I'm in Heaven

by Terry Ravenscroft

  Following my redundancy it wasn’t too long before my money started to run out. I’d been earning a decent wage at Hargreaves’s, much more than the indecent money I was drawing in Job Shirkers Allowance (which is what my fellow drawers of the pittance down at the Job Centre called the state handout).

  My savings were little, less than a thousand pounds. Although by no means a liver of the high life I’d always liked to spend what little spare money I had on enjoying myself. Therefore, and despite making every possible economy, I soon had to start going without things I’d previously taken for granted; a holiday once a year, an hour or two at the pub on Friday night, a weekly visit to the cinema, a very occasional meal at a decent restaurant, nothing too pricey. All had to go, to some extent, the holidays completely.

  By far the worst cut-back forced on me was in the following of my beloved Manchester United. My mother and I had attended all their home games since I’d been in my early twenties. (She also accompanied me on all my other leisure activities, her semi-invalid status being semi enough for her to demand a lot of looking after by her son but not semi enough for her to allow him the opportunity to sow anything in the way of wild oats.) I was forced to give up my season ticket. After twenty seven years. It was still possible for me to watch Manchester United - when they were playing at Old Trafford tickets could always be obtained, at a price - I just didn’t have the price.

  I was just grateful that my abiding interest, the Second World War, didn’t cost me anything. Library books were still free to borrow - I’d always made good use of Manchester’s famed Central Library and spent many happy hours there over the years - and nowadays there was the internet too, also free at the library.

  I’d been fascinated by the war ever since I was a boy. I’ve no idea why, it just came up one day in History between The Industrial Revolution and The Corn Laws - our history curriculum seemed to be based on wherever our history teacher Mr Newton opened the book that day - and I was hooked. Learning all about it came easily to me, certainly much easier than my schoolwork, battles and blitzkriegs being a more appealing subject to small boys than geography and sums.

  I became especially interested in the events leading up to the war; the coming to power of Adolf Hitler, the rise of the Nazi Party, the Nuremberg Rallies, Lebensraum , the annexing of Austria and the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland. I couldn’t have explained my obsession with Hitler. It was just there, something I had. Why do some people go train spotting or try to catch butterflies? Perhaps it was because Hitler and me we were total opposites; Norman Smith, the sort who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, and the German fuehrer who wouldn’t say boo to a goose step. Maybe it was the sheer, almost unbelievable evilness of it all, the terrible attraction that violence often has for decent people - for much the same reason that the people least likely to commit grisly murders are the ones who are most fascinated by grisly murders.

  Mr Newton called me a morbid little bugger and my schoolmates, no less understanding and more interested in the adventures of Roy Rogers & Trigger and Flash Gordon than concentration camps and U-Boats, made fun of me and my unusual hobby. Even Piggy Higginbottom, who on one occasion, after the Moors Murders had been in the news again, had spent an entire weekend shallow grave spotting. I didn’t mind them making fun of me, I enjoyed my hobby. Stuff them.

  A very strange thing happened when I was fourteen. I actually met Hitler. I knew it couldn’t be him, really, because he was long dead by then, shot by his own hand in his Berlin bunker as everybody knows, especially me, but even by people who couldn’t give a shit about Hitler. But it was just as real. I was playing football in the park after school with a few of my mates, just shooting-in, and one of them sliced the ball into the wood behind the pile of coats goal. I was nearest so I went to get it. And there in the wood was Hitler. He’d been watching us. He was a lot older than the Hitler I’d seen in photographs and newsreels, about eighty I’d guess, and his hair was grey. His funny little Charlie Chaplin moustache was nearly all grey too, and his face was all wrinkly, but if it wasn’t Hitler it was his spitting image. The sight of him stopped me dead in my tracks. At first he looked as surprised as I must have looked, as though he’d been found out doing something he shouldn’t, but after a moment he smiled, reached out a bony old hand to touch me and said “Norman. Wie geht’s?” It means ‘How’s it going’ in German; I know that now but at the time I thought he was telling me my end had come. I nearly shit myself. I just turned and ran. When my mates saw me legging it out of the wood one of them shouted, “Where’s the ball?” and I said “Fuck the ball, Hitler’s in there watching us!” They just laughed at me and jeered and told me I was Hitler bloody mad and to get back in the wood and get the ball it would be dark in no time.

  When my father died young and I was forced, at the age of twenty two, to take on the role of family breadwinner and carer to my mother, I like to think that I played the poor hand of cards fate had dealt me with good grace. It wasn’t the life I would have chosen but it wasn’t the end of the world, there was still plenty to live for. In addition to my interest in the Third Reich and Hitler I had my books - I was always an avid reader - and my films, the worlds of make believe that provided the entertainment and laughs I didn’t get nowhere near enough of in the real world. And I had my music and my football. My television too, though increasingly less of the electronic tit as the years rolled by. (I can remember when ‘Coronation Street’ was something to look forward to, not something that made you give up the will to live.)

  Besides, there was always somebody worse off than you were. I knew somebody worse off, a girl of eighteen on the next street who had both her invalid parents on her hands, as well as a younger sister and brother to look after. If ever I started to feel sorry for myself I recalled the story of the man who complained he hadn’t got any shoes, until he met a man who hadn’t got any feet. Remembering the story one day when my mother was being particularly irksome, I thought that although I wouldn’t like to be without feet I wouldn’t mind not having to look after her and limping a bit, but unfortunately this option wasn’t open to me.

  Like most young men I would have liked to have girlfriends, and eventually marry. With the burden of my mother there was no likelihood of that happening. She never actively discouraged me from seeking a girlfriend; she never said I shouldn’t have a girl. She didn’t have to. Veiled comments were more than enough. “We’re all right, me and you, Norman. Just us two, soldiering on,” was a favourite. Another was “I see him down the street has split up with his wife. Far too young to have got married in the first place if you ask me, nobody should get married till they’re at least thirty-five.” On hearing this I asked her if this stricture applied to women too, as if it did it only gave them about ten years to produce children before the menopause cut short their fertile years. She told me not to “talk dirty” in her house, there was enough of that sort of talk on the television thank you very much without me adding to it.

  By the time I’d reached thirty-five my mother had amended her minimum age for a man considering marriage to forty. Then forty-five. Then fifty. I was forty-nine when she died so never made the qualifying age. It wouldn’t have made any difference; she would have moved it to fifty before I reached it, with fifty-five waiting in the wings.

  When she passed away, and with her passing the obstacle to any romantic ambitions I might have passing away with her, I was at last able to start looking for someone I could share the rest of my life with. For so long a man without a purpose in life I set about my task with gusto.

  I was still only middle-aged, of independent if somewhat limited means, and although I would never have been picked out from a crowd as the good-looking one I was nevertheless quite presentable; I didn’t have BO, I still had all my hair, most of my teeth, and a penis, hardly used, one careful owner.

  It proved to be a more difficult task than I could ever have imagined.

  Although always comfortable in the company of men I was les
s so when it came to women, and was doubly shy when it came to the business of acquiring a girlfriend. I just never

  knew what to say to them and invariably ended up saying nothing. I could never approach a girl and ask her out, the embarrassment if they turned me down would have been too much to bear. Whenever a girl took my eye my usual method was to smile at her in the hope it would encourage her to smile back and maybe speak to me. If she did I would try to take it from there. On rare occasions it worked, but unfortunately for every girl who returned my smile and followed it up with a friendly word there were a dozen who asked me who the hell I thought I was smiling at and was I looking for a slap?

  I once heard a story, maybe just ‘a story’ but it sounds like the sort of thing that might be true, of a man whose sole pulling technique was to go up to the girl of his choice and simply say “Do you fancy a fuck?” The story went that he got knocked back a lot but also got a lot of fucks. Never in a million years would I have been able to ask a girl if she fancied a fuck and even if I’d been able to the first slap of rejection would have prevented me from ever asking another.

  Therefore my girlfriends were few and far between. There might have been more of them if I hadn’t been so particular, for I knew exactly the type of girl I wanted. The problem was that the sort I wanted didn’t want me and the sort who wanted me I didn’t want. My Auntie Betty, whose opinion I valued, said I was too particular, and I suppose I was. But I knew what I wanted and wasn’t about to settle for anything less.

  My heart’s desire was for an English Rose. I admired the demure, understated beauty of the typical English Rose; her lissom figure, her pale complexion, her unfussy, simply styled hair, blonde or brunette, usually long but not necessarily so, always with waves, never straight, never curls. Although I would by no means turn down a blonde my preferred choice was a doe-eyed brunette. And preferably one with three names - I had noticed that for some reason or other that those possessing three names were the finest of all English Roses.

  But despite all my efforts I had never been able to attract an English Rose.

  It was not for the want of trying. I had even tried internet dating, the Last Chance Saloon of those seeking love and affection, a meeting place which thankfully doesn’t recognise tongue-tied in the presence of the opposite sex; even a dumb man can be loquacious on the world wide web, Harpo Marx would have pulled. But even this had not harvested an English Rose, although willing English thorns had been plentiful.

  One of those thorns, Sue from Stockport, informed me that her friends had often told her she looked a lot like Helena Bonham Carter. I eagerly looked forward to our speedily arranged meeting - the famous star of stage and screen was my second favourite English Rose of all time. When I met up with Sue I concluded that her friends must have been very good friends indeed, or in dire need of the services of an optician, as she looked more like Jimmy Carter than Helena Bonham Carter. Nor was her lack of English Roseness helped by her soiled anorak and the Capstan Full Strength dangling from her lips.

  Fortunately she had said she would be wearing a black hat with a feather in it, otherwise I’d have walked right past her. She was also wearing a black eye, which would have presented me with another clue to her identity had she mentioned it, but had perhaps considered that the black hat was sufficient means of identification. Or maybe she’d got the black eye after our date had already been arranged; she looked like the kind of woman who could attract a black eye without too much effort.

  “Sue?” I said in disbelief.

  “Yeh.”

  “I almost didn’t recognise you.”

  “I’m wearin a black ‘at wiv a fuckin fevver in it aren’t I?”

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  Unaware of the protocol of internet dating I didn’t really know where to go next. Sue from Stockport did. “We’ll go for a drink shall we?”

  “If you like.”

  Sue liked so much that we were sat in a pub in two minutes flat with drinks in front of us.

  I had never visualised an English Rose drinking pints of black and tan, nor picking her nose and saying “fuck” every few words, and my date with Sue from Stockport was as short as good manners permitted.

  I also tried placing a small ad in the ‘Encounters Dating’ section of the Sunday Times. (Not a great reader of newspapers - far too many exaggerations and downright lies - I took the Sunday Mirror, and only then for the football, but felt that English Roses with three names were more likely to take the Times than the Mirror. Auntie Betty made the shrewd observation that women of the ilk of Denise van Outen would be more likely to read the Mirror, whilst women such as Janet Street Porter would be more likely to take the Times, and which one would I rather end up with? I would have preferred to end up with neither, especially Janet Street Porter, about whom I had once had a particularly bad nightmare - a saddle and stirrups were involved - but felt on balance that my reasoning in plumping for the Times was sound.)

  Not wishing another Sue from Stockport I took great care in composing the advertisement. I toyed briefly with the idea of stipulating ‘those with a black eye who pick their nose and say ‘fuck’ a lot need not apply’. However feeling that these words were too brutally frank, and probably inadmissible, and unable to come up with words that would convey the same message in a less candid manner, I decided against it. I also considered putting ‘teetotaller preferred’ as I didn’t want to end up in a pub again with somebody who drank pints of black and tan, and would have done so if I hadn’t been aware that Greta Scaachi likes the odd tipple, and I certainly didn’t want to discourage any woman who looked like Greta Scaachi from replying.

  After much deliberation my advert read: ‘Single man, 52, GSOH, likes eating out, the cinema, reading, walking, WLTM lady 35-45, must be the English Rose type, for friendship and possibly more.’ Of the three English Roses who responded to my advert one must have been at least sixty, another was almost certainly a transvestite, and the third, although the possessor of a GSOH, looked like SHIT.

  I tried one further advert, which produced one response, from a woman who had ‘mistakenly become a lesbian and was looking for a way back’, and then threw in the towel.

  *

  It broke Auntie Betty’s heart when I told her I had cancer. She cried for ages, and went on forever about how unfair it was. Why hadn’t God taken her instead? She was seventy six, she’d had her life, I was only just turned fifty. I didn’t say anything when she mentioned God. That was her business, let her have her illusions. At least she didn’t go around knocking on people’s doors and telling them all about him and shoving pamphlets in their face.

  When she’d finally finished crying Auntie Betty told me that I’d best put my affairs in order.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ....Uncle Sid’s funeral last week. All the mourners were sat there at the crem, saying things people say at funerals.

  “He's going to a better place.”

  No he isn't, he's going into the oven then up the chimney. He'll only go to a better place if the wind's in the right direction and it blows him to The Bahamas. If it's in the wrong direction he could end up in a worse place, he could end up in Accrington or somewhere.

  “Well at least he managed to hold on until his cold weather payment went into the bank.”

  “We haven't got to kneel have we, Doris? Because I'll never get up with my knees.”

  All Uncle Sid's grandchildren were there. Texting each other.

  “This is so not me.”

  Cousin Annie was there, with her little boy.

  “Mam, is he going to be buried or crucified?”

  “I'll crucify you if you don't shut it you little bugger.”

  Uncle Sid's four sons carried his coffin down the aisle, tipped down at one corner and gently undulating because Cousin Dwayne is about a foot shorter than the other three and Cousin Shane has a club foot. The whole event was being tastefully videoed by Six Feet Under Videos.

  “Can you take him back outsi
de and carry him down the aisle again just one more time? Only there was an aeroplane in shot.”

  An aeroplane?

  “That little boy's tearing pages out of the hymn books and making aeroplanes out of them; you'll need to keep him under control. Oh and bearers, is that as straight as you can get the coffin because the wreath's going to fall off again if you’re not careful.”

  They set off back down the aisle to start again.

  “Where are they taking him now? He won’t know whether he’s coming or going.”

  “He’s going.”

  “Well tell them to get on with it, they’ll have me missing Countdown if they don’t get a move on.”

  That's my Auntie Hilda, six vowels, five consonants, no brain....

  Click!

  I switched off the DVD player. Peter Kay is my favourite comedian but not even his latest million-selling DVD Apparently A Bungalow Isn’t Good Enough For My Mother, Now She Wants A Bloody Mansion The Greedy Cow could cheer me up.

  I would like to have been Peter Kay. Or any successful stand-up comic come to that. I often used to think what a wonderful feeling it must be to be up there on stage making the whole audience laugh, to bathe in the warmth of the waves of laughter flowing over the footlights. A countrywide sell-out tour, culminating in week at the MEN Arena, Manchester. Bring it on.

  After I’d been made redundant and it had quickly become evident that getting another job was going to be virtually impossible I’d thought briefly of trying to become a stand-up. Well why not? It wouldn’t cost anything to try. I can be quite funny; I knew that, people were always telling me. The milkman thought I was a scream. But the milkman was selling me milk and a strawberry yoghurt every day, he wasn’t what you might call an impartial observer, and even if he hadn’t been selling me milk and yoghurt it’s one thing making the milkman laugh with a joke about not being able to get an erection since I’d changed to sterilized milk, quite another getting up in front of an audience and making it laugh.