I'm in Heaven

by Terry Ravenscroft

  *

  Three months after returning to Earth, a month after being discharged from hospital, I had started work with Bob Hill, Plumber. My first job was less than auspicious - a blocked WC. “We get a lot of that,” my employer informed me, information that I, with my dislike of shit, could have done without. Sanitary towels were the cause of the blockage. “It’s usually when they have young girls in the house,” Bob said knowledgably, obviously an authority on the subject. “Their mothers warn them not to put them down the lavvy but they take no notice.” Far too much information already but more was to come. “But hairdressers are the worst, hairdressers’ shops. I think the customers save them for when they have their hair done. I go to one place at least once a month; I’m surprised I’m not invited to their Christmas party. ‘Hair Today’ it’s called. They ought to call it ‘Sanitary Towel Today’.”

  There were two more blocked lavatories that week. One on Tuesday, the other on Wednesday. The one on Tuesday was sanitary towels again, the one on Wednesday a teddy bear that a toddler had decided need a bath. It resurfaced from its short stay down the u-bend with a sanitary towel wrapped diagonally over one eye, giving it the appearance of Children in Need’s Pudsey Bear. And it was covered in shit of course. Pudsey Bear in Need. In need of a good scrubbing. I heaved when I saw it. There were no blocked lavatories on Thursday otherwise I might not have lasted until Friday.

  Even if my future hadn’t contained a seemingly constant stream of lavatories to unblock - and Bob Hill said the week’s tally was ‘about normal for the time of the year’. (Did it vary from summer to winter? Were there more lavatories to unblock in spring and less in the Autumn? I didn’t ask, I didn’t want to know.) Even if it had all been fitting central heating boilers and radiators and plumbing-in washing machines, even if friendly housewives had plied me constantly with tea and biscuits as I went about my work, even if the providers of tea and biscuits had been English Roses and offered me sex along with the Typhoo and chocolate digestives I would have jacked it in after the first week. I just couldn’t cope with it. It wasn’t just the plumbing and the shit; I wouldn’t have been able to cope with any job. The memories of my time in heaven were too strong. The wonderful, marvellous time I’d had there, especially the times with Kristin, were in my thoughts every minute of my waking hours, and many of my nocturnal ones too; I just couldn’t get them out of my head no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I tried to ignore them.

  “You’ve got to give yourself a bit of time, lad,” said Bob Hill, when I told him I was quitting. “You’ve had a rough time of it by all accounts.”

  Little did Bob Hill know that I’d had exactly the opposite of a rough time, and that it had given me a taste for the good things in life that even the most successful plumber would never be able to afford in his wildest dreams. How many new bathrooms would you have to fit to earn enough money for Manchester United to win five-nil every week? How many central heating systems would you have to install to tempt Kristin Scott Thomas into your bed? On a more realistic level, how many new washing machines would you have to plumb in to earn what a top stand-up comic makes?

  It was this last thought that prompted me to thank Bob for his sympathy but that my mind was made up. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. The following day I phoned each of Manchester’s comedy clubs to find out when their next open-mike nights were.

  *

  A sign pointed the way the town’s heritage centre. Having had enough of the park and feeling all my troubles boil to the surface again I took the short but stiff climb up out of the gorge to see what the centre had to offer. It just might grab my interest and temporarily lift my gloom for a bit.

  The walls were covered in information boards detailing the various developments in the town’s history, along with old photographs and posters – ‘Town Hall. Dance to Jimmy Armstrong and his Band. 1s/6d. Jiving or Be-Bop are Prohibited’; ‘The New Mills Brass Band, Est. 1812, will perform a Grand Victory Concert’; ‘1912 May Queen Celebrations in the park, floats, fancy dress, visiting Queens, All Welcome’. There was a coal mine tunnel, a reminder of the thirty pits the town once had, and tables and shelves containing old ledgers and books documenting the town’s history from its start as a farming community through its rapid growth and transition into a mill town - hence New Mills - during the Industrial Revolution, to its present function as a dormitory town for Stockport and Manchester. Pride of place was taken by a large model of the town as it was a hundred and fifty years ago with all the cotton mills, long since demolished, still standing. I noted that the high level bridge crossing the River Sett had already been built and a second bridge, that would be known as the Union Road Bridge, over the River Goyt, was still under construction. While I was looking at the model a man came over and spoke to me. I had been just about to leave but what the man said made me change my mind. And my future.

  I left the heritage centre then. To look down into the park under the town from the bridges above it. Before returning home.

  *

  The manager at the Frog and Bucket didn’t recognise me of course. Nor did the two would-be comedians who had been trying their luck the night I’d been doing likewise. It seemed strange because then the manager had been all over me with offers of work, and one of the two comedians had buttonholed me and asked me for tips. Well maybe the manager would offer me some work tonight, there was no reason why he shouldn’t, I had the material, I had the technique - we were talking here about a stand-up who had completed a sell-out one hundred night countrywide tour.

  It was a good night, the place almost full. Despite my track record I was nervous. I couldn’t ‘want’ the audience to like me, but I hadn’t done that when I was in heaven, both in the comedy clubs, eventually, and later on tour. I would be fine, I was sure, despite the nerves. Any butterflies in the stomach would disappear once I was out there, once I’d got my first laugh. And there were no drunks in the audience, I noted with relief, no one to shout out “Tell us one we haven’t heard you sad bastard.”

  The first two acts had gone down well, which was a further gratifying sign. And neither of them had been anything special - if the audience found them funny they’d find me hilarious. The third bloke wasn’t funny at all. Like most of the comedians who try out at comedy clubs his humour was in observation; the problem was he hadn’t observed very much. “Am I the only person in the world who wonders why the Queen always looks to the left on coins and looks to the right on stamps?” he asked the yawning audience. Well yes, probably you are, everyone else has better things to do with their time than gawp at stamps and coins to see which way the Queen happens to be looking. And that had been it. That was all the observation the observational comedian had observed; that the Queen always looks to the left on coins and looks to the right on stamps. He had no answer to this strange phenomenon, no amusing suggestions as to how it might have come about. That maybe Her Majesty looked to the left on coins because when she’d sat for the photo the photographer had told her it was her best side but when she’d sat for the stamp Prince Philip had blacked her left eye the night before.

  So, having been bored rigid by observations about the Queen’s head and which way it was looking on different units of exchange, and similar gems – by far the best of which was “My wife’s into Feng Shui, she keeps moving the furniture round for optimum happiness. She moved the wardrobe last night but it doesn’t look any happier to me” - the audience were in less than good humour when the fourth act up that night, me, took the stage.

  It went wrong from the start. “Are there any Muslims in the audience tonight?” The problem was that there weren’t. If there had been it all might have turned out differently.

  When I’d appeared at large arena venues I’d looked far into the audience and addressed a ‘pretend’ Muslim with the follow-up line of “Yes, you sir. Is that your wife with you? What do you mean, you’ve no idea, she’s wearing a burka?” But when you look out into the audience at the F
rog and Bucket - miniscule by comparison - you look directly at someone; there’s no alternative. And with no Muslims in the audience - and no wives present even if there had been a Muslim - I’d had to look at someone. Unfortunately the man must have been a member of the British National Party - or at the very least in sympathy with its ideals - as he immediately sprang to his feet and said in a threatening manner, “Who the fuck are you calling a Muslim you fucking arsehole?”

  It threw me completely. It would have thrown Peter Kay. “Sorry. I wasn’t meaning....sorry.”

  “Well just fucking watch it, twat.”

  “I’ve said I’m sorry. It’s just that....”

  “Oh get on with it,” came a raucous voice from the back.

  Pulling myself together I tried to do just that. “And talking about women who wear burkas how about the one who was up in court for making herself into a human bomb? Her parents said they were going to stick with her....” I realised my mistake the moment the words came out of my mouth and tried desperately to get back on course.“Stand by her. Her parents said they were going to stand by her.”

  But it was too late. The tag had been blown. I didn’t bother with another joke. I walked off the stage and straight out of the Frog and Bucket without stopping. I didn’t try again.

  *

  I crossed the first of the high level bridges, the Union Road bridge, and walked on to the second, the Queen’s bridge. The man who came up to me at the heritage centre had said, indicating the Queen’s bridge on the model of the town, “You see that bridge. Bloke chucked himself off it last week.”

  It was of course the answer to all my problems and I’d realised it immediately. I couldn’t think why I hadn’t thought of it before. Suicide. Jump off the bridge and seconds later I would be dead and back with Kristin.

  When I arrived at the Queen’s bridge I didn’t pause for even a second. Looking quickly to left and right to see if anyone was watching - there wasn’t but it wouldn’t have made any difference if there had been - I took a grip of the top of the iron railing, vaulted over it and plunged ninety feet to my certain death.

  When I hit the shallow water of the river I didn’t stop; I entered a tunnel, this time pitch black, and kept on falling.

  ****

  PART FOUR

  IN HELL

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I fell a further few feet beyond the end of the tunnel and landed flat on my back with a sickening thud. Every breath of air was knocked out of my body. I screwed my eyes tight shut in pain. My hands felt the ground beneath me. It was solid, hard to the touch. Had I missed the wooden bench in Piccadilly Gardens and landed on the pavement? Or maybe I wasn’t in Piccadilly Gardens, where I expected I’d arrive, maybe I was somewhere else, maybe I was still in New Mills, in New Mills heaven?

  No matter, all that was important was that I was back where I belonged; if I did happen to be in New Mills I could soon get the train back to Manchester, and from there on to Lymm, and Kristin.

  But wherever it was I’d ended up there was a heck of a racket going on. A large number of people were shouting excitedly, whistling, cheering, rebel-yelling. I forced my eyes open. The first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t outside; there was a ceiling high above me. Suspended from its rafters were what looked to be spotlights and loudspeakers. And were those TV sets hanging in mid-air? Where was this? I struggled painfully to a sitting position and looked around. I gasped in amazement. I was on the set of a huge television studio. In front of me was the studio audience. Behind me a huge television screen, sixty feet high or more, its screen split into nine sections in rows of three, like one side of a gigantic Rubik’s Cube. The whole screen and each of its sections was bordered by strobe lighting which pulsed on and off every second, a different garish colour for every pulse. Giant mirrors at either side, the same size as the screen, reflected and multiplied its nine sections into twenty seven. A battery of laser beams criss-crossed the screen from corner to corner, top to bottom, side to side. Dry ice carpeted the floor. Simon Cowell would have had a an orgasm.

  No sooner had I taken in the scene than a lantern-jawed presence with an artificial air and artificial hair minced towards me, stopped, leered down at me and said, “Nice to see you....to see you, nice. Welcome to hell. I’m your mentor. Your tormentor. ”

  “Fuck me,” I said.

  “I will be doing, Norman, I will be. And at every opportunity,” said Bruce Forsyth.

  The audience erupted.

  Bruce affected delighted surprise, turned to them and clapped his hands together. “What a wonderful welcome! Such a lovely audience. So much better than last week’s.”

  The audience replaced the whooping and hollering with laughter and warm applause.

  The object of their affection turned his cadaverous grin on me and said, “I bet you thought you’d be going to heaven, didn’t you?” Then, with another trademark leer at the audience “The fool!”

  The audience whooped and hollered and rebel-yelled even louder. Bruce encouraged them, arms outstretched, conducting them. Then, with a quick left to right sweep of his baton he silenced them instantly and said, “Tell Norman why he hasn’t gone to heaven, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.”

  “Because he’s committed a mortal sin,” the audience chanted as one. Bruce nodded sagely in agreement. “Right. Because he’s committed a mortal sin.” He turned to me and cupped an ear. “What’s that, Norman? You thought that was just for Catholics? Yes well you know what thought did, don’t you. Followed a muck cart and thought it was wedding. But in your case he thought he was going to heaven and he was going to hell. So how do you like those apples?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I was literally struck dumb.

  Bruce showed mock concern. “Aw. Cat got your tongue? I think Norman must be a bit shy ladies and gentlemen. Aw.”

  “Aw,” echoed the audience, taking their cue.

  Bruce turned his attention back to me. “Now where was I?” He thought for a moment then pretended to remember. “Ah yes.” He took hold of my hand as if to help me to my feet but immediately let go of it with an expression of distaste. “Ooh! Ooh, you’re all clammy. He’s all clammy, ladies and gentlemen.” He shook his head and tut-tutted. “Where have you been, Norman, you bad boy?” He shook his head in despair. “I don’t know, I really don’t. The things I have to do to make a living.” He took hold of my hand again as if holding a dead rat would have been preferable, put it on my stomach, felt around for a moment and placed it on my colostomy bag. I grimaced as I was reminded of it. This drew another smirk from Bruce. “Yes, it’s still there, Norman, this isn’t heaven you’re in now; this is a million miles from heaven.” Then, with a grin at the admiring audience he said, “And now I’ve got a little surprise for you. Because you’re my favourite. He’s my favourite, ladies and gentlemen.” He moved my hand a few inches to the left. I caught my breath. “That’s right, another colostomy bag, Norman. Your Brucie bonus. I know how much you like them.”

  The audience roared with laughter.

  The voice-over clown from Dancing on Ice now added his two pennyworth. “Ooh he didn’t like that!”

  The audience went wild.

  Bruce continued, by now at his oiliest. “But as you know, you get nothing for a pair....” He cued the audience.

  They responded. “Not in this game!”

  “So it’s on with the show. And what a show we have for you tonight ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, viewers at home.”

  At a signal from Bruce two stage hands carrying a hard-backed chair descended on me, hauled me bodily to my feet, dumped me on the chair, strapped me to it and span me round so that I was facing the huge television screen. Bruce turned to the audience and announced, “Let the entertainment begin.”

  To the biggest eruption of applause yet from the audience all nine sections of the television screen, augmented by their reflections in the giant mirrors, suddenly burst into life. I was completely engulfed in television
screens. They were showing nine of my most hated programmes - A Carry On film; Strictly Come Dancing; The X-Factor; Alan Carr, Chatty Man; Coronation Street; Britain’s Got Talent; Jonathan Ross presenting an awards show; Loose Women; and I’m a Celebrity Get Me out of Here. All in HD and Dolby Sound.

  For the next three hours I was forced to watch them while the studio audience whooped and hollered and laughed and screamed and rebel-yelled and applauded. The only break in the proceedings was when a member of the audience, suspected of having an IQ of over 30, was dragged out screaming and replaced with Prince Andrew.

  Every five minutes or so, for a few seconds, one of the programmes took on a starring role, zooming out of its section to fill the entire screen. The image of one of the perma-tanned uninformed nonentities who comprise the panel of the X-Factor suddenly became nine times larger and said to one of the totally untalented contestants, “You nailed it.” A clip from the cunt and tit show Coronation Street - “So Steve cunt come then?” “In tit a shame.” A scene from Carry on Cleo - “I’m sorry sir, but for the good of Rome you must die.” “But you’re my personal bodyguard and champion gladiator. I don’t want to die. Treachery! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”