I'm in Heaven

by Terry Ravenscroft

  It wasn’t the first time I’d toyed with the idea. The other times I’d done no more than that, just thought about it, daydreamed. But the thought of my mother’s likely reaction to my dreams had always stopped me doing anything about it: “What do you want to be a comedian for, you’re far too young; nobody should become a comedian until they’re a hundred.” So that’s just Bruce Forsyth then. Or Sir Bruce Forsyth as he’s recently become. Jesus Christ, talk about the bottom of the barrel being scraped; we’ve scraped right through the bottom of it and a yard into the ground beneath it.

  This time it was different though. There was no mother to pour scorn on me. This time I hadn’t got a job to go to keep me honest. This time I needed the money.

  I wrote a routine around how a good many Muslim bridegrooms don’t have a clue what their brides look like until after they’ve married them as they’d always worn the burka until then. I made plans to try it out on open-mike night at The Frog and Bucket or another of Manchester’s comedy clubs. Would it be funny enough? Were fame and riches just around the corner? Never mind fame and riches, was a half decent living round the corner? I thought my jokes were funny but, as a wise man once observed, a joke isn’t a joke until someone has laughed at it. When I’d rehearsed the routine in front of the mirror the cat hadn’t shown much enthusiasm but it hadn’t walked out, but would human beings be as tolerant as Whiskers?

  I thought of trying it out on the milkman but there was the sale of milk and yoghurt influence to take into consideration so he wouldn’t be much use. Nor would Uncle Reg and Auntie Betty; they would laugh anyway, Auntie Betty because she loves me and Uncle Reg because he’d laugh if his arse was on fire, so I still wouldn’t know if I was being funny or just deluding myself.

  In the end I never found out. I didn’t even make it to The Frog and Bucket let alone appear on its stage. I set out, but even on the bus I knew I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. I could see it coming a mile off; if no one laughed at my first joke I’d simply walk off the stage. And I couldn’t take the risk that happening what with the humiliation it would bring with it. It was the same flaw in my make-up that prevented me asking a girl for a date. The embarrassment of failure. I’d been fooling myself when I said it wouldn’t cost anything to try - the cost was injured pride if it didn’t work out and it was a price I couldn’t bring myself to pay.

  At that period in my life, and much as I tried to occupy my mind with other things, death was never far from my thoughts. Everything that came into my head seemed to work its way round to it eventually. It was like Six Degrees of Separation, except that I usually only needed five. Me....Hugh Gaitskill Street....Manchester....Manchester Southern Cemetery....Death. Me....My garden....Flowers....A wreath....Death. When I was feeling particularly down it took only four. Me....Go for a walk....Fall down an open manhole, land on my head and fracture my skull....Death.

  When I followed my Auntie Betty’s advice and sat down with pen and paper to put my affairs in order the whole process only took about ten minutes. There were only three things on it and one of those was ‘Cancel the milk’. There was even a question mark against that, as not knowing exactly when I was going to die I didn’t know when I’d need to cancel it. ‘I won’t be needing any more milk after June the third but I might just manage to hang on a bit longer’ wouldn’t be good enough. The other two items were ‘Make will leaving everything to Auntie Betty and Uncle Reg’ and ‘Find home for cat’.

  I didn’t have anything in the way of personal effects of any great value that my auntie and uncle would be interested in, just a few bits and pieces I’d give to one of the charity shops when the time came, and there was no property to leave, 12 Hugh Gaitskill Street is a council house. During the sale of the nation’s stock of council rented property in the eighties my mother had been offered the two-up two-down house at a favourable price - the cost would have been recouped inside ten years by not having to pay rent - but she had turned the offer down on the grounds that she might die before the ten years were up. (On exactly the same grounds she never took advantage of any ‘three for the price of two’ offers, preferring to buy one item at a time ‘to be on the safe side’. At a loose end one day I had guesstimated that over the course of thirty years this policy had cost her about fifty thousand pounds. When I told her this she said it was a pity I hadn’t anything better to do.)

  “It would be just like me to die the week after I’d bought it,” she said, when I suggested buying the house. “And then where would I be?”

  In that little wooden bungalow with no windows, Mother. “Well if you were dead it wouldn’t matter would it.”

  “I’m not being buried in debt, I wouldn’t be comfortable.”

  I’ll put a little mattress in with you and a duvet, maybe a hot water bottle. “You wouldn’t be buried in debt, they’d likely let me take the mortgage over.”

  “Yes you’d like that, wouldn’t you. So that’s what all this is about. Well I’m not buying it and that’s all about it.”

  Apart from Auntie Betty and Uncle Reg I hadn’t told anyone else I was going to die. I hadn’t even told Bob Hill, Plumber; when I told him I wouldn’t be starting work for him after all I lied that I’d had a better offer. I’d considered telling my mates down at my local, The Grim Jogger, but in the end didn’t as I knew they’d only start feeling sorry for me and I didn’t want that. They’d find out soon enough, anyway. And the council would find out when I stopped paying the rent; they were the least of my worries.

  After compiling the ‘Putting my affairs in order’ list I turned to ‘Things I want to do before I die’. It wasn’t something I had planned to do. It had been prompted when I’d been looking through the television listings to see if there was anything I could watch that evening, in the forlorn hope that the BBC or ITV might have managed to coax enough life back into one of the dead horses they were still flogging for it to make one final lurch down the racecourse. I hadn’t held my breath. I wouldn’t have bothered owning a TV set at all, with its indigestible diet of cookery programmes and reality shows and make-over shows, if it hadn’t been for the news and the occasional decent film or documentary. But there wasn’t even a film worth watching that evening, nothing that wasn’t an animated cartoon, which I’ve never cared for, or an offering that didn’t rely on CGI, cartoons for grown-ups who have never grown up, which I cared for even less.

  Amongst the day’s offerings, sandwiched between Chef of Chefs and Just Desserts, or maybe it was between Changing Partners and Granddad Swap, was The Bucket Men, a film about two terminally ill old men played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. I didn’t bother to watch it; I’d already seen it at the cinema, it was a four piss picture that kicked the bucket long before the old men did. (I have always subscribed to the Sam Goldwyn method of categorizing a film’s worth, whereby a great film is one which you can’t bear to leave to go to the lavatory for a pee in case you miss something; good films were one piss pictures, not bad films were two piss pictures, and so on.)

  The old men’s list had been much longer than mine, whose list was not much longer than my list of affairs to be put in order. I nearly didn’t make it at all. I didn’t see a lot of point. To my way of thinking ninety per cent of the pleasure of doing something is in the memories of having done it; having memories necessitates having a future and I hadn’t got a future now. I only compiled it to try to take my mind off things.

  At one time my list might have been a lot longer, but only because it would have comprised of things I’d long since forgotten about, probably when I realised there was little chance of my ever doing them, what with my mother.

  Making a list of things I didn’t want to do would have been far easier. Being a member of the studio audience at a recording of Strictly Come Dancing or The X-Factor would be at the top of it; closely followed in joint second place by watching a Carry On film and listening to rap music.

  There wouldn’t have been a problem when I was a boy. The list would have
been as long as my arm. It was a game I often used to play with Piggy Higginbottom, except that it wasn’t ‘I want to’ it was ‘I’m going to’.

  “I’m going to walk on the Moon like Neil Armstrong.”

  “I’m going to go to Hollywood and meet Roy Rogers.”

  “I’m going to meet Trigger.”

  “I’m going to go up in a hot air balloon.”

  “I’m going to have fish and chips for me tea every day.”

  “I’m going to play football for England”

  “I’m going to play cricket for England.”

  “I’m going to ride on a camel.”

  “I’m going to feel a girl’s bare breasts.”

  I’d already felt a girl’s breasts through her overcoat and jumper and it had been wonderful so what must feeling bare breasts be like? I could only imagine, and often did. Which led to, through the surprising but welcome arrival of an erection one day, another ‘I want to’; ‘I want to shag somebody’.

  Less than ten years later most of my young boy’s dreams had disappeared. Time, circumstances and my mother had seen to that. At twenty I had felt several girls’ bare breasts - the first time was a one-night stand under Blackpool central pier with a girl from Ramsbottom who said she worked in a greengrocers. Which had surprised me because from the smell of her I’d have thought she worked in a fishmongers. (I know better now.) She was a junior swimming champion, a girl with big shoulders and a big nose along with her big breasts - this was before I had developed a taste for English Roses - and yes, it was even better than wonderful, it was bloody marvellous.

  Riding a camel had been achieved too; I’d done that at Skegness when I’d gone on the Desert Experience, two hundred yards up the beach and back on a ‘Ship of the Desert all the way from Morocco’. The excursion had lived up to its promise of ‘making me feel just like Lawrence of Arabia’, although as far as I could remember Lawrence of Arabia’s camel hadn’t stopped for a shit on the way back.

  Now, short of ideas, I had turned to my good friend the internet to see what was on other people’s wish lists. Some of the things they wanted to do I wouldn’t have minded doing but couldn’t on the grounds of cost. The air fares alone to such places as Australia to ‘Scuba dive in The Great Barrier Reef’, to India to ‘See the Taj Mahal’ or to Brazil to ‘To go wild in Rio at the Mardigras’ would take far more money than I was able to put my hands on.

  Others, although affordable, didn’t appeal or were unobtainable. ‘Spend a night alone in a haunted house’. No thank you. ‘Make love on a train’. I had enough difficulty getting someone to make love to anywhere without narrowing the field to women who’d do it with me on the 16.40 to Oldham. ‘Fart in a crowded place’. I’d already done that lots of times and couldn’t imagine there was anyone who hadn’t, with the possible exception of the Queen and Joanna Lumley.

  A way round the problem of not having the money would have been to follow the example of Geoff Jenkinson, up the road. Geoff, on learning he had a terminal illness and only months to live, had taken out long-term loans with six different loan companies. In all he borrowed £120,000, and had paid back less than £5,000 when he popped his clogs. He spent the lot on having the time of his life while he still had a life in which to have it . His Saturday night parties were legend. I was lucky enough to be invited to a couple of them and at the first had been introduced to Crystal champagne, crack cocaine and a complimentary prostitute all in the first five minutes. I had taken advantage of the first two but, still intent on finding an English Rose, not the third.

  After much soul searching I opted to follow the Geoff Jenkinson method of funding wish fulfilments but after writing down the contact details of a number of loan companies I searched my soul a bit more and crossed them all out. Much as I would have liked to have taken their money - and a stream of letters through my letter-box constantly invited me to fill my boots with generous amounts of it - I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was stealing, and I’d never been able to steal, it wasn’t right, no more than it would have been right to fly the coop and leave my mother to fend for herself when my father died.

  I ended up with just four things on my list: take a holiday touring the West of Scotland - I’d once set off for Fort William with my mother in a Wallace Arnold coach but on the way she decided she didn’t like Scottish people so we’d got off at Junction 35 on the M6 and gone to Morecambe instead (very nice but she wouldn’t go again); see the Niagara Falls; watch all Manchester United’s matches in the forthcoming season, home and away; and have dinner at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quatre Saisons.

  Sadly, although it was something I would dearly love to have done, I had to strike from my list ‘Strangle Ant and Dec’, which I’d initially included for a bit of fun but later had started to think seriously about it. Well why not? It would have been a service to the nation. I’ve never got Ant and Dec. What are they for? What do they do? They can’t act, they can’t sing, they can’t dance and they’re about as funny as a walk round the park with a nail in your shoe. All they’re good at is being Ant and Dec, and Ant and Dec can’t act, can’t sing, etcetera. But tempting as ridding the world of them was, and it was, it was impractical; I mean what would Dec be doing while I was busy squeezing the last drop of life out of Ant? Not standing about waiting his turn that’s for sure. And although it would get rid of fifty per cent of them - Ant, as he’s slightly the more irritating of the two - it just didn’t seem fair to strangle one of them without the other. My sense of fair play manifesting itself again.

  Before I could make a start on the list I had to come to a decision. Mr Matthews, the oncologist at the hospital, had given me the choice of surgery or chemotherapy or both. ‘Both’ would be best, and was his recommendation; however none of the treatments would cure my cancer, just slow it down. Cancer with added extras.

  In considering which, if any, to opt for, I had looked up the side effects of chemotherapy, or ‘chemo’ as Mr Matthews called it, in what I suppose was an attempt to make it sound more user-friendly. Chemotherapy? Was he having a laugh?

  Apparently there are a hundred and fifty seven such side effects; I counted them. Removing from the list Vaginal Bleeding, Vaginal Dryness and Vaginal Infection, which I didn’t think I’d cop for, even with my luck, brought the total down to a hundred and fifty four.

  I’d never heard of most of them. Anaphylasix and Neutropenia were two of the most unwelcome sounding, but none were things I would wish to put up with a moment longer than I had to. Bone Pain, Blood Pressure, Bronchitis....Cataracts, Conjunctivitus, Cystisis....Deep Vein Thrombosis, Depression - Christ, who wouldn’t be depressed if you’d got that lot? - Dehydration, Dyspepsia.

  Amongst the more attractive things I could look forward to were Bladder Problems, Itching, Impotence, Nosebleeds, Dizziness, Diarrhoea and Farting. (I noted that if I had opted for ‘Farting in a public place’ as one of the things I wanted to do before I died that it wouldn’t now present a problem. Not that I had foreseen one; quite often my problem is stopping myself from farting in a public place.) Especially, I didn’t fancy my hair and teeth falling out, which were apparently near certainties. The list also included A Dry Mouth. I already had a dry mouth simply from reading about it so that just left a hundred and fifty three to go.

  I considered my position. Deciding whether to opt for just surgery, or surgery and chemotherapy, the choice was no better than Hobson’s. The former would possibly extend my life a little, but I would still die, the latter might extend it a bit longer and I would still die - but at the cost of experiencing any or all of the side effects and, after my hair and teeth had fallen out, looking like Gollum out of The Lord of the Rings whilst I was having them. However life, as the saying goes, is sweet, and especially so if you haven’t got a great deal of it left, so I bit the bullet, while I still had teeth left to bite it with, and opted for both.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In the event I didn’t do any of the things I wanted to do bef
ore I died, save for watching just one of Manchester United’s games - which they lost to a side they should have buried, the ‘it never rains but it pours’ principal kicking in again.

  The operation, performed just two weeks after my cancer had been diagnosed, followed almost immediately by the start of the chemotherapy treatment, had left me so drained of energy that I just couldn’t be bothered to make the effort. The only other thing I attempted, before I became too ill to travel all but the shortest distances, was a meal at Le Manoir aux Quatre Saisons.

  On taking a seat in the dining room of the two-Michelin starred restaurant I ordered one of famed chef Raymond Blanc’s signature dishes. However no sooner had I sat down than I started to feel sick - the chemotherapy - and by the time the dish arrived fifteen minutes later I felt so sick that if I’d eaten it I would have been in great danger of putting my own signature on it in the shape of a Technicolor yawn. There had been nothing for it but to leave it untouched. I was just grateful that Le Patron himself wasn’t there to see the apparent slight on one of his creations.

  If my problem had just been that I felt sick all the time it might have been bearable, but the ever-present nausea, from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night, was just the tip of the iceberg. Now seemingly every bone in my body ached, every muscle likewise. I had abdominal pain one day, chest pain another day, rectum pain on another, and on some days an unholy trinity of all three at the same time. The only time I didn’t have a bad headache was when I had an even worse headache. And I itched. All over. My genitals in particular itched. They still itched after I’d scratched them, but this might have been because I didn’t scratch them with the same intensity as the other parts of my body, probably because in the back of my mind was the fear that they might fall of and I would develop a vagina, and along with it the reinstatement of another three possible side effects.