Category: Razzamatazz

I was reading the other day about the famed man management skills of football managers Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourhino. It reminded me that when I was a supervisor with Ferodo Brake Lining a long time ago that on at least one occasion my own man management skills weren’t all that bad.

George was the night shift sweeper-up on my shift, employed to keep the passageways of my section and other sections in our block clean and dust and debris free. He was without any doubt the most lazy idle sweeper-up in the world. He should have been shown the door long since but this was pre-Thatcher when trade unions were very strong and the only offence that warranted the sack was murder, and even then the offender might have got off with a written warning. So how to get rid of George?
On company headed notepaper I wrote to him pointing out that the company had just taken on, as his opposite number on the day shift, a man with only one leg. I went on to say that as that it was clearly unfair that a man with two legs should be paid the same wages as a man with only one leg the options now open to George were –
(a) Carry on with the company, but on half the wage he was on previously. Or –
(b) Have a leg off.
I signed the letter with a fictitious name and added under the name Manager and Chief Executive. I put the letter in an official Ferodo envelope and handed it to him at the start of the next shift. Five minutes later he was in my office.
“Have you seen this?” he said in a shocked tone, brandishing the letter, and all of a shake.
I took the letter off him and read it. “Hmm,” I said. “Actually I do know about this, George. The Manager and Chief Executive left this for you.”
I handed him two pieces of paper. One was a leaving notice, made out in his name. The other was an appointment with Cavendish Hospital, Buxton, to have a leg amputated. He looked at them in turn.
“You’re to sign one of those and let me have it at the end of the shift,” I said.
He thought about it for about ten seconds or so then said: “Tha can have me answer now. Because I’m not having a leg of, t’job’s not worth it.”
With that he signed the leaving notice and handed it to me. Man managers? I’ve shit ‘em.

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,

,

, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy 

 

Apparently more people are changing their name by deed poll than ever before.

“So you’d like to change your name?”

“Yes please.”

“And what is your name at the moment?”

“Jeremiah Fart.”

“Yes I could see why a name like that might hold you back.”

“It’s done more than hold me back. I’ve never been able to get a job. I tell them my name and they just laugh and say ‘We can’t give you a job with a name like Jeremiah Fart, everyone would laugh at us’. So the sooner I can get it changed the better.”

“Very well.”

“I’d like to be called Ivor Bignob.”

“Yes I bet you would. But unfortunately it doesn’t work like that.”

“No?”

“No. We have a list of names you can choose from. But unfortunately we’ve been rather busy lately and we only have one name left.”

“I’ll take it. What is it?”

“John Prescott.”

(A SHORT PAUSE)  “….I think I’ll stick with Jeremiah Fart.”

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

I was driving along in the car yesterday when I noticed up ahead of me a lady cyclist with the most wonderful bottom. I’ve always been a bottom man, as opposed to a tit man, so quite naturally, after checking in my rear view mirror that it was safe to do so (I almost called an accident once in a similar situation), I slowed down to get a more relaxed and longer ogle at the luscious lycra-covered derriere. Nearer, it was even more magnificent, and leapt right into my top ten, between Kylie and Beyonce – which is where I wouldn’t mind being.
As soon as I passed her by I looked in the rear view mirror to see what the owner of the lovely bum looked like. As I’ve said, I’m a bottom man first and foremost, a staunch believer in the maxim ‘You don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire’, but given the choice I naturally prefer a girl to be pretty. This girl was very pretty. The only trouble was she was a man. There’s a slight chance, due to the absence of anything that could remotely be described as tits, that it could have been Keira Knightly, but if it was she’s grown a moustache since the last time I saw her photo in the newspapers.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened of course. To a bottom connoisseur such as I it’s an occupational habit. But it did leave me a little shaken. I mean I’d been fancying a man’s bottom for Christ’s sake! A serial straight like me.
I mentioned the incident to Atkins Down The Road.
“That’s the advantage of being a tit man like me,” he said. “That sort of thing can’t happen to a tit man.”
“What about man tits?” I said. “Lots of men have tits as big as women nowadays.  Bigger. How do you know you haven’t admired a pair of tits which belonged to a man?”
“Well I’d know it was a man wouldn’t I”, said Atkins, surprised at my suggestion. “I’m not so senile that I’ve forgotten what a man looks like.”
”I’m not so sure,” I said. “There are plenty blonde-haired pretty men around, and both sexes wear trousers all the time nowadays, you could very well have lusted after a man and not been aware of it.” 
“Do you think?” said Atkins, not so sure of himself now.
“More likely than not in my opinion,” I said. “More likely than not. Probably a certainty.”
“Shit!” said Atkins.
Atkins was now as shaken as I had been. I felt a lot better about it. A concern shared is a concern halved.

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