Chef

12th January 2007

“Is there any way I can help, Chef?”
“You could slice the onion for me if you would be so kind, Chef.”
“Will do. And how about you, Chef?”
“Not at the moment but I might need a hand with the gnocchi later, Chef.”
“Just as you say, Chef.”
A typical exchange between prize tosser Ainsley Harriet and whichever two pretentious prima donnas chefs happen to be with him in the Ready Steady Cook studio that day.
Why on earth to they find it necessary to address each other as Chef all the time, or even at all? People in other professions seem to manage without doing it. Motor Mechanics don’t do it.
“Pass me that spanner would you, Motor Mechanic?”
Which one, the ten millimetre or the fifteen millimetre, Motor Mechanic?
“The ten millimetre one thanks, Motor Mechanic.”
“There you go, Motor Mechanic.”
I don’t think so. Office workers don’t do it.
“Where’s the Post Clerk today, Buying Department Clerk?”
“No idea. Why don’t you ask the Office Manager, Messenger Boy?”
“No need to do that, she phoned in with a bad cold, Messenger Boy.”
Oh. Thanks for that, Typist with Nice Arse.”
Most unlikely.
The only other people who do it are Members of Parliament with their Right Honourable this and Right Honourable that. But then they’re as pretentious as chefs so it is to be expected.
Anyway chefs are cooks not chefs, this is England, not France. Prats.

I will be interviewed reference my book Dear Air 2000 by Nick Ferrari on LBC Radio on Monday next at 9.20 a.m. Those of you who live in the London area might care to tune in if you’ve nothing better to do and listen to me make a prick of myself.

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

No Parking

11th January 2007

Despite The Trouble saying that I wouldn’t have any trouble being a shithouse as I was already well on the way to being one I now know for sure that I could never be a shithouse. This was brought home to me in no uncertain manner in an incident which happened this morning on

Market Street

, the main shopping street of our little town.
About two weeks ago I was driving along this street looking for a parking place and for once was lucky for about thirty yards ahead I spotted a space on the other side. I couldn’t drive straight into it as there was traffic coming in the opposite direction so I pulled up just short of the parking space and indicated that I was going to turn right. The oncoming cars continued to pass me then fuck me if the driver of the final one didn’t pass me but, spotting the parking space, quickly indicated that he was turning left and turned into it.
I was livid, for he had clearly seen that I was waiting to park in the same space.
As he got out of the car, taking care not to look at me, as the guilty do, I wound down the window and shouted; “What did you do that for? You could see I was waiting!” He simply ignored me and walked off.
I can’t remember exactly what I thought at the time but if it wasn’t something like ‘What an absolute shithouse” I would be very surprised.
This morning the opportunity presented itself for me to do exactly the same dirty deed that had been visited on me. This time the scenario was that a car was waiting adjacent to a parking space with its right indicator flashing and I was driving in the opposite direction. I must have been in this sort of situation a thousand times before, and a thousand times I have driven on, but this time, probably prompted by what had happened a couple of weeks ago and my desire to be a shithouse, I quickly indicated that I was going to pull in and drove into the parking spot.
The driver of the other car was as livid as I had been. I got out of my car, the driver of the other car got out of his car and said something along the lines of what I had said when in his position two weeks previously, except that the words ‘twat’ and ‘fucking’ were included.
I immediately began to feel bad about it. In fact so bad that I knew I couldn’t go through with it. So I just said: “Sorry mate, I didn’t see you there,” got back in the car, reversed out and drove on. Thus proving that I couldn’t be a shithouse even if I wanted to.
So I shall just have to go on being the kind, generous, considerate, lovely, fellow who will do anything for you and hasn’t got a bad word to say about anybody, for the rest of my life. (And the fact that the driver of the other car in the incident, although maybe not a shithouse, was built like a brick variety of that convenience, had nothing to do with it).

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

You can write to me at –

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

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy

Already A Shithouse

9th January 2007

I have informed The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road of my intention to be a shithouse from now on and the reason why. Atkins said that it sounds like a good idea and that he may very well become a shithouse himself. The Trouble said I should have no trouble whatsoever becoming a shithouse if my behaviour yesterday is anything to go by. I assume she means the business with her trousers.

Like the rest of us The Trouble tends to put on a few pounds over Christmas and also like the rest of us she has ambitions to get rid of the surplus poundage as soon into the New Year as is reasonably possible. She happened to mention to me that this year she would have to do without the use of scales in her quest as unfortunately she had forgotten to weigh herself prior to the start of the holiday festivities. No matter, she said, she would know when her weight was back to normal as the week before Christmas she had bought a new pair of trousers which fitted her perfectly.
Her plan then was to diet until the trousers fitted her as perfectly again. Foolproof. Not so. A sound method on the face of it, but open to abuse.
I have a sister who along with a sewing machine and the seamstress skills to go with it shares my sense of humour, so, just for a laugh, I had her take in the waist of the trousers by a couple of inches. Yesterday The Trouble declared that she felt she had lost enough excess poundage to get into the trousers again and disappeared upstairs to our bedroom. I have never heard the howl of a banshee, but if it is half as terrifying as the noise that came out of our bedroom two minutes later then if banshees ever hit town I don’t want to be around when they do. I ran upstairs. The Trouble is not a fat woman, on the contrary she has a nice figure for her age, but even a nice figure can not get away with an attempt to force it into a pair of trousers deficient in the waist measurement by two inches. Consequently the small amount of fat she normally carries round her waist had become a roll of fat, spilling out of the top of the trousers, which, if not of lifebelt proportions, certainly looked like something which might be an aid to buoyancy had she been drowning.
Naturally I started to laugh. Not for very long though because clearly she was upset, a fact that became clear to me when she threw a pot of oil of olay at me. I apologised, then in an effort to restore the good humour she had been in before she tried on the trousers I let her in on my little joke, adding as a bonus that she had probably reached her target weight after all. For some unknown reason she failed to find it funny and she has hardly spoken to me since.
If this is all you have to do to be considered a shithouse it’s going to be easy.

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 

Shithouse

8th January 2007Whenever someone loses their life in tragic circumstances they are always described thus: “Oh he was a smashing bloke. Really genuine. And so generous. He would do anything for anybody.’
Or ‘She was a wonderful woman. A Saint. Everybody liked her. I never heard anybody say a bad thing against her.
Or ‘She was a lovely girl. So bubbly. Always had a smile on her face and a kind word.’ 
No one is ever a shithouse. No one ever says; ‘He was a right arsehole. A real tight-fisted vindictive twat who wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire or give you the dirt from under his fingernails.’
This maxim isn’t confined to victims of murderers or those unfortunates who have been visited by incurable diseases. It seems to apply to anyone who has died. I have been to quite a few funerals over the years and I have yet to hear a eulogy in which the speaker describes the deceased in anything but the most glowing terms. And most certainly not as a shithouse.
The conclusion to be drawn from this state of affairs is that only the good die, shithouses never. So, in an effort to live as long as possible, I am going to become a shithouse. Starting today.

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 2000Football Crazy