Misadventures

by Sylvia Smith

  I noticed it was fine weather during her holiday and I thought she must be thoroughly enjoying herself, especially as she was visiting ‘the old country’.

  The week after her return I rang her doorbell and heard Prince, the poodle, barking away as usual, but Mr Murphy greeted me. I asked him, ‘Where is Mrs Murphy?’ He replied, ‘Go in the front room and see.’ I did as he said and saw her sitting in an armchair as white as a sheet, wearing her night clothes and looking very unwell. ‘What happened to you?’ I asked, ‘And what about your holiday?’ She replied, ‘As soon as I got to the hotel I got sick and had to go to bed and the doctor was called. He said I either had a touch of food poisoning or a tummy bug, and I spent the entire week ill in bed. I was very very ill and when we came back I had to travel to and from the plane in a wheelchair. My eldest son met us at Heathrow and it was a great relief to get home. I was terribly disappointed and it’s such a waste of money. The hotel alone cost me three hundred and sixty pounds.’ She paused and sighed, ‘Oh, well that’s life, isn’t it?’

  Mrs Murphy slowly climbed the stairs to bed and I got on with the cleaning of the house. When I had finished she called me to her room. ‘Here’s your money, Sylvia,’ she said and gave me my wages. She delved into her purse and held her hand out again, saying. ‘And this is last week’s money too.’

  1994

  RAF

  Raf was forty-five and originated from Guyana. He ran two cut-price clothing stalls on the pavement outside a pub in Leyton High Road. I was forty-nine.

  I would pass Raf’s clothing stalls on my way to the shops and often stopped to see his latest ranges.

  One Thursday I bought the local newspaper and was amazed to see an article about him on the front page. It stated that Raf was suing the pub for the rent he had paid them since trading there. The reason he made headline news was because he should not have paid any rent at all as the pavement is public property.

  I saw Raf the following day and I said to him, ‘I’ve been reading about you. You’ve been paying rent and you shouldn’t have. Is that right?’ He laughed and replied, ‘Yes, and the publican doesn’t want to know. I’ve been paying sixty pounds a week rent to this pub for the last eleven years and I didn’t realise this was wrong until a policeman pulled up two weeks ago and asked me for my Street Trader’s Licence. I said I didn’t need one and he said I did. He went to see his superiors to settle the argument and it turned out he was right. The pub doesn’t own the pavement, the local council does. So I’ve got to get myself a Trader’s Licence otherwise I’ll be in court, and I’m suing the pub because they won’t give me my money back.’

  One year later the brewery sold the pub. The new owners decorated the outside with hanging baskets of flowers and they didn’t want Raf’s stalls hiding their frontage. Raf refused to move until they offered him the use of a small shop they owned around the corner. Raf now has better premises for the same amount of rent but to date he is still in the process of suing the brewery for the back-rent he should not have paid in the first place.

  1994

  STEVE

  Steve was forty years old and lived upstairs from me with his boyfriend in a furnished flatlet. He was always very pleasant and friendly and he kept his accommodation spotlessly clean. I was aged forty-nine.

  Friday mornings I worked from ten until twelve every week cleaning the house of an elderly Irish lady, Mrs Murphy, whose home was far too big for her to cope with. One Friday she showed me the spin drier she kept in her cellar and said, ‘I bought this a couple of years ago when my washing machine broke down but I’ve only used it about six times and I don’t need it anymore. Do you know anyone who would like to buy it? It’s almost brand new, it’s in good working order and I only want ten pounds for it so it’s quite a good bargain.’ I could see it was in immaculate condition but my flatlet was already overcrowded. I replied, ‘It would suit me very nicely if only I had the space for it. As I haven’t I’ll ask the other people in the house to see if one of them would like It.’ Over the weekend I spoke to the other tenants but I didn’t find a buyer.

  A few weeks later Steve and his boyfriend moved into one of the apartments upstairs. John, another tenant, said to me, ‘Why don’t you ask Steve if he wants that spin drier?’ I thought for a moment and replied, ‘If he does, how about I ask twenty pounds for it and you can have five pounds as it was your idea and that will leave me five pounds profit after I’ve given Mrs Murphy her tenner.’

  Later in the day I saw Steve. I told him of Mrs Murphy’s bargain, quoting the increased price, and asked him if he was interested. He replied, ‘Yes please, that’s exactly what I need when I’m washing out my sweaters. Thank you very much for thinking of me.’

  I phoned Mrs Murphy and told her the good news and we arranged that John and I would make the collection that afternoon.

  Mrs Murphy was very pleased to see us and she was so delighted with her sale she said, ‘How about we go fifty-fifty on this, Sylvia? You give me five pounds and you can keep the other five pounds.’ I said, ‘That’s very nice of you, thank you,’ and gave her a five pound note.

  John and I giggled as we carried the spin drier home and up the stairs to Steve, who gave me the twenty pounds we had agreed. We returned downstairs to my flatlet to split the proceeds. I gave John five pounds and kept the remaining ten pounds.

  John said, ‘That’s what I call a very nice “sting”.’

  Steve was not quite so honest either. He moved out of his apartment two months later and smashed the pane of glass in one of the porch doors as he was taking his wooden bookcase out of the house. He telephoned Virginia, the agent, and told her the wind had done the damage in the night and Virginia believed him.

  1995

  COUSIN JUNE

  My cousin June was a wealthy widow with a desire to stretch her money as far as it would go. Her home was a beautiful bungalow near the coast. She was aged sixty-four. I was fifty.

  June’s only son Ivan was marrying for the second time. June decided to make the wedding photographs and wedding album a present to him and his future wife. Her next step should have been to hire a professional photographer to attend the wedding. Instead she asked her boyfriend Alan to take all the photographs.

  Ivan also had money. He and his bride were expensively dressed and married in style at a Registry Office. A lavish reception was held at the local Yacht Club, of which Ivan was a member.

  Alan snapped the happy couple throughout the ceremony and in the gardens of the Registry Office. He also went at great lengths to take as many photographs as possible of the bride and groom at the reception. Altogether he took over one hundred prints.

  June had the films developed and to her great dismay she discovered Alan was not the good photographer she had supposed. She was embarrassed to see pictures of the happy couple outside the Registry Office minus their feet but with a good shot of a clear sky, beautiful snaps of pot plants with the newlyweds squeezed into the left of the scene, many photographs completely out of focus and quite a few with missing foreheads.

  June submitted the wedding album to her son and new daughter in law with the comment, ‘Not all of the photos have come out as I had hoped.’ The eventual reply from her daughter-in-law was, ‘Thank God we had quite a few friends taking photographs otherwise we wouldn’t have had one decent snap of our wedding!’

  June had a woman friend she had known for forty years and they had spent much of their lives socialising together. Unfortunately this lady was suddenly widowed for the second time. June promptly ordered a lovely wreath and had it delivered on the day of the funeral. Some time after this event had taken place June was shocked to realise she had written the name of the first husband on the card attached to the wreath.

  1995

  THE OLD DUCK IN SAINSBURYS

  She was a frail old lady aged about seventy-five. I was a robust fifty.

  I was in Sainsbury’s supermarket waiting to pay for the food I had selected. The woman ahead of
me moved up a few paces as the shopper in front of her cleared the checkout. There was no space on the conveyor belt to place my goods so I stayed in the same spot holding the store’s wire basket. The old lady behind me saw the other person go forward and decided to do the same, which meant that she walked straight into me. Neither one of us altered our position so we were squashed together. As the conveyor belt cleared I placed my groceries on it and moved past the cashier to collect them. The old lady followed me and once more we were glued to each other. I didn’t make any comment and quietly filled my shopping bag. I gave the cashier a note from the purse I was holding, took my change and lightly lifted my left arm to open my handbag at the same time as the old lady bent down to pick up her carrier bag with the result that my elbow poked into her right eye. She covered her eye with her hand, softly uttering, ‘Oh, oh, oh.’ I said, ‘Sorry,’ and walked away.

  The four women behind the old lady were very concerned for her. ‘Are you alright?’ they asked. She replied weakly, ‘Yes, thank you.’ I turned to see them looking at me with disgust as I left the store.

  It was only a very gentle and completely accidental poke in the eye but I thought to myself, ‘That’s what you get for being difficult.’

  1995

  THE BLACK MAN IN TESCO

  I was aged fifty.

  It was a Tuesday afternoon and time for my weekly shopping trip. I made my way to Tesco’s supermarket and wandered into their fruit and veg section. I decided to buy a melon but unfortunately they were hard to my touch and I didn’t know whether they were ripe or not. Standing beside me was a tall, black man, aged about forty, choosing some grapes. I thought to myself, ‘These melons grow in a hot country and so did he so he must know all there is to know about them.’ I turned to the black man, holding the fruit in my outstretched hand, and asked him, ‘Could you tell me if this is ripe please?’ The black man looked at me and down at my hand. He must have realised my line of thought immediately. He didn’t say a word to me. He burst into laughter as he looked from the melon to my face. Some time passed and still he was convulsed with laughter. As he was unable to speak to me I replaced the melon on the shelf and moved to Tesco’s yoghurt department.

  1995

  THE MAN

  He was approximately fifty-three, I was fifty.

  It was a lovely summer’s day and I was walking to the shops in the High Road. As I turned a corner I saw a man bending over the boot of his car, packing various bags inside. He was wearing short white shorts. As I approached him I noticed a large, dark-brown stain on the linen covering the middle of his cheeks. I decided he had a touch of diarrhoea and had broken wind without realising he was spraying his clothing. I made no comment but my mind ran away with me. I wondered if perhaps he was going to the coast for the day and when he would discover his soiled apparel.

  1995

  I have now completed this book and I am taking it to an agent for him to decide whether or not it’s worth publishing, and I wonder if this is yet another misadventure. I will just have to wait and see.

  Praise

  More praise for Misadventures

  ‘There is something compelling about this chronicle of ordinariness as the years roll past with anecdotes of chance encounters at supermarket checkouts, minor illnesses, unfortunate investments and unsuccessful romances … a humorous and ultimately poignant read.’ The Bookseller

  ‘Misadventures is essentially a most peculiar autobiography. The crushing mundanity of it all becomes strangely involving and Smith’s matter of fact, deadpan delivery makes for oddly engaging reading.’ The List

  ‘As a kind of blank prose it is engaging. As literature it seems like a control experiment, a series of words devoid of the stylistic devices you expect. Somehow that doesn’t prevent it from being often howlingly funny.’ Scotland on Sunday.

  ‘I could not put down her unusual, deflated, hilarious book. It deserves to be a best-seller. But, if the rest of her life is anything to go by, it will be a flop.’ Observer

  ‘Is it utterly banal or fascinating?’ Express

  ‘Frank, funny and often farcical, Sylvia Smith’s first book has been hailed as a middle-aged answer to Sex and the City. This book is so deadpan, and the scenes she describes so extraordinarily ordinary, this is one of the most unusual you are likely to come across.’ Sunday Express

  ‘Like Fielding, Sylvia Smith has produced a comic chronicle of the daft boyfriends, embarrassing medical examinations, lopsided friendships and retail mishaps of an ordinary woman.’ Evening Standard

  ‘It’s a litany of small talk that somehow comes together to form a life. There’s something very beguiling about Misadventures.’ The Big Issue (Scotland)

  ‘Tipped to become this year’s bestseller.’ The Week

  ‘It manages, in an odd, inconsequential way, to be quite funny, and definitely memorable. It is certainly unlike anything else currently being published, which lends a sense of freshness, even originality, to the flat prose and uneventful anecdotes … Against all odds, Sylvia Smith has written something really interesting.’ The Big Issue

  ‘So far, Misadventures has had critics flummoxed – yet they’re all talking about it and it’s fast becoming cult reading. The unvarnished story of life as lived by silent millions, there’s something unusually genuine about it.’ Daily Mail

  ‘Told in a series of vignettes, each incident is a real-life misadventure – some amusing, some horrific, some banal, but all identifiable, engaging and in their own way fascinating. It’s not the entries here it’s the cumulative effect that echoes on long after you’ve finished the book.’ Buzz

  ‘She tells the facts as she sees them, and her honesty and humour make it all work.’ Bizarre

  ‘Sylvia talks rather like Dot Cotton, only a lot more slowly. Sylvia talks like Don Cotton on temazepam … Sylvia isn’t your average literary sensation. Sylvia is very, very un-Zadie.’ Independent

  ‘Sometimes sad, often funny, sometimes merely staggering in its banality – moreover, unquestionably well-written – the one thing this book never feels is “ordinary”.’ New Statesman

  ‘In a world where everyone must be someone, where a religion of pop psychology demands success from those who are no-one, where popular fiction has become a wilderness of hype and turgid syntax, where literary works are more about the author’s contacts than the content, Sylvia Smith is a breath of fresh air and surprises with an oasis of the ordinary.’ Irish Independent

  About the Author

  MISADVENTURES

  Born in East London to working-class parents as the Second World War was drawing to a close, Sylvia Smith ducked out of a career in hairdressing at the last minute to begin a life of office work. She slowly and completely accidentally worked her way up to the position of private secretary. She is unmarried with no children. A driving licence and a school swimming certificate are her only qualifications, although she is also quite good at dressmaking. Misadventures is her first book.

  Copyright

  First published in 2001

  by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street,

  Edinburgh, EH1 1TE

  This digital edition first published in 2009

  by Canongate Books

  Copyright © Sylvia Smith, 2001

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available

  on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84767 742 6

  www.meetatthegate.com

 

 

 
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