Posted on by JonnyB

There is a knock on the door!!!

I breathe deeply before I go to answer it, as this time I know very well who the knocker is. In fact, I have been sitting patiently waiting all day, with my hair gelled into a trendy fashion and my best shirt on.

I subtly peek through the curtains to see the van parked in the lane. I am right!!! It is the Vegetable Delivery Lady on her last ever day at work.

I take a deep breath. Then another deep breath. Then I stand up and walk slowly to the door. My heart is pounding a bit as I walk through the kitchen, so I take another couple of deep breaths to compensate.

It is important to avoid a scene. Much as I like the foxy Vegetable Delivery Lady, we must both keep a stiff upper lip about our parting. I hope that she does not do anything foolish that we will both regret later.

Wearing a grin that is both welcoming and wolfish, and still breathing hard, I throw open the door.

“Hi!!!” I purr, adopting a cool leaning position on the doorframe.

“Hello!” she replies. “Here you go.”

She hands me my vegetable box which entails unadopting my leaning position. I breathe a bit more to compensate.

“Oooh they look good this week!” I enthuse.

“I’ll see you later, then.” She turns and steps away, playing it cool.

“Hang on!!!” I shout at her.

“What?” she asks, looking back and glancing at her watch, to check how much time we will have together.

“Hullo!!!” exclaims Short Tony, appearing from round the corner, and bounding insensitively into our Special Moment. It is like being on that ‘Neighbours from Hell’ programme on the telly. I shoo him inside, in some irritation.

“See ya then!” the Vegetable Delivery Lady waves from the van.

I wave morosely and stomp back into the house.

Posted on by JonnyB

Short Tony opened the door in some bleariness.

“Would you like a sausage sandwich?” I asked.

His face lit up, like a spaniel discovering a lower-than-expected tax bill. “Not half,” he said.

“Great. Have you got any bread?”

Truth be told, we are both feeling slightly fragile this morning. A magnificent dinner was held at the Village Pub last night, in honour of Trafalgar Day. Here in the village we are scrupulous about honouring our local historical heroes. Admittedly, we got the date wrong, but that is a minor point.

Being very tight, we didn’t actually attend the magnificent dinner, but instead sat at the bar and befriended the Chef, who, in collusion with the Well-Spoken Barman, smuggled us out some roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

Lord Nelson is an extremely important person, as if it wasn’t for him we would all be French, and look where that would have got us. As it was, here we were centuries later, still free to sit in the pub and eat roast beef and drink Stella.

Nelson, very much like Ronnie Barker, touched the lives of all of us and it is good that we made the effort to go to the pub. Community spirit and neighbourly acts are alive and well in England today, e.g. my kind offer to make Short Tony’s breakfast.

I scooted back to the cottage, to see if the LTLP had finished cooking our sausages.

Posted on by JonnyB

Waves of indifference radiated from her every fibre as I pointed out my difficulty.

From some unspecified overseas location, she had the air of one who had been promised an interesting and lucrative job in the sex industry only to find herself being forcibly trafficked into the provincial hotel reception business.

“It doesn’t lock, you see. It does look to me that somebody has kicked it down recently and it hasn’t been mended. In fact the whole door frame is hanging off.”

“I’ll get someone to look at it,” she said, in a tone that made me want to sprint off down to William Hill and put a tenner on the ‘David Cameron/Nobody will look at our hotel room door’ accumulator.

We pulled the door as shut as we could, consumed our hotel breakfast, and made our way into the beautiful market town of Ludlow.

Ludlow is a very notable place, most famous for being the headquarters of ‘Crash’ computer magazine in the 1980s. We explored the castle and shops, mainly the food shops, until sudden and unexpected explosive diarrhoea forced a curtailment.

It would have been nice to have spent an extra day exploring, but I’d forgotten to book the hotel for the third night. Still, this allowed the Pneumatic Drill man to continue digging up the concrete outside our bedroom window in peace.

We returned home, refreshed after our small break in the country.

Posted on by JonnyB

I am going away!!!

On holiday.

I shall be back at the end of next week. Thank you for your patience and continued interest.