Sally- Part 11. A HEART PACEMAKER FITTED ?

Sidney was the only severe asthmatic I knew who followed each deep drag on a cigarette with an equally deep suck on his ventolin inhaler. Actually, Sidney was the only severe asthmatic I knew who smoked. Actually, Sidney was the only severe asthmatic I knew.

So, my mother was essentially a market trader's daughter who spoke cockney and worked the stall in her youth before becoming a nursey school teacher in the late 1930's, worked for about a year, met my father who proposed on their first meeting, got married,started breeding and has lived off her ancient and quite incomplete knowledge ever since. Her only reading material is the knitting patterns and recipes which she cuts out of  "Woman's Weekly" which she doesn't actually read but decorates the backs of chairs with.

She talked to "Aunty" Sonia for hours at a time though all you'd hear was, "I know, Oh! I know" repeatedly. Now I think "Aunty" Sonia was on the other end also saying "I know, Oh! I know" ! So there wass no actual conversation, it was a form of comfort to them both! Come to think of it, my mother's decrepid phone directory held hundreds of phone numbers of long-dead relatives whom she had probably droned to death. "Auntie" Sonia and Sally out-lived them all and couldn't kill each other off and so mutated into women able to talk endless dross for decades. I know what you're thinking men and if you want to live say nothing!

To continue.....Sally's voice had barely faded away when fear sent my guts into spasm. "Shirley! I whimpered, "millions of people might have been listening! Do you think that anyone might realise that "Sally Of Forest Gate" is the mother of David Nash of Blyth, Northumberland?! They will! Oh my God I'll be a laughing stock!" And as my hysteria mounted I once again lost control of my bodily functions. I mean, how much gas can one body produce in a panic? I can assure you a lot! Only Shirley's resounding slap across my face whilst holding a towel to her nose brought me under some form of self-control and after an afternoon punctuated by bouts of severe depression followed by maniacal laughter I gradually returned to what by my standards was normal behaviour.

By the time the children came home from school I was much calmer and managed to tell them the tale amidst floods of helpless laughter from us all.

I couldn't not phone my mother and I hadn't planned anything particularly cruel until I heard her still slightly offended voice say "Chello?"

By the way, did you hear about the old  lady who when she answered the phone with a "Chello?" heard a sex pest say, "'Ello darlin! I know what you want me to do. You want me to come round there, strip you naked, tie you to the bedposts and have my wicked way with you for six hours!" And she said, "And you can tell all zat from just "Chello?"?

I couldn't help myself and with my voice disguised with an accent somewhere between Cornwall and Yorkshire I said, " 'Ello, be thart Sally Of Forest Gate", to which she replied a little guardedly, "Yes?". "Well Sally this be the BBC ere. Now m'dear you phoned a medical phone in this mornin with the wrong question didn't you my love?"
"Oh! Yes darling I did but I did tell the chairman that I hadn't actually been listening before I called but had seen the programme in the .........."
"That's OK Sally" I interrupted, "Don't you worry about that", my accent had changed to Welsh and then  Pakistani, "Cos, in fact, we're planning to do a programme about pernicious anaemia in two weeks time and we would like you to phone in your question again."
" Well I wouldn't mind darling but I felt that your chairman wanted me off air rather too quickly and I wouldn't want that to happen again and anyway I'm having a heart pacemaker fitted in the next two weeks and may well be in hospital at the time."

Now my family were all standing around me and as the conversation flowed I would cover up the mouthpiece and repeat everything Sally said. My lot were on the floor, helpless with laughter by the time she got to the totally made up bit about the pacemaker, like the Martians in the Cadbury's Smash advert.
"A pacemaker Sally?" Now in Scottish, "Oh dear, that is a shame but nivver ye minde aboot that hen, ye jist let us know which hospital yuur ganning to be in and the BBC will get a telephone to yuur bedside."
"Ah! I, I, I'm not quite sure.Erm, I erm think it'll be Guys or The London"
"Vell don't you vorry" in German now, "Zer BBC vill find you!"

And with a final "Gooday mate" in Australian I bade her farewell!

We were done in! Never had the family howled so crazily or wept so copiously and as the hysteria faded I was accused of great cruelty and forced to phone her back as myself.