Kevin was stretching himself to help ease the pain and stiffness in his back when Debbie came out of the front door carrying a mug of tea.
‘Time for a break, Dave,’ she said.
‘Very, funny,’ Kevin replied at his wife’s reference to him as Dave, the television gardener.
‘Are you trying to compete with old Rufus?’ she asked with a smile before heading back to the house and didn’t hear Kevin say, ‘Heh up, here he comes with the gas men.’
‘Have you been having some trouble, Rufus?’ Kevin asked when his neighbour peered over the hedge after he’d seen the gas van drive away.
‘I wasn’t having any trouble until those two messed up my gas boiler. It was fine, but they told me that there was a problem with the pressure. They offered to fix it for free, so I let them get on with it, but they’ve been back and forth. Anyway, they tell me it’s fixed now, so let’s hope I’ve seen the last of them.’
Kevin asked him if he was sure that they were genuine and not checking out his house for a future burglary.
‘Burglary!’ replied Rufus who was clearly surprised by the suggestion. ‘We don’t have such things in these parts, at least not at present, but with all these outsiders coming in it might change. They seemed genuine enough and showed me their identification cards and you must have seen that they were wearing uniforms.’
Kevin was wondering if Rufus included them as outsiders.
‘I wonder why it only affected your property and how they found out about it if you didn’t report any problems?’ Kevin asked.
Rufus stroked his chin before he replied, ‘I was wondering about that myself and when I asked one of them he told me that it’s all done by computer monitoring. It was the same one who seemed more interested in my computer than fixing the gas problem.’
Kevin smiled and asked Rufus if he had anything dodgy on his computer, like pirated software. Rufus screwed up his face, puzzled by Kevin’s remarks and then asked, ‘What’s pirated software and how could I have anything, what you call dodgy, on my computer? I don’t download anything illegal if that’s what you mean.’
Kevin was about to ask Rufus what sort of things were illegal or if he had ever hacked into someone’s computer, but decided that he’d teased him enough.
‘Anyway, I think I’ve just about finished here, so I’d better make a start on the back garden.’
Rufus closed his front door and was taking his shoes off when he heard a call from his mother.
‘What did you say, Mother,’ he asked when he joined her in the living room?’
‘Those workmen have left their tools, which means that they’ll probably come knocking on the door again, disturbing the peace.’
Mother Cranleigh brushed aside the wisps of grey hair that had fallen across her eye before she repeated, ‘Those workmen have left their tools, which means that they’ll probably be back again, so we’ll have to be careful they don’t use it as an excuse to come inside the house again.’
‘I’ll leave them by the front door,’ said Rufus, not wanting to have the men back inside the house again.
* * *
The tools that the gas men left behind had been on the doorstep for three days when Rufus decided to telephone the gas people to make arrangements to have them picked up. It seemed the right thing to do, but he wished he hadn’t bothered.
‘Why were you shouting down the telephone,’ Mother Cranleigh asked when he had replaced the telephone.
‘Because the gas company woman was trying to say that I must have made a mistake.’
‘What sort of mistake?’
‘She asked me if I was sure that it was gas engineers that called here and not men from the electricity company. I told the stupid woman that they’d arrived in a van with the GAS sign displayed on it. According to her there was no record of the work being booked on their computer system.’
Rufus calmed down and retrieved the tools from the front step intending to put them in his garden shed. He was troubled as he recalled the remarks made by the newcomer next door that the men might have been impostors and up to no good. Well, if any burglars tried breaking in to his house then they’d end up with a sore head. It would probably be the first time that a man had defended his property with a giant sized cucumber. Rufus was thinking that it would make a perfect weapon!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jamie had never used a soldering iron before or even seen one until he had rummaged through Uncle Stanley’s tool box, but he was pleased with his effort as he soldered the last component on to the circuit board. He still wasn’t sure whether his friend Daniel, otherwise known as Soupinpota really was winding him up this time. It was just as well that he had been sworn to secrecy because they would have carried him off to the funny farm if he’d told anyone what he was trying to do.
It had all started last week when Daniel had told him about a space action game called, Ultimate Planet Wars. According to Daniel it was the most exciting computer game that he had ever played and it was just like flying a space craft for real. The problem was that even Uncle Stanley’s wonder PC couldn’t play it because the program required some more memory. He had told Jamie that his granddad in Scarborough could have loaded the game onto a communications satellite that he had access to if Jamie could get a military radar dish, but it would have to be mounted on the roof. Jamie was confident that his dad wouldn’t mind the dish as long as he could receive the satellite sport’s channels, but a radar dish wasn’t the sort of item that you could buy in the Army and Navy surplus stores. When he’d told Daniel that the dish was a no, no, Daniel had suggested another solution that would allow Jamie to be able to play the game.
Jamie had been worried that Daniel was going to suggest that he should hack into some company’s mainframe or even a government computer and use their free space. He was relieved to learn that the idea didn’t involve hacking, but something called natureram. The first part seemed reasonable enough when Daniel sent him a diagram of an interface with instructions of how to build it. Jamie didn’t know what the components that he had found in Uncle Stanley’s treasure chest of electronics actually did, but Daniel had just told Jamie to trust him and he had seemed so confident.
Jamie had felt a bit of a Muppet when he’d gone to Jones’s the greengrocer’s and bought a yucca plant. He wondered if there was any connection between the plant and yuk, the word that came to mind whenever one of his aunties or his mum’s friends kissed him and left a lipstick mark on his cheek, even if he liked them. Mr Jones had asked him if it was a present for his mum and had given Jamie a surprised look when Jamie told him that it was for himself, because he was interested in horticulture. Mr Jones had advised him to make sure that it was regularly watered and when he’d told Jamie that some folks claimed that the yucca had secret powers, Jamie had been tempted to reply, ‘I’ll let you know if mine has.’
Jamie carefully trailed the wire from the interface board across the desk and clipped the sensors on the leaves of the Yucca plant that was on the window sill. As far as his mum and dad were concerned he was testing for moisture changes as part of a school project he had been assigned. His dad had been well impressed and had called Jamie, Prof, a few times since he’d told him about it.
‘I don’t believe I’m doing this,’ Jamie said to himself as he rebooted the machine ready to test if the Yucca plant would provide him with the extra computer memory that he needed.
As the screen flickered during the computer’s start-up routine, Jamie expected to see a ‘gotcha’ message from, Daniel the joker, appear on the screen, but everything seemed normal.
‘Wow,’ was all that Jamie could say when he clicked on System Proprieties and saw that he had 200 infineonbytes of natureram. He wondered how many bytes were in an infineon, but guessed there would be mega, mega!
‘You are an absolute genius, Daniel,’ Jamie said, directing his comments at the monitor after he had loaded a file into natureram and confirmed that he was able to use the ram he h
ad just installed. Just to be absolutely convinced that his computer was actually using the memory supplied by the yucca plant on the window sill he disconnected one of the sensors from the plant.
Jamie shook his head in amazement as the error message flashed onto the screen declaring that there had been a natureram malfunction.
Jamie sent off an email to Daniel explaining the operation had been successful and that he was ready to download the game onto his machine. Daniel had already explained that although the game required massive amounts of storage he would send it via superzip and it would probably only take 12 timeonseconds to download. Jamie didn’t bother to ask how long a timeonsecond was because he knew it was probably trillions and trillions faster than the blink of an eye.
By the time Jamie heard his dad’s call to summon him downstairs for his dinner he had enjoyed an ‘out of this world’ experience playing ‘Ultimate Planet Wars’. Daniel hadn't exaggerated when he had described its level of realism that was far beyond the fastest arcade game that he had played. He had flicked through some of the other games and noted one that caught his attention called ‘Virtual Movie’.
Jamie had been thinking about his newly installed natureram and had decided that the only explanation was that Uncle Stanley and Daniel’s granddad must have been working on some secret government project that had developed organic memory. The idea that plant life could act as computer memory was awesome and it reminded him of something his dad had told him just a few months ago. His dad believed that there were all kinds of patents that had been taken out on various inventions by the big companies to prevent the products ever been put on sale. His dad had read somewhere that an everlasting match had been invented that would make lighters and matches obsolete if it was ever put on sale. He also believed that cars could be powered by super efficient batteries, but they wouldn’t be made available until the oil ran out. Jamie didn’t always agree with his dad’s political views, but on this occasion they made sense. At the moment computer components, including memory was big business that could be wiped out if someone discovered that it could be provided by plant life. He reminded himself to make sure that the yucca plant was cared for if ever they went on holiday. Rufus would be the ideal person and Jamie wondered if Rufus’s giant cucumbers could be used in an organic computing system.
Kevin saw the faraway look on Jamie’s face as they waited for Debbie to serve their dinner. He didn’t think that his son had discovered girls yet, but something was preoccupying his thoughts lately. It must have been several days since they had chatted about football and that was serious as far as Kevin was concerned. He had been over the moon when his son was born and he had hoped that their second child would also have been a boy, but he had been pleased for Debbie when Leanne came along. Kevin wasn’t looking forward to the day when Leanne brought home a lad who didn’t support Liverpool, or even worse didn’t like football.
‘Jamie, me thinks you are spending too much time on that computer,’ Debbie said as she placed his dinner in front of him.
‘I keep telling you, Mum, that it’s educational and helps me with my homework, especially being able to get on the Internet.’
Kevin delayed the intended bite on the sausage on the end of his fork and he added his support to what Jamie had said, ‘The lad’s right, Debs, judging by his first school report he’s doing really well. So, it can’t be doing him any harm and it’s not costing us anything according to the telephone bill that came through yesterday. How come we’re not being charged for you using the Internet, our Jamie?’
Jamie carried on munching the mouthful of potato while he thought up an excuse.
‘I expect Uncle Stanley must have paid in advance or the telephone people have messed up,’ Jamie suggested, but he still didn’t know how the computer accessed the Internet because he hadn’t discovered a modem or any telephone point in the room.
‘I suppose that might explain it,’ replied Kevin, ’or maybe Uncle Stanley had a contact with one of his old techie mates who might have fiddled it in some way.’
Debbie frowned as she scolded her husband, ‘Trust you to think of that. I’m sure he wouldn’t have done any such thing.’
‘Well, the telephone people rip us off with high telephone charges, so where’s the harm!’
Kevin winked at Jamie and then decided not to upset Debbie any further, ‘But I expect you are right, Sweetheart. I wasn’t being serious. Anyway, how is the computer doing, son?
‘It’s not bad for an old machine,’ Jamie replied, thinking if only he could explain what it was really like, which was super, super turbo.
Jamie had promised to send Daniel a photograph because neither of the boys had a camera connected to their computers, but couldn’t find one, so decided to ask his mum who knew exactly where everything was.
‘Mum, where are those photographs of me that were taken just before we left Liverpool. You know the ones with me and Geoff?’
‘You’ll find them in one of the shoe boxes in our wardrobe. I haven’t got around to putting them in an album.’
‘Are you planning to send your mug shot to a young lady?’ teased Kevin and asked him if he’d met her on one of those ‘chat line thingies’.
‘Do me a favour, Dad. Chat lines are for lonely people or old timers, like you.’
‘Cheeky,’ Kevin jokingly admonishing Jamie, ‘Mind you, your mum used to have a pen pal. What was his name, Debs?’
Debbie pulled tongues at her husband and answered that his name was Gordon.
‘Ah, yes, Gordon from Sheffield. I bet he’s still playing with his train set.’
‘Was he your boyfriend, Mum?’ asked Leanne with a rare question.
‘Not really, but he was a nice lad. Your dad didn’t like him just because he didn’t play football.’
‘He didn’t play anything,’ Kevin said and started laughing.
‘Ask your mum where Gordon took her on their first date?’
‘I don’t remember,’ Debbie said.
‘Your mum’s a big fibber. He took her train spotting and if I hadn’t teased your mum so much she would probably be living near Crewe station in a railway house now.’
‘Did you have a girlfriend at school, Daddy?’ Leanne asked with her second question of the day.
‘I was too busy enjoying myself playing football, Princess.’
‘Now who’s fibbing,’ Debbie challenged him. ‘What about Megan Davies?’
Kevin was wishing that he hadn’t started this bit of fun. He still recalled the day that Gareth and Dai Davies had held him over the railway bridge, threatening to drop him if he didn’t promise to take their sister to the school dance.
‘You know why I took Megan out,’ he reminded Debbie.
‘Of course I do. I’m hardly likely to forget the hunky Davies brothers.’
Kevin decided that it was time to change the subject.
‘So, Jamie, when are we going to see your computer in action? I was telling your mum that I’m thinking of enrolling on one of those government computer courses. I’ll soon be coming out with all those buzz words like megapits and geigerhurters.’
‘Dad!’ Jamie groaned and then corrected him, ‘Its megabytes and gigahertz and you are best to finish your course before I show you my computer, because it’s a bit more complicated than a shop bought computer.’
‘Giga Hertz,’ Kevin mused over the name and then told Jamie that he used to play for Bayern Munich.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jamie was still troubled about having to keep the power of Uncle Stanley’s computer a secret, but was given some light relief when the family were having dinner and his dad told them that his search for a job was over. Debbie was surprised because it was the first that she had heard of it and she had been with Kevin all afternoon.
‘You kept that quiet,’ Debbie said, trying to hide her annoyance that he had waited until now to deliver the important news.
‘Come on, Dad; don’t keep us in suspense, ‘Jamie said. �
��I bet it’s something to do with cars.’
Kevin reached for the salt as he replied, ‘No, it’s nothing to do with cars.’
‘Is it something to do with flowers and things, or vegetables?’ Leanne asked.
Jamie laughed. ‘You’re going to become a fruit and veg man on the market, Dad. I can just hear you doing your sales pitch and calling out, ‘ripe bananas’.
‘No, but our Leanne is getting warmer because it’s connected with farming. Well sort of. You haven’t had a guess yet, Debs, so what do you think it is?’ Kevin asked.
‘Spud picking would be my guess if it’s part time.’
‘It’s full time and more to do with animals than crops.’
‘I hope it is horses, Daddy, because I want to go horse riding,’ Leanne said, clearly excited by the prospect.
‘Sorry, Princess, but it’s nothing to do with horses.’
‘Then it must be cows because we haven’t seen any sheep around here,’ Debbie suggested.
Kevin shook his head, but before he could bring the guessing game to an end Jamie beat him to it.
‘Pigs, its pigs,’ Jamie said, sounding confident that he had guessed right and Kevin nodded in agreement. Leanne groaned, Debbie gave a faint smile and Jamie was in hysterics.
‘It’s not that funny, son. Anyway, I’ve done a bit of reading about pigs and they definitely get a bad press. They’re one the cleanest animals, almost as clean as we are in fact and they’re friendly. Mr Rosser who owns the farm says that I’m a natural with them and that should make the job easier.’
‘So, what does the job involve exactly?’ Debbie asked.
‘Well mostly making sure that the stock are in good health and preparing them for market. It’s quite a responsible job according to Mr Rosser.
‘And what about cleaning out the sty?’ Jamie asked.
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