He had two on a trolley and he attached the winding rope to them and rang for the winding engineman to start to raise the girders so they could be sent down the shaft. One of the girders got stuck on the trolley and when Ossie tried to free it with his hands they clapped together trapping his hand. There was a big pool of blood gathering in his glove and it was obvious that his finger had been cut off. He turned to me and said “Will you look after the pit top while I go and seek medical attention before I faint!” Cool or what? They didn’t save his finger and he is now a vicar with nine digits – quite a change from coal mining. _________________________________________________________