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1.15pm: It’s blowing a gale (quite literally – gusting to about 50mph at the moment) and absolutely chucking it down with rain, and guess what I have to go and do sometime between now and 5.00pm? I have to go and feed the birds.
Gretchen is away at the moment, so it falls to Muggins to don wellies and souwesters and load herself down with food. I mean, the little perishers are sitting out there, in the trees and bushes, tapping their tiny feet in annoyance and pretending to look at minute avian wristwatches. Any minute now one of them (probably a blue tit … blue tits are aggressive devils – don’t let the cute faces fool you) will come and cling to bottom of the office window and stare at me in mute reproach.
And what thanks will I get? They’ll go and poop all over my car, that’s what.
4.45pm: We live on a financial knife-edge and always have done. We long ago reconciled ourselves to the fact that we’ll never be rolling in dosh, and in general we manage to make the proverbial ends meet.
This, however, is NO thanks to the local bird population.
Originally, we started putting out a handful or two of birdseed and some stale bread for them.
As one does.
Then we bought some peanuts for the feeder (which we had also bought). Then we found out that there were different mixes for different types of bird. Then we discovered high energy mixes, spring mixes, winter mixes, naff-off-pigeon mixes, sunflower kernels, bogena mix …
Which is why, come the financial year end, I have to explain to our accountant why we spend enough on birdfood to feed a small third-world country.
… here is the whole of the article I gave you a précis of yesterday:
From the Manchester Evening News - Last Extra Edition.
Saturday, July 16th, 1949.
(Price – Three Halfpence)
SEASIDE POLICE SWOOP ON ROCK RACKET
Food Officers Drafted In
An Evening News Reporter.
Police and food enforcement officers swooped on black marketeers in Blackpool today in the first drive this year to smash a rock-stick racket.
It is understood that between 60 and 70 prosecutions for alleged rock-selling offences are pending, many of them the result of inquiries made before today’s pounce.
Food officers from Manchester have been drafted to Blackpool to help the local officials. They aim to stamp out the under-cover rock-selling trade that is sending thousands of sticks into the black market every week.
The food officers hope to trace the rock to its source and prosecute the big suppliers.
Today’s move follows three weeks of detailed planning by Mr E Thornton, Blackpool’s food chief, Mr A L Wood, head of the North-West Enforcement Division in Manchester, Mr H Barnes, Chief Constable of Blackpool and civic heads and confectionery trade leaders.
Toffee apples – 1s 3d.
During the last three weeks, while men and women food officers patrolled the town for evidence for the swoop, they have found:
- Sixpenny bars of rock offered for sale from 2s 6d to 3s 6d.
- Small sticks of rock given away to customers who buy toffee apples at 1s 3d.
- Balloons at 1s 6d, and postcards, shoddy earrings and other trinkets at exorbitant prices.
- Unlicensed sellers hawking rock from baskets in the street.
Chief operating areas of the racketeers are the three main railway stations, the bus stations, the promenade and the amusement centre.
“We’ll break it”
Mr Thornton said today: “Every year Blackpool has a racket. This is one of the biggest, but we are determined to break it.”
Mr Jack Booth of the Cameron Rock Company, Blackpool, chairman of Blackpool Chocolate, Sugar and Confectionery Association said: “These people are watching for every loophole in the law. Our customers who queue for as long as two hours for rock are asking where the black market goods are coming from.”
—:oOo:—
4.15pm: We take in an awful lot of jumble. People clear out their attics and bring us the contents. Some of it’s unmitigated junk, some of it looks as if it’s carrying a notifiable disease and some of it is actually saleable.
I took a delivery this afternoon which was chiefly a batch of very old photographic paper and mounts. In the midst of the packages of card mounts, however, I found an absolute gem. It’s a copy of the “Last Extra Edition” of the Manchester Evening news dated the 16th of July 1949.
Its headline reads “SEASIDE POLICE SWOOP ON ROCK RACKET” and the piece itself is about – and I kid you not – black market Blackpool rock. On Saturday the 16th the police and local officials pounced (their word) on traders who were sending thousands of sticks of rock into the black market every week.
One of the black marketeers’ cunning wheezes was apparently to give a stick of rock away free to anyone who forked out 1s 3d for a toffee apple. Alternatively, you could buy a balloon for the same price, or a really nice pair of shoddy earrings.
The unlicensed traders were also selling sticks of rock from baskets at the main railway stations for prices ranging from 2s 6d to 3s 6d.
Mr E Thornton, Blackpool’s Food Chief, said he was determined to break the racket.
One man’s racketeer is another man’s entrepreneur – that’s what I always say.
11.55am: I’m a Luddite at heart. I own a vast collection of fountain pens which I write with all the time. I use a writing slope at my desk. I have blotting paper, for crying out loud …
I DON’T like computers, but unfortunately they’re a necessary evil without which this Centre would not function, and they know it. What’s more, they usually choose the most breathtakingly inconvenient moment possible to prove it.
We’re coming up to the end of the financial year. I should be getting all the paperwork ready, but in order to do that, I have to load the Employer CD-ROM kindly sent to me by HM Revenue and Customs. In order to do that, I need a CD drive … and mine had vanished, taking my DVD drive with it. I don’t mean that there were two gaping holes in my computer, I mean that the bloody machine simply told me they weren’t there, when they plainly were. There is no future in arguing with a computer under those circumstances.
I lived with this state of affairs for a couple of months, assuming that the drives were just knackered and needed replacing … which I would see to when it was necessary.
Well, it became necessary yesterday when said CD-ROM arrived on my desk. Simultaneously, Gretchen had a client in who had also been having disk-drive problems and was facing huge repair bills until her son remembered the magic words: Code 39.
Do you know that is? It’s an error message and I had it on both of my non-existent drives. It’s caused by those sneaky little automatic updates that happen when you’re not looking. In this case, it’s an update that – while making its own little corner of the world oojah-cum-spiff – completely wrecks your s*dding disk drives.
Thanks, guys.
Anyway, a quick Google of “Code 39″ revealed a straightforward fix and both my drives are working again.
It doesn’t happen with fountain pens. The worst you can do is break a nib.
12.45am: There are certain things in life that are absolutely guaranteed to make you nervous, simply by existing.
Brown manilla window envelopes marked “HM Revenue and Customs” come right at the top of the list. You automatically expect the worst … and usually get it.
So … when I arrived at work this morning, having had Wednesday off (I always have Wednesdays off … have done for years … I can’t remember how it started, but by golly I cling to it like a drowning man to a piece of flotsam) … Now where was I? Oh yes, HM Revenue and Customs. When I came in this morning and found a communication from them on my desk, my little heart sank. It sank still further when I saw it was an ‘Overpayment Review’, until I read down it a little further and discovered that WE had overpaid THEM and THEY owed US £303.00.
How my sunken heart rose. How my chubby face beamed …
Only it’s not that simple is it? They’ve discovered that we’ve overpaid them, but in order to get our money back, we have to check all our P35s, P14s, P11 and CIS36s (whatever THEY are …) for 2005/2006, work out how we managed to do it, explain it, produce the evidence and fill in the relevant form.
Brown manilla window envelopes seldom fail to deliver.
1.10pm: I’m about to head off for the nearest metropolis to do the banking, pop into a shop or two for a few necessities and attempt to remember to collect Grace on the way back.
There’s a very good chance that en route, I’ll see someone who has known me for a very long time – ever since I moved to Cumbria, indeed. I know this for a fact because they know absolutely all about me, the Matriarch, my late father, where we live, the Centre, Gretchen …
In fact they know Gretchen too … and usually enquire solicitously after my welfare whenever they see her.
The problem is … I can’t think for the life of me who this person is, where they know me from and least of all what their name is. Gretchen is equally lost. We both feel we know them from somewhere, but we have no idea where. Sometimes we sit at the lunch table, frowning companionably at each other, wondering who they could be.
Unfortunately, there’s no way of finding out now because they’ve been greeting me like a long-lost friend for the past 10 years or more, so we’re a wee bit too far down the road of acquaintance for me to suddenly turn around and say, “Excuse me – and please don’t take this the wrong way – but who ARE you?”
Likewise, I can’t ask the people they work with because sure as eggs is eggs, even if I say “PLEASE don’t tell them I asked, but …”, they won’t be able to resist the temptation, will they?
So, it’s destined to remain a mystery, probably for ever and ever.
Puzzled of Ravenglass.
11.45am: Today we have the Marking of the Trivia Quizzes.
Every year for about the last 8 or so years, the Centre (ie: Yours Truly) has produced a Trivia Quiz. It started innocently enough when one of our volunteers offered to do a printed quiz booklet as a little fundraiser for us. It sold quite nicely, so the next year, we did the same – only this time I produced the questions.
Thing is, the Briggs brain is such a grab bag of completely useless information that MY idea of “trivia” doesn’t quite dovetail with anybody else’s. In fact, people were so startled by the thought that the questions came straight out of my head without the assistance of reference books that they started avoiding me in the street. (Well, okay – they didn’t really – that was a bit of artistic license … but you get my drift.)
As the years passed the quiz built up a small but crazed following whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to prove that their brain was more inhinged than mine. I began to receive 100% correct answer sheets back – so I made the quiz a little trickier, until eventually it was so insanely difficult that all the nice, normal people who tried to do it were reduced to tears.
It was at that point I realized that unless I wanted to alienate half my potential quiz-buyers I was going to have to do TWO quizzes – one for sensible people with mortgages and lace-up shoes, and one for The Others
The Others and I have been locked in mortal combat now for about five years. They love it when I make typos. How they chortle when they spot a wrong initial in someone’s name. And as for questions that have more than one possible answer … well, let’s just say you always know you’re in trouble when an answer sheet arrives back with a two page essay on the History of Chewing Gum attached …
So … that’s what I’m doing today. Marking the quizzes – a nice, peaceful occupation that usually leaves blood on the walls.
9.35am: We have a lovely client, whom I shall call Angela, who lives in a town a little way up the coast from us. She doesn’t drive and so has to rely on public transport to get to and from the Centre. This isn’t too awkward because Ravenglass has both a regular train and bus service. (At this point in the narrative I feel I should say that “regular” does not mean “frequent”. It means, basically, twice a day.)
For the last couple of months Angela has been coming by bus, having her treatment session, staying for a spot of lunch and then going back by train. The last twice, however, she’s rung plaintively from her home to say that she had waited for nearly an hour and the bus hadn’t turned up. So we decided a change of plan was in order and worked out that she could both come and go by train if we moved her appointment to midday.
Yesterday was the first day she was going to come by train. At about 11.50am, I got in my car and popped down to Ravenglass Station to meet her. (It’s only about mile from the Centre, but it’s all uphill, and the last 250 yards are the steepest … We prefer our clients NOT to be half dead and wheezing when they arrive.)
I waited, and waited … and then waited some more. No train. It was a nice day however, so I just stood there on the platform, sort of basking in the sunshine like an amiable shark. Suddenly, I became aware of a small curly-haired presence behind me, calling my name. It was Gretchen. Apparently almost as soon as I had left the Centre, Angela had rung to say that the train was stuck in Workington because someone had thrown a rock at it (it’s half term, isn’t it?). It WAS on its way, but was running about 45 minutes late. I hadn’t taken my mobile ‘phone with me and it’s an unmanned station, so Gretchen couldn’t ‘phone me. She’d tried to get hold of Andrea’s partner Sam, who lives just up the road, but he wasn’t answering the ‘phone, so in the end she had no choice but to get in her car and come down and tell me herself.
Message delivered, she returned to the Centre and I went off for a pleasant saunter around the Ravenglass Estuary for half an hour.
Back at the station, the train finally arrived nearly an hour later than its scheduled time. Angela got off, looking a little the worse for wear.
On the drive back to the Centre she said to me, “I was thinking on the train that perhaps God is trying to tell me that He doesn’t want me to come to the Centre anymore.”
She paused reflectively for a moment and I tried (and failed) to think of something intelligent to say.
Then she added, with just a hint of twinkle …
“But somehow, I don’t think God communicates via Public Transport. Do you?”
“Probably not, Angela.” I replied. “Probably not.”
10.30am: Gretchen has been asked that question more than once, you know. They can’t quite see the point of me, somehow …
I suppose I can understand why. To an outsider coming in it all seems very simple. They arrive, they go and see Gretchen for an hour, they leave.
What’s to manage? What does this person wandering around the place clutching a ridiculously over-large mug of tea actually DO all day?
Allow me to enlighten you with a quick jog-trot through a standard sort of day:
9.00am (or before): Arrive at Centre. Make ridiculously over-large mug of tea. Try to avoid Gretchen who nearly always has a list of Things She Needs To Discuss. My brain and lips don’t synchronize until after at least my second ridiculously over-large mug of tea. Talking to me is a waste of time. I just nod and say “Okay, fine, yes …” and nothing sinks in.
9.30am: Make second ridiculously over-large mug of tea and continue to avoid the aforementioned Centre Director. Check emails. Delete the ones offering to enlarge my willy, the ones from Nigerian gentlemen with tragic life stories, the ones from banks I’ve never had an account with telling me I have to update my details, the ones from bogus ebay customers saying I haven’t sent them the 48 Wii consoles they paid me for and the ones from people who assume that I want to know all about their erotic encounters with Egyptian goddesses. (You don’t get those? You can have mine.) Also inadvertently delete the one from our website host telling me that our credit card has expired and I need to update the details in order to avoid the suspension of the site.
10.00am. Check website and wonder why it isn’t there.
10.10am: Ring website host and spend 20 minutes whining.
10.30am: Make third ridiculously over-large mug of tea and set about reclaiming the tax on the previous month’s donations.
Midday: Start thinking about lunch. A lot.
12.10pm: Decide that lunch is really, really what I need more than anything else in the known universe – more even than a ridiculously over-large mug of tea.
12.20pm: Have lunch.
1.00pm: Get the Centre’s takings ready for banking. Repeat exercise three times because it never bl**dy well balances, does it?
1.30pm: Check emails. Repeat all the same steps as at 9.30am, except the last one.
1.50pm: Head off into the wilds of Seascale to do the banking and collect Grace, our wonderful cleaner.
2.20.pm: Arrive back at Centre and realize I’ve left Grace, our wonderful cleaner, standing on her doorstep. Hurtle back down the A595 much faster than is strictly legal.
2.40pm: Arrive back with Grace, make her a cup of coffee and draw up a list of things for her to do.
3.00pm: Realize that I’ve missed the deadline for the Parish News copy and type out something incoherently frivolous. Email it to the Editor.
3.20pm: Receive email from the Editor of the Parish News telling me there was no Parish News copy attached to the email. Make a ridiculously over-large mug of tea and try again.
4.00pm: Remember that the ONE THING I really, really had to do today was check the level of the oil in the tank in the garden. Check it. Panic. Ring oil company who soothingly assure me that the oil is on automatic top-up and will arrive tomorrow.
4.10pm: Answer the ‘phone to a cold caller offering me an irresistible deal on telephones. Hang up just as they’re getting into their stride.
4.12pm: Answer the ‘phone to same caller who says “I think we were cut off …”. Hang up again.
4.13pm: Answer the ‘phone to the same caller who says she wants to speak to my Supervisor. Say “I AM my Supervisor” and hang up.
4.14pm: Ignore ‘phone when it rings … and rings … and rings … and rings …
4.15pm: Listen to the still-ringing ‘phone and consider answering it to tell the woman that she’s temperamentally unsuited to her job. Decide not to.
4.20pm: When the ‘phone finally stops ringing, call home to ask The Matriarch what it was she wanted me to pick up from the garage shop on the way home. She can’t remember either. She has an excuse. She’s 86.
4.30pm: Start making a list in my Filofax of Things I Must Do Tomorrow, knowing perfectly well I’m writing a work of complete fiction, and thinking it’s unfair that some people get PAID for it.
4.50pm: Grace appears in my office with her coat on. I take this as the sign that she wants to go home and we both scarper before anyone can stop us …
