Hooptedoodle #348 - ...you know, maybe it is funny, after all...

This morning the plan was to visit my old mum, in the care home in the village. Sometimes this can be kind of heavy going, but the visits mean a lot to her (though she forgets about them almost immediately), and I do feel better afterwards.

This is not a great time, for a lot of reasons - I drove off to the home in my van, trying to find something on the radio which was not about the latest political excitement here in the UK - not easy. Apparently Adrian Mole and his football hooligan sidekick have pulled a brilliant fast one by sending some foreign chaps a letter written in disappearing ink (or something). Wow - what a corker. I can feel patriotic pride flooding though my old veins. What a bunch of self-serving tossers.

When everything turns to rat droppings, Schadenfreude is probably all we have left. Ultimately, I'm past caring what happens - bring it on, but I do have a list of key individuals who I hope get their just desserts after the public enquiry. In such a context, trying to engage my mother in conversation is something of a light relief.

She can only stand my visits for about 30 to 40 minutes (people who know me may understand this), then she starts to get anxious, so when the time appeared to be right I said cheerio and see-you-soon, and left, to get some groceries at Tesco's on the way home. There's a strict regime at the home, whereby visitors have to sign in and out. This all makes good sense, and I was told that, if there's a serious fire, the signatures in the visitors' book will make it easier to reconcile the body count. That's probably more security information than I had thought I needed, but it also bothers me a little - what happens if the book is consumed in the flames? Never mind - if I'm dead, I won't care.

I  signed out (11:45, if it matters), and as I opened the front door to leave there were two fellows standing outside - plumbers, come to service the heating. I held the door open for them, exchanged "good morning"s, and the older of the two said:

"Does someone on the staff know you're going out?"

"It's OK," I told him, "I've signed the book".

So that was all right, then, but I was a bit shaken. As I went to retrieve my van, I was actually laughing out loud. Hysteria? - quite probably, but there is a certain black humour in the thought that one day I may be trapped in the home forever because the plumbers aren't convinced I'm a visitor. Not even Adrian Mole is above such judgements, eventually, I guess. Thank you, God.

Maybe I should take a break from watching my Twilight Zone box set.

Here's a trailer from one of my favourite movies, which is getting more poignant every day.

Hooptedoodle #347 - Amazon Prime Telephone Scam

Armed with our whizzo anti-nuisance phone, we have got rather used to not being hassled by morons, but the use of randomised fake caller numbers seems to have brought the problem back.

No damage done here, but just a general heads-up. This scam was going the rounds last year, based on fake emails. It's now moved to the telephone. This last week we have been averaging 3 or 4 scam phone calls a day, sent to both our landline and my wife's mobile. The sender number appears to be randomly generated - none of the numbers is listed on Who Called Me and similar sites, and a call to any of them is rejected as invalid - no such number. Thus we can block each individual number as it is used, but it doesn't help much.

On the 3 occasions we've answered the call, there is a recorded voice message (English, with an Indian-subcontinent accent) which tells us that our Amazon Prime account will now renew itself by billing us $39.99 each month. If we do not wish to renew, press "1" to speak to an account advisor.

We did not press "1", of course, though some nervous people might. None of us has an Amazon Prime account (I can't imagine why we would want one), though both of the telephones in question were used in connection with chasing up recent non-delivery problems (and promised but imaginary refunds) associated with the Amazon Marketplace. Coincidence?

I don't think changing passwords or anything is going to help - we could change our contact numbers for our Amazon accounts, I guess. For the moment we'll just try not to answer, not play along and hope they get fed up with us soon.

Anyway - keep an eye open. I have already ditched my eBay account because of the security risks. I'd hate to lose access to Amazon, but I am starting to think about not buying anything more from Amazon's "marketplace" sellers. I'm sure they are mostly bona fide, but we've come across some lulus.

Hooptedoodle #346 - Pauly, the Iron Man

Yet another off-topic story of no consequence, about some odd-ball I used to know. This one is not only off-topic, but also definitely off-colour, so if you don't fancy the idea, or are easily offended, please skip it and go and read something else. I quite understand. Enjoy the rest of your day.

This recollection was sparked by a recent conversation with a mate of mine, in which we revisited some treasured tales of Pauly, a mutual friend, whom neither of us has seen for some years.

I first met Pauly when he was about 30. He's a native of Portstewart, in County Londonderry, though subsequently a Glaswegian, and I came to know him when I moved to this area because he was a spare-time musician (such lost souls tend to attract each other in the void, like asteroids). He was also renowned as a volunteer fireman in a local village.

He played the uillean bagpipes, and pretty well, too, I believe, though I never heard him. He was also a drummer (of sorts). As a self-taught drummer he was passable, but had a very narrow range of styles and was completely unable to play quietly, which is definitely a career limitation for a drummer. He and I were once involved in a wedding band in a local village hall, and the event was so loud and so unruly that the police eventually stopped it - that village hall has never been allowed to put on music since that occasion. Not even for children's tea-parties. This is fame of a sort, I guess.

That brings us to the underlying theme of this story - wherever Pauly went, if there was drink involved there was frequently trouble. He was a lovely man, amusing, and generous to a fault, but he stands out in my personal annals as one of the very few genuine desperadoes I ever met.

When I first met him he had just recovered from an "accident", in which he had dived into the sea from a cliff, and been lucky to escape with only a damaged vertebra in his neck. When pressed on the matter, he claimed that he had done this "for a laugh", to entertain some friends. He also claimed that he was unlucky in that he had been assured that it was safe to dive from this cliff, though he chose the wrong cliff (the assurance being in respect of a nearby, but totally different cliff), and he accepted that he was probably fortunate to survive.

Pauly was ex-army. After he left the army he appears to have taken "a few years out" - his main interest (apart from wild bouts of heavy drinking) was in keeping supremely fit. He was a regular, and very successful, competitor in various extreme competitions such as the Iron Man triathlon events - he was a hill runner extraordinaire, a mountain biker, swimmer, wind-surfer, diver and general madman. Whatever he did, it was invariably over the top. My mother would certainly not have allowed me to play with him, I think.

He told many hilarious tales - almost always self-deprecating, with himself as the butt of the humour. After his part-time spell as a volunteer fireman, he took a permanent job with the fire brigade in a nearby town (Musselburgh), and he got married and had a couple of kids and showed definite signs of settling down, though the fire service is probably never very calm. Obviously he did his share of cutting people out of motor wrecks and searching buildings for bodies - none of which he talked about. Later he was promoted to be a fire officer in a market town in the Borders, he moved away from these parts and bought a lovely old house in the grounds of a private school. His wife was a psychiatrist - a super lady - I guess she calmed him down. I visited him one weekend in the Borders, on an off-day. He was very happy, his new home was splendid, his family was everything to him, and I realised that he was no longer the crazy man I used to know. I guess this is in itself a happy ending, so I wished him well, and apart from occasional Xmas emails I haven't been in touch since.

My favourite of his fire service stories concerned the rescue of a very large lady in Musselburgh who decided to take a bath one Saturday night, when she was drunk. Alas, the plastic bathtub cracked under the weight, and she was trapped in the wreckage. The alarm was raised when the bath-water brought down the bathroom ceiling in the apartment below. We should draw a veil over the details of this episode, but it does give an interesting insight into the hazards and the delicacy necessary in the work.

Pauly was at his most entertaining recounting his adventures hitch-hiking around the USA and South America. His post-army drop-out period started off in the States - he managed to support himself by playing the bagpipes in malls and doing odd jobs. He was arrested on a number of occasions for possessing weed, though this only became nasty when he was jailed in El Paso - the police picked him up for vagrancy, confiscating all his money and papers to make the point. He was in serious trouble since his visa had expired. They kept all his stuff (including the bagpipes) and did a deal by which they dumped him and another hitch-hiking pot-head in Mexico, on the understanding that they did not wish to see him again.

He had a pretty wild and very confused time in South America.  He was there for almost a year. He made long trips on lorries, and in railway trucks. He mixed with some of the most iconic dead-beats of history. He made a little pocket money doing labouring jobs, cleaning jobs, washing dishes - whatever came up. It was never legal - he never had valid papers for being anywhere - he still had his British passport, but that was it. He deliberately kept a low profile at all times.

At one stage he arrived after a long ride in a truck at some coastal city (it might have been Valparaiso - it doesn't matter). He headed off to an apartment for which he had been given the address, dropped his bag off and was dragged down to a beach for a party. He spent the night drinking with a bunch of layabouts. At some point money was put into a hat, and someone went off and brought back some food. Pauly subsequently became very ill, and passed out on the beach. He was awakened by the tide coming in...

He was really not feeling good at all, and was disappointed to realise that he had (to put it in a straightforward manner) soiled himself during the night. He made an attempt to clean himself in the sea, with limited success. He still had a small amount of cash, so he set off to put matters right. He went to a street market in a poor area near the harbour, where he just had enough to buy a very cheap pair of jeans (men's - medium) and some underclothes. With commendable initiative, he walked into a shopping area, entered a supermarket and locked himself in a customer toilet. He cleaned himself up, took the plastic bag off his new jeans, wrapped up his soiled old jeans in the bag, and got rid of the evidence by throwing it out of the window into an alley-way. Only then, when he unfolded them, did he realise that his new jeans from the market stall were actually a denim jacket.

He did magnificently. He put the jacket on as a kind of loin cloth - upside down, back to front - tied the sleeves around his thighs and pulled his tee-shirt down as far as it would go. He said that he looked unbelievable, but he walked out of the crowded store - no-one gave him a second look, apparently - and made his way to the apartment. Every day, in some dubious part of the world, people must be performing acts of improvisational heroism like this which put us all to shame. In his way, Pauly was a legend. Certainly, his adventures are still told in hushed whispers.

Hooptedoodle #345 - Nothing New on the Planet

Humbug!

Hooptedoodle #344a - That Russian Girl

I decided I would find out once and for all about the picture on the wall of my mother's room. I took a couple of photos of it, and spent a little while playing around with Google Images.

Found it. It is a portrait painted in St Petersburg by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun in about 1791, the subject being Elisaveta Alexandrovna, Baroness Stroganova, who was about 12 at the time.

When she was 16 Baroness Stroganova married Count Nikolai Demidov, who was appointed as a Russian diplomat in Paris, during the time of Napoleon I. They were big Napoleon fans, apparently, but the political situation meant that they had to return to Russia. The Demidovs had two children, but eventually separated because, it seems, he was too boring. Elisaveta moved back to Paris, where she died in 1818.

Here's another portrait of her, in about 1804, in Paris, by Robert Lefèvre, at a time when presumably she was still the wife of a Russian diplomat.

She is buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise, in Paris - as am I, of course.

Sorry about this - I realise nobody could care less, though it is a nice little picture. This post is really a celebration only of Google and Wikipedia, so it is without any merit at all, other than commemoration of my finally finding out what that damned picture from Paris Match was, after only 40-something years. This is not any kind of relative of my mother's of course, though she has probably eaten Beef Stroganoff at some time in her life. That's as close as it gets. There is no point my telling my mum what I found out, because she will have no idea what I'm talking about, so it stops there.

I did get a bit distracted during my (brief) researches - Ancien Régime portraiture is not normally my thing, but Vigée Le Brun is definitely worth a read - she's certainly more interesting than Mme Demidova

Hooptedoodle #344 - Martin's Dad

My personal context for this post is just a regulation-issue, time-of-life thing. I visit my elderly mother in her nursing home each week - always at an odd time and on a random day, so that I can't be accused of being late, or of having missed a visit. No problems with this - obviously I am happy to visit my mum. She enjoys my visits, though she doesn't remember them, but it is taking me longer and longer to recover from them. She is increasingly confused, often distressed by her chaotic interpretation of the real world and her own memories, and has become (I regret to say) surprisingly vitriolic and actually quite racist in her views. She is regularly unpleasant to her carers, which of course they handle with cheerful, professional indifference, though it causes me much agony on their behalf.

Stock photo - the elderly resident is the one on the right

From my own point of view, each visit helps to convince me a little more that extreme old age has no upside - it seems like a very mean trick indeed. In my heart I know this cannot be true, but the evidence is overwhelming. I make these regular visits to an old lady who is no longer anyone I remember; she is mostly angry, or upset, or depressed - she thinks that the staff are trying to steal her belongings, she doesn't like the other residents, because they are old and stupid, and so on. Each time I leave I feel oddly privileged to be free to walk out of the place, and I take the long route home through the lovely countryside. My wife has come to dread the days I visit my mother, because I always come home very gloomy.

This, I hasten to say, is not a whinge - it's a situation shared by a great many of my friends and contemporaries, so I have to shape up and get on with it. Apart from vague stuff like duty, I wouldn't want it any other way. It's the very least I can do for my old mum. I try not to think about how long I have until it's my turn to be visited, but it's inevitable that aspect of it should bother me a little as well.

 


Along these lines, I've recently been exchanging occasional supportive emails with my friend Martin, whose father, Ben, is becoming "a bit difficult" (to use Martin's phrase). Martin, by the way, is happy that I should post this story here. [All the names, of course, are changed!] 


Martin's mother died suddenly a few years ago - she was, I am told, a lovely but rather mousey little lady, who never had a great deal to say for herself. Martin has been surprised by the extent to which his dad, who always made all the decisions and was very outspoken ("never suffered fools gladly") has shrunk into himself since he was widowed. They rarely heard from him, they were concerned that he chose to spend all his time on his own. They bought him a big TV a couple of Christmases ago, and after a month he put it back in its box and stored it in the garage. Martin suggested that his dad might join an evening class, or do some voluntary work at the local hospital, or renew his interest in photography, but he got very short answers. He got an old friend of Ben's to arrange to take him down to the pub occasionally - that didn't go well - they fell out after a couple of weeks, and Ben came close to starting a fight at the bowling club. Ben phoned up Martin a couple of times at about 3am, to tell him that there was a car parked in the street outside his house, and it shouldn't be there. Ben's street, apparently, is full of cars from end to end. Martin told his dad not to worry about it, so his dad phoned the police instead.

Round about the same time, Martin got a quiet heads-up from the family doctor that his father didn't seem very well, might not be eating or looking after himself properly, and refused to answer the door if anyone called. Martin's wife, Angie, is a treasure - she's energetic and kind-hearted and all the things which Martin claims he is not. She suggested that they should take Ben with them on their Saturday groceries-run to Sainsbury's. It would get him out of the house (they could pretend that they needed him to help them), and it would give an opportunity to make sure he was buying some decent food for his own larder.

To Martin's astonishment, his dad was delighted to go to Sainsbury's with them. It all went very well - maybe, ominously, too well, Martin thought.

The only problem initially was that the old man found the shop too noisy - too many kids, too many people. So after he'd put his own shopping in their trolley he liked to go and stand outside in the car park. On the drive home he would tell them at great length of all the examples of dangerous or antisocial parking he had observed. Martin was not invigorated by the subject matter, but old Ben was more animated than they had seen him for years, so they decided that even a rather weird interest was better than none.

By the third Saturday there was trouble. Sainsbury's had received quite a few complaints. Ben had printed a little supply of notices, and he spent his visit putting them under customers' windscreen-wipers, explaining that they had used the disabled spaces without displaying the requisite Blue Badge, or had parked in the mother-and-child spaces when they patently did not have a child with them, or had parked carelessly, protruding over the painted white lines or (more subjectively) thoughtlessly close to the next vehicle. Some customers thought initially that Sainsbury's themselves had issued these notices, but the supermarket staff had observed Ben at work. Tactfully, they mentioned to Martin and Angie that they'd have to ask for this to stop, and immediately.

By the following week, Ben was driving to Sainsbury's in his own car on Saturday - purportedly to do his weekly shopping. Martin and Angie's pleasure at this news was short-lived. He wasn't shopping. He hung around all afternoon in the car park, harassing the customers and telling them off for parking badly, or driving too quickly, or not controlling their children, or (apparently) speaking too loud. 

The manager at the local Sainsbury's had become quite a good friend of Martin's by this time, and he went to visit him, to discuss what they could do. They hatched a cunning plan.

The next Saturday, Ben arrived at Sainsbury's on his weekly mission. You are allowed 2 hours in the car park, maximum (this to prevent local workers and residents jamming up the place), and after 2 hours Sainsbury's clamped Ben's car and issued him with a parking ticket, for repeatedly breaking this rule, and parking in "an inconsiderate and antisocial manner". Ben was mortified - ashamed. He agreed with Sainsbury's that they would destroy the ticket if he promised never to hassle their customers again.

That, of course, does nothing to address Martin's other, related problems, but he is quite pleased with that outcome. He says you have to celebrate what little successes you have, as they come along.

Who's that in the car park, dear?

Hooptedoodle #343 - Castles in the Air

Yesterday I visited a friend of mine, a retired architect. When I say retired, the term is relative - he still takes on some private work - he enjoys the technical and creative challenge, and the modern computer drawing tools are good fun. He also has to pay continuing professional subs and make some token effort at keeping his knowledge up to date, and he has to pay for personal insurance. An architect is never off the hook - if a building collapses and kills someone, years after completion, the architect may still be found personally liable if the design is proved to be faulty.

Over coffee, he shared some hairy old yarns of the building sites and the shenanigans and politics in the Building Control office. This prompted a story from me which I had forgotten about for a while - a story about another architect friend of mine from years ago. It occurred to me that it might be worth a run out here.

Sitting comfortably? - then I'll begin...

This story dates from the early 1980s. My eldest sons were then at primary school in Morningside, Edinburgh, and my then wife befriended a group of other mothers she met at the school gate. Next thing, I was roped into a round-robin of socialising with these ladies and their families. Being a miserable soul, I wasn't too keen on this kind of enforced jollity, and was relieved when it fizzled out a bit. One of the husbands, though, was Bob, with whom I got on very well - a most interesting and amusing chap. A great football fan - a life-long follower of Partick Thistle FC.

Bob was an architect - nothing glamorous - no fancy Georgian office in the New Town for him - he was a time-served, City & Guilds type architect who came up the hard way, and he worked for a little company no-one had ever heard of. In fact, this company was a small part of the bewildering empire of one of Scotland's major retail banks at that time, and it was responsible for the maintenance of the bank's property. Thus the architects there carried out a wide range of tasks, from the refurbishment of a rural branch office to the design and construction of a new banqueting hall at the head office. This, I hasten to add, was many years before the astonishing excesses of the emirates of [Sir] Fred Goodwin and his chums at RBS and elsewhere.

Bob was a good friend, and he did me a couple of very useful favours, producing very heavily discounted designs for a kitchen extension and an outbuilding at my previous home. We also enjoyed a good few beers together, and he told me stories of why the architects in his little organisation did rather well.

They all did "homers", you see - private jobs, unconnected with their employment, though a lot of the private work was done in the office, during office hours. At the time, there was a "perks of the job" facility available to directors and top management in the bank - they were allowed to take out loans at very low (sometimes non-existent) rates of interest, for the purposes of house purchase, or home improvement, or similar. Usually some bricks-&-mortar type of investment.

If this seems like an abuse, I have to say that such facilities were widespread throughout the finance industry at the time. They would also be available in some form to all permanent members of staff, though the amounts would normally be less than those involved for the top brass. As Bob said, "In a brewery there is usually the odd bottle of beer going spare - in a bank, the situation is the same, except the stock in trade is cash - the place is awash with it".  

The procedure was that a competent, detailed design would be required for the work - if it were approved, the cash would be advanced through the Personnel department. The scheme, naturally, was ultimately under the control of the same senior individuals who were benefiting most from it, and the validation and costing of the drawings were carried out by Bob's colleagues in the design office - who, in almost all cases, would have produced them in the first place. Payment for the design and drawing work was paid to the architects individually in cash, and [allegedly] a lot of this went on out of sight of the Inland Revenue. Bob reckoned that a fair proportion of this building work was never carried out - a design would be produced for a fictitious project, it would be approved and costed, the loan would be granted, cash paid for the architect's services, and the world would move on.

Bob's first involvement in this odd sideline came when he was approached by one of his directors, who wanted the attic floor of part of a listed mansion house in the Scottish Borders equipped with a TV lounge, a billiards room and a small guest apartment. Bob was puzzled by the "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" style of the proposition - and one of his more experienced colleagues explained that the job was probably a hoax - just a fund-raiser. The money might be used for anything at all - it might even be invested to provide a return well in excess of the token interest on the loan.

Despite this his professional instincts persisted, and Bob became very interested in some of the challenges of this project - at one point he went to see his client, with his drawings, to discuss an idea he had for a light-well into the stair area of this attic conversion. He realised very quickly that the director was not interested in his ideas - in fact was rather surprised to hear from him. Then he remembered - the thing would never be built.

Bob got all sorts of private commissions from the bank's senior echelons, their relatives, golfing friends and so on. He did not make a fortune out of it, because he kept a sense of proportion, but some of his colleagues really did very well indeed out of their homers. One of them, a South African chap named Albert Hinkus, became something of a legend, and achieved a sufficiently ostentatious lifestyle to attract resentment amongst his peers - someone seems to have tipped off the Revenue.

Hinkus received a letter from the tax authorities, which basically said something to the effect that they suspected that he had other income which he had not declared, and they invited him to a personal interview at Drumsheugh Gardens. This was not unlike being invited to Gestapo HQ.

Bob says Hinkus had holiday properties in France, which he rented out, also a modest yacht based at Trinité-sur-Mer in Brittany, which he also rented out, and he was reputed to own a share in a vintage Le Mans-style Bentley, though his official salary was nothing extraordinary.

Gratuitous photo of vintage Bentley

Hinkus went along to his interview in a terrible state of anxiety, apparently. After having a couple of attempts at mystified denial completely ignored, he decided that they obviously did have something on him, so he confessed. Problem was that, once he started, he became very emotional and couldn't stop, and he gave them full details of many years of untaxed fees for private architectural work, amounting to tens of thousands of pounds. When he had finished, his interviewers were very worried about his state, and offered him a cup of tea and a chance to rest for a few minutes.

Over tea, one of them thanked him very much for his full and frank co-operation, and said that the only definite information they had had previously was that he had been paid some £30 for squash coaching lessons at a local private school the previous year.  He was also reminded that he must be sure to claim for his transport expenses in connection with the squash coaching.

I don't know what happened to Hinkus - I understand the abuses of the fantasy buildings scam were drastically pruned subsequently. Bob himself was a very religious fellow, and would never have done anything as iniquitous as cheating on his tax, but he said that some of his colleagues had some very sleepless nights, waiting for more letters from HM Inland Revenue.

In passing, I am reminded that Bob had some very bad luck some years later. He and his wife had bought an old farmhouse, and he had an extension built on the side, including a large conservatory which, of course, he designed himself. I never saw it - my wife had kept in touch with Bob's wife, and she said it was beautiful. Just as it was being completed there was a serious fire that destroyed much of the house. No-one was hurt, fortunately, but it took a couple of years to restore the place. Because the house was unoccupied at  the time of the fire, the police investigated the incident.

There was nothing suspicious, but the cause of the fire is alarming enough to stand as a warning. An inexpensive spotlight - designed to clip on to shelving - fell off and landed on a sofa in the new sun-lounge; unfortunately, the rocker switch on the lamp hit the sofa, and it switched itself on, scorching and ultimately igniting the sofa and resulting in a major conflagration. Never use clip-on spotlights - if they still make them, avoid them. 

Hooptedoodle #342 - Chrysopidae

The Green Lacewing - these chaps live all over the Northern Hemisphere - very successful. I rather like them - they are peaceful and elegant, of modest dimensions, and do no harm. This time of year we always have a few around the house, but they blend in with their surroundings and don't move about much. If you have a lacewing sharing your room it will not be a nuisance.

Further to this, they are very good news for the garden - their larvae, which are surprisingly fierce, ugly beggars, have a voracious appetite for aphids - the larvae are also reputed to sting humans occasionally - we never see these indoors [that's the larvae, not humans].

Nearly twenty years ago, when I had recently moved into the original version of our current house, I had an ancient, mains-powered front doorbell. [When did you last see one of those?]

One day it stopped working - after a week or two of relying on the knocker, I spent an afternoon trying to work out what was wrong - checked the transformer and the wiring, cleaned out the push-button. Eventually I opened up the bell unit itself, and found that it was jammed with adult lacewings - all dead. There were dozens of them - possibly a hundred or more. I guess they had been hibernating, since it seems unlikely they would have hatched in there. I had a slightly nervous feeling that I was in a sci-fi movie, but I am assured that this is not an uncommon event, though they usually choose their sleeping place with more care. I don't know whether the lacewings had just died of the cold in there or whether something had trapped or injured them.

I never cared much for the mains electric doorbell anyway, so subsequently it has been replaced by a series of battery-powered ones which send a little radio signal to bell units placed around the house. The present one plays a grating, ice-cream van version of Fur Elise, which is useful since it encourages us to race to the door in case the postman presses the button a second time.

Hooptedoodle #341 - Maybe not the Moon, then?

Noah sat at the kitchen table and glowered at his mother, who was bustling about, preparing for whatever it was she had said they were going to do. What he really wanted was to get back to playing with the rude noises he had downloaded on his smartphone, but experience told him this current inconvenience might not last too long. Noah was four. To pass the time, he idly punched his twin sister, Olivia, who was sitting next to him, staring out of the window at the pigeons on the garage roof. Olivia spun round in her chair, with a grimace, to find him staring innocently at their mother, who was having some problems.

Katharine was attaching some large sheets of paper to the front of the refrigerator, using button magnets. Because the sheets of paper had been rolled up for a while, they needed extra magnets at the bottom to stop them curling up. Once they were hanging straight and flat, she found they were in the wrong order, so with a little tut-tutting she swapped them around until everything was right. She cleared her throat and took a telescopic pointer from the mug on the adjacent windowsill.

"Righto, you guys," she said, "we need to spend a few minutes revisiting our plans for our holiday this year."

No response - Olivia had gone back to staring out of the window, and Noah just carried on glowering, thinking about his phone.

Katharine continued.

"Now, these are the results of our brainstorm from March. You remember that we decided that the most important things - the things that you said mattered most to you for this year's trip - were that we wanted to go somewhere really quiet and somewhere that offered the very best sandcastle-making facilities ever. You will recall that we got into a bit of an argument about some of this, and the meeting was cut short because Noah pulled Olivia's hair, but - as we left it - we were looking at the possibility of going to the Moon. I have to say I was never completely comfortable with this choice, though we have to keep faith with the process, as I always say..." she laughed nervously, "but I think we can't put this meeting off any longer."

She paused, partly for dramatic effect, partly to take a very deep breath.

"It looks as though the Moon is not going to be a possibility, Twinnies. I'm really, really sorry, but there are some big problems. I've been doing some more reading, and I really think we should go somewhere else."

The screaming started immediately.

"But you PROMISED!" roared Olivia. "You said we could go anywhere we wanted - that it was our choice. You told us a LIE!"

"Promised...  lie..." echoed Noah, kicking his sister under the table.

"No, no," protested Katharine, "Mummy would never tell you a lie, you know that. It's just that, well, the Moon is a very difficult and expensive place to get to, and our car won't be able to get there, and we can't afford to buy a car that could. I don't know very much about the Moon, as I told you last time. It seems it's always the details that cause the trouble - there wouldn't be any ice cream, and one thing that worries me rather a  lot is that there is no air there, so we would all die. That wouldn't be very good would it?"

"But you promised," said Olivia, tearful now. "I don't care about the stupid air! I want to go to THE MOON. I told Victoria that we were going, too. You said we could go anywhere we wanted. That was a LIE. I'm going to call Child Line"

Noah was calmer.

"Where will we go instead?"

"Well, Daddy and I thought we could go back to that super camp-site at Ilfracombe - remember what a lovely time we had there last time? We think it would be marvellous."

"Last time it was raining," said Noah, "and I cut my foot on the beach. I don't want to go there. Anyway, the toilets were smelly."

This was not going well. Katharine fell back on her methodology training - it had never failed her before. She raised her voice a little, to be heard above Olivia, who was now sobbing on the table, her face laid on her arms.

"Well, we could start again with new Terms of Reference, and we could have another brainstorm - that would be the best and fairest thing to do, I think. You two happy with that?"

The meeting ended at this point. Noah pushed his sister off her chair, and she banged her head on the recycling tub, and there was a lot of screaming. Katharine put her pointer back in the mug and went to rescue her daughter.

It was true. She had, in fact, promised. That was the worst bit of the whole thing. 

Hooptedoodle #340 - The Elephant That Never Forgets

Thread A

Years ago, I opened a savings account with the old Northern Rock Building Society (of Newcastle), because (as I recall) at the time they were paying reasonable interest (remember interest, by the way?). Sometime thereafter Northern Rock was taken over by Virgin Money, and for about 5 years now I have been thinking to myself, why do I keep this account open? It doesn't pay me anything, so as you would notice, and its utility to me is not worth all the junk mail - it's just a sort of float fund. Each month I pondered this briefly, decided that I should do something about it, and then forgot about it for another month.

Now I am informed that Virgin Money has become part of Clydesdale Bank, which cues up a bit of personal history.


Thread B

In (I think) 1979 I returned from a family holiday and we were unpacking when the doorbell rang. On the step there was a gentleman in a suit, who handed me a sealed letter for which I had to sign. It was notification from the John Lewis Partnership that they had started legal proceedings to recover the money I owed them. The holiday was suddenly a distant memory. What on earth was this?

All a bit unfortunate really - I had moved house a couple of years before, and we had had our new kitchen refitted and modernised - my architect, my tradesmen, but the furniture and equipment came from John Lewis. Since the other parties in this project had no interest in waiting for payment, I spread the pain a little by taking out an 18-month credit agreement (what used to be called hire purchase) for part of my bill to JLP. That way I could still do other things, such as eat, and take my family on holiday. That's the way it was done in those days.

I never thought any more about it. Sadly, my bankers (Clydesdale) made a little mistake, and terminated the monthly payments a year early. The date was correct, but the year was wrong. Well, they were only a bank, for goodness sake.

When John Lewis realised that I had done the dirty on them, they began sending me letters about the balance - there were a number of these, getting progressively more assertive and showing more red headings. Again, another small misfortune. They sent these letters to the wrong address - this was because my previous address was still held on my shopping account with them, though the hire purchase agreement correctly showed the new address, which was also where they had delivered the kitchen fittings. Just another bad break.

Of course we got things sorted out fairly quickly. No lasting damage, except that I had a dodgy credit rating for a few years, through no fault of my own. Lewis's got their money, our kitchen was very satisfactory. Thank you very much.

At the end of the episode I requested a meeting with my Clydesdale Bank branch manager, just to ensure everything was cleared up. You will find this hard to believe, but apparently said manager (Mr Harper - I remember him very well) misunderstood why we were having the meeting, and in fact misunderstood what had happened - I am convinced that his staff did not tell him. Not only was there no apology forthcoming, Mr Harper was very sanctimonious about the whole thing (well, he was obviously a busy man, and I was unforgivably young at the time), and he informed me that he would take it as a personal favour if I could avoid such occurrences in future, and ensure that my finances were kept in order. I regret to say that the discussion became a little heated, I closed my accounts at Clydesdale on the spot, and promised Mr Harper that I would never do business with his bank again, neither would I countenance any of my friends or family doing so. Mr Harper, for his part, looked at his watch and announced that he was delighted to hear it.

This is now laughable in the extreme, since there can be hardly anyone left alive who worked for Clydesdale in 1979, but I see no reason to change my views. A promise is a promise - in the retail banking business, at least the customers must strive for a little integrity. I have now closed my Virgin accounts. I refuse to be associated with Clydesdale, even by transfer of ownership, even after all these years.

No-one will notice, of course, and if they did they wouldn't care, but it matters to me. One has to be true to oneself.

Stuff them.

Hooptedoodle #339: Kevin and the Genie

The Genie seemed to be getting a little impatient.

"Righto - that's the 200 million euros in a secret Swiss bank account, and the lifetime supply of Flamin' Hot Nacho Cheese-flavour Doritos all arranged - you have one wish left."

"Gosh," said Kevin, "this really is difficult - I don't know what to choose! I'm trying to decide what my favourite brand of chocolate is."

The Genie was now definitely getting a little impatient.

"Look," he said, "I'm really very grateful to you for releasing me from the lamp, and all that, but I've been stuck in there for a thousand years, and I've some catching up to do, so if we could get on with it...?"

Kevin was not outfaced.

"I understand that I can put you back in the lamp at any time until I've had my three wishes granted, isn't that right?" and he held the stopper threateningly, over the top of the lamp. "If I hadn't been given the job of clearing out my Grannie's attic you would still be in there, wouldn't you? - so give me a minute or two to think of something. I'm not sure just what you are able to do, you see - you couldn't give me some ideas?"

The Genie sighed. If you've never heard a Genie sigh, it's a sound you really don't forget in a hurry.

"Well, so far you've exhibited the usual level of greed I expect in these situations - with respect, of course," he added, hastily, glancing at the stopper in Kevin's hand. "Why don't you wish for something which is of some good to the rest of the world, apart from yourself?"

Kevin pondered this for a minute.

"I know," he said, "there's terrible trouble in the Middle East recently - a lot of fighting and religious hatred - terrible misery and suffering in Syria, Yemen, Gaza, places like that. Could you fix that, and make the area peaceful again?"

"Hmmm," murmured the Genie, "that's a refreshing idea - that might be a possibility. The names don't mean anything to me - they may be modern names - where is this place?"

Kevin rushed off and fetched his old Philip's World Atlas for Schools, and opened it at the Middle East. The Genie studied it carefully, but became very uneasy.

"Look - I'm really sorry," he said. "The names are unfamiliar, but I recognise the maps - I know these places well - the people here have hated each other for thousands of years. I don't like to say this, but you've come up with something I really don't think I can do anything about. Too vast a problem - too long a history of trouble. I am sorry, Kevin - it was a really good idea, though. Is there anything else I can do for you? - something a bit easier?"

Kevin became thoughtful for a while. Then he brightened up a little.

"Well, this may seem silly, but I play wargames - battles with model soldiers - with some friends, and we regularly have difficulties trying to arrange our rules to encourage the proper use of off-table reserves. It really doesn't work very well. Since you have knowledge of all the wise things that have ever been done, could you come up with a solution for this problem?"

The Genie just stared at him.

"Let's have another look at that map of the Middle East?" he said.

Hooptedoodle #338 - Well Said, Johanna

I'm not a big tennis fan, though I can waste whole afternoons watching matches on TV if I get caught up. Wimbledon is on the telly. It's a British institution. Strawberries and cream, top players, excitement, thrills and shocks - and it's all brought to us by the BBC. In fact it would be difficult to find much fault with the way it is brought to us by the BBC, but they do suffer a little from the delusion that they somehow own the event. Having given us the Women's Football World Cup, we are now lucky enough to have Wimbledon bestowed upon us. We are not worthy. [At least it is one thing remaining for which we do not have to pay the Murdoch family.]

Yesterday Johanna Konta, who is a British player, lost her quarter-final match in the Ladies' Singles. I didn't see the game, but I did see this clip of the post-match press interview [click to watch it - it's worth the time]. One journalist, who would have been fawning and offering to wash her car if she had won, assumes the role of careers teacher when she loses - we will have an insensitive, analytical look at her weaknesses, and the camera will give close-ups if she is moved to tears. Great TV, too.

Well, no. I am delighted to observe that Ms Konta pulled him up very nicely, and told him his fortune. One small but maybe significant blow against the army of overpaid parasites who make a soft living out of the media aspects of professional sport, capitalising on the dedication, talent, hard work and heartache of others. Just because this twerp gets to interview or write about the best players in the world does not give him any credentials of his own - knock him down with a French loaf. I am sick of seeing microphones being stuck under the noses of distressed sportsmen and women who are obviously struggling to keep it all in.

"How disappointed are you feeling at this moment, Mauricio?"

"Why don't you go and **** yourself, you moron?"

Nice one, Johanna - I shall follow your career with more interest!

Hooptedoodle #337 - Garrulus Glandarius - and more on the Swallow Saga

The Contesse did very well to spot this today, snaffling some bread from the lawn (braving the jackdaws...). In fact I'd seen it a couple of days ago, sitting on the overhead power lines in the fading evening light, but it was on the other side of the lane, and I couldn't make it out clearly - just a vaguely grey bird, too small for a wood pigeon, wrong shape for a thrush.

Well, of course this is a Jay - garrulus glandarius - really not such a rarity at all, though they are not so common in Scotland, but we've never seen one here before. Only time we've ever seen a Jay was in my parents' garden, almost 20 years ago, when they used to live in Liverpool.

Anyway, he's most welcome (provided he behaves nicely, of course). I believe that you usually hear jays before you see them, so we'll keep an ear open for that.

Separate, though related, topic - Swallows again

I have occasionally recorded here our impressive lack of success in discouraging swallows from nesting in our woodshed. This reached a farcical crescendo with the introduction of a fake owl, who failed so dismally that he is now sentenced to stay in the woodshed until further notice, so that he may observe the annual arrival of the swallows and reflect on his inadequacy.

I hasten to say that we have nothing against swallows - they are, in any case, protected - but it seems a bit unnecessary for them to fly all the way from Africa each Spring just to build another shambolic nest in our woodshed and crap on everything in sight. So this year's Grand Plan involved something a little more ambitious than a plastic owl. I commissioned Chuff the Joiner (excellent fellow - replaced our Velux windows in the attic a couple of years ago) to build a caged entrance gate to the woodshed - timber and 16-gauge galvanised steel mesh - to keep out the swallows (and the rats, and the cats...). I also got him to line the timber back wall (which has gaps between the boards) with the same mesh. Fantastic - now we can stop the nests merely by forcing the little beggars to go and build elsewhere. What could possibly go wrong?

That's right - you guessed. Chuff was late starting the job, so that by the time the gate was complete the swallows already had built their nest in the shed, and had eggs in it. Thus we now have to spend the rest of the Summer being careful to prop the door open, so that the swallows are able to come and go without hindrance, and their babies will not die. I guess we just have to get rid of the nest and clean the place up when they have all gone back to Africa in the Autumn.

In the meantime, it does hurt just a little to have to keep the smart new £450 gate propped open. I particularly did not appreciate the adult swallows sitting on the power lines this morning, hissing and tutting disapprovingly when I was working in the garden. All right - I accept they think it is their garden, but it does seem a little ungrateful in the circumstances.

Next year, though - next year...

Hooptedoodle #336 - Did I Jump Too Soon?

I've managed to steer clear of the Tory Leadership circus in the last few weeks, and I must say I feel a lot better for it. I reasoned that the party members are sufficiently self-obsessed to be able to carry on without my paying attention, which is a relief. Since my announcement that I would not be putting myself forward (see my Fake News Hooptedoodle from last month, if you can be bothered), I have had occasional requests to reconsider.

I confess that there have been moments when I was tempted - occasionally I would see one of the hopefuls in action, and find myself thinking, "you know, I could do that...", but commonsense has triumphed, I believe, and I am happy not to be involved. In any case, I'm trying to keep myself free in case I get offered the manager's job at Chelsea FC, which will probably have a more secure future than that of UK Prime Minister. The big problem for me is this Brexit thingy - I haven't the faintest idea what they are on about. We all have to accept our own limits, I think, and, though I have been waiting patiently for the Daily Mail to finally come to my aid, and explain clearly how this No-Deal business is all going to work (since they obviously understand it), I'm still none the wiser. Best to stay out of it, then - my Preston grannie would have had something pithy to say on the subject, you bet. 

I understand that the first of the televised debates for the real leadership candidates [real? - discuss] took place yesterday, and Mr B Johnson did not appear - his chair and lectern remained empty throughout. I didn't watch the thing, naturally, and I am reluctant to admit it, but I'm quite impressed by that. Not only did he set himself up to be the only candidate who did not disgrace himself last night by speaking drivel on live TV, but it seems he actually increased his share of the opinion poll by not turning up. Brilliant. Fleetingly, it occurs to me that I, too, could have failed to show up, but I'm sure I couldn't have done it so charismatically or impressively.

This is not a new concept - fairly recently, the United States elected a president who was not a politician, for example, so the idea of a null candidate has been around for a while. I recall that many years ago someone wrote a song in support of a US presidential nominee named Nobody - on the grounds that this was exactly the person who would govern with integrity, who would care for the poor and the sick, who would ensure that the legal system and taxation were fair for all, etc. I had a look, but couldn't find the old one (1970s? - yes - we've had buffoons around for as long as that). I did find this clip, however, which would be better if it hadn't been so childishly produced, but it makes the point. Clearly we have to have someone running things, but would a vacuum be better than an idiot? Worth thinking about. Does an empty chair have real advantages over Boris? Hmmm.

I'm bored with this now. I'm still not going to watch the next live debate, but am intrigued to see if this cunning ploy catches on, and no-one turns up to it at all - trying to out-absent each other. Keep your cards hidden. Say nowt. That would be something.

Better still, perhaps they could all just shut up and leave us in peace. I am sick to death of hypocrisy, flagrant dishonesty and self-promotion. Some clown tried to sue Mr Johnson recently for telling lies while serving in a public office. Imagine a politician telling lies - good heavens. That's not even funny.

How long can this confounded farce rattle on? No - it's OK - I don't really want to know.

Hooptedoodle #335 - Me and the Bird Man...

Another Hooptedoodle - three on the bounce is normally a sign of something or other. On this occasion, it's because life is a little upside-down at the moment with my son's school exams - not a great deal of upheaval for me, since the Contesse is doing the organising and transport, but I have had a few days on my own at home. I've taken the opportunity to make decent progress with prepping more soldiers for the French Refurb, but I am reluctant to post yet more photos of bare-metal Les Higgins figures and the pervading mess. I could, of course, just keep quiet for a few days, but that could set a very dangerous precedent.

Yesterday I was reading about an incident I saw - or at which I was present, I suppose - when I was a small boy. On Whit Monday, May 21st 1956, I was taken by "Uncle" Duggie - a family friend - to the air show at Speke. Duggie was a Liverpool police officer, he was ex-RAF (he had been a middleweight boxing champion in the RAF) and he had more brass neck than you would believe, so he was an ideal man for taking you around - he seemed to know just about everybody, and he was quite happy to walk into areas which were supposed to be off-limits to the public.

Valentin demonstrating some of his later wings, suspended from a scaffold. If anyone thinks this looks like a bad idea, please put up your hand. [This set-up was a pose for photos, one of which subsequently appeared on the cover of his book]

It was a lovely, hot day. The place was packed. One big attraction was the scheduled appearance of the French Bird Man, Leo Valentin, who was to fly with strapped-on wings for our entertainment. Not much happened in those days - not like this. The events of that day, I learn, were also remembered by other, eventually more famous Liverpool kids than me - George Harrison and Paul McCartney were there (at that time they both lived in the new council housing estate at Speke, close to the airport), as was Clive Barker, the sci-fi writer and film-maker. Of course they were. There were 100,000 people there - anyone who could get there was bound to have been there - a big family holiday-out for the whole city. I was a very timid child, and was very worried about the Bird Man, and some of the planes were a tad noisy, and I didn't care for big crowds - so it wasn't such a perfect day for me, maybe!

Liverpool airport is at Speke, which then was outside the south end of the city. I remember being parched with thirst - no-one carried water in those days, for some reason, and queuing for a cup of industrial tea didn't seem such a great idea. I also remember that it was very hard to see much. If you were a small person, it wasn't a straightforward matter to see the sky between the adults. Valentin's flight was delayed - when he eventually made an attempt it was in a period when the crowd had started to wander around the airfield, and the events, which certainly did not last long, almost appeared incidental - many of those present must actually have been unaware of it. Valentin's approach run (with a new, larger style of wing, ferried up in a DC3) was pretty much unnoticeable (we couldn't hear the commentator anyway), his exit from the plane went wrong, he damaged one of his wings in the doorway, and I got a very brief glimpse (between adults) of Valentin, wrapped in his parachute, falling to the ground, maybe a mile away. There was a bit of a collective gasp, but a great many people around me never noticed.

A strange atmosphere fell over the place. It was one of those "nothing to see here, move along please" moments - the organisers obviously had to allow a slight gap for emergency reaction, but the show must go on. It was only when I got home (via the 82 bus) that I realised what had happened. I had simply assumed that Valentin wasn't flying today. In fact his emergency chute had failed, and he'd fallen 9000 feet into a cornfield, at Halewood. He was, of course, as dead as a door-nail. For some reason the local paper made a big fuss about the fact that his watch was still working. Someone missed an advertising opportunity there. Here's a nice little, rather homespun, video clip, to which I link with humble thanks and no permission.

Valentin had been a war hero, and was given a fancy military funeral in France - none of this reached the UK press. As far as I was concerned, he was really just another example of a common phenomenon of the times - you queued for hours to see something, and then nothing happened. Well, not for me - obviously things must have been a bit intense for him.

I believe this is the actual Beverley, at actual Speke, on the actual day [actually]. I am not on board - not bloody likely.

At some point in the afternoon Uncle Duggie got us past a rope barrier to look at a Blackburn Beverley and chat with its pilot - a friend of his from the RAF. Although the official record of the show says that the Beverley was a "no-show", I can confirm that it was very much there, and it did perform a fly-past later, with Duggie's pal at the controls. Duggie had managed to negotiate a look inside the thing, and asked me did I want to have a look around it - not flying in it, you understand, just having a peek, which wasn't allowed either. Since my timidity would not allow me to do anything which was not permitted, and since claustrophobia was another problem to add to my aforementioned list, I declined. I am ashamed to say that I turned down the opportunity to look around a newly-commissioned RAF Beverley, in 1956. Sorry, gentlemen. Sometimes I wonder how I ever survived this big, tough world. Sometimes I think that if I had a time machine I would go back and give myself a kick up the backside.

When there was no airshow, the spectator gallery on the roof at Speke was quite a popular attraction. I went a couple of times - it was very windy up there, and there weren't many planes to look at, I can tell you. What a miserable beggar I was!

Speke airport is now known as Liverpool John Lennon Airport. It always strikes me as ironic that Lennon himself only had a very brief involvement with the airport as a youth, when he was (I think) fired from temporary employment as a gopher in the cafe, for having a generally unhelpful attitude and making a deliberately unsavoury job of the sandwiches. That's how you go about getting an airport named after you. Charles de Gaulle had to work a bit harder for his airport, maybe.