Posted on by JonnyB

We visit a pram shop.

I realise that this introduction is perhaps not the best way to draw people in, being of equivalent interest to TV’s ‘And now, starring Ross Kemp…’

I immediately find myself in enemy territory. There are prams everywhere. Couples browse hand in hand, cooing at each other in a lovey fashion, and I realise with a start that they are exactly like the people in catalogues. It is sinister. I am assuming that they are all models, and when a real customer walks in, they scurry out from the room at the back and take their positions in a catalogue-like manner.

“Do you need any help?” asks Lisa, the Pram Shop Assistant.

Clearly we need help. However, it is a point of honour that whenever I am in any form of shop, if the assistant comes over and asks if I need help, the reply is “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Yes, I think we need lots of help,” replies the LTLP. She has no dignity.

I don’t know when it was that prams became so complicated. Certainly when I was a child, they were very simple affairs, just a box sort of thing on wheels. The one I travelled in didn’t even have any brakes, and kept hurtling down the steep hill into the river, or that is what my mother said to the policemen when they brought me back. Anyway, it was basic. The Wartburg Knight of the baby transportation world.

But babies today seem to want to travel in unparalleled luxury. It is why we have so much anti social behaviour and thugdom, they are spoilt from the word ‘go’. Frankly, if I’d have been a few feet shorter, I would have climbed into one myself and the LTLP could have wheeled me round the rest of the shopping centre. It would have been good practice for her.

I am torn at the moment between one which converts into about 129347 other things in a Bond-like fashion, or one of the three wheeled ones. The latter do strike me as a bit like having a Range Rover for the school run, but it would be very practical on the sort of terrain that we would be encountering around the village. Plus you could do bash-ups in it.

In fact it is very noticeable in the catalogue – the traditional prams and push chairs are all illustrated showing an unfeasibly pert and pretty young mum lugging them around, whereas the three-wheelers all feature pictures of dad. They are clever.

Two hours later, we leave the pram shop. This is a new world for me, and I’m not sure that I feel at home.

Posted on by JonnyB

“What’s the matter?” I asked the Well-Spoken Barman.

Normally a smiley sort of fellow, his face betrayed the disappointment and chagrin of a man who had won the popular ITV television show ‘Blind Date’, only to find himself jetting off to a Stereophonics concert accompanied by Gerald Kaufman.

He explained that he had sent Phil the Kitchenhand off into King’s Lynn to have his car MOT’d. (For overseas readers, an MOT is a sort of certificate drivers get annually to measure how well they get on with their mechanics).

“They didn’t just fail it,” he mourned. “They wouldn’t give him the bloody keys back. Said it was a deathtrap and that they couldn’t take that responsibility.”

I marvelled at this unusual devotion to duty by the garage mechanic people.

“So anyway, in the end they agreed to tow it to his place and leave it in front of his house,” he continued. “And he rung me up to tell me the news, which I was pissed off about, as you can imagine. But then he rang back an hour later to tell me that he’d just gone outside and it had actually been stolen.”

“Result!” I said in a cheerful voice. “So instead of paying for it to be towed away, you get some insurance money.”

“Not really,” he replied. “I got another call an hour later to say that he’d looked outside again and the thief had brought the fucking thing back.”

I commiserated with his situation. They should at least have had the courtesy to set it on fire or something. I took my pint from the bar in sympathy, and wandered off to watch the cricket.

Posted on by JonnyB

“Can we have another cloth, please!!!”

The Chipper Barman throws a wettish rag in our direction, knowing full well that Big A has spilt his pint again.

“And another pint of ASBO, I guess.”

I have never known anybody that spills as many pints as he does. He drops them, knocks them with his elbow, sends them flying with wild hand gesticulations or puts them down and misses the table. I point this out in a reasonable yet exasperated fashion, as I sit there like Paul McCartney’s son-in-law at the climax of a dirty weekend in a North Wales caravan park, dripping in Stella.

Idly, I wonder whether I can get some form of laboured and contrived joke out of this.

I leave my lager-sodden chair and have a quick chat to a couple of the other quiz teams. I sympathise with the lot who came second place to us, as it is important to show magnanimity in victory. The pathetic losers. I talk them through exactly which questions that we got right that they got wrong, as it is important that they learn for next time.

There are more good-natured comments about the fact that we have won it again and should be banned, etc. I take these in the spirit in which they are intended.

We leave the bar just after closing time. I am singing the song ‘We Are The Champions’ by the pop group Queen. The LTLP tells me not to be such an idiot.

Posted on by JonnyB

Mercy dash.

Throwing on my shoes, leaping into the car, screeching left out of the gate towards the edge of the village. The splotlets of rain against the windscreen as I speed up past the small church and green lane, past a surprised flock of sheep, hitting the derestricted zone on the hills and pressing the throttle to the floor. All the time, worry about the pregnant LTLP gnawing away at my mind.

Panic.

Would my dinner still be ready on my return from the emergency bowls call-out?

I whipped the car to a Bo Duke-like halt outside the pub (but exiting properly, via the door) and sprinted up the drive to the green. Cries of ‘thank God you’re here!’ greeted me from my depleted team, an absolute first in my bowling experience or, indeed, in any walk of life whatsoever.

“You’re with the ladies tonight,” called the team captain, indicating rink number five. Four ends had already been played, and we appeared to be losing by 238942342 points to 0. More cries. “Young man!!! Young man!!!”

A quick conflab. One lady admitted that she neither confident nor very good, the other revealed that she couldn’t actually get the wood as far as the other end of the green.

“You’ll have to be skipper,” she decided.

Skipper!!! They made me skipper!!! Pride shone from every pore as I strode up the green to take my place. Skipper in bowls is a v. important job, as it involves shouting instructions to the rest of your team – where you want them to aim for, what to hit etc. Then you have your go last, which is fun because there are loads of things you can hit.

By the 21st end I was hoarse but elated. And we had brought the score back to 238942342 points to 8.

We shook hands and I explained that I could not go for a beer, as I was waiting for my dinner to be cooked for me and it would be unfair on the LTLP to hang around.

I was dead chuffed as I gently drove home. I had saved the day, like some bowls superhero.

I should have a big ‘B’ on my chest. The LTLP agreed.