Dreams and a normal day...
Drop a dime before I walk awayAny song you want I'll gladly play
Money feeds my music machine
Now listen while I play
My green tambourine
My Green Tambourine, The Lemon Pipers
Highest chart position no 7 Feb '68
Monday 12th February 1968 : 10.30am
Bob Beck climbs from the cab of his Volkswagon dropside pickup truck, frowning slightly as the engine finally coughs and splutters into silence a full thirty seconds after he switched it off and removed the ignition key, he'll get it seen to at his mate Don's garage but Don will just laugh when he sees that Bob is still driving the twenty year old wreck, this Volkswagon was built only shortly after Herr Hitler had been defeated and in fact was a deposit to the British Government in reparation for the cost of pulverising German industry during the second world war.
Bob has owned the truck for five years now, it suits his business, it sounds like a thousand hand propelled lawn mowers all running at once but the open back allows him to carry whatever materials are needed for the job in hand on any given day. Bob's trade is plumbing, a term which incorporates everything from fitting a new kitchen tap washer to central heating and drain work, but he also turns his hand to any kind of small building work and the back of the pick-up is as likely to be filled with sand and cement as plumbing materials.
But although the VW pick-up is eminently suitable for Bobs trade, Bob does not feel that it projects quite the correct image for a man in his position, after all, since buying the Tomato Dip café last year Bob is now an entrepreneur, a valuable businessman, well respected in the Kirkstall community (in his mind even if not in reality), and Bob is thinking, albeit only briefly, of investing in a vehicle more in keeping with his new status, something like a Jaguar for instance.
He's parked the truck someway down Kirkstall Road today and he's glad that the earlier rain has stopped but even so he turns up the collar on his donkey jacket and fastens the top button, it's a cold wet miserable February morning to match the cold wet miserable buildings around him, but as usual Bob is in a good mood.
He's in a perennial good mood because he is in control of everything in his life, he's lucky in that he is, and always has been, self employed so he has no boss to answer to, no timetable to keep to, no-one to tell him when he can or can't take days off and no-one to dock his wages for being late (for which he is eternally grateful as Bob has never kept to a specific meeting time in his life).
Bob never really knows from one week to the next where he will be working and which jobs he will be working on, his plumbing work is mainly domestic so each job only lasts for a day or so which brings its own uncertainty to your bank balance and grey hairs for your bank manager, but for the last 20 years of his working life Bob has been self employed and has never been short of a bob or two, in fact his wallet always contains twenty or thirty pounds which is considerably more than the average weekly wage, and if his bank manager ever went to Bobs house and looked in the tin marked “sugar” in the small cupboard next to the coal shute in the cellar, he'd find a thick roll of five, ten and twenty pound notes totalling well over five hundred pounds, this is Bobs “float” where the money goes from all the cash jobs, those jobs where receipts and invoices are not required, this is Bobs Jaguar fund.
At the moment the Jaguar fund is doing nicely and he is about a quarter of the way towards a brand new XJ6, Bob has already made enquiries at Appleyards and although the salesman had looked quite disgusted at him as he parked the VW pickup right in front of the showroom he'd been won over by the sight of the fund (temporarily exported to Bobs wallet for the very purpose of winning over the salesman), and he'd left the dealer with lots of brochures and a promise of a phone call if ever a good cash bargain came into stock.
As he reaches the café door Bob pauses and holds the door open to let an old lady out, she thanks him and scrapes the paint off the bottom of the door with her shopping trolley as she goes, causing Bob to wince a little and almost call her back to show her the damage, it his door that she's scraped and its he who will have to repaint it, bloody old woman, she'd better be a regular.
He's still crouched there assesing the damage when an elderly man in a dirty taupe raincoat nudges him from behind with the bottom of his walking stick and asks "if he's bloody coming in or going out , make his mind up because he's gagging for a cup of tea and he didn't fight through the war and get this here gammy leg just to stand out in the rain while young pillocks like him make his mind up whether he's in or out of the bloody cafe".
Bob has apologised to the old timer and stood aside before he realises that its he, Bob, who owns the bloody cafe and if the old git doesn't watch his language he'll have him out on the pavement any time soon, walking stick, war wound and all, bloody hell, what does a man have to do to get respect around here, isn't it enough that he saved their cafe from extinction last year ? They wouldn't have a cafe to stop out of the rain in if it wasn't for him and last years float fund, bloody Kirkstall residents, this place wiped out his float last year, £3400 for this shit heap, that robbing bastard Stan Barlow saw him and his float fund coming that day.
£3400, cash, for the 30 year repairing lease on the building, stock, fixtures and fittings, goodwill and Maureen, £100 a week turnover Stan Barlow had promised, "its a little goldmine" he'd promised Bob and he'd shown Bob the books to prove it, or at least he'd shown him a version of the books to prove it, Stan's "selling the business" version of the books that was, as opposed to Stan's "Inland Revenue declaration" version of the books and the reality, the real version of the books which was stored in Stan's head now safely retired and living in a very nice bungalow up Skipton way, Bob had a mind to drive up to Skipton as soon as he'd done his own version of this years books, £100 a week my sweet fanny adams, £100 a month was more like it, and so Bob still persisted with the plumbing business albeit that Sid Fox, his plumbing partner, had to bear more of the burden whilst Bob kept an eye on Stans "little goldmine".
Bob enters his empire at last and stands at the doorway, hands deeply thrust into his builders donkey jacket pockets and purveys his new domain, his world, his float fund investment, nobody sees him at first until an old woman seated at the nearest table to the door asks him "if he's bloody coming in or going out but either way to shut the door its blowing a bloody gale in here and she's only just got warm since she came in", its the second time in three minutes that Bob has been abused by his customers and for the second time in three minutes he wonders why he ever bothered with this shit heap.
Bob steps further into his cafe and closes the door behind him, no-one looks up, no-one doffs their cap or thanks him once again for saving their community cafe, Bob will never tire of hearing them thank him for saving their community cafe, because no bugger cares about their community cafe and if they know that he's the owner then they don't let on that they know.
Maureen has her back to him, she's frying up an egg for the old soldier who so rudely jabbed Bob in the back with the walking stick, the old soldier himself is taking a seat at the back of the cafe and looks at Bob, scowls, then nods his head over to Maureen, then at the radio with a disapproving raise of his eyebrows as if to convey to Bob that he doesn't approve of Don Partridge the Oportunity Knocks one man band winner belting out his own composition "Rosie", neither does Bob, its a crap song, its a crap television show, but the old soldier has got off on the wrong foot with Bob by poking him in the back with his walking stick and so Bob shouts Maureens name above the din and tells her to "turn it up a bit more, its a good song this one".
Maureen jumps at the sound of her new boss shouting her name, even though its been a year she still can't think of him as just "the boss", Mr Barlow was "the boss", Mr Beck is still "the new boss", she looks over her shoulder and smiles at Mr Beck and shouts "right away Mr Beck, just turn this egg first" and under her breath thinks herself lucky that Mr Beck didn't walk in two minutes earlier as she and that old Mrs Waters were finishing off their argument over whether the bread was stale or not.
"Rosie, whoa Ro-woo-woo-sie", sings Bob at the top of his voice, then looks over at the old soldier and winks at him just as Maureen calls out "egg butty, no broken yolk" and turns to mount the stool to turn up the radio as instructed, Bob tells her to turn it down instead and picks up the plate with the egg butty on it and takes it over to the old soldier,
"Here y'are old timer, keep yer stick ter yerself next time an all" Bob smiles a friendly sort of smile at him and the old soldier just turns away and mutters something to himself that Bob can't hear.
Bob's behind the counter with the till open on No Sale, "did that old git pay for his egg Maureen" he asks, she's confused about the radio now and confirms that yes the old git paid, "how's business then love", Bobs looking for cash in the till, cash in notes in particular, "anything to bank yet love" Maureen tells him its been a bit quiet but its the start of the week see, and he took all the notes out of the till on Saturday, remember.
Bob remembers alright, its just that he likes to keep the paper money at home so that he can filter some of it into his Jaguar fund and he wants Maureen to get used to a regular routine of him taking the paper money away to be "banked", no harm in letting her think that he's security conscious, she'll soon be telling the Kirkstall population how careful he is with the paper money and they won't be trying any till snatches or break-ins if they hear there's no paper money in the till, they'll not find it at home either, hidden in his cellar like it is.
"Got them new money posters up yet Maureen, its next month you know"
"No Mr Beck, they're still in the cupboard, I'll put them up tonight before ah go 'ome"
"Right-oh don't forget though love will you, don't want any mistakes with the change do we?"
"No Mr Beck, I'll manage" although secretly Maureen is very worried about the two new coins due out next month, new one and two shilling coins, she's heard that they are much smaller than the current ones and her pensioner customers want to know "what they won the war for to let them mess about with the money like this, its all that bloody common market nonsense, and this won't be the end of it you mark my words love"
Not finding any paper money in the till Bob closes the till and picking up a large spoon has a poke around in the tomato dip mixture on the left hand griddle, “not cleaning this at all are you love” he asks of Maureen who replies that “no its not been cleaned since before Christmas”, Bob nods his satisfaction and as he can find nothing more constructive to do in here he wipes his hands on a dirty tea towel under the counter and tells Maureen to drop the latch when she leaves as he'll pop in on his way home and lock up properly, Maureen is pleased with this news as it means that Mr Beck has a plumbing job to do this afternoon and she can knock off a bit earlier without him knowing.
Bob closes the café door behind him and turns his back to the wind which is now blowing specks of rain around, he walks back to the VW pickup, opens the unlocked door and steps into the cab then sits and stares around the interior, somewhere in here, somewhere in the mix of sandwich bags, empty milk bottles, scraps of paper with old forgotten notes scribbled on them, invoices and old newspapers, is the current scrap of paper with the address where he is supposed to be meeting up with Foxy this morning, its in Horsforth that much he knows and after a quick rummage around he finds the address written in the margin of yesterdays Daily Mirror, its not in Horsforth, its in Headingley, just a short drive up the hill from Kirkstall, he and Sid Fox his plumbing partner are doing a central heating job in a semi-detached near the cricket ground, a very nice little earner in cash and a nice house to work in, belongs to an asian doctor and his wife who both work so Bob and Foxy can take as long as they like over this job treating the house as their own, makes a change from having to work around a housewife who insists on watching your every movement all day long.
Bob turns the key in the ignition, the VW Pickup does not respond, it does this sometimes. He waits with the ignition still switched on then after 30 seconds he hears a whine from the starter motor as it spins into life, the engine is cranked a few times which shudders the cab and physically throws Bob from side to side, and then with a huge clatter the engine awakens as the first drop of petrol hits the spark plugs, it takes only a feather touch of his foot to disengage the clutch as the pedal is nearly down to the floor anyway, select first gear with a gnash of gear teeth, rev the engine to fever pitch and the VW Pickup moves slowly from the kerb.
There's a scrape and rattle from behind the cab as the wheelbarrow in the open back of the truck slides along the steel corrugated bed and a thud as it hits the drop-down tailgate, and if Bob had bothered to check the speedometer he'd notice that he was already travelling at 60mph, he isn't really, in fact the VW Pickup will do well to hit 30mph at any time today, the speedometer has been broken for years and Bob doesn't bother looking at it any more.
Its a seven minute drive in the VW to St Annes Road and the Azids very nice semi-detached, Bob parks behind Sid Fox's maroon Ford Consul with the back seats taken out so he can use it like a van, and as he walks up the garden path towards the front door he can hear from within the sound of a plumber busy at his work, singing along to Elvis on the portable radio, Foxy thinks he's a good singer but in truth there's more chance of Elvis becoming a plumber than Foxy hitting two consecutive good notes. Bob pauses outside the front door to light up a slim panatella, shielding the lighter flame from the wind which is picking up now and mixing the rain in with a suggestion of ice, pushes the door open with his foot while still lighting the small cigar and calls out to Foxy to "stand by your beds" to which Sid Fox's head peers around the door through to the kitchen at the end of the spacious hallway and enquires, " 'bout fuckin time an all, where yer bin ?"
"Had to call at the caff Foxy, keep 'er on 'er toes y'know, see if theres any paper in the till"
"An was there then ?"
"Nah, its Monday, I emptied it sat'day"
"How much you creaming of t'top then eh ?"
"Enough"
"Jammy bugger"
"You could 'ave 'ad yer share"
"Aye ah kno, jammy bugger"
When Bob bought the caffe off Stan Barlow last year he'd tried to get Foxy involved as well, tried to go a 50/50 share with him, tried to convince Foxy that the cafe was a "little goldmine", and seeing as how they were both long-standing clients of the cafe it'd be only right for the pair of them to be the new owners, but Foxy didn't want to know, Foxy had just got divorced 12 months previous and had claimed in court that he had no money and no assets and as his ex-wife knew no better he'd got away with giving her all the furntiture and transferring the rented council house into her name. Foxy walked out of court with apparently not a penny in savings, not a brick of the house to his name and only the clothes that he stood up in and the wreck of a Ford Consul that he drove around in, his now ex-wife was well pleased but of course she knew nothing of the £4,800 that had been hidden in Foxy's cellar inside the old mildewed navy dufflebag that she'd almost thrown out on several occasions if only she'd been brave enough to pick it up from where it lay stuffed into the corner of the coal hole, Foxy's cash float had survived the divorce but it wouldn't have survived long if his ex-wife had heard of a new business investment not twelve months later, so he'd missed out on a 50% share of the cafe and he was well sickened by it.
Bob removes the builders donkey jacket and rolls up the sleeves of his heavy cotton checked shirt, theres work to do, pipes to lay under the kitchen floor through into the dining room for the Azid's new central heating system, but first Bob puts on the kettle for a cup of tea, Foxy's hands are already dirty from taking the floorboards up and crawling around in the floorspace, Bob'll make the tea with Mrs Azid's nice Denby teapot and some of her nice leaf tea, and we might even find some bourbon biscuits in her cupboard, lets start the day properly.
Bob and Foxy have worked together for twenty years now, they have a lot in common, they're both 42 years old, both served their apprenticeships at Morfitts in Headingley, both left at the end of their apprenticeships to join the Royal Navy at the tail end of the war and on their return they'd spurned old man Morfitts offer of re-employment to go on their own, figuring that they might as well put the money straight into their own pockets instead of old man Morfitts.
Their first job together made them sworn enemies of old man Morfitt when they stole a good job from right under his nose, a complete strip out job it was, replacing lead water pipes with galvanised steel ones, copper being impossible to find after the war. £200 cash in hand for two weeks work that single action had caused nearly ten years of conflict as Morfitt tried to put them out of work, spreading rumours about their solvency, stopping accounts at the builders merchants and trying to get them disbarred from the plumbing and heating engineers association, all to no avail though as Bob and Sid were an amiable pair and could easily handle obstructive builders merchants with a joke, a smoke and the sniff of a roll of cash and they could sweet talk their way around any female client or laugh and joke and smoke their way into any male clients friendship.
Bob is the better looking of the two, barrel chested, a shade under six foot tall, blond hair combed in a side parting which he allows to grow more fashionably longer these days, a sort of chunkier version of Adam Faith he scrubs up well, cleans under his nails every night and is always well presented to his lady friends, of which there are many.
Sid is shorter, stockier, dark hair, with a swarthy complexion, huge hands which are rough and always dirty, he smells of plumbing, that earthy, slightly foul-water smell which some days is also mixed with the bitter stench of solder when he's been working with lead, Sid Fox always has a woodbine behind his ear and without fail never leaves the house without one of several dirty flat caps welded solidly to his head, today its the indestructable leather one and there is a woodbine behind his ear as well as one hanging from the corner of his mouth, they both smoke like chimneys although Bob prefers cigars, even when working on "live" gas pipes, and like electricians who think they'll never be electrocuted Bob and Foxy believe that the gas that they work with will not ignite as long as they don't draw too deeply on their fags, they have of course been proved wrong on many occasions, Foxy the worst when he was once flung across a kitchen in Beeston after igniting his cigarette lighter to see where the hissing noise was coming from.
Although the two have worked together for the last twenty years they are not strictly business partners, both prefering to stay self-employed and handle their own little piles of cash at the end of the week. Bob has a bank account in the name of RoBeck Construction, a business name that he thought up one night when full of beer so when they get paid by cheque by their business customers Bob will cash the cheque and give Foxy his half share in cash after deducting any material costs. Foxy does not have any bank accounts, he deals only in cash as he doesn't trust his ex-wife and her solicitor or the bank employees who will surely tell her every time they see him on the bank premises, and so Foxy only trusts cash and Bob, he's known Bob too long to know that Bob won't fiddle him and if Bob says that Foxy's share of a particular job is ten pound ten shilling and sixpence then Foxy is happy that Bob will have done the sums right, Foxy has never once questioned Bobs calculations.
Cash is in fact the only acceptable currency for their domestic jobs and as most of their jobs are domestic in nature then the books that each one keeps for his own tax records do not show a particularly high level of income, indeed if any inland revenue inspector ever saw their books he would first of all ask why it was that Foxy's books showed a pitiful level of income compared to Bobs, so pitiful indeed that Foxy was technically bereft of any visible means of support and the inspector might ask where Foxy got the money to pay the rent on his small terraced house every week, let alone find money for food.
Bobs book-keeping was only marginally better, his declared income on his tax return every year was borderline poverty and only just above the margin that prevented enquiring eyes down at the revenue offices. Neither one questioned the other on their tax returns both working on the theory that if asked in any official capacity it would be better to be genuinely ignorant of the others money affairs, Bob suspected that Foxy had not filled in a tax return for a few years but would have been suprised to learn that Foxy had not actually declared any income at all since leaving the navy in 1948.
The cash that is not declared in their books is, in their eyes, their cash, and nothing to do with the revenue. the cash that remains in their pockets on a Friday night is for spending over the weekend and if anything is left on a Sunday night then it goes downstairs in the cellar and the float tin.
Bob and Foxy stand in the kitchen leaning against Mrs Azid's new MFI kitchen units which have been examined very closely by the two, the flat pack phenomenon has just started in Leeds and both are scornful of the idea, as tradesmen they simply refuse to believe that ordinary people who have never picked up a hammer and screwdriver in their life will be able to assemble something as complex as a kitchen cupboard, not to mention the plumbing, they look forward to the first call they get when a hapless punter calls them out to assemble their MFI kitchen, the stick they will hand out that day has already been well practised on tea breaks such as the one they are taking now.
Foxy is opening and closing the wall cupboard door in front of him with increasing violence in a demonstration to Bob that chipboard will eventually crack around the hinge joints, “its not even good quality chipboard Bob, look its starting to go already” and indeed it is, a hairline crack is already appearing in the formica covering next to the hinge, “if I keep slamming this door a bit longer I bet it'll fall off completely” and he looks as though he's prepared to do just that until Bob reminds him that they don't want to be repairing Mrs Azids kitchen for the rest of the week, “well I'm going to tell her about it” insists Foxy, determined to make the poor lady guilty at taking food from the mouths of honest tradesmen who could have hand built her a nice kitchen out of proper wood for not much more than twice the price.
And because he's been stopped from breaking Mrs Azids cupboard door just to prove that he could, Foxy drops to his knees and opens the cupbaord door under the sink to inspect the plumbing, Foxy suspects that the Azids did not use a plumber to do the plumbing work and as soon as he moves aside a couple of boxes of Daz, a tube of Ajax and various cleaning aids he confirms his suspicions, "look at this Bob, its bloody rubbish, bloody cowboys she's had in, look at that solder, its a right bloody mess, I'll bet if I shake it here it'll crack to buggery", and he grasps the cold water feed pipe and gives it a good shake just to prove that he can break the cowboys work.
"Foxy for gods sake bloody leave off will you, I don't want to be crawlin' under her bloody sink all mornin, theres all this bloody pipework to get finished this mornin, 'ave you finished yer tea?"
"Aye, well its not bloody right is it, I'll be tellin 'er about 'er pipework under that sink, its bloody atrocious, a right cowboys done that Bob".
"Are you goin under then Foxy", Bobs question is merely confirmation of the way their partnership always works, Foxy always "goes under" the floorboards because he's the shortest of the pair and because he's always mucky anyway, its always been that way, and today is no different and Foxy squirms his way through the narrow gap in Mrs Azids kitchen floor as Bob picks up a length of three quarter inch copper pipe and rubs one end with wire wool ready for Foxy, who is now out of sight under the floor, to solder the joint
which will take hot water into Mrs Azids immaculate lounge with its Parker Knoll recliner armchair, ensuring that next winter she will not have to go around each room lighting the gas fires when she gets in from the hospital every night, its the future is central heating and Bob and Foxy are an integral part of it.
A dull thud from under the floorboards followed by a muffled "You Fuckin Bastard" means that once again Foxy has forgotten that the joist between the dining room and the lounge is lower than all the others and as Bob now knows exactly where Foxy is located he strolls into the lounge with his club hammer and crowbar and sets about lifting one of the floorboards near the bay window.
The rest of the day progresses well, Foxy completes the ground floor pipework just before lunch and they sit in Mrs Azids kitchen with their potted beef sandwiches and two wedges of a jam sponge cake that Bob has liberated from the cafe, whilst drinking the first of four cups of strong tea from Mrs Azids best Denby earthenware, and for amusement Bob watches the filth and solder flux on Foxy's hands gradually migrate to the bread on his sandwich then disappear into his mouth, in all their years together Bob has never known Foxy to wash his hands for something as inconsequential as a sandwich, not even on occasions they've been working on foul water drainpipes.
Which reminds Bob of an incident that happened on a job last year and inbetween a mouth full of potted beef and bread, Bob laughs out loud at the memory of Foxy chasing him down a terraced street of houses in Harehills. They'd been asked to unblock a toilet in a rented back-to-back house by the landlord of the property who used Bob and Foxy for all sorts of odd jobs, neither of them wanted to do the blocked toilet job but the landlord gave them lots of work, small jobs that usually only took a few hours but he paid good rates and he paid in cash, so when the call was made to Bobs house one morning he didn't hesitate.
When they'd arrived at the house they'd found the upstairs toilet completely blocked with turds (goldfish was the polite term that Bob and Foxy used in front of the clients) and almost full of at least four days worth of excrement, but out in the street the drain was empty, showing that the blockage was somewhere in the foul water pipe between the toilet and the street. It was Foxy's turn to get the sweet end of the stick for a change and he had a good laugh at Bob as he watched him struggle into his pair of dirty overalls, the ones that they both saved for these sort of jobs, then pull on a pair of rubber gauntlets and start to screw a large rubber plunger onto a four foot long length of broom handle.
The procedure was quite simple, Bob would pump the plunger up and down inside the toilet bowl in an attempt to get the obstruction to move and Foxy would wait outside observing the drain to make sure that the blockage flowed away properly, when and if Bob could shift it. foxy's part of the job really only involved him standing above the drain manhole with a pole just in case the blockage needed breaking up some more when it reached him, but Foxy loved mucky jobs and so as Bob disappeared into the house he took up his position at the manhole laid down on the pavement with his head inside the hole, and gradually shifted his way down until only the bottom part of his legs were visible from the pavement and his head was almost level with the drainpipe at teh bottom of the hole
There was nothing to see down here, not even a trickle of water in the bottom of the pipe, this was a bad blockage and Foxy suspected that it wasn't in the toilet bowl at all but somewhere down at pavement level, perhaps where the drainpipe turned at ninety degrees before it emerged into this manhole. Foxy heard a dull thud fromthe pipe, then another, then several in succesion, Bob was pumping the plunger up and down in hte toilet bowl but nothing was emerging at this end, just as Foxy suspected, this was a bad blockage and if it was in the toilet it would have shifted by now.
Then on Bobs last plunge, Foxy heard something moving in the pipe, there was still no water coming through but something was definitely moving towards him and twisting his head level with the pipe he thought he could see something white (or something that had once been white) but it seemed to be firmly wedged in there now. Lifting himself clear of the manhole he went to the boot of his car and took out an old wire coathanger to hook the object with and drag it out but before he stuck his head down the hole again he shouted up at the bathroom window to tell Bob not to plunge anymore while he had his head down the hole.
A muffled shout from the bathroom indicated that Bob had heard and so Foxy took up his position again, head first down the drain, no-one else but Foxy would have done this, even when he had the clean end of the job, even when all he had to do was stand and watch, Foxy couldn't resist getting his hands dirty. He was wedged into position, right down in the three foot deep hole with his head turned towards the blocked pipe, arm halfway inside the blocked section trying to get the coathanger hooked into the blockage when he heard the dull thud start up again,
"What the fu..." but before the question left his mouth a blast of foul air came from the pipe straight in his mouth followed by an awful gurgling sound and then four days worth of backed up excrement rushed towards his face and emerged into the open manhole bubbling and boiling, unfortunately unable to escape out of the opposite side of the manhole due to Foxy being in the way. Within seconds he was submerged and his eyes, nose ears and mouth plugged with goldfish and semi-fermented toilet waste, kicking and struggling and all the time trying to curse like he'd never cursed before Foxy managed to extracate himself from the hole and knelt on the pavement desperately trying to wipe the slime from his eyes whilst coughing and hacking up brown gunge from his lungs.
It was that sight that had greeted Bob as he came downstairs to find out if Foxy had seen what was causing the blockage, he'd seen everything drain away from the toilet bowl after Foxy had shouted up at him to have one more go and had flushed the toilet a couple of times to clean out the bowl, and now the sight of Foxy sprawled on the pavement spitting out goldfish was too much for Bob's composure and he burst out an uncontrollable flood of laughter that had him sinking to his knees, wiping his eyes and trying to grab a breath before the fits of laughter started again and again.
Which all seemed a bit disconcerting to the two old ladies over the road who had come to their front door attracted by the smell, only to see two men on their knees on the pavement, one bent double trying desperately to clear his eyes, ears and nose all the while coughing and hacking as though he'd taken a lung full of mustard gas, and the other bent double holding his rib cage with both hands trying desperately to get his breath back in order to fuel another round of hysterical laughter.
And then just at that point Foxy hacked up the last glob from his lungs, snorted the last niblet from his nostril, and with one last vigorous rub his vision came back into some sort of focus, albeit with a slightly brown edge, and he slowly pulled himself upright whilst still kneeling on the pavement and turned his head to target his vision on Bob, who, whilst still struggling for breath, met Foxy's gaze with a face full of mirth,
"You did that on purpose you bastard"
"Did what Foxy ?"
"You plunged when I said not to plunge, you plunged when I had my head down the hole, you bloody did that on purpose you bloody bastard"
"No I bloody didn't, you said to give it one more go"
"I bloody didn't, I bloody said don't do it any bloody more, don't do it any bloody more I said, it sounds nothing like give it one more go"
"Well thats what it sounded like up there"
and with that Bob reached over and ever so carefully picked a small goldfish from the top of Foxy's head and flung it down the manhole,
"Come 'ere yer bastard...." as Foxy sprung to his feet Bob was one second ahead of him and off down the road they both ran, Bob still laughing over his shoulder treating the whole thing as a big joke which just infuriated Foxy even more, as did the fact that his short legs wouldn't catch Bob if he chased him all day.
And as they disappeared down the end of the street the two old ladies, standing with arms folded over ample busoms turned to each other, shook their heads, tutted, and turned and went back into their respective houses.
And when Foxy had finished chasing Bob around the neighbourhood they had returned to the van, sat inside and opened their lunchboxes, and whilst Bob had managed to wash his hands in the house earlier Foxy hadn't, and despite stinking of four days worth of human excrement, his hair still tacky and his fingernails stuffed full of the light brown stuff, Foxy had enjoyed his jam sandwiches and even licked his fingers clean at the end, at which point Bob had to leave the van for some fresh air.
Bob reminds Foxy of the tale now and they lean on Mrs Azids new kitchen units laughing out loud until it starts to hurt, each adding his own little tag to the storyline and when Bob reminds Foxy that he never washed his hands afterwards, Foxy is holding his Denby cup of tea close to his mouth and he throws back his head and laughs so loud that he spills half of it down his overalls and onto Mrs Azids new lino floor, so he puts the cup down on the worktop, spilling more of it in the process and makes a wiping motion with his workboots on the lino, which only suceeds in spreading the tea even further as well as making it dirtier.
They're both laughing so hard now that Foxy belches in the middle of a guffaw and nearly brings his sandwiches up again so he walks out of the back door for air and to calm down a bit, Bob stays in the kitchen, fresh chuckles erupting at random intervals, tears running freely down his face and muttering the occasional "oh dear," and "you daft bugger".
When Mrs Azid returns home at 6pm she is a little upset to see that six of her best Denby teacups are lying in two inches of dirty brown water in her kitchen sink along with her matching Denby teapot and four side plates and when she asks Foxy why they are in the sink Foxy replies that "man cannot live by bread alone love" and thats "its thirsty work plumbing is" and when Mrs Azid asks if they can't bring flasks of tea and workmans mugs with them to work, Foxy confirms that indeed they normally do, but "as she will appreciate, tea tastes much better from a proper tea cup love, and thats a lovely tea service you've got there", Mrs Azid confirms that indeed it is, it was a wedding present from Mr Azids cousin in Burnley, and it was very expensive and is only to be used on special occasions so could he and Bob please ensure that they bring their own pots in future, and by the way, who is going to wash up the valuable Denby tea service, to which Foxy looks agast and resists telling her that washing pots is womens work and instead smiles and informs her that delicate pottery like the Denby needs delicate feminine hands like hers, whilst at the same time displaying his own shovel-like and filthy hands at which point Mrs Azid hurridly agrees with him.
Later, when Bob and Foxy have left for the night Mrs Azid will also notice that her biscuit barrel is empty even though she remembers filling it with two packets of chocolate digestives at the weekend and she wonders just how expensive this central heating job will be by the time the two plumbers have finished.
posted by Gary @ 2:04 PM
2 Comments:
It's good, damn good. That bit about the pipes backing up, urgh! Yech! that must have happened to you in real life, must have for you to write it so emotivly. Get this to an agent NOW!
It was a real incident :)
Bob was actually my uncle and his friend Sid Fox was his real business partner - thats something that really did happen to them !
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