Poles Apart

23rd January 2007

Thanks to the influx of Poles in our town recently Atkins Down The Road and I have a new daft game. It’s called Pretending To Be Polish and we played it for the first time today during the half hour journey on the train from New Mills to Manchester. During the off peak hours the trains are emptier than an MP’s promise so as usual we had the whole coach to ourselves.
The game started when the conductor came round shortly after we’d boarded the train. “Tickets please,” the conductor announced cheerily. He didn’t stay cheery for long.
“Warsaw,” I said, taking out my wallet.
“Pardon?”
“Warsaw. Come back Englands.”
“Return,” said Atkins. “He mean Warsaw return.”
“We don’t go to Warsaw. Manchester, that’s where we go”
“Warsaw,” I repeated, a bit more firmly, taking a fiver from my wallet.
“We don’t go to Warsaw. We only go to Piccadilly.”
“Piccalilli?”
“Piccadilly! It’s the terminus.”
Atkins came to the rescue again. He pointed to me. “Pole.” Then he pointed at himself. “Pole.” Then he held up two fingers. “Three Poles. No spik English very gut. No understand.”
“Warsaw,” I said, pushing the fiver into the conductor’s hand.
“For the last time we don’t go to fucking Warsaw,” said the no longer cheery Conductor.
Atkins’s face lit up. “Understand fucking,” he said. “Fucking awful weather. Fucking Scouse bastards.”
“Warsaw,” I said. “No Piccalilli.”

The conductor spelled it out slowly. We…do…not…go…to…Warsaw! Go….Manchester!”
The conductor’s slowly enunciated words obviously made sense to my fellow Pole because Atkins now gave a huge beam. “Go Manchester!” he said. The conductor smiled. Atkins continued. “Go Manchester United! Manchester United go! Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo,Go! Please don’t take out Socks Jar away.”

“Red Navy!” I said.
“Army,” said Atkins.
“Army Navy!” I said.

“Oh bollocks to this,” said the conductor, and went on his way.
It was almost as rewarding  as playing blind men.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They ar e priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy

Published by

Razzamatazz

Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things. Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.

3 thoughts on “Poles Apart”

  1. funny you should mention conductors. just posted a bit about me time bus driving. don’t think I ever had Poles on board though. I’m garnering an ambition to join you n Atkins on a journey. I may nor survive the experience but what a journey!

Leave a Reply