2002
Tuesday, January 1
Looked in the mirror first thing this morning and didn't like what I saw: a 5ft-tall penguin wearing sunglasses and a red bikini, smoking a cigar, and toting a machine gun under one stunted wing-flap.
I turned round and looked at it. Yup, it was definitely there, larger than life and in our bedroom.
I was ridiculously pleased to note that the cigar was unlit. I'd had three cigars as I welcomed in 2002 and my lungs felt as if they had spent the whole of 2001 wandering through a 1951 London smog.
Jules says I was as pissed as a fart last night/this morning. But she was crapulent, which must be one stage worse, so how does she know?
Aaah... a blow-up transvestite penguin in the bedroom is a bit of a give-away. Plus the fact that I was looking in the mirror to see why I couldn't get my tongue back in my mouth. Had it really metamorphosed into something normally found in a hippo's gob?
Hang on, hang on - it might not be a transvestite. It might be a very butch female penguin.
xxxxxx
Wednesday, January 9
2 16 28 34 41 42
Oh fuck! Keep beating, heart.
2 16 28 34 41 42!
Please don't stop. I need you now more than ever. It doesn't bear thinking about: realise an unbelievable dream - and the old ticker conks out.
2 16 28 34 41 42!!!
We sat up virtually through the night. Talking, planning, sometimes dreaming, sometimes scarcely daring to dream, occasionally rechecking - on Teletext, Ceefax, internet. They all sahat's £21 between friends. When we get the cheque - TODAY! (now early hours of Thurs) - and lob it inid the same thing. We had been millionaires since Saturday night, and didn't know it. Multi-millionaires, actually.
£3,456,768, to be precise. If we had claimed straight away and got the cheque in the bank it might even be £3,456,789 by now. What a fabulous, pleasing sequence that would be. But shit, w a new account I might even write a separate cheque for £21 just to see that on the statement.
xxxxxx
Friday, May 10
Jules couldn't bear the suspense any more - she rang Toon And Country and asked if Mrs W-L had accepted our offer on Windolene Heights (aptly named in view of all the glass overlooking the garden). She was fobbed off, which made us suspect that there hadn't been any other offers but Mrs W-L didn't want to come down by £10K. Apparently the man dealing with it was out and wouldn't be in again until next Wednesday.
Jules didn't say it; she didn't have to. Her look said: 'If we lose this house because you were too tight-fisted to put in a proper offer, I'll chop your balls off, sauté them, and feed them to Sarah's moggy.'
I may have got the odd word wrong, but that was the gist of it. Well, we have been communing for 31 years.
xxxxxx
Wednesday, September 18xxxxxx
Tuesday, December 31
A letter dropped on the mat from the hospital mid-morning. They would like to take some more spinal fluid. Nothing to worry about; just a technical problem rendered the test inconclusive.
Worried!? Course I wasn't. I rang the surgery straight away, and fortunately Dr Macca was free. She reassured me that if they had spotted anything untoward they would have told me. A technical problem meant just that - an equipment failure, or something.
Her vague 'or something' was no more reassuring than the hospital's 'inconclusive' . Why hadn't they said 'void'? Or did that just stem from the general malaise these days of imprecise English ?
More likely the latter, I think. Ask a hundred people what 'invariable' means and only a few will say correctly 'always, without exception'. The rest will say 'usually' - invariably.
Anyway, I decided my brain needed a break from the written word; and vowed to try my darnedest to put my inconclusive test out of mind, for at least the rest of 2002.
xxxxxx
2007
Monday, January 1
Spent the day in a dream. Got absolutely slaughtered at The Cocked Hat last night. Smoked like a chimney fire, too.
Just me and the Usual Suspects. Sarah and Mike were down in Kent, Cory and Chrissy in Edinburgh (street party called off because of high winds after they had driven all that way!), Ronnie and Sally in Leicester, FR and MJ in Lincolnshire. Lots of calls and lots of texts after midnight. I must practise my texting; it took me half an hour to reply to just one.
Glad I didn't go to The Crown. The only person I missed was Blind Hugh.
NOTES
Nothing changes, does it? Except the embargo on the New Year's Honours List, apparently. Found out at the weekend that knighthoods had gone to MI6 chief John Scarlett for taking the rap for 'sexing-up' the dossier on Iraq, allowing Tony Blair to go to war, and to James Dyson for taking hundreds of UK jobs to the Far East.
Arise, Sir Fall Guy!
Arise, Sir Takenustothecleaners!
For the record, and totally unconnected of course, Saddam Hussein was hanged on Saturday, December 30, 2006.
Liz waylaid Jack on the landing as he came out of the bathroom from brushing his teeth. She pulled his naked body into her dressing gown for a long loving hug and then spoke softly into his neck.
'I hope you don't mind if I don't come in tonight, love. I still feel absolutely shattered. And you've got to get up early tomorrow.'
The words "wedge" and "thin end" sprang to Jack's mind but he didn't say so.
'Course not, love,' he said instead. 'We both need a good night's rest. It's been a strange few days.'
'Annus horribilis all of a sudden.'
'I'll fetch the cream.'
Liz laughed properly for the first time in days.
xxxxxx
He was still going round the conundrum, examining it from every angle, when they caught up with the bank holiday traffic (they usually missed the worst by setting off early or late) and an ancient Ford Escort tried to get him to move over from the outside lane by the simple expedient of driving right up his arse. And woke him from his reverie with a jolt.
'Get back, you tosser!' he said through gritted teeth with a vehemence that set alarm bells ringing in Liz's brain.
The Escort decided not to.
'The stupid tosser,' said Jack.
'Stay calm,' advised Liz.
'I am. But how am I supposed to pull over when there's a steady stream of traffic in the middle lane? Just get the Distalex ready.'
'Okay.'
The Escort flashed its lights.
Jack stayed calm. He lifted his left arm up by the side of his head and pointed to the middle lane, to indicate the impossibility of the demand.
The Escort flashed its lights again.
'Okay,' said Jack, 'switch it on and press White.'
Liz did as requested; Jack watched in his rear-view mirror for a reaction to the message TOO CLOSE, GUYS!.
The Escort driver's shaved bald head went back, and Jack was sure he could see the stupid tosser's eyes open wide and his mouth gape even wider in a big fat face that looked as if it belonged to a thirtysomething hod carrier (with an unlovely thirtysomething female hod carrier alongside him making up the plural Guys). And Fat Face was so bewildered that he had obviously stamped on his brakes because the ancient Escort seemed to buck and then suddenly it was a dozen yards further back than it had been.
'It worked! Hallelujah!' chortled Jack. 'Switch it off, switch it off.'
xxxxxx
They sat close together, talking quietly. In Interview Room 1.
It took some explaining. Firstly, that it wasn't another little white lie, as such, and no, he hadn't suddenly taken to lying to her after all these years of togetherness and trust; she had just assumed that the note he had left saying "Gone out to play!" had meant golf, just because he had mentioned once that he might play golf on Saturday. Secondly, that when he said he had gone out to play with Dodge he meant he had been experimenting again with the Distalex, or rather the AntiGater Mark 1 (VAT Included) as it was now, with Dodge and a young woman; who was, yes, reasonably attractive, but that was beside the point. And thirdly, that he had never mentioned the reasonably attractive young woman before because ...
'Yes, because?' demanded Liz.
'Because ... you might ... get the wrong idea,' said Jack warily.
'Because I might be jealous and jump to the wrong conclusion?'
'Yes.'
'How old are you, Jack?'
'Fifty-nine, Miss.'
'And how old is she?'
'Late twenties, I believe.'
Liz looked at him dispassionately with raised questioning eyebrows.
'Ah. See what you mean,' he said. 'Even if I fancied her - which I don't, of course - never in a million years would she fancy, er...'
Liz nodded.
'... An old fart like me,' he added.
'Quite,' she said. 'Now where is she?'
'Still in with the good-cop-bad-cop, I think.'
'I'm gonna tear her fucking tits off.'
xxxxxx
Jack turned towards Marc and his dancing Angel. She was now within a foot of him and was gesturing towards her bra top, and then her pants, the band of which held a neat fan of five and ten pound notes on each hip, leaving a fleshy funnel down the middle waiting to be filled.
Marc's brain wasn't that befuddled. He worked out fairly swiftly that if he popped at least a fiver down her pants she would take off her bra. He took out his wallet and frowned. It was empty.
'Jack,' he pleaded quietly, half turning his head away from his voluptuous Angel, 'have you got ...?'
Jack decided drastic action was called for.
'Marc,' he said very loudly, so that voyeurs all around them could hear, 'you can see a pair of tits, I'm sure just as lovely as these, every night of the week. For free. And so can I. So no, I'm not lending you any money.'
Jack took a deep re-energising breath, and then smiled at Marc, at the pretty dancing Angel - who showed great professionalism by continuing to writhe while her tits were being discussed - and at the gawping voyeurs nearest him.
He was calm and focused by the time a door to their left opened and the waitress Angel appeared with a short, chubby, dinner-jacketed man who was probably not a fellow waiter but the manager.
'Now, Sir,' said the latter, halting in front of Jack, 'is there a problem?'
'No, Sir - thank you,' replied Jack. 'My friend came in by mistake. We are just leaving.'
At which moment Marc took several pound coins from his jacket pocket and slipped them down the pants of the distracted dancing Angel and waited for her to take her bra off. Instead, she shrieked and jumped up and clutched at her lumpy pants as if some prat had shoved a fistful of cold metal down them.
At which moment four burly bouncers rushed from three different doors and surrounded the two nightclub virgins.
xxxxxx
There was the biggest gathering of photographers outside Four Rivers Magistrates' Court since the first appearance in the 1970s of Ron Camborne, the serial killer with a penchant, and a celebrated new recipe, for devilled kidneys (he preferred the dish with human kidney and thus became known as Renal Ron).
This time they all wanted pictures of the stunning Emily Kraft - and were hoping against hope that the also very attractive but somewhat aloof Claire Sinclair would turn up, too. Not a single paper could afford to miss the meeting of Fiery Redhead and Iceberg Blonde. Would the Iceberg douse the Fire? Or would the Fire melt the Iceberg?
BBC newsreader Sophie Raworth urges drivers to keep a safe distance in a Highways Agency DVD 'Don't be a fool'. Following too close is a factor in one third of road accidents, according to the Highways Agency. Drivers are encouraged to use the 'Two Second Rule' to measure the distance between themselves and the vehicle in front. Choose a point in front of you, such as a bridge or a road sign, and when the vehicle in front passes it, start to repeat the sentence "Only a fool breaks the two second rule" or count out loud "One second, two seconds". If you're at the correct distance, your vehicle should pass the landmark only after you've finished speaking.