Holiday

24th February 2007

I will be on holiday (Lanzarote) until Monday March 5th, so no blog until then.

The winner of my film title is Canute with ‘One Flew Up Your Sister’s Nest’.  If you’ll email me your address Canute via www.topcomedy.co.uk I’ll put your wonderful prize in the post.

Ta ta for now.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are 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

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy

Lost Keys

23rd February 2007

I lost the car again this morning. Well not lost exactly, ‘temporarily forgot where I’d parked’ it would be a more accurate description.
I do this quite often nowadays. It’s an age thing I suppose. Although I wasn’t all that hot at remembering where I’d parked the car when I was much younger. I was never particularly absent-minded but, whatever failings I had in this area, they all seemed to be concentrated on the business of forgetting where I’d parked the car.
Multi-storey car parks were my main bugbear, and many the frustrated hours I’ve spent in them hopefully and hopelessly searching their dank, dark levels.

“Are you sure you left it on level D?” This is The Trouble.
“Well you were with me.”
“Yes but I didn’t notice.”
 “Perhaps you ought to have?”
“Me? It isn’t my place. It was you who parked the car therefore it’ is you who is responsible for remembering where you parked it. Although I can see I shall have to start remembering. Failing that we’ll have to start leaving a trail of bread like Hansel Gretel.”
The Trouble can be very cutting sometimes. Mind you she had every right to be cutting on this occasion as although I was correct in my belief that I’d left the car on level D we turned out to be in the wrong car park.
I once spent a good hour looking for our blue Ford Cortina before I remembered I’d changed it for a red Mondeo about a week previously. Fortunately I was on my own at the time so the incident passed without causing me any embarrassment. Which can’t be said for the time I took my twelve-year-old grandson to watch Macclesfield Town play football one Saturday afternoon.
Fully aware of my habit of forgetting where I’d left the car I made a note of the name of the street in which I’d parked it. Laburnum Drive. When we returned after the match it had disappeared. There was a space exactly where it had been, leading me to immediately jump to the conclusion that it had been stolen. Nevertheless I double and triple checked the whole length of the street to see if I hadn’t perhaps left it further up or down the street than I thought I had, but no, I was right. The car had definitely been stolen.
We made our way the short distance back to the ground and I reported the theft to a policeman in a patrol car still on duty outside the main exit. He told us to hang on for a few minutes then he would take us to the station to make a full report and see about getting us home. Five minutes later we were in the back of his patrol car on the way to the station.
We’d travelled no more than a couple of hundred yards when he made a left turn. And a few seconds later drove past my car, by now just about the only parked car left on the road. It was definitely my car. What do do? My first thought was to completely ignore it, let the policeman do his stuff, then return later for it. I hadn’t worked out how I was going to explain to the police how it came to be back in my possession but in the event there was no need to as at that moment my grandson pointed out of the window and shouted: “Grandad! Your car!”
I feigned surprise. “Is it? No, mine’s a darker blue than that.”
“No it’s yours Grandad, it’s your registration number,” the eagle-eyed little bugger squealed.
The policeman stopped the car and turned to look at me. “Sir? Is it your car?”
Wishing the earth would open up and swallow him – not me, I’ve no wish to give the hot bowels of the earth a closer examination but I didn’t mind the policeman doing it, take some of his mates if he wanted – I had to admit that it was.
It turned out that I’d been looking for the car on Laburnum Avenue, the next street down, and parallel to, Laburnum Drive.
“It isn’t the first time this has happened,” said the policeman, in the tone of voice that was consoling but nevertheless got over the fact that he thought he was dealing with a bloody idiot. “It’ll be the last time it happens to me,” I said.
“You’re going to make really sure that we’ve got the right street next time, aren’t you Grandad,” said my solicitous grandson.
“No, we’re never bloody coming here,” I said. “Get in the car.”

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are 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

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy

Children

22nd February 2007

Atkins Down The Road sometimes joins me for my daily walk and last Friday was such a day. During our stroll we noticed at the side of a small cobbled road leading to a cottage a painted wooden sign which read ‘Children! 5 M.P.H.’ I remarked to Atkins that I had never in my life come across a five miles per hour child, all the children I’ve ever seen being quite motionless and gazing at a computer screen or tearing about at a speed in excess of 100 m.p.h. Atkins’ said that his experience in the matter of mobile children was similar to mine and we agreed that we would not rest until we had seen the phenomenon of 5 m.p.h. children. Were they walking? Were they on roller skates? Were they mechanically propelled in some way? We had to know.
We walked down the cobbled road, round the bend, and up to the house. On our way we didn’t see any 5 m.p.h. children, nor indeed any children travelling at any speed at all, so I knocked on the door. A man answered it.
“My friend and I would like to see the 5 m.p.h. children,” I said. “As advertised on your sign.”
He gave me an odd look. “What?”
“Your 5 m.p.h. children,” reiterated Atkins. “We’d like a view of them if it isn’t too much trouble. That’s if you’re open.”
The man looked at us sharply. “Is this a wind-up?” He started looking for TV cameras. He didn’t see any of course but that didn’t do anything to remove his suspicions. “It is, isn’t it,” he said. “It’s a bloody wind-up isn’t it.”
“Not at all,” I said. “It’s just that Atkins here and me have never seen a 5 m.p.h. child and we’d very much like to see one before we die.”
“Which could be imminent in my case,” said Atkins. “With my heart.” 
The man chose not to dwell on Atkins’ medical condition (entirely fictitious) and after bestowing on us a look of long-suffering that would have done credit to Oliver Hardy when Stan Laurel was being at his most frustrating he said: “The sign doesn’t mean that. It means that cars shouldn’t travel at over five miles an hour because I have children. And they might knock them over.”
My eyes widened in enlightenment. “Ah.”
“In that case,” said Atkins, a more pedantic man than I, and thus not as ready to accept the man’s explanation, “Wouldn’t it be better if your sign said ‘Speed limit 5 m.p.h.’ or something like that?”
“How would that be better?” said the man, obviously a person not to be swayed easily.
“Well for one thing it would stop people knocking on your door and asking to see your 5 m.p.h. children,” I said.
I passed the sign again today. It had been altered to read ‘Speed limit 5 m.p.h.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are 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

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy

Electoral Roll

21st  February 2007

I answered the door. I didn’t like the look of the man stood there at all. He was wearing tinted glasses, and I’ve always been suspicious about people who adopt this affectation ever since I saw that planet-saving pop singer what’s-his-name, Bongo, Bonio, or something, wearing them. Plus the man was carrying a briefcase, which almost certainly meant that he would either be trying to sell me something or poke his nose into my business, both of which I can do without.
“Mr Ravenscroft?” he said, in a tone of voice that as well incorporating a question mark also contained a degree of arrogance.
I ignored the question mark and went to work on the arrogance by treating his statement as though it were an announcement. “Well what a coincidence! That’s my name too. We must be related. Tell me, are you one of the Cheshire Ravenscrofts or one of the Scottish branch of the family?”
When confronted by arrogant people it has always been my policy to try to disrupt them right at the outset, to try to get them off the front foot and firmly on the back foot. It appears I succeeded because for a few seconds the man just stood there looking at me open-mouthed. Then he managed to close his mouth and a second later and started forming words. “No. You misunderstand. I’m not Mr Ravenscroft.”
I affected surprise. “Then why did you say you were?”
“I didn’t. I was enquiring if you were Mr Ravenscroft.”
“Ah. I see. So then, now we’ve got that established (and that the arrogance has disappeared from your tone), what can I do for you?”
“It’s about your Electoral Roll form.”
“Yes, what about it?”
He referred to a notebook. “Apparently we’ve sent you three and three times you’ve failed to do the necessary.”
“Wrong. I returned all three of them.”
“Yes but you didn’t fill them in and sign them.”
“That’s right. That’s because neither my wife nor I want a role in the next Election, we’re both quite happy to let the politicians get on with it if it keeps them amused.”
He looked at me as if to say ‘You stupid bastard’. Unfortunately for him he isn’t allowed to call me a stupid bastard, so he said, a leer now on is face and the arrogance returning “The Electoral Roll is nothing to do with you having a role in the Election,  nor your desire to vote or otherwise.”
“Then why is it called the Electoral Roll? Electoral….elector…elections….seems to me it’s everything to do with voting.”
“It is to do with the Local Authority knowing who precisely resides at every address within the boundaries of that Local Authority,” he said, the voice of authority, or maybe the voice of local authority.
“You already know who lives here,” I said. “You printed our names on the Electoral Roll forms under ‘Names of People Living at this Address’.”
“We need you to confirm it.”
“Right, I confirm it. We live here.”
“By signing the Electoral Roll form.”
“Sorry, no can do. I sent them all back. All three of them.”
“I know.” He opened his briefcase and produced a form. He treated me to a supercilious smile. “I’ve brought along another one.”
I took it off him, glanced briefly at it then said: “Yes well it all seems to be in order, I’ll sign it then. Shan’t be a moment I’ll get my pen.”
I closed the door on him, put on a top coat and went out the back door for a walk. I don’t know how long the man waited on the doorstep but he wasn’t there when I returned about an hour later.
He’ll be back again I suppose, and I’ll probably sign next time. Donald Duck, I think. Or maybe Eric Cartman.

There is still time to enter my film title quiz The Last Resort posted on 18th Feb. The first prize is a copy of my book Dear Air 2000, which makes an ideal Christmas present for people you don’t like.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are 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

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy