The Demise of Roland Ratso: Chapter sixty one

I went for a curry with Alan and Bill and I am determined not to get any on my shirt – I have chosen navy blue this time just in case. The poppadoms and pickles are the first challenge and I get attacked by a dollop of the red onion. It bounces off my shirt a couple of times (like a bouncing bomb!) and lands on the table cloth leaving a red streak. Alan is beside himself with laughter. I am not amused and he takes great delight in drawing the stain to the attention of all the waiters as they pass. I get my revenge because at the end of the meal I have no more stains yet he has dropped a knife on the floor and their side of the table is also badly stained. Then back to the club for a few pints. No Picko the bingo bore(d) but the singer is OK.Apparently I am now a "git" according to Picko. I suppose I will be a bigger "git" when I publish a picture of him in his frock on this site. I have started my chemo again and have loaded up my silo with the fourteen tablets daily for the week and we have decided to go out for Sunday lunch. The carvery is fairly quiet and we have a lovely Sunday lunch. Jonathan complains that it doesn’t seem like a Sunday because he has no pots to wash! He will regret that remark. I seem to be a bit constipated and I hope it is not a forewarning of things to come! Sunday night and we are for a treat. NOT! The band is called the Shadowtones – a Shadows tribute band. Well the Shadows have never been my cup of tea – we were in two distinct camps at school – the Shads and Eric Clapton. The band on Sunday night were technically superb. I couldn’t fault a note they played. But they were dead from the neck down. No passion, no panache. I don’t know if you have ever seen the Thunderbirds film where they go to a night club and Cliff’s son is appearing with the Shadows. Well that was like their performance. Oh dear! Alan is still on about my shirt – he claims the one I have on tonight is the same one from Saturday – which it isn’t. Bloody cheek. It is a beautiful day and I really should be in the bombsite that we call a back garden but my back is aching so much I can hardly walk or stand at all. Jonathan has done an amazing job digging out the shed base and now I think he needs a little direction to get it finished. I have still been fairly constipated in spite of the beer and curry which is very unusual for me. Treeze has posted a comment about her fifteen year old son dangling through a bedroom ceiling. We had a house fire around 1997 – the fire started in the kitchen (where all the best ones do!) and migrated up the soil pipe and totalled the bathroom. After the fire brigade had finished o was determined not to leave the house unattended because it was not secure and I didn’t want some scum coming in a stealing what possessions we had left. After we managed to get the kids billeted elsewhere we spent a romantic night on the living room floor looking up at the lavatory pan hanging down through the ceiling. Beats stars any day. Much more romantic. A few years later and I was remodelling the bathroom and decided to replace the charred floorboards on the top landing. I got all of the boards replaced except for two short pieces at the top of the stairs which I just dropped in position – not screwing them down – before going to the club. On my way to bed I forgot about the two pieces – both a bout two feet long and stepped in the middle of them both. My leg went through the kitchen ceiling as the two floorboards opened like a Lancaster bomber’s door (not one with a bouncing bomb as they were slung underneath in a cradle) and then closed around my gonads! Irene rushed into the kitchen only to see my leg dangling from upstairs. She says that she was only trying to push my leg up, I think she was trying to pull me through! Timothy and Jonathan then had the problem of extracting me from the hole. Every time they lifted me up the two pieces of wood clamped my nuts. Agony was not the word. The problem was solved by sliding the offending floorboards out from under my crutch and then they were able to hump my frame out of the hole. Then there was the time I drilled into the thirty amp ring main and that was when the family started calling me Frank Spencer but I think we will leave that story for another day. I have restarted my chemo and so far it hasn’t been too bad – I felt a bit sick this morning but it passed. The backache is a killer – it’s stopping me doing most things which is making me fed up. I have got some magic beans – runner beans – which me and my little girl were going to grow but I haven’t had a chance to get out in the garden. I think we will have to have a shed building barbecue!