Jonathan has decided to clean the bathroom and it sounds like a war zone downstairs with banging and crashing. I remark to Irene that is like being in a first world war trench. How can you make so much bloody noise cleaning mirrors and tiles? We can stand it no longer and retreat to the peace and quiet of the club where Irene leads me astray by buying some pints of the foaming ale. As we went out of the door she asked if I was taking the car. “Not if you are buying the beer! “ I respond. Taking the car would mean several cans of diet coke.
I woke up late – well late for the last time. Given I now have a bladder the size of a golf ball so I am up every two hours for a bit of a dribble.
As I am sitting looking at my emails the phone rings. “ Can I speak to Mr. Wilkie” says the voice on the other end. “Which one?” I respond. “Mr. A.R. Wilkie “ comes the response. “Speaking, “ I reply. Then the speil starts about how he sent me an investment guide that detailed ISAs and oter financial products. “Stop there, “ I respond, “I am not interested. You have confused me with someone who has got some money!” Jonathan and Irene collapse with laughter as does the man on the other end of the phone.
Eric is coming round to collect some books we have been given that have come from someone’s house that has died. Obviously somebody’s pride and joy but really I fail to see how the complete mariner’s handbook of 1911 will float anyone’s boat. Pun intended. Or a 1920 Home Doctor complete with an exercise regime for the “busy man” but non for the busy woman. Presumably they aren’t! There are quite a number of surreal books including several volumes of the welder’s handbook and a directory of hotels from 1981. I tell Jonathan it would be a good project to visit them all and see how many are left!
Eric collects for the Hayward House Hospice shop in Nottingham but I am not sure what they are going to do with this motley collection. Jonathan then tells me that he is donating a hundred or so videos of Star Trek which he found in the function room of the pub that he ran. Apparently the owner had died from a brain haemorrage and they just dumped all of his stuff. The area manager told Jonathan to skip all of his possessions but Jonathan insisted in taking all of the videos and now after breaking my back carrying them down stairs they are now going to charity.
My bowels have been a bit iffy for a couple of days. It’s as if they know what I am doing and then chose the most inopportune moments to have a weight. I might have to consider the anti diahorrea tablets and then worry about the effects of constipation.
Back to Westbourne Street in nineteen sixty nine and we have had one hell of party at the weekend and there is masses to clean up. We are off school at half term or something. The empty bottles have all been gathered up and taken back to the off licence for the tuppences. What a brilliant system that was. I am lalid on the settee reading a superman comic and one of my friends is up in my bedroom squashing jumbo beer cans by jumping off my bed on to them. Suddenly the ceiling rose – one of those beautiful ones that were seen in Victorian houses falls to the floor followed by most of the ceiling and part of the huge plaster cornice that is directly above my head, which smacks me straight on the forehead. I shout to the perpetrator after I have stopped seeing stars. I have got a huge bruise on my forehead – which as it turned out became my alibi.
It took quite a while to clean up the living room – especially the dust and horse hair and plaster but we did the best we could. Again it was time to go and meet Arbuckle at the bus stop and tell him the news. How do you tell someone that their ceiling had disintegrated before someone’s very eyes? First he was concerned and intrigued about the massive bruise on my forehead which had now grown as big as a hen’s egg. I told him that basically I was laid on the settee and the ceiling collapsed. He seemed quite satisfied with that until we reached the crime scene. CSI had nothing on Arbuckle. He looked at the cracks in the remaining cornice and the bits of ceiling and pronounced that the ceiling “didn’t just fall down” – the damage was caused by someone. Of course by now I was exonerated because of the hen’s egg on my forehead but Arbuckle demanded to know who had done it. In the end I had to spill the beans and that person was banned from Westbourne Street forever. Arbuckle sat down, remarking once again “that I had done a god job cleaning up” and switched his television on to watch the news.
If I was ever to write a book about Westbourne Street I am sure that no-one would believe half of the things that happened. Tim has said he would write is autobiography which would be in three parts – The calpol years – where he claims he was drugged with calpol as an infant; the benylin years where he claims that he was drugged with benylin and finally the lager years. The problem is that all of the pages would be blank because he can’t remember any of it!
________________________________________________________
