Stairlift to Heaven by Terry Ravenscroft Read Free Book Online

or so of fencing we should go round with the hat but I managed to talk him out of it; I’m not hard up enough yet to resort to begging, but perhaps it’s one for the future. Another suggestion from a friend at our local was that it might be an idea to take it to the Edinburgh Festival as apparently street entertainment such as our ‘Blind Men’ is a popular feature there. Atkins was very keen on the idea and said that if we do go we should definitely go round with the hat, if only to cover our expenses. However I remain unconvinced, either of taking it to Edinburgh or going round with the hat. But if anyone reading this, especially students, would like to perform ‘Blind Men’ at Edinburgh, please feel free. Anything to keep you out of the charity shops.
     
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    January 10 2007. EXCESS WEIGHT.
     
    Like most of us The Trouble tends to put on a few pounds over Christmas and the New Year and also like most of us she has ambitions to get rid of the surplus poundage as soon as possible. She happened to mention to me that this year she would have to do without the benefit of a set of scales in this annual quest to get back to her previous weight as unfortunately she had forgotten to weigh herself prior to the start of the 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 that fitted her perfectly. Her plan 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 abused it.
    I have a sister who, along with a sewing machine and the seamstress skills to go with it, shares my sense of humour. Just for a laugh I had her take in the waist of The Trouble’s new trousers by a couple of inches. This morning 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 it happens. 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 cannot 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 could be an aid to buoyancy had she been drowning.
    Naturally I started to laugh. Not for very long though because she was clearly upset, which 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 see the funny side of it and she hasn’t spoken to me since.
     
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    January 21 2007. SHITHOUSE.
     
    A few days ago there was an item on the BBC one o’clock news about a road death. Distraught parents lamented the loss of their seventeen-year-old child, the victim of a hit and run. She was a lovely girl, bubbly, everybody liked her. Two days later, on the evening news, a man had spoken of his soldier son, killed in action. He had been a son to be proud of, brave, a lion, looked up to by his men, they would have followed him anywhere. And on yesterday’s news a woman had told of her brother, shot dead when accidentally getting caught up in a drugs war. The victim had been really genuine, always had a smile on his face and a good word for everyone, would have given you his last penny, a veritable saint.
    This morning I attended the funeral of The Trouble’s cousin Norman. The service