Sally-Part 69. MRS. BELCHER'S BOSOMS- PART 3

SUPERIOR TO ME IN EVERY WAY AS THIS ACCURATE DRAWING BY GEMMA ILLUSTRATES !

According to the temperature gradient for last night as shown on several hundred weather forecasts that Shirley had checked over the course of many days, it wouldn't be colder than thirteen degrees centigrade and Shirley requested that I changed the quilt cover from polyester to cotton to prevent her sweating to death under a minus seven tog filling.

I had carried out the pre-change formalities of pulling the bed no more than one inch from the wall before refitting the external lagging foam to the bed leg nearest the toilet to ensure Shirley not ending up in some pain with the leg lodged between her big and second toes on her return from any of her nine trips to the loo during the night although of course I should have waited until I'd pushed the bed back in before carrying out that particular procedure which makes sense doesn't it, if you're still awake at this point in my tale and was standing with the replacement quilt cover inside out and concertinared along my arms with my hands holding the corners of the quilt from the inside before flipping and shaking it expertly for only thirty minutes when I heard, " Hang on ! The temperature's going down to twelve according to the South West Scotland forecast so you'd better leave the polyester one on! "

So with a jaunty, " Ok darling ! " and a jolly whistled tuneless tune, I refitted the first cover before pushing the mattress back fully to the headboard, checking that I had not disturbed the total flatness of the quilt that fits UNDER the mattress cover that now won't fit properly because it's straining against the under-quilt and smoothing the valance that also doesn't fit properly for the same reason before forcing the 'fitted' sheet over everything else whilst secretly clenching my jaws and growling a silent sneer of contempt before apologising when reminded that if there's one thing that Shirley can't stand it's whistling, especially tuneless jolly tunes !

And then I watched a football match on the telly for the first time in ten years.

England just beat Ukraine when Rooney, playing in my own favourite position of ' Poacher ' headed the only goal in a quite good game. But why oh why does he get paid a quarter of a million pounds a week ? How stupid are the fans to think that he or any other sportsman is worth five hundred times more than most people earn ?

And why oh why do actors and so-called stand-up comedians who are rarely even vaguely amusing and are simply people who can pull faces and remember lines earn millions of pounds ?

I wasn't first into bed last night but had I been I would have been snugly asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and then wide awake when challenged abruptly about whether I'd pushed the mattreess fully back and then definitely even wider awake when Shirley shook the quilt fanning a blast of freezing air over my frozen feet and telling me to pull more quilt over my side, which I simply don't understand why I have to, before getting in and warning me not to dare to pull the thing off her again, ever and  pushing her frozen thighs between my legs, calling me a wimp if I dare to complain when my conkers feel like they've been immersed in liquid nitrogen !

WE HAVE NEVER ARGUED ONCE IN FORTY YEARS !

If I even dare to try to do the same thing to her with a much smaller part of my person a low growl warns me off !

And then as I drift back to sleep, making sure my head's not touching the headboard and don't ask why I hear," Feet ! Put them down ! They're making a tent and  the great long things are keeping the quilt off mine !"

Well I'm long and before curling up into a ball start the night on my back with my feet steepled as in prayer so being told to flatten them means adopting the fifth ballet position which does not come easily to me and causes great discomfort in the knees and ankles for the thirty seconds before my next instruction which is monosylabically, " Neck !" and have to turn on my side to massage a specific point just to the right of her neck that I invariably miss by one millionth of an inch and get told " Either do it properly or don't bother ! " as if I'm the benficiary of it ! And then I hear, " Back!" and reach down to the aching bit in the small of her back which I work until, "Left calf !", "Right thigh !", "Neck again !" and now finally wide awake and aware that I am lying next to a naked female who is now fast asleep reacts as any man would only to hear, " Go to SLEEP !"

Shirley's nights are spectacularly awful as she sleeps rarely and then only for a few minutes at a time because I roll over and pull the entire quilt off her, leaving her naked and with her body temperature fallen to somewhere near boiling point !

She then rips it off me, which I don't feel as once asleep I do not stir for at least eight hours and spreads it over the two of us'

She'll then doze before re-awakening to find me curled up like a dormouse wrapped in the entire quilt again !

Apparently this goes on all night until she gives up and gets up at five thirty !

I'll stagger in at nine yawning my head off asking her why she's up so early .

Normally at home, where we have electronic reception she would have already checked out Josh Groban's latest Tweets and showbiz gossip and be keen to show me some four hundred identical photos of him and his new girlfriend on the red carpet at yet another award ceremony and I would look and say comforting things like, " She looks like she could be his sister " which reignites her own hope for her chances of marrying him !

I think we ought to try single beds !

Sally-Part 68. MRS.BELCHER'S BOSOMS-PART 2

So the question on the tip of every observant young boy's mind and many teenagers and some men's.....all right..... every single heterosexual male's mind is ' Are norks plumbed in where they appear to be protruding from or do they emerge from the collar bones and according to mass and gravity descend to a point of equilibrium and remain there for some time before plummeting to the same level as Mrs. Belcher's ?'

Research over fifty years hasn't thrown up a difinitive answer yet but seems to be the best way to answer these trying questions but ONE day, through continuing self-sacrifice I WILL know for sure !

So gentlemen and interested ladies, keep reading the Blog !

Personally I found that standing behind one particular Russian au-pair girl when I was fifteen as she cleaned her teeth in front of the large bathroom mirror wearing a silk pyjama jacket with her top three buttons quite deliberately left provocatively undone provided a certain amount of vital information whilst benefitting me with the added knowledge of being able to make a comparison between the pertness of the top and bottom halves all the time convincing the young lady that I really needed to know the Russian for toothpaste, soap, flannel and 'I love you' which if it could be of any use to you if you find yourselves in a similar position is ' Yarvuss looblue' !

I have carried on my research ever since for the benefit of mankind and hope that my illustrated booklet ' Norks' available directly from my market stall and now in it's four millionth edition may answer many of the questions that you haven't been able to research yourselves ! With several thousand illustrative photos taken with my hidden camera it has proven to be of great interest to others carrying out their own observations !

Shirley who doesn't appreciate my long-term research project, has just grabbed my jaw with a fist held so tightly that I'm frankly amazed that she hasn't retorn yesterday's Tourettian site and growled, " I bet you're glad I've recovered aren't you you useless man ? Oh no ! You weren't useless at all were you ? After all you did wash up a plate didn't you even if I had to get up off my death-settee to wipe the bit at the front of the sink that I'd told you to wipe in case any water got under the work surface ? "

All this has nothing to do with Charles Dance who stole my girlfriend on a train to Zagreb !

He didn't really steal her as, unknown to me she had already decided to ditch me after her father insisted she did after meeting me !

It was either ditch me or stay in the prison-like Halls of Residence whose entrance hall must have been coated in emanations from a process that the powers to be did their best to prevent !

And partaking in my bedsit wasn't too successful when we had to pretend to be discussing modern art's shortcomings as we walked downstairs to be confronted by a very disdainful landlady who had obviously never been young herself !

But in my case ' Flat if you ditch him....Halls if you don't ' was easily resolved !

Of course I had to listen to all the usual nonsense of "It's not you, it's me " stuff only to learn the truth later from her best friend !

If one thing is true it is that the only way many of us runtish men who would stand no chance of winning the hand of a beautiful woman is to exploit humour and tickle a woman's funny bone .

Handsome and usually pompous men obviously experience some success with women but with my looks I soon learned that making women laugh helplessly and then pouncing on them before they could get their breath back was my best chance !.

And so I became a clown and woke up each day intent on making women laugh.

 I still do !

Though there are one or two who have remained stubbornly impossible to raise even a slight smile from and they know who they are !

The woman I most want to make laugh actually cried yesterday at " If I lived on my own " so I must still have some of the old talent left !

At Leicester Art College I got a role as an idiot in a play that we took to The International Student Theatre Festival in Yugoslavia.

We travelled for two nights by train where I found my then girlfriend in the arms of the tall, handsome, incredibly debonair Charles Dance, a fellow student, destined to become fabulously rich, famous and finally ruined by my far-reaching and ever-lasting curse !

Yes, at the age of sixty five he's just fathered a child with a much younger woman than himself.

So now he will suffer the double whammy of not being able to get a decent night's sleep because of a crying baby and because of a younger woman's physical demands on him ! HaHaHa !

Charles and I weren't actually mates or even friends as he was a couple of years older than me but he must have realised that there was more to me than the public image of 'Prat' and asked me to act in a two-man play with him whose title I've forgotten.

What I haven't forgotten is the performance when I forgot my lines and froze on stage.

It probably didn't last long but it's a feeling that has never left me and might explain constant dreams of being useless, whether because of bullets I'm firing at villains dribbling out the end of the guns, thrown punches that land like jelly, walking in town with either nothing on, only my pants on or without shoes on!

But then on the other hand I'm forever dreaming that I'm guiding the Queen or Prince Charles around Blyth !

Shirley once went from page six in a play to the twenty sixth and last page and walked off leaving the other actors and the entire audience confused and lost without anyone understanding how the murdered woman's body got into the wardrobe !

But as Shirley never ever goes back, even to this day, she wasn't perturbed !

Anyway, I left college soon after and had no further contact with him until I saw him acting brilliantly in ' Jewel In The Crown ' and adored by my wife !

He was extremely popular for a while and when I read that he was starring with The Royal Shakespeare Company in Coriolanus at The Theatre Royal in Newcastle in 1990 I dropped him a line thinking that he might remember me.

He did and he replied, " There you are Nashy ! Call in and we'll have a meal !"

So one winter's Sunday, soaking wet in my un-waterproof ski-suit and bursting for a pee after market I went to the stage door and asked to see him.

The archetypal stage-door misery sat behind a sliding window, reading The Sunday Mirror through the lower part of his bifocals when I appeared, apparently drowned and asking to speak to my friend the star!

"Yeeuu are a freyernd ov Charles Dawnce are yeeuu Sor ? Well weeull sees aboot that wurnt we ? Wayut theyure Sor ! " he sneered in Geordie before disappearing through a set of double-doors !

He reappeared shortly afterwards.

Humbled and half-bowing he held the doors open for me to pass through to the Star's dressing room !

And there, with the door kept open sat Charles, stripped to the waist and lifting weights, breathing heavily through his nostrils and not stopping as he enthusiastically greeted me with, " Dayvide Darrlingg ! How luverly to seee you arfter alll theese yurs ! " in Actorese !

" You're looking well Charles " I replied in English, peering past his sweating torso to his toilet and relief, " OK if I have a pee? I'm bursting ! "

" Well, if you must dear boy! " he answered horrified at the thought of the germs I would undoubtedly be transferring to him !

We frankly had little chance to chat then as we were constantly interrupted by Directors and sycophants who all called Charles ' Charlie ' and each other " Darhling ! "

But we arranged to have a post-performance meal the next night if I met him at the Stage Door.

Well the play was frankly awful and the meal excruciating !

I was invisible at the stage door as hordes of women begged for his autograph and an inconvenience at dinner as an obviously former lover drooled over him!

I wasn't able to ask any question that didn't meet with a wary denial or suspicion that I was trying to get a lead for the press !

As an example I offer a fairly innocuous and genuine question whilst trying to keep the conversation going without continuously reinforcing his ego with platitudinous observations of every performance he'd ever given; " So Charles what will you be in next ?"

His answer was ," One never knows dear boy, from one day to the next, what will be required of one ! "

Or even and knowing that he liked cars;" so what are you driving these days Charles ? " was answered with, "Well my Chauffeur drives...........!"

I answer people I hate like that !

Oh no ! I finally get it ! He hated me !

And although Charles attempted to pay for the meal with his then impressive Platinum card, I insisted that as I had contacted him that I would pay and not only for him but the two other women that he had invited to the meal without my prior knowledge !

Shirley simply doesn't understand why I did that ! Pride born out of poverty darling and as you're not a man you will never understand that !

Charles and I haven't been in contact since !

Now why wasn't Shirley present at that dinner as she loved the man ?

Well she refused, saying that when SHE dined with Charles Dance I wouldn't be there !

And finally a follow up tale !

Many years later we were on holiday in Cornwall when Charles was directing ' Ladies in Lavender ' . Not that we knew it.

Shirley had gone to the toilet and as I waited for her I heard Charles's distinctive voice talking to two women as he walked across Mousehole car park.

I did not call out to him and he did not see me.

I couldn't wait to introduce Shirley to him as he walked into the distance.

" Shirley ! Look ! It's Charles Dance ! Come on, I'll introduce you ! Come on ! "

Her reply, as she gazed across the tarmac, was full of dismay and finality, " That BALD man is NOT Charles Dance ! "

But it was !
.

Sally-Part 67. IF I LIVED ON MY OWN !

If I lived on my own I would work eighteen hours a day, never look through a window, would have no idea of what time of year it was except for the fact that my nose would be running less and my feet would feel slightly less frozen in warmer weather and never have a holiday!

I would eat take-aways several times a day or cheese sandwiches with plain crisps either in the sandwich or piled-up beside it.

I'd wash the few dishes I'd used once every couple of days and drink from a large stock of Bournvita, Horlicks, exotic coffees and banana milk-shakes !

As it is I do not live on my own and my presently injured wife has just limped back from one of our two bathrooms Touretting three times and found a small pool of water by the caravan sink, left through my inattention to detail, under the pointless glass preparation platter that sits on plastic feet just high enough to allow a monumental build-up of  splashes and crumbs every three minutes!

' Touretting ' for the ignorant is that sudden and dreadful involuntary noise that pulled muscles and other aches and pains are responsible for inflicting on generally unsympathetic family members.

You might let out a sucked in slight hiss if you were alone but in company it's a yell of agony, noted with disgust but mostly ignored by those upon whose ears it falls!

Shirley, a trained actress, lets out cannon shots of intensity that make whole roomfuls of people leap in terror!

I'm not making light of her pulled or torn diaphragm condition as I've had it once or twice when I have failed to lift things according to the 'Health and Safety' poster which I don't have in my workshop.

My attention has just been brought to the pool of water with a cluck only moments after being informed that she'd discovered that I'd left the blind down in the bathroom which she did only moments before observing that the empty veranda paint tin which I failed to take to the bin last night was lying on it's side under the veranda and that my eyebrows need trimming !

I was also pleased to receive the knowledge that low tide was at 7:33 this morning which means that IF she recovers by this afternoon our walk along the Cardonness beach can't start much before 3pm unless we wanted to go to visit the garden at Castle Kennedy instead but not both although the Met-office weather forecast would let us do both in fine weather if we wished and her back could take it and it would be best to do them both today as the forecast is for heavy rain tomorrow which would preclude such visits taking place at all !

The really long term weather forecast for two weeks time has not been published yet which is a shame as I need to be advised on what clothing to take for one day away in London on a steam train visit with my entire multi-layered family who will probably all be waiting to punch me for either writng about them or not writing about them in my Blog.

I do know however that to get back to King's Cross railway station for the nine o'clock service to Newcastle I will have to leave The Great Black Cock's Crowing Railway or whatever it's called and I'm not even going to mention what images came up on the laptop when Shirley typed this slightly wrong name into Google, by 7:15 to get the 7:38 from Weybridge changing at Waterloo for the 8:06 to Victoria via Piccadilly or if I miss the 8:06 then there will be another at 8:14!

I can't even remember why I've gone upstairs so why have I been told this two weeks in advance ?

There will probably be no need to carry an extra Levothyroxine tablet unless I'm worried that a strike by porters will cause severe disruption to all public services.

And if I did live on my own I would not have leant my sons the larger part of my inheritance and would now be driving a Range Rover which carries kudos and not a Peugeot Partner which carries none and looks like it should have a Motability sign in the back window!

Respect of course to Motability drivers who get given free cars,insurance, tax, tyres and servicing if they or their spouses have Athlete's foot and need to be able to park for free near a Supermarket where they can rest their enormous guts on the handles of their trolleys as they throw in more fat-packed foodstuffs before holding up the queue by paying with a credit card with money they haven't worked for !

As my poor wife has fallen asleep after eating her Rice Krispies for which I opened the milk but wasn't allowed to pour it as I wouldn't have poured the correct amount with the preferred flourish, I shall have to make my own toast which at least with me doing it shouldn't be burnt and whilst doing so ponder the question asked twenty minutes ago of whether the Rice Krispies grains are bigger than they used to be !

My partner of forty glorious years has just woken from her slumber after a quarter of an hour, choked, muttered, " Ah ! Dribbled ! How long have I been off for?" and gone straight back to sleep!

Perhaps I should continue writing in private and not in the lounge where with my bare feet feeling like blocks of ice, the left side of my head baked by the sun and my ears lulled by the regular emanations of my wifes collapsed uvula and soft tissues I could think up profound lies and not write about what is to some, the minutiae of real life !

Ah now ! Hovis or Fench stick? With jam, peanut butter or Marmite ?

Apparently I'm having the Hovis !

Sally-Part 66. MRS. BELCHER'S BOSOMS-Part 1

Mrs. Belcher's Bosoms grew out of her hips !

Well great round things grew out of her hips which were the same size as the footballs that her son Jimmy Belcher kicked professionally for I think Leyton Orient, the East London team that lost every match it ever played or so it happily seemed to me, a West Ham boy who knew every team colour and ground name off by heart, not because I was particularly interested but because quarter to five on a Saturday afternoon was and still is results time!

Dee dum dee dum dee diddly dum dee dum dee dum dee diddly dum, diddly diddly diddly diddly dum dum! See I remember the tune sixty years later!

Or was that the introduction to Grandstand which showed boxing and proper sport and horse racing which I hated then and hate even more now and I have no idea why ?

And where is 'Hamilton Academicals' or 'Queen Of The South' anyway ?

And I loved seeing the colours of the teams strips on the tea and cigarette cards that I collected avidly if I could get to Grandma Myer'sis PG TIPS tea box before my brothers or cousins, which I rarely did and then ruined playing picture cards at home and at school.

 I couldn't flick mine like the hard lads who I discovered years later glued two together to give them directional stability!

Grandma Kahan drunk Typhoo Tea as did my family and all they gave away was a soft cardboard picture printed in black and white that you had to cut off the side of the box and flopped when you tried to flick it and  was useless and held in contempt by everyone including wimps like me !

I probably learned more from picture cards than anything else as I can't remember ever reading a book except occassionally opening and then rapidly closing an encyclopaedia that was as boring as it was heavy!

When I was at Art College in Leicester I was so poor, so hungry and so desperate that I took a job as an Encyclopaedia Salesman !

The initial meeting was fronted by a team of greasily dressed smug thugs who insisted that we chanted absolutely pointless lines like, " I want to be rich! I will be rich ! I will sell more Encyclopaedia Britannicas then anyone else has ever done !"

And then I was sent out to a smart area where I tripped over my unlearned script on my first call and the lady of the house informed me that I was talking gibberish and that she, her husband and all her children were well educated without referring to Encyclopaedia Britannica and didn't feel inclined to 'Invest' several thousand pounds filling her house with massive tomes containing information that would rapidly become outdated and advised me to give up immediately as I was obviously not cut out to be a door to door salesman !

I took her advice and walked to the nearest bus stop and went home without telling my team-mates or supervisor !

So in precisely twenty four hours I had gone from being a skint student ladies underwear designer to being an even more skint failed Encyclopaedia salesman ! That bus fare home broke the bank and when, later the same day I asked the teller at Lloyds Bank if I could extend my eight pound overdraft by a further two pounds she went off to the manager who peering over a glass desk divider at my pitiful state shook his head at her in denial !

So then I did what I did just about every weekend, I hitch-hiked down to London and home, pretended everything was fine, ate whatever my mother burned and went round to both Grandmas for tea, cakes and a ten bob note which is today's fifty pence, helped myself to a couple of quid out of mum's 'money drawer' and hitched back to Leicester to starve for another week !

Why I never got a bar job or a paper-round like other students did I don't know. Perhaps it would have interfered with drama club rehearsals and if it had then I might never have met Charles Dance and acted in a two-man play with him...before he got famous !

Anyway, Mrs. Belcher's Bosoms !

Mrs. Belcher was our next door neighbour who I can remember nothing more about than the mystifying masses that filled my small child's vision whenever she opened her front door to me.

I don't know why I would have even been knocking on her door as she had no young children for me to play with.

Perhaps my mother sent me on errands.

Or perhaps and the most likely explanation is that those things fascinated me so much, even aged six or seven that I just took myself round to try and work out exactly where and to what they were attached!

I've been doing very much the same thing ever since but no longer to Mrs. Belcher who would probably be one hundred and thirty by now!

But it was she who was responsible for initiating an interest that turned into a life-long quest !

Thankyou Mrs. Belcher!

It's just possible that had they been smaller and  contained at a higher level then my best friend Kelvin and I wouldn't have got ourselves beaten up in a posh pub in Wanstead when we were seventeen and carrying out research on other men's women's chests, a subject I was startled to discover Kelvin had discovered of interest for himself without any input from me !

Not having women of our own and unlikely ever to have any, we found the only way to observe was to sit in pubs letting out an occassional 'Phwoar!' when some especially interesting articles passed by at eye-line height !

I've laboured this point slightly because the woman I conned into noticing me and then marrying me doesn't think any other man has the same interests as me !

If there are any chaps out there who have EVER noticed these odd things that women occasionally stuff into too small containers thus forcing them to virtually tumble out into our only just restrained palms, please let me know and we could start up a 'cover-up' campaign or a poster for the side of buses which would say, " You ! Yes you the underdressed woman there! Go home and get some decent clothing on ! "

Perhaps you have already thought of expresing your digust but have been waiting for me to emerge as your leader !

And certainly I know that I and many others were scandalised recently by the sight of thousands of young ladies sporting ultra short denim shorts which exposed acres of buttocked gristly cellulite enroute to a music festival on Newcastle's Quayside !

I must finally mention a quite disturbing example of over-stuffing that my sons and I were subjected to recently on holiday in Colonsay.

We had gone to the Pub Quiz Night that I've written about in a previous Blog.

What I failed to disclose at the time is that the 'Quizmaster' was a startlingly attractive twenty three year old young lady with a lovely face and long legs who unfortunately had chosen to wear a containment system that did almost everything but that, thus ensuring silence in the room, if noisy and lecherous drooling and deep sighing could be called silence !

For some reason Jonathan and Julian who were sat directly in front of her and both of  whom I thought had very good hearing kept asking for questions to be repeated and they both approached her an unhealthily large number of times asking her to check their answers for spelling mistakes whilst the rest of the men cheered them for looking down her top !

I felt sorry for her, sat on a high stool with her legs crossed and  wearing a loose-fitting summer skirt as she was obviously uncomfortable, perhaps a buttock had gone numb, finding it necessary to repeatedly uncross and then recross her legs slowly, adding to the increasing frisson of male helplessness and causing wolf-like howls and steam to escape all around the room !

I've never before witnessed a round of applause with cries of 'More!' at the end of a quiz for a quizmaster and felt decidedly uncomfortable for her boyfriend who will have to learn to live with this problem or seek out a mouse!

Personally I think that my sons would be prepared to live with the problem and I could try too !

Sally-Part 65. SIT DOWN PLEASE ! FOR I AM THE BRINGER OF SAD NEWS !

GRANDMA ' SALLY ' ! WITH  SHIRLEY, JONATHAN AND JULIAN WHO EVEN MANAGED TO LOOK DISINTERSESTED IN LIFE THIRTY YEARS AGO !

GEMMA WATCHING HER BABY BROTHER JULIAN EATING HER GRANDMA !

GRANDMA WITH JULIAN

HOW, I'M SURE SHE WOULD LOVE TO BE REMEMBERED !

Shirley and I were away the day when, long before mobile phones were commonplace and less than the size of a housebrick, Gemma picked up our housephone to be asked by the operator if she would accept a 'reverse-charge' call.

Even then they were ridiculously expensive and reserved for absolute emergencies only, like Gemma being so drunk that she had fallen down a nightclub staircase, breaking her thumb and needing her Daddy to fetch her from hospital !

Gemma could hear her Grandmother calling through the operator's voice, "Cooee darling! It's Grandma! Gemma! Cooee! I just want to ask Daddy if he can remember Uncle Frank's middle name !"

Gemma refused to accept the charge and despite hearing her Grandmother's distressed appeal to the operator to try again, put the receiver down !

It later transpired that Sally had phoned many people, using the reverse-charge system as she had no cash and would talk to each person for a long time and not just in this country, doing almost irreperable damage to their phone bills.

Well, a few weeks later Gemma and I went to visit Sally in hospital and in a parlous state, slipping in and out of conciousness and Gemma bent over her slumbering form and speaking gently said, " Grandma! Can you hear me! It's Gemma! Grandma! Wake up! Grandma! Open your eyes! Can you hear me? It's Gemma! "

Sally's breathing altered slightly as she came back to wakefulness and opening only one eye looked up at Gemma and whispered, " You Bastard! " and fell back into a deep sleep!

A short while later Sally was well enough to be moved to a convalescent home for a month before being thrown out for turning her room and the immaculate grounds into a dump and as nowhere else would take her she was allowed to go to her daughter-in-law Jackie in Brighton on the south coast where she had a whale of a time zooming around in her wheelchair and living it up at beach barbecues.

After six weeks there she returned home to find almost nothing left from her lifetime of acquiring but apart from swearing at me down the phone accusing my brothers of throwing away indispensible and irreplaceable collectables she took to tidiness and settled down to being looked after until she inevitably weakened once again and had to be readmitted to hospital.

Shirley and I had taken it upon ourselves to sort out the wardrobes and a mountain of clothes and papers that had built up beside her bed which she hadn't used for years as she preferred to sleep on a settee in the lounge.

As I started to heave the clothing into waste sacks, cash, cheques and share dividends started to cascade out of magazines where they'd evidently been put for safe-keeping and then forgotten about, so I had to start again and gather several year's paperwork together for my brother to use to contact various financial houses for out-of-time payouts.

Shirley, size about twelve, found amongst hundreds of  second hand unwashed outfits a size thirty five skirt that mum had asked if she'd wanted a few years before! I mean even if you know someone actually is a size thirty five you don't offer her a size thirty five skirt do you? The truth would kill her, wouldn't it?

Mum had bought it at a charity shop to take apart to remodel or because she thought that a very large neighbour might like it!

Shirley and I were both black with grime by the time we'd finished.

So the house was bleached and tidy and as mum was evidently about to return, some hardwood, mouse-proof furniture was brought in.

Her final hospital stay was in a typically horrible National Health hospital in East London with filthy carpets and overcrowded, understaffed mixed-sex wards

On one family visit, we were sitting around her bed when staff rushed down the ward, closing all curtains before bringing in a coffin on a trolley. Unfortunately as someone was taking off the lid and in the uncomfortable atmosphere that had quickly settled over the place he or she dropped it and it slid under 'our' curtains!

Seeing it, Sally grabbed my oldest brother by the lapels and stated firmly and categorically, " You will be the executor of my will and I want you and all you others sitting here to know that David owes me nothing! Not one penny and it'll be up to you to make sure that ALL past borrowings are taken into account! " And with that the last of her dwindling energy was spent and she sunk back against her pillows.

I looked around at my brothers who were all looking rather uncomfortable and examining their shoes and fingernails!

Mum's spirit remained high until the end and even in her weakened state she still found the energy to help the grim reaper empty the ward by walking around showing her fomidable collection of family photos and describing the layout of every room that she had ever been in, each victim expiring with terror on their faces, some even before she got to them!

Just seeing her approach was too much for many of  them!

It's highly probable that some doctors, seeing the dreadful effect my mother was having on their patients, may have eased these poor wretches' last few days with the odd extra large phial of oblivion. I'm not saying that that is what they actually did but it would have been a kind gesture wouldn't it?

I had been quite horrible to my brothers as the inevitable end was approaching by reminding them that 'The Day Of Reckoning' was coming when they would be expected to honestly reveal how much money each had borrowed which would have to be taken into account and deducted from their payouts and added to mine ! Nyuk ! Nyuk ! Nyuk !

Although mum was becoming weaker she still had a trick up her sleeve which she kept for after her very peaceful passing.

And her final trick WAS a corker!

At her funeral the five sons stood together to recite the prayer for the dead in Hebrew but as only my oldest brother had had any training in it, we others were given prayer books containing phonetic translations. So on the nod of one of the resentful Rabbis ( for it was easy to see that they considered us heathens for our obvious lack of religious instruction, which is even worse than being Christians to them ) and on cue we started the recitation of the twenty lines.

All went sort of well for the first line with a vaguely Hebrewish sound being achieved by us all but by the end of the second line we had gone out of sync and dropped back into an unintelligible Cocknee-based drone and by the third line it became apparent that one of us had turned to the wrong page and was reciting a verse which turned out to be for a new-born boy !

The three Rabbis weren't happy at all and angrily stopped the service before restarting it with us all reading from the correct page with the books the right way up and read from right to left, well that's how Hebrew is written though the phonetics were written conventionally so could be read as in English.......to continue !

The sixty or so in the congregation were having trouble containing their laughter as we, burning with embarrassment to the tips of our ears and sweating more than profusely, stumbled, mimed and spluttered our way through, hoping that the ground would quickly open up and swallow US!

It was so bad that very few people could look us in the eye afterwards to offer their condolences and several didn't come back to the house to eat the traditional foods!

Shame that because they missed me standing on a chair, by request and regaling everyone with the tale of mum's medical phone-in with everyone laughing out loud!

I then shot out to the cloisters and put on Sally's gardening blouse, long brown skirt and broken glasses before calling out in Sally's voice, "Cooee Everyone! I'm back!".

I walked back in wearing mum's smile and having shrunk myself to her stature looked convincing enough to cause several ladies to faint and a few men to swear in terror, cross themselves and fall to their knees staring up to the heavens and mumbling the Lords prayer! Odd that really as it was a Jewish ceremony!

I then pressed a pre-prepared CD player button that brought track seven of the Gladiator sound track thundering out and ran cackling maniacally from the room before stripping off and walking calmly back in to a scene of devastation asking if I'd missed anything exciting !

No-one spoke or moved a muscle! They sat, lay or kneeled agog and in silence!

Mum would have been looking down crying with laughter and called out, " Oh that's just my David!"

SALLY WITH HER FIVE SONS, FOUR OF WHOM I'VE BLANKED IN CASE THEY DON'T WANT TO BE IDENTIFIED AS HAVING ANYTHING TO DO WITH ME! I CAN HEAR SALLY LAUGHING RIGHT NOW !

                                                                     THE END !

Sally-Part 64 ! WALTER WILLIAMS ! THE MOST DECENT AND HONEST MAN IN THE WORLD!

It's time to reveal the most decent and honest man in the world ! His name is Walter Williams and he lives on the Island of Colonsay in a cottage overlooking the stuuning Kiloran Bay.

THE IRREPLACEABLE WALTER WILLIAMS, THE MOST HONEST MAN IN THE WORLD !  ALTHOUGH THERE 'S A SIGN OUTSIDE HIS COTTAGE THAT SAYS 'DOGS WILL BE SHOT !' AND HE LOOKS LIKE HE MEANS IT, HE'S A REAL SOFTY REALLY AND INTERESTED AND KIND TO EVERYONE!

My son Jonathan had just given me a golf ball which flashed on and off for thirty seconds after you hit it so that you could trace it's trajectory and see where it landed and be able to walk towards it and was a brilliant way of being able to carry on playing after dark even though you can't actually see the ball before you hit it making the whole thing pointless in the first place !

I teed off, watched it land and started walking towards it but lost sight of it when it stopped flashing earlier than I thought it would!

I NEVER saw it again even though three of us searched for an hour or more!

The next day Walter, a local who ate all our biscuits and moaned about our restricted selection when we rented a house next door to him, stopped me and ecstatically showed me his latest find....MY lost golf ball !

"Walter where did you find that? It's mine and I lost it on the fifth last night!"

" Aw ! I foond it on the seventh this morning so it canna be yuurs ! " he said clasping it firmer than necessary before heading off to his barn to add it to his collection of hundreds of 'Found' balls !

" Walter ! My son only gave it to me yesterday and it's the only 'AURORA' on the Island and if you let me have it back I will present you with a trophy for your honesty and show you what it does ! " I wheedled.

" Wit it does ? Wit does it dee ? Ahll give it yee afore yee borst intee tearrs but shore me the noo orile kipit! "
I grabbed it, banged it on the floor and watched the pain of loss strike through his eyes as it burst into life and he realised that he'd been robbed of a wonder of the world ! And then I ran out his barn cackling in triumph as he yelled after me; "Sassenach ! Wait 'til ah git ma harnds on yee !"

ALL HAPPY AGAIN ! WALTER PROUDLY ACCEPTING THE TROPHY FOR " THE MOST DECENT AND HONEST MAN ON COLONSAY " FEATURING A MOUNTED ' ST.ANDREW'S ' GOLF BALL ! NOTE THE SOLAR POWERED BAT-DETECTOR THAT I ALWAYS WEAR ON MY HEAD AND WHICH I DEVELOPED FOR WEARING ESPECIALLY  ON COLONSAY AFTER THE INFAMOUS BAT ATTACK THAT I WROTE ABOUT IN PART 29 " NAKED HERO ! "

 I left it for a couple of days and hid from the man and his gun before making and presenting him with this magnificent trophy which cheered him up no end !

There is one other man on Colonsay who deserves praise and that's Keith Rutherford, the Island's endlessly cheerful and helpful Postman whose grin and wave and salute as he drives about on his rounds are those things that make childhood holiday memories so magical ! Oh ! But I'm not a child ! Ah well !

There's lots more 'Colonsay' in Parts 22-29-33-60 and 64.

Sally-Part 63. DANIEL AND HIS SNAIL !

This photo has just arrived through the wires and it just had to be given it's own Blog page !

All ideas for a title will be much appreciated !Photo by Grandma Joan !

MY GRANDSON DANIEL AGED TWO AND A HALF ! JUST LOOK AT THE CONCENTRATION IN HIS EYES ! WHAT IS HE THINKING?

Sally-Part 62. DAVID ! YOU'LL HAVE TO GO BACK ! THEY'VE OVERCHARGED ON THE NECTARINES !

POPPIES IN THE GARDEN ON COLONSAY MAY 25th 2012!

It's a long six hour drive to catch the ferry to here and we can no longer do it without an overnight hotel and in fact as I can't even drive for more than twenty minutes from home without starting to yawn unless I've got a bag of raw carrots cut into strips to chew on and had an hour's snooze beforehand even if we're leaving at ten in the morning, long distance travel is now out of the question!

So when Shirley told me that she just HAD to get back to Colonsay, I thought only 'Carrots!' . And that's probably my entire contribution to our holiday plans!

A YEAR OR TWO BACK ON THE TOP OF 'THE AERIALS' WITH A 360* VIEW !

THE PAPS OF JURA FROM OUR WALK TO THE SILVER BEACHES!

We sort of 'gave up' on Colonsay a couple of years ago, having spent many holidays here, for as long as a month at a time, once we'd bought our second home in Dumfries and Galloway.

SECOND HOME? I hear you ask!

Alright, a caravan!

In fact a static not a tourer!

SO WHO WOULD NEED TO GO ON HOLIDAY WHEN YOU OWN THIS ?

O.K ! A large, double-glazed, centrally-heated beauty set high on a hill facing south over the ocean in a dream position and only at most three hours from home, which I can just about manage without an overnight break!

Shirley discovered this jewel of an Island about twenty five years ago and the truth is that it's magic draws you back and you'll perhaps appreciate why when you look at the photos.

AND WE RARELY SEE ANYONE ELSE ALL DAY !

The pure white sand beaches and clear turquoise seas, the absolute silence and the fantastic heat that we've had this mostly windless week have been QUITE magical and incomparable!

DOES ANYONE NEED A CAPTION ? !

IT  DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS ! BEATING JONATHAN FOR THE THIRD TIME JUST AFTER SUNSET AT 10:30 PM !

MYSELF, JULIAN AND JONATHAN DEAD WITH HEAT BEFORE WE'VE EVEN STARTED !

PLAYING GOLF INTO THE SETTING SUN ! 9:45 LAST SATURDAY ! TEMP DOWN TO 25*C !

Playing golf and sometimes crying with laughter at ridiculously immature things with my sons until it got too dark at ten thirty, whilst all the time watching the amazing skies as the sun sunk into a totally clear horizon was unforgettable and probably unrepeatable !

I CAN'T RISK BREAKING MY LEGS SO RESTRICT MY LEAPS TO TWENTY FOOT DROPS !

I managed a highly respectable four foot leap off the thirty foot sand dunes, showing them how a sixty three year old still 'had it' before filming them running and bounding twenty feet further than me! And that's what sand dunes are for ! Not nanby-pamby wildlife preservation!

NOT YET OLD ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND DANGER !

I wouldn't join in as they kited on Killoran Bay with Julian's monster which smashed me into the ground a couple of years ago, breaking every rib...well bruising one of them a little and I was reluctant to swim in the calm sea which was cold enough to make a man's eyes cross once the water reached a certain level!

JUST BEFORE IT DUMPED HIM ONTO THE DOCTOR'S COUCH !

KIDS AND THE SEA HUH ?

NOT THIS YEAR THANKS !

THE BOYS COULDN'T WAIT TO GET BACK TO WORK !

 BUT losing at the Pub-Quiz-Night was pathetically one thing that really got the three of us shaking our heads in disbelief, especially as the local who has won it just about every week for the last ten years is known to be a Quiz Swot !

No ordinary person with 'general' knowledge could possibly know ' Which is the the only country in the world with a plain dark green flag ?' ( a real question! ) or the answer to other even more obscure and I admit made-up questions like ' Name the medical procedure for removing the pituitary gland and how many members of staff would be present in the operating theatre at the time? ' or ' How many grains of sand are there in Australia?' or ' What was the name of the boat that the first Norwegians built to row to America in in 1286 ? ' or ' Name the winners of all the Eurovision Song Contests' or ' What chemical compound is represented by the symbol Hg4So8Pb6H5O'? ( answers on a postcard to this web address will win a packet of Tesco's' Value' Butterscotch sweets...closing date Oct 1937....no members of my family or their friends may enter! )

This week the combined intellects of a lawyer, an ex-army Captain and an all-round hugely intelligent man ( that's me and I got three right ! ) could only manage thirty five out of fifty whilst the winner effortlessly cruised to forty six!

If only he didn't win up to thirty quid of our money each time!

As all the regulars plead to be on his team and we don't stand a chance, we kiss our three pound coins goodbye!

Enough already!

This trip actually nearly never happened or would have been severely curtailed because we almost missed the ferry or rather Shirley nearly made me nearly make us miss the ferry!

I'm fairly relaxed about most things but not about missing trains, planes, appointments or ferries!

Shirley is 'THE GREAT ORGANISER' and as such knows everything in absolute detail and expects that once she has briefly mentioned a ferry departure time to me in passing six months before it leaves that I am able to hold that information and retrieve it at will !

Well I'm NOT !

My memory lasts slightly longer than a goldfish's but by not much!

For example, If I'm listening to a piece of music on the radio that I want to remember, I'll get a pad and pen ready and then if I remember to listen to the announcer naming the piece, which I don't, I immediately forget it as he's saying it and can't remember what he has literally just said !

Then I'll see the pad and pen lying there and wonder why I put it there and whether or not it was me who put it there in the first place, by which time I can't remember the tune of the piece I was listening to so I can't even hum it to ask Shirley if she knows what the tune is I'm humming as, by the time I walk through to the lounge to ask her why I've just walked through to the lounge because I've forgotten why I've walked through to the lounge and then as I can't hum, sing or whistle a tune without making it unrecognisably flat or piercingly shrill she just tells me to go back to work and not disturb her again as she is reading important speculation stuff about the latest woman Josh Groban's been seen with ! ( See " HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSH GROBAN! " )

SO! If you don't want to have to pay £3:40 for a loaf and a small bottle of semi-skimmed you have to do a BIG shop in Oban first.

But the temperature was already soaring as we reached the town four hours before our sailing, having spent the night in a lodge forty miles out to be close enough to leave at dawn with plenty of time to get to the port for the mid-afternoon departure, allowing for a couple of naps on a nearby beach before setting out on our three-layered shopping spree!

First and with two hours to go....ALDI FOR CRAP ! ( That should be their Slogan ! )

So that meant a full size trolley which I always get as Shirley has never understood where to put the pound coin to release one.

I'll hand that over before going back to the car to get the list that she has left there.

Her instruction to "Choose whatever YOU want as I can't read your mind! NO! Put them back!" results in me whimpering as I'm denied everything that I REALLY want and settle for her choice for me of a packet of 'ALDI' Rich Tea Biscuits !

Then on to TESCO'S where even though the trollies are free Shirley still can't work out how to pull one backwards out of the rack and so I do that and then run back to the car for the list that she's forgotten again!

Shirley likes to push the trolley in Tesco's as the floors are smooth and so I'm left to look 'interested' and to go fetch the " NOT easy cook brown rice ! " and other non-perishables that are scattered around the store in a system of logic that only ' Management Consultants' such as my daughter works for could possibly justify.

Non-perishables done and with time starting to speed up I choose the only cashier who's new to the job and can't work out what to do with a customer's credit card that's just been rejected thus leaving two hundred and eighty pounds worth of goods to be returned to their shelves and with the customer who is apoplectic with rage as he screams revenge on his newly divorced wife !

So, repacking my unpacked trolley I move to the queue with the least amount of people in it and try to not turn puce and shout " Shut up and move yourself ! You are not the only person in the world with piles!" as each of the locals I've managed to stand behind decide to discuss their medical problems with the cashier!

At last! A quick dash back to the car parked in the only shady part to unload before returning for the perishables!

It's all sensible really!

And then with all perishables packed into the collection of freezer boxes brought for the purpose and me  thinking that there's plenty of time to drive the five minutes to the ferry which is due to leave, I've remembered from six months before, at twenty to the hour................

DISASTER !

 I'm roused from my general day-dreaming stupor by Shirley who is standing staring in dismay at the receipt and pointing at a line too small for me to read without a microscope, howls.......

 "DAVID ! YOU'LL HAVE TO GO BACK ! THEY'VE OVERCHARGED ON THE NECTARINES ! "

So off I dawdle to find three members of staff who CAN'T discover the proper price after each has individually escorted me to the unpriced Nectarine display shelf except for the notice on the Nectarine basket's handle which reads "Half Price" and which had apparently been wrongly placed in the £1 area by mistake!

Such trials is life made of !

" Surely " I say a little patronisingly, " No-one would pay £1:69 for five slightly over-ripe and pitted Nectarines would they? "

The cashier in 'Customer Services' was just about to make the hardest decision of her life by actually using her initiative and was standing there with her brows really crushed tightly together trying to think something or anything when the store froze to a man and woman as a blood-curdling scream rang out:

"DAVID ! THE FERRY'S LEAVING IN FIFTEEN MINUTES AND I'VE HAD TO LEAVE THE CAR UNLOCKED AND MY BOWELS HAVE TURNED TO JELLY WAITING FOR YOU ! RUN !"

I hadn't dared to ask the departure time in case Shirley got a bit impatient and accused me of never listening to her ( which I now dare to admit I don't ! ) and had truthfully thought it left half an hour later than it did !

Shirley stood in the entrance looking a little flustered and I just had time to make the cashier write " 30p owing on Nectarines " on my receipt before driving like an idiot to the ferry terminal where, last in line, I still had to run like mad for over a quarter of a mile each way to the office and back to get our tickets!

I shall be revisiting that store when I return to the mainland to claim my money!

At least I didn't nearly forget to get off the ferry like my two sons did the next day when I saw them waiting one floor too high for the gangway which was about to be dropped after the leavers had boarded to be lifted into place so that they could descend to the quay!

And they would probably have spent the next three days not getting off as they wondered whether Colonsay was further away than they remembered !

Once again dear readers, I leave you and this time in wonder and breathless with anticipation as to whether I get my refund !

Fear not ! I WILL reveal the outcome !