April to June 2015Posted by Ian Ashley Sun, June 28, 2015 06:54PM
The news that’s had us all on tenterhooks down at the Silver
Lantern Café this week was that Rita Randell had decided to take up
speed-dating. Not that she’s ever been slow off the mark where men are
concerned but you would have thought having lived in Biddermouth on Sea all her
life and already buried three husbands she might have been a bit cautious about
what would be on offer. Not than any of us have tried it apart from our friend
Hilary and according to Vera Preston that didn’t turn out too well either.
‘She ended up coming home with her Clive,’ she said.
‘A bit like when they went wife-swapping and ended up with
each other’s front door keys then,’ added Lila Morris. ‘I mean I know she says
they have an open marriage but even my Ken would have recognised that koala
bear on her key ring. For a start it’s got an ear missing.’
Vera said perhaps she’d taken it off but whatever marital
combinations our friend Hilary tried to inject a bit of passion into her
marriage that still didn’t answer the questions of why Rita and why now?
‘Perhaps she’s looking for number four.’
‘Well it can’t be for the money,’ said my neighbour Beattie,
‘she wore the same dress to her last two weddings and she’d definitely saved
all the insurance when her Ted died. That coffin was so cheap you could see the
glue in the joins.’
‘And the bottom fell out,’ added Lila, ‘at least that’s what
Bob Kelly said happened when they lowered him in. It was a good job he had a
plot near the door, another few yards and he’d have dropped out on the gravel.’
Now I don’t know much about speed-dating but I do know most
of the eligible men in Biddermouth as does Rita, so you would have thought
she’d have called it quits and joined the National Trust like all the other
widows we knew. I mean the single men are not a bad bunch but anything more
than putting air in their tyres seems to leave them bent double for days. But maybe
speed-dating for the over 60’s is a more stately affair. It will have to be. By
the time the likes of Don Hewish have made their way to the next table it will be
time to pack up and go home.
‘Anyway,’ said Vera, ‘it’s in Curston not here.’
Beattie said that made sense.
‘At least there her quest won’t be hampered by her
reputation.’
However it seemed that this time Rita was pulling out all
the stops. Chrissie Painting had seen her buying new lingerie and some gel
inserts, Gloria Holland had seen her trying on dresses in Top Shop and Vera
knew for a fact that she’d booked a hair appointment at the Bona Curl salon.
Of course Kevin the owner refused to divulge any of the
details. He said it would be breaking a professional confidence which somehow
didn’t ring true. I mean how else would we have known that Beattie’s supposedly
inherited dark curls owed their continued existence to liberal applications of
Balmoral Mink at regular intervals?
‘All I will say, ‘he said, ‘is that she’s brought in a lot
of pictures of Lulu, although in my professional opinion she’s asking a bit
much there so she might have to make do with a sort of Jane Fonda.’
Mind you it was only because Beattie fancied a bit of smoked
haddock for her tea that we found out
Rita’s fourth road trip down the aisle might be a rockier road than she
thought.
‘George Cawdrey has hired a minibus,’ Beattie said.
‘Apparently he’s some friend of the landlord of the Golden Fleece and they’re
all going over on Thursday, although I don’t know why he’s bothering, he smells
of fish.’
I reminded her that he was a fishmonger and she replied that
was no excuse for never washing his hands.
‘Did you smell Lila after they’d done that rumba? I had to
keep my hanky to my face the whole time she was sat next to me. It’s a good job
you can boil cotton or that dress would have been ruined. Still it looks like
it will be a quiet night at the whist drive which is no bad thing.’
I know last week Beattie had taken exception to Don Hewish
suggesting they play strip poker but the rest of us thought he was joking.
Perhaps he wasn’t. So maybe Rita was getting herself in out of her depth.
‘That particular swimming pool has yet to be dug Maureen,’
Beattie said but then she’s never liked Rita much. ‘She’s just like her mother.
You know she died owing every house in the street a cup of sugar?’
I didn’t, and as far as I knew sugar would be the last thing
on Rita’s mind as she always carried her own sweeteners in her handbag. Still
if she thought that by going speed-dating in Curston she’d be ploughing a
furrow in pastures new it sounded as if she was going to be sorely
disappointed.
And there I was not wrong. Of course we got the full story
from Vera courtesy of her cousin who cleans the Golden Fleece and found a
couple of abandoned gel inserts when she was sweeping up the following morning.
So I suppose most of it must have been true.
Far from being a night of romantic encounters they’d had to
take out a few tables to make way for all the walking frames and Rita found
herself up against some pretty stern competition from the local widows who had
not taken kindly to finding a stranger in their midst. Lucky for her George
Cawdrey had that minibus or she’d have been lynched.
Of course I’m not saying anything happened but according to
Vera there was a Top Shop dress airing on Rita’s washing line the following
morning so…?
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book ‘Bell, Book & Handbag’ featuring Maureen and Beattie please click HERE
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stories in The Biddermouth Gazette ©Ian Ashley 2015
April to June 2015Posted by Ian Ashley Sun, June 21, 2015 05:34PM
Sadly not everybody seems to appreciate the Rev Velma
Meakin’s attempts to put St Matthews and All Angels back into the heart of our
seaside community. Granted some of the things she’s done like hosting ‘Get it
on with God’ at a nightclub have rattled the traditionalists.
Vera, Lila and I are of the opinion that Velma has been a
breath of fresh air. My next door neighbour Beattie is not. Still when you firmly
believe that the Almighty is ‘immortal, invisible and yours’ you’re never going
to think mixing ‘Now Thank We All Our God’ and ‘Thine Be The Glory’ into a
dance medley is the way ahead. Still that’s no need for people to be sending Velma
death threats is it?
‘Well if you ask me she’s brought it all on herself,’ said
Beattie who I have to say was on my list of possible suspects. ‘The Bishop
should have left her at St Werburghs after she sold off the pews and replaced
them with folding chairs. I mean how can you even contemplate the Almighty when
you’re perched on a bit of plywood that’s liable to collapse at any moment? At
least the Rev Stevens took in orphans.’
‘And we know why,’ said Lila, although we didn’t really, but
as they say there is no smoke without fire.
‘Taking up a residency at Chaser’s is no different to
thousands of people climbing a hill to get a glimpse of Jesus,’ Vera said which
earned her such a look from Beattie you’d have thought she’d announced she’d
become a Bride of Satan. ‘Anyway Velma’s done more for my Dwayne’s substance
abuse than that old Rev Stevens. All he ever did was cuddle him.’
‘He’s still doing it though,’ said Lila which I assumed referred
to Dwayne and not the Rev Stevens who I thought was still ‘recovering’ at a
monastery following his prostate op.
Vera replied that wasn’t the point. Thanks to Velma she now
knew what to do when her grandson started foaming at the mouth whereas before
she’d always had to call an ambulance.
‘That last time he spent four hours on a trolley in that
hospital carpark because they were all too busy treating people claiming they
had asthma when all they had was a cough.’
‘Plus she’s done wonders with the notice board,’ said Hilary.
We all turned in amazement when we heard that. This was the
first time she’d managed to speak real words since she’d had that Botox
treatment. Of course it was going to be a while, if ever, before her left eye
could blink properly but for £15 and a home visit from a beautician in an old
Ford Transit Van you’re not going to look like Cher, no matter what the advert
says.
‘That notice board has always been for the community,’ said
Beattie. ‘And now she puts all sorts on it. Lawn mowers for sale, accommodation
notices in Polish, even Stella Wheatley’s got an advert on it although why she
needs to wear a bra and panties to advertise a hairdressing salon I really do not
know. But you try putting anything up there to do bell ringing and down it
comes.’
‘Bell ringing,’ asked Vera?
‘She means the Biddermouth Swingers Club,’ said Lila
shooting a sly glance at Hilary.
‘Exactly,’ Beattie replied. ‘It breaks my heart to think of
those great big bells just dangling there unused.’
So I think that is where Velma’s problems really started. The
notice board I mean not taking a stand against the Biddermouth Swingers
publicising their monthly cheese and wine parties although it’s probably best
not to think about where the crumbs from the crackers end up. Or even where you
tuck your serviette. Still whistle blowing disco vicars is one thing. Telling
the Madrigal Society and the altar flowers volunteers that they no longer had
exclusive rights to the church notice board was clearly another.
Vera took the view that moving Delia Cartwright and six
other people who wore ruffs into the vestry to make way for Velma’s Pregnancy
Advice Clinic was no bad thing. Lila said it was a shame. Beattie said it was
traditional and Vera fought back asking when either of them had last gone ‘hey
nonny no?’
Still that hasn’t stopped the letters page of the
Biddermouth Gazette being chock a block with the town airing its views. Personally
I was with Derek from Newtown Road. He claimed that Delia and her singers simply
got in the way in the shopping centre at Christmas and were probably a health
and safety hazard in their farthingales. Beattie was firmly with Joan from
Glebe Villas. She declared that Velma would never have dared do such a thing if
Delia Cartwright had been a Muslim. But then I suppose if she had been she
wouldn’t be dressing up as Elizabeth 1st at every opportunity would
she? Plus Velma wouldn’t have woken up one morning to find a headless chicken
on her door step.
Who did that we’ll never know. It couldn’t have been Delia
Cartwright because she’s a vegetarian and I don’t suppose a mangled nut cutlet
would have made the front page of the Daily Mail. And it most certainly wouldn’t have been
Beattie. She hates waste, especially when it comes to food.
Still the Rev. Meakin remains unrepentant and despite being
hit by an anonymous bread roll in the local supermarket continues to go about
her work and is currently busy putting the finishing touches to her ‘Music for
the People’ concert at St Matthews and All Angels.
Of course there will be no madrigals now that Delia has
flounced off in a huff which would have left a nasty gap in the programme this
late in the day. However Mary Rose with the Singing Chihuahua has a brother-in-law
in nearby Curston who has a Border Collie that can play the harmonica. So all is
well with the world. Unless of course you’ve spent a whole week starching your
ruff.
To view my
book ‘Bell, Book & Handbag’ featuring Maureen and Beattie please click HERE
All
stories in The Biddermouth Gazette ©Ian Ashley 2015
April to June 2015Posted by Ian Ashley Sun, June 14, 2015 06:12PM
We knew something was up at the Bona Curl Salon because
normally you’re not greeted with the sound of bolts being drawn back and chains
being uncoupled before you can open the door. You don’t usually have to flash
your bus pass as proof of identity either and you are most certainly not
greeted by Kevin’s assistant, Iris Naomi, dressed as a security guard. Although
I have to say with her facial piercings and Meatloaf T-shirt she always manages
to look pretty unwelcoming anyway.
However on this particular morning the entire place was on
lockdown. Not that any of us had appointments but we had heard via Karen from
the cake shop next door that the police had called there during in the night. Phone
calls had been made, plans for the day shelved and even my next door neighbour
Beattie decided to abandon her morning for buffing up the manhole cover outside
her front door for fear of missing out on the gossip.
Of course it all depended on which phone call you believed
as to why the police had been there in the first place because as usual
everybody had their own version of events.
Karen thought there had been a burglary but that wasn’t good
enough for my neighbour Beattie. She immediately took the view that Kevin had been
arrested for importuning behind the bandstand.
‘He has proclivities Maureen,’ she’d said as if Kevin’s
embracing of an alternative life style was hot news.
Lila Morris reckoned they’d come for Kevin’s assistant Iris
Naomi because even after three years at hairdressing college she still managed
to get the hose wrapped round your neck.
‘Look what happened to Linda Parkin. She popped in for a
wash and set and came out looking like she’d gone three rounds with the Boston
Strangler. If you ask me that girl’s finally succeeded in killing somebody.’
Vera Preston, with her long history of dealing with visits
from the forces of law and order to her own family took another view entirely.
She said it was another example of police harassment especially when she found
out that one of the constables was WPC Tina Worthy.
‘That one’s always been a fascist,’ she said. ‘Even at
school she had in it for our Dwayne. She used to handcuff him to the radiators
and make him late for his lessons you know. No wonder he never learned to read
properly.’
‘Fairs fair though Vera,’ said Lila who due to the complex
bloodlines you find in a small town was somehow related to the Worthy’s by two
marriages and an out of wedlock liaison, ‘he did write ‘I is a lesbo’ on her
forehead with a jumbo marker.’
So you can imagine that once we’d all got over the shock of
seeing Iris Naomi wearing a security guard’s peak cap a sense of disappointment
settled in all round. She hadn’t been arrested for manslaughter and despite
looking pale and drawn Kevin was at liberty too.
‘I expect he’s out on bail,’ whispered Beattie desperate to
cling on to her own ill-will when Kevin emerged from the back kitchen. ‘Well he
needn’t think I’m putting a penny towards his fine. You see Maureen this is
what you get when you have a LibDem majority on the council. Rainbow warriors.’
Vera said she thought they saved whales not picked up men in
the local park and Lila just made sure she stayed out of striking range of the
murderous Iris Naomi and her baseball bat and offered to put the kettle on.
‘Whatever’s going on Kevin,’ I asked?
‘It’s me Nan, Maureen. She’s escaped and the police think
she’s probably heading this way.’
‘I thought she was dead,’ said Vera.
‘I thought she was in the same place as your mother,’ said
Beattie who never missed a chance to level an imaginary score.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my mother Beattie Hathaway. You
know as well as I do she was perfectly ok until the fireworks factory exploded
and that Catherine wheel flew through the window and set light to all her
George Formby memorabilia. Anyway Heather Grange is residential not custodial.
She’s there of her own freewill.’
Which was more than could be said for Granny Nethercott
apparently. She was in Bay View House.
‘Maximum security’, added Lila as if anything more needed to
be said.
‘Mind you,’ said Vera,’ she had it coming especially after
that business with the machete in the school playground. If the caretaker
hadn’t thrown that old tennis net over her my Chantal would have been a goner.’
‘And my Bez,’ said Lila.
‘Which would have been no bad thing,’ muttered my next door
neighbour but I think I was the only one close enough to hear that because
neither of the others rose to the bait. I mean I know one lives on a diet of
Red Bull and the other one wears dungarees but that’s no reason to promote
infanticide is it? After all everybody is somebody’s child, even Beattie.
Of course it’s very hard for an eighty five year old woman
in a floral nightdress to remain at large for long. Especially after a
thunderstorm. Although if Vera’s grandson Dwayne hadn’t tried to mug her for
her handbag she may well have dried out enough to have hopped on a bus and made
it to Southampton. As it was his social worker claimed he was making a citizen’s
arrest and he got off on a technicality.
And apparently, or so Kevin said, following a course of
electric shock therapy, Granny Nethercott was better too.
‘She’s become word perfect in every film Bette Davis had
ever made,’ he said. ‘Which is amazing in itself considering she’s never even
seen any of them. Mind you it’s got me thinking about Iris Naomi. I mean you
never know, a few jolts from a hot brush and I may be able to trust her with
scissors.’
To view my
book ‘Bell, Book & Handbag’ featuring Maureen and Beattie please click HERE
All stories
in The Biddermouth Gazette ©Ian Ashley 2015
April to June 2015Posted by Ian Ashley Sun, June 07, 2015 03:47PM
Regular readers may well recall that every year Biddermouth
on Sea throws caution to the wind and attempts to host a musical festival. Some
of you may also recollect that
this year the Rev Velma Meakin, the radical
incumbent at St Matthews and All Angels, is hosting an alternative extravaganza
called Music For the People. However
for those of a less socialistic nature the cultural elite are pressing ahead
with a programme of things nobody but them have heard of and my next door
neighbour Beattie, who also pretends to know about these things was beside
herself with joy at the prospect.
‘You can all go and listen to Ted Aldis and his Syncopated
Foot Tappers and drink warm Fanta with a transvestite vicar if you want, ’ she
said , ‘I’ll be listening to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and enjoying a nice cup
of Earl Grey tea.’
Vera said if she’d known Frankie Valli was coming to the
Town Hall Theatre she’d have got Beattie to have got her a ticket as well. Lila
just wondered why anybody else would bother to write another Four Seasons when Nigel
Kennedy had already done it.
However it’s not just the prospect of having her annual
blast of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ that’s got Beattie so excited but it was
recently announced in the Gazette that Dame Sally Framling had taken a short
let on ‘Shell House’ down on the seafront for what Beattie calls ‘the season’
and what the rest of us would know as ‘four weeks in the summer’.
But who this Dame Sally was we had no idea.
‘I knew she won a gold medal,’ said Vera, ‘but I had no idea
she was musical.’
Hilary said she was confusing her with Sally Gunnell the
Olympic hurdler and Lila thought this particular Sally might have been in
Dynasty because Joan Collins had been made a Dame too.
Anyway as it happened they were all wrong because Dame Sally
Framling turned out to be Lancashire’s finest living soprano.
‘Not that you’d know she was northern to listen to her sing,’
said Beattie. ‘But then I suppose she had elocution lessons unlike Gracie
Fields. After all who wants to hear Tosca being sung by a mill girl?’
Well I don’t like to hear it sung by anybody. Although there
are times when Beattie has it on so loud I am forced to endure it. That said Tosca
does have my sympathies. I mean she’d had one hell of a day hadn’t she? So you
can’t really blame her for leaping out of that window. At least Dusty Springfield never leaves you
feeling suicidal even when she’s less than merry.
So you can imagine how unbearable Beattie was when she
managed to get an invite to tea at Shell House with her old friend Mrs
Dennington- Wriggley, known to us behind Beattie’s back as Mrs Diddley- Dee.
You see she smells of mothballs and is always going on about ‘during the Raj’.
Honestly to hear her talk you’d think her husband had been Viceroy and not a
salesman for a tyre company. Still to my neighbour she has all the charm of ‘A
Passage to India’. And it has to be said that Beattie is a sucker for anybody
with a hyphen and a fusty fur coat.
Not that there was anything remotely fusty about Beattie
when the GREAT DAY dawned. She’d had her court shoes re-heeled, her best cotton
gloves dry cleaned and had even managed by dint of some nimble linguistics to
turn one of last year’s summer frocks into this years ‘tea gown’.
Vera phoned me to say she’d even seen her gliding down the
High Street in a taxi doing that thing the Queen Mother used to do that was
part way between a wave and struggling with the lid of a jar of pickled onions.
‘I hope she’s not to disappointed if all she gets is a plate
of whelks and a glass of milk stout,’ she added.
And so did I.
Now usually when Beattie’s had a brush with the aristocracy,
even if they are northern, or comes close to a cucumber sandwich devoid of its
crust she’s straight round giving you chapter and verse on who said what and
how thin the bread was. But the fact that she’d come home on the bus with her
best hairnet stuffed in her handbag made me think all had not gone well.
Perhaps whelks had been served after all. Or had Dame Sally committed the
ultimate social faux pas and put the milk in her teacup first? Either way it
was a very tight lipped Beattie that slammed her front door and proceeded to
play the 1812 Overture very loudly on her radiogram all night.
Of course normally I wouldn’t dream of steaming open anybody
else’s post but when Dame Sally’s chauffeur got Beattie’s address wrong and
popped an envelope through my door…well Vera said to put the kettle on and
she’d be straight round.
‘The trick is not to smudge the ink,’ she said expertly
holding the envelope over the spout.
‘The trick is not to tell Beattie,’ I replied after Vera had
read the letter out loud.
‘That’s true,’ said Vera, ‘I mean five mornings a week
cleaning at four pound an hour isn’t much of an offer is it? I’d have held out
for at least six. Still now we know eh Maureen? Pimped by Mrs Diddley-Dee. Well
my lips are sealed.’
Luckily there were still a few tickets left for Ted Aldis
and his Syncopated Foot Tappers. He may not be Beattie’s cup of tea but at
least he’s never offered her a cleaning job. ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ might not
be Vivaldi and there may only be warm Fanta to drink but Beattie will be sat amongst
her friends. I think. Of course I suppose that all depends on how evil Vera’s
feeling on the day doesn’t it?
To view my
book ‘Bell, Book & Handbag’ featuring Maureen and Beattie please click HERE
All
stories in The Biddermouth Gazette ©Ian Ashley 2015
April to June 2015Posted by Ian Ashley Sun, May 31, 2015 06:03PM
The way Sylvia Protheroe has treated poor Karen Braithwaite
recently seems to have back-fired on her big time. Letters have been written to
the Editor of the Gazette, her slimming club has been picketed and somebody,
presumably Vera Preston’s grandson Dwayne, sprayed something rude on her front
door. We think it was him because most people know you put a ‘c’ before the ‘k’,
or why else would it be called a four letter word?
Not that Sylvia has ever been a friend of mine. My next door
neighbour Beattie may claim they were bosom buddies when they both attended the
Imelda Frayne School of Dancing back in the mid 1950’s, however I think it must
have always been a one-sided relationship even then. You see as Sylvia always
says she graduated with honours and her mother put her straight into ballet
school whereas when Beattie left her mother put her straight into a corset.
‘Far be it from me to imply that she was heavy footed as a
child,’ Sylvia said to me one day when we found ourselves forced to share a
table during a busy hour at the Silver Lantern Café, ‘but the word ‘tap’ comes nowhere close to describing the noise
she made dancing.’
Of course even at sixty seven with her tight bun, perfect
poise and deformed feet Sylvia likes to think she is too much of a lady to use
the words ‘thunderous’ and ‘gargantuan’ and I don’t believe half of her stories
either. She may well have slipped on a Pavlova but I seriously doubt she ever
danced with one. As for all that ‘Dame Margot once said to me…’ business I
reckon you can take that with a pinch of salt too. Although I suspect in Sylvia’s
case it would be of the low sodium variety.
Still even a life time touring the provinces as a geriatric cygnet
is no excuse for banning people from the slimming club. I mean anybody else
would have pocketed Karen’s weekly subscription and let her stand at the back eating
a pasty and touching somebody else’s toes. But not Sylvia.
‘I have my reputation to think of,’ she said. ‘Imagine what
would happen if word got round that I allowed my ladies to actually put on weight?
Nobody is big-boned. They are just fat through their own lack of control. As Dame
Margot once said to me when she caught me sucking a throat pastel in rehearsals…
’
Now I’m not saying that Karen isn’t a bit on the large side.
Neither am I saying that a few less Sacher Tortes wouldn’t help to keep her
this side of twenty stone and certainly being the proprietor of Karen’s Kakes doesn’t
help either. But you could argue, as Karen does frequently, that it is a
question of genetics. You see in her day Karen’s late mother Peggy did cut a
formidable figure as a school crossing lady. In fact Kevin from the Bona Curl
claims she once wrote off a fire engine. Vera and Lila remember it slightly
differently.
‘She was hit by a milk float,’ recalled Lila. ‘But Peggy did
have to have her service at St Jude’s.’
‘Because of the wide aisle,’ added Beattie whose own hips
may well be the deciding factor in her final choice of resting place.
However the one thing Karen didn’t inherit was her mother’s
personality. Peggy Braithwaite was feared. Her daughter is loved by all. In
fact with her Union Jack kaftans Karen is a bit of a local celebrity. Sylvia
Protheroe is not. And that if you ask me was her undoing. She may well have a
cholesterol level of two and the BMI of a dried apricot but she was no match
for Karen who hit the front page under a headline of ‘Big, Bold and Biddermouth.’
Neither was Sylvia up to fighting off Bez Morris’s left wing
women’s group when it made fat a feminist issue, infiltrated a slimming club
meeting and disturbed the peace of Sylvia’s Pilates class by pelting the members
with doughnuts. A couple of size zero ladies from nearby Abbots Sepsis tried to
fight back but ended up being taken away in an ambulance and one woman even
claimed she’d been held hostage in the changing room.
‘I only gained my freedom by agreeing to eat three chocolate
Hob Nob biscuits,’ she said.
She then boasted of having then gone for a twenty mile run afterwards
which only brought the wrath of the Director of the Princess Diana Memorial
Hospital Eating Disorder Clinic firmly down upon her head in an article accompanied
by a photograph of Karen behind her counter merrily eating her way through a
mountain of profiteroles.
Even the local chapter of The Hells Angels roared into town and
named her as their mascot although I have to say her partner Derwent wasn’t too
happy when she was pictured astride a Harley Davidson in a leather jacket and
matching shorts. Personally I think the headline 'Boys Luv Big Birds' was a little unnecessary. He wasn't best pleased when she received a proposal
of marriage from a tribal chieftain in Africa either. But he is putting on a
brave face and as Karen said, ‘what can you do with six oxen when you live over
a bakery?’
Mind you quite what Derwent will make of Karen’s latest
offer nobody knows. Vera tells me the local hospice is planning to ditch its
usual ‘Biddermouth Through the Season’s’, calendar in favour of one called ‘Biddermouth
Curves’. Apparently they have already found candidates for January through to August
and rumour has it that Karen will be Miss Soft Fruit September. Thankfully it
is printed by the same company that do the parish magazine for St Matthews and
All Angels so I doubt the photographs will contain any nudity.
Of course I think the letter Beattie received claiming to be
from the charity and offering her a choice of the winter months was a hoax.
After all everybody knows you don’t spell ‘photographer’ with an ‘F’.
To view my
book ‘Bell, Book & Handbag’ featuring Maureen and Beattie please click HERE
All
stories in The Biddermouth Gazette ©Ian Ashley 2015
April to June 2015Posted by Ian Ashley Sun, May 24, 2015 06:24PM
Unusually for Biddermouth on Sea this week’s local paper was
full of sex and violence. Normally anything like that is squeezed into small
paragraphs between Births, Deaths and Marriages and the Under a Tenner adverts.
However since the Tories gained a majority on the council it seems they have
decided to expose once and for all how low the town has fallen under four years
of Lib Dem misrule. So sex and violence it is. All over the front page.
Because the violence bit involved Vera’s grandson none of us
are mentioning it. I mean it’s not the first time that lad’s been in trouble
and I daresay it won’t be the last. His grandmother says it’s because he’s lactose
intolerant but I ask you, who mixes cider with milk and tries to bite a man’s
ear off?
Anyway leaving Vera Preston’s random approach to
grand-parenting aside it was the news that two couples had been arrested for
something called ‘dogging’ that caught everybody’s attention.
Vera reckoned one of the couples had to be our friends
Hilary and Clive. Lila Morris wasn’t so sure. She said even they wouldn’t be so
daft as to imagine that their old Ford Cortina would go unnoticed in a layby.
‘I mean you’d spot those furry dice a mile off,’ she added
and we all laughed. Except Beattie.
She said it served them right and it was high time the
police did something about it.
‘Still, ‘she added slicing her Danish pastry into dainty
morsels, ‘the fines will go some way towards the cost of those signs they’ve
put on all the lampposts.’
Well that made me drop my scone jam-side down on the table
cloth I can tell you as I couldn’t for the life of me remember seeing any signs
warning people not to engage in unbridled sexual activity. And I’m sure I would
have noticed. I mean those images have to be pretty graphic don’t they? School
children crossing. Beware the elderly. Loose chippings. But as for lustful
abandon, well the mind boggled.
‘After all,’ she continued whilst the rest of us battled
with our wildest imaginations and Lila went right off her chocolate coated ring
doughnut, ‘you can buy those little plastic bags on a roll in PoundMart, so
there is no excuse for people to let their animals foul the pavements is there?’
Cora, our waitress, said in passing that you could buy
scoops as well which seemed to be news to Beattie. I don’t know why. I know for
a fact she’d bought one herself. She claimed it matched the oven glove she’d
brought on a day trip to Windsor Castle. Mind you I’d never quite plucked up
the courage to tell her it wasn’t a fish slice. Still as they say, ignorance is
bliss.
I think Vera would have said something had she not been so
disappointed to see Hilary herself giving us a cheery wave as she popped into
the Post Office across the road from the Silver Lantern café.
‘She’s got some pluck I’ll give her that, ‘she muttered.
I thought that was a bit rich coming from a woman whose
grandson had attempted to bite the ear off a security guard in the local supermarket
but where Vera’s concerned often the least said the soonest mended so I kept my
opinions to myself.
Of course what we all really wanted to talk about was the other
front page story. Apparently the Happy Hands Massage Parlour had been raided by
the police and three ‘prominent local figures’ had been caught red handed. At
least Ludmilla, Ekaterina and Blanche had. The men, you imagine, were merely
red faced. Still that probably explained why Stella Wheatley had made herself
scarce and gone off to visit ‘friends’ in Torquay. Not that it was common
knowledge that she had a fifty percent share in the business but there had to
be something big going down to make Stella abandon the three Polish lads who’d
been decorating her bedroom since October for the balmy breezes of the English
Riviera.
‘Mind you, I have heard’ said Lila and she went on to name
two local Tory councillors.
Beattie claimed she was being ridiculous.
‘They are both happily married. It was in their manifestos.’
‘So are Hilary and Clive,’ I said.
‘Correction,’ said Vera. ‘They’re just married.’
‘Still it’s those poor
girls I feel sorry for.’
And there Lila did have a point. Ludmilla and Ekaterina had
been arrested, named and shamed in big bold typeface whereas the men it seemed
would be getting off scot free. Of course it must have been doubly humiliating
for Tom Pickering. He’d told everybody he’d met Blanche in a church in Bangkok.
Still at least she had a husband to pay her fine or at least her airfare back
to the Far East. Poor Ludmilla had nothing to go home to except a bombed out
apartment somewhere in the Ukraine and a small child who might well still be
buried under the rubble. As for Ekaterina she’d told me she had come to England
expecting to be employed as a waitress.
‘But I am learning so much good words’, she’d said putting
on a brave face although you do have to wonder what her small talk consists of
at parties.
However as with all humanitarian crises we are more
interested in the news nearer to home. Will Hilary be named as the mystery
woman arrested wearing a rubber cat suit, as Vera fervently hopes, and was her
companion really Clive barely disguised as Tarzan?
However as the Happy Hands saga clearly shows, it’s not what
you’re doing but who you’re doing it with that counts. Although I’m not sure
Hilary is even on nodding terms with anybody from the local council.
As for Beattie, she’s still turning her bacon with her
favourite colour coded utensil and blaming their Labrador.
‘After all if they’d gone to PoundMart Maureen, none of this
would have happened.’
To view my
book ‘Bell, Book & Handbag’ featuring Maureen and Beattie please click HERE
All
stories in The Biddermouth Gazette ©Ian Ashley 2015
April to June 2015Posted by Ian Ashley Sun, May 17, 2015 06:26PM
Regular readers may remember that since the Rev Velma Meakin
took over the running of the Over 60’s club we’ve had far more exciting things
to do than wave Union Jacks whilst singing, ‘Tipperary’ and Line Dancing was
just one of a host of new entertainments she had organised on our behalf.
Now they do say you can lead horses to water but you cannot
make them drink and I think the same applied to my next door neighbour Beattie
and Country and Western music. At first her excuse was she was too busy
polishing her silver, next it was her day for her drains and when she finally
she said she couldn’t see how anybody could dance to the theme tune from
Bonanza I felt we should give her up as a lost cause.
Our friend Vera had other ideas.
‘You just look at yourself in that,’ she said ramming a pink
cow-girl hat firmly on top of Beattie’s hairnet.
‘Snazzy eh? And they were cheap. I found them reduced in
PoundMart.’
Now I know Beattie loves a bargain, probably more than the
rest of us, but I don’t think she was any more impressed looking at her
reflection in the window of the Silver Lantern Café than we were gazing at the
real thing.
‘That’s a ‘no’ then,’ said Lila as Beattie stomped off
muttering she’d rather buff up her cruet. ‘Never mind I expect we can get
Hilary to come with us. She hasn’t been out of the house since her Clive came
back with his tail between his legs. I’ll give her a call.’
To say our friend Hilary had been keeping herself to herself
was an understatement. All we knew was that her husband had seen the error of
his ways and returned to the marital home. Presumably he quickly came to the
conclusion the comforts of his own reclining armchair were less demanding than those
of Stella’s Wheatley’s surgically enhanced bust. But we can’t be sure.
‘She’s had Botox,’ said Lila, ‘only I’m not supposed to tell
anybody so don’t you two say anything.’
You could hear Vera’s mind already clicking away like a pair
of knitting needles on the other side of the table. No doubt she was busy
trying to plain and purl Stella Wheatley and Hilary’s new face into a single
withering insult that would kill two birds with one stone.
I just hoped Hilary had had it done professionally but
according to Lila she’d used some friend of Kevin’s from the Bona Curl.
‘You know who I mean,’ she said, ‘the one that does door to
door lip plumping with recycled chip shop oil.’
Well if there hadn’t been a good reason before to take up
Line Dancing at sixty seven there was now, so as Vera said all we had to do was
sort out our outfits and we’d be well away.
I have to say when she turned up that denim jacket was a bit
of a surprise. It looked like the result of an unhappy one night stand between
Mr Levi and a lampshade heiress. Lila’s get up was no better. I’m not sure what
she was wearing but it looked like she’d studied ‘Seven Brides for Seven
Brothers’ very closely and still managed to get it wrong. I’d gone for speed
and efficiency, leggings and a sweat shirt, because I’m sure the poster never
mentioned there would be prizes for fancy dress.
To be honest if Hilary hadn’t said ‘hello’ I would never
have recognised her. At least I think that’s what she said because her lips didn’t
actually move and one eye looked distinctly Bette Davis whilst the other one
hardly opened at all.
‘Told you,’ said Lila looking in the mirror and securing her
bow with yet more hair grips.
Now it’s if it’s hard to have a conversation with somebody who
can only gurgle, Line Dancing with them was even harder. Not only did you all have
to dip and slide but it seems you were expected to do turns as well and all this
in time with Patsy and Tex, our local country and western singers, and their
band, The Renegades.
Still credit where credit’s due. Vera did try her best.
Unfortunately she had Polly Watkins who was stone deaf on one side and Jimmy
Jameson, who despite driving a taxi for forty years still had trouble with left
and right, on the other. So most of the time when Vera’s slides weren’t colliding
with Polly’s turns she was eye to eye with Jimmy when they should have both
been facing the same way.
Lila didn’t fare much better either. It seemed that Hilary’s
face wasn’t the only part of her body that had been paralysed and by the time
she dipped everybody was spinning so quite a few people fell over more than
once.
Personally I blame that Patsy. She may look like Tammy
Wynette when she’s stood still but trying to follow somebody who’s had a hip
replacement when they shout ‘dip’ was never going to be easy. You see when it
came to her right side she had an unfair advantage over the rest of us. In fact
those who were stood near the front seemed to dip a great deal more than the
rest of us nearer the back although it has to be said our turns were a lot
slower. Still it’s no secret that Tex has balance issues due to problems with
his middle ear.
‘Well that was fun,’ said Vera trying to put a brave face on
things despite the fact that she’d ended up doing a lively two-step with Jimmy
when her fringing got caught on his belt buckle and her cowgirl hat had a large
foot print on the crown.
Personally I’m not so sure. Even after a long hot bath and
plenty of embrocation I’m still wondering if buffing up my own cruet wouldn’t
have been the lesser of two evils.
To view my
book ‘Bell, Book & Handbag’ featuring Maureen and Beattie please click HERE
All
stories in The Biddermouth Gazette ©Ian Ashley 2015
April to June 2015Posted by Ian Ashley Sun, May 10, 2015 05:53PM
Long ago, although to hear my friends Vera and Lila, it
might well have been yesterday, Biddermouth on Sea suffered its’ own outbreak
of Beatle-mania in the shape of Barry Venture and the Ventones. I wasn’t here
at the time but apparently they were a dancehall smash back in the days when
there were such things and such things regularly got broken up. And now it
seemed they had reunited and were winding up in town for the last night of the tour.
‘We are most definitely going!’ said Vera.
‘We most definitely are!’ echoed Lila. ‘And you too Maureen,
you’ll love them. You never know we might even tempt Hilary out of retirement.
After all she was sweet on their drummer wasn’t she Vera?’
‘What the one that got done for little boys?’
Lila paused with her Danish pasty and said no, she meant the
one who got Sally do-dah pregnant.
‘Sally Peter’s?’
‘No it began with a ‘J’, Henderson. That’s it Sally
Henderson.’
That’s an ‘H’ I thought but I let it pass. Anyway they were
both too busy bickering over whether Hilary had ‘done it’ with the priapic
drummer or not to pay much attention.
‘Well I say she didn’t,’ said Lila who was often the last
one to think ill of anybody.
‘And I say she did,’ snapped Vera, ‘ that night on at
Curston Lido, when you fell off the back of Chris Maynard’s moped and snapped
the heels clean off those boots of mine
you’d borrowed.’
They were still bickering over whether it was a moped, as
Vera claimed, or a Harley Davidson, as Lila wished to remember it, when we
settled the bill at the Silver Lantern Café and headed off our separate ways.
I noticed that neither of my friends had mentioned my next
door neighbour Beattie coming with us. Not that I was surprised. I’d seen
pictures of her in the early Sixties and to be honest if it wasn’t for the cars
in the background you’d swear she was posing to celebrate the end of sweet
rationing. Of course they didn’t do large sizes in teenage clothes back then
which is probably why she looked like her mum and her aunties. So I doubt she
ever fell off the back of anything more exciting than a settee.
Still I felt one of us should ask her. I mean you never
know. She might have surprised us and had all their old records in one of the
trunks in her loft.
As it happened she didn’t. When I mentioned it she just
shuddered and said something about ‘child molesters’ and carried on steaming
razor sharp folds into her tea towels.
Which was how we came to find ourselves outside the
Biddermouth Legion without her but with about 200 other elderly women and an
assortment of walking frames and inhalers whilst we waited for Hilary to turn
up.
‘Now remember, ‘ Vera
said as if it was Lila and I that needed to watch our tongues, ‘ no mention of
her getting back with Clive and certainly no mention of him leaving her for
Stella Wheatley in the first place and speaking of which…’
There she was, Biddermouth’s own geriatric sex kitten Stella
Wheatley arm in arm with a lad who looked young enough to be her own grandson.
‘That must be Peter,’ said Vera.
‘Pytor,’ Lila corrected, ‘he’s Polish.’
Well I thought, Stella still can’t be having her bedroom
re-decorated surely? I mean how many Polish lads does it take to wall paper a
room twelve by ten? Still I wasn’t going to let it spoil my evening. Mind you I
did wonder, looking along the queue, if Vera and Lila realised Barry and his
Ventones might well be on walking frames themselves by now. After all the
Sixties were a fair while back whether we like to admit it or not and none of
us have worn well, apart from Stella that is and she owes all that to plastic
surgery.
‘We’ll have to make sure we keep her and Hilary keep well
apart, after all we don’t want any unpleasantness,’ said Vera who I knew full
well was secretly hoping otherwise.
‘She’s not coming,’ said Lila. ‘Botox.’
‘Horrific to,’ she added although I’d like to think she was
talking about the process itself and not what it had done to Hilary’s face.
However in we went and on they came to rapturous applause
and straight into a medley of old pop songs that got everybody in the mood. There
was the odd moment when the lead guitar played something completely different
to the bass but nobody seemed to notice. Of course their hell raising days were
over and ‘Twist and Shout’ was a bit slower than it should be but then there
were enough people who twisted down and then needed the St John’s Ambulance
team to get them upright again as it was. Any faster and there would have been
even longer queues than normal at the local A&E.
Stella Wheatley was writhing all over that poor Polish lad
and when Barry sang ‘Love Me Tender’ she got him in a lip-lock which Vera said
nearly made her bring up her chips. I hadn’t had any but I knew what she meant.
I have to say the boys were doing a great job with some old
Rolling Stones stuff for a finale. I say ‘were’ because from somewhere down the
front an enormous pair of bloomers hit Barry full in the face. He reeled
backwards into the lead guitarist. More underwear flew through the air and a
mug of Horlicks got spilt down the back of the amplifier. Then there was an
enormous ‘bang’. Somebody yelled ‘FIRE’ and all the lights went out.
Thankfully nobody was seriously hurt and even those with
walking frames were evacuated safely. Barry
is as well as can be expected following his heart attack and my best coat still
reeks of smoke. Even after being dry cleaned twice!
To view my
book ‘Bell, Book & Handbag’ featuring Maureen and Beattie please click HERE
All
stories in The Biddermouth Gazette ©Ian Ashley 2015
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