Stairlift to Heaven

by Terry Ravenscroft

  It all reminds me of a sketch I once wrote for my radio series Star Terk Two, in the eighties.

  A NEWSAGENTS SHOP. DAVE WALKS UP TO THE COUNTER WHERE THE NEWSAGENT IS SERVING.

  DAVE: Could I put a Valentine’s Day message in next week’s Advertiser, please?

  NEWSAGENT: Of course. What would you like to say?

  DAVE: ‘To my darling Jenny, lots of love, Dave.

  NEWSAGENT: (WRITES IT DOWN) ‘To my darling Jennypoos, lots….’

  DAVE: Jenny.

  NEWSAGENT: What?

  DAVE: Just ‘Jenny'.

  NEWSAGENT: No ‘poos’?

  DAVE: No.

  NEWSAGENT: It isn’t any extra.

  DAVE: I don’t want a ‘poos’, thank you.

  NEWSAGENT: Suit yourself. (WRITES IT DOWN) ‘To my darling Jenny, lots of love, Davey Wavey.

  DAVE: Dave.

  NEWSAGENT: Pardon?

  DAVE: Just Dave. And another thing, you don’t spell ‘lots of love’ like that.

  NEWSAGENT: You do. (SPELLS IT OUT) L..O..T..Z..A..L..U..V. Lotzaluv.

  DAVE: Yes well when I went to school it was three separate words, ‘Lots’, ‘of’ and ‘love’. So I’d like it like that, please.

  NEWSAGENT: Well you’re the one who’s paying I suppose. So that’s ‘To my darling Jenny....megasqidgeons of love, Dave’.

  DAVE: ‘Lots’ of love.

  NEWSAGENT: ‘Megasquidgeons’ is another way of saying ‘lots’.

  DAVE: Not on my Valentine’s Day message it isn’t.

  NEWSAGENT: ‘Oodles of squidgeons of love’?

  DAVE: ‘Lots’of love.

  NEWSAGENT: ‘Lots of squidgeons of….?

  DAVE: Just ‘Lots of love’!

  NEWSAGENT: Right. ‘To my darling Jenny, lots of love, Dave….(UNDER HIS BREATH)…ey diddle dum doos.’

  DAVE: What?

  NEWSAGENT: Nothing.

  DAVE: What’s that you’ve written down?

  NEWSAGENT: What you told me.

  DAVE: Let me see. Move your hand....My name is not Davey diddle dum doos!

  NEWSAGENT: Oh come on, this is a Valentine’s Day message; people always use silly names for Valentine messages.

  DAVE: Well I don’t.

  NEWSAGENT: Oh lighten up for God’s sake, it’s only a bit of fun.

  DAVE: No it isn’t, using silly names is stupid and childish. So I’ll just thank you to put ‘To my darling Jenny, lots of love, Dave’.

  NEWSAGENT: Very well then, if you insist. (WRITES IT DOWN) ‘To my darling Jenny, lots of love, Dave.

  DAVE: Thank you.

  NEWSAGENT: And your full name and address please?

  DAVE: Mr Dave Droopydrawers, 22 Acacia Avenue....

  ****

  March 14 2007.TREE SURGEONS.

  It’s spring again, the time of year when you get men in green boiler-suits knocking on your front door asking you if you want any of your trees topped, lopped, felled or otherwise assaulted. The tree-felling close season is over and they’re raring to go with their screaming chainsaws at the drop of a tenner. “That one needs to come down. What, tree that size? It wouldn’t surprise me if the roots aren’t right under your conservatory already, leave it much longer and your floor will be like the deck of the Titanic at iceberg time, just you see if it won’t.”

  Tree surgeons are only marginally easier to get rid of than Irishmen who have some tarmac left over from a job up the road and who for a mere couple of hundred pounds will re-tarmac your drive with it to the depth of the thickness of the walls of a condom.

  A few years ago, tired of the annual intrusions of the tree-fellers, I devised a plan to rid myself of them with the minimum of fuss. I would simply tell them that my house was for sale, and I was therefore not about to spend any money on it as obviously this would only be to the benefit of the new owner. It had always worked like a charm. Until yesterday.

  “Good morning sir, Ace Tree Surgeons,” the ace tree surgeon on my doorstep announced. “Do you want any of your trees’ branches pruned or trees felling?”

  On his green boiler-suit, underneath the letters Ace Tree Surgeons, was a little motif of a tree surgeon at work on a tree, should I think he was a man from Mars. As he went through his opening spiel the ace tree surgeon was expertly eyeing our small oak tree and no doubt the probable distance of its roots from our conservatory.

  “Sorry, we’re moving house,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said, disappointed.

  He almost went, but then turned and stood his ground, clearly not completely happy with my excuse. “Where’s your sign?”

  My reply was the old standby of a person found out in a lie. “What?”

  He pointed across the road to the ‘For Sale’ notice planted on the Rigby’s front lawn. “Your ‘For Sale’ sign? Where is it?”

  My first thought was to tell him that a tree surgeon had cut it down yesterday in mistake for my oak tree whose roots were about to undermine the floor of the conservatory, but he was a big bloke and I wasn’t at all sure he’d appreciate the wit of this cutting riposte. “Kids stole it,” I said, “Little sods will pinch anything round here.” and closed the door quickly before he offered to massacre them for me with his chainsaw, only a tenner.

  ****

  April 3 2007. PETER KAY.

  About a couple of months ago I wrote some comic material, some short routines, and sent them to Peter Kay via his agent. I hadn’t done any scriptwriting for ages but I was inspired to after my daughter had loaned me some of Peter Kay’s CDs, one of which was ‘Live at Bolton Albert Hall’, which I had enjoyed enormously. A funny man, Peter Kay. Performing the sort of material I could write. I wrote. There follows an extract from one of the scripts I sent to him, selected not because it’s the best one but because it’s about being old.

  .....I mean you can’t set foot outside the house nowadays without bumping into about two dozen old people in a walking party. Why can’t they stop in and sit in the corner smelling of mothballs and trumping like they used to? (PULLS A FACE, WAFTS AWAY A SMELL. CALLS) ‘Get some more moth balls when you go out would you, Dorothy’. But no, they’re all out there, in the gear - bob hat, waxed jacket, corduroy trousers, waterproof leg bindings, map, compass, binoculars, haversack, one of them special walker’s sticks with a spike in the end and enough equipment for an assault on Everest - and they’re only going for a half-mile walk along the canal. They used to call it rambling. They should still call it that because they all ramble.... ‘Nice here isn’t it’….‘Lovely. Not as nice as Turkey though’….‘What?’.....‘Not as nice as Turkey’....‘Right. Although given the choice I’d always have chicken .....’

  You can tell the leader because he’s got a beard and more badges on his waxed jacket than the others. (WALKS SMARTLY ON SPOT, TURNS TO CALL BEHIND) ‘Try to keep up will you.’

  ‘It’s these new boots.’

  ‘Did you treat them with dubbin like I told you?’

  Hey, that brings back memories, dubbin. When I were a kid we used to have to rub it into our football boots - when football boots were football boots, not these carpet slippers they wear nowadays. ‘And Giggs is running down the wing with the ball seemingly stuck to his feet.’ If he’d rubbed about a pound of dubbin into each boot like we had to the ball would be stuck to his feet. The problem wasn’t getting the ball to stick to your feet it was trying to get it off once it had stuck there. There was no blasting it into the net from the edge of the penalty area in those days, if you wanted to score you had to run into the net. (HE RUNS PONDEROUSLY, DRAGGING ONE OF HIS LEGS, AND THROWS HIMSELF INTO AN IMAGINARY GOAL. THEN DETACHES AN IMAGINARY BALL FROM HIS FOOT AS THOUGH IT WERE AS HEAVY AS A CANNONBALL, TOSSES IT AWAY IN TRIUMPH BUT WITH A GOOD DEAL OF EFFORT) Well footballs were heavy in those days. Bend it like Beckham? If he kicked one of the footballs I used to have to play with the only thing that would bend would be his foot.

  ‘Well, did you treat them with dubbin then, like I told you to?’


  ‘They didn’t know what dubbin were at Tesco’s. She said try t’ deli counter. They’d never heard of it either so I bought an onion bahji.’

  ‘Did you think of trying a shoe shop?’

  ‘They don’t have loyalty cards at t’shoe shop.’

  ‘I’m tired, can we stop for a rest?’

  ‘We’ll be late for our bar snack if we stop, it’s booked for twelve and we’re already an hour behind schedule.’

  ‘I hope they know I can’t eat chips with my stomach.’

  ‘I want to go to the toilet.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go before we set off?’

  ‘I didn’t want to go then.’

  ‘I went before we set off but I want to go again, it’s me prostate.’

  ‘Have you tried rubbing dubbin on it?’

  And so it goes on. ‘Try to keep up’ ‘Can we stop for a rest’ ‘I want to go to the toilet’ I reckon that once people reach the age of forty they mentally start to go back in years instead of forward so by the time they’re seventy they’re ten again. If a man is aged seventy nine it’s like he’s one year old again - no teeth, no hair and no control over his bodily functions. And once they get into their seventies they start being childish again. Telling tales about each other, that sort of thing. ‘Her next door is behind with the rent again. And Hitler was alive when she last paid her poll tax. I believe she’s thick with the postman as well’. They say that in Bolton, ‘thick with somebody’ when they mean friendly with them. They don’t say ‘thin’ with them if you’re unfriendly with them though. They say you’re being a twat with them....’

  I never got a reply. So about a month later I sent them again, in case they’d got lost in the post. Nothing. I could believe they’d got lost once but not twice. I was disappointed, because even if Peter Kay had thought the scripts weren’t the sort of thing he was looking for he could at least have had the grace to reply. I remember many years ago sending some material to Jimmy Tarbuck when I was trying to get started as a scriptwriter. He wrote me a very nice note back, saying thanks very much for my interest but he already had a couple of scriptwriters he was happy with.

  A week or two later I played another of the CDs my daughter had loaned me. This one was from his first television series, ‘That Peter Kay Thing’. About halfway through, talking about his birth, Peter’s character said, “My mother was a long time in labour with me because it was two days before the doctor realised she still had her tights on.” A very funny line. In fact just as funny today as it was when I wrote it for Les Dawson as part of his opening monologue for an episode of ‘The Dawson Watch’ we did about the National Health Service in 1979.

  So apparently although my material wasn’t good enough to warrant a reply, much less good enough to buy, it was quite good enough to steal. I wrote again to Peter Kay, saying as much. And guess what? I didn’t get an answer again. I will say no more. Except that I still think he is very funny. But not thin with me.

  ****

  April 27 2007. THE OLYMPIANS.

  I’ve always believed that walking is the finest exercise you can have apart from sex, and like sex can be perfectly free - unless you start buying special clothes and equipment for it and call it hiking or golf - and at the age of sixty-six I still walk five miles every day just for the sheer pleasure of it.

  It was while I was out walking and passing through the local park on the way to the canal for one of my regular trips along its towpath that I chanced upon an abandoned Zimmer Frame at the side of the path.

  It immediately struck me what an unusual thing it was to abandon. I can understand people throwing away prams, their owners having no further use for them once their children have learned to walk, but I would have thought once you have found you need a Zimmer frame to help you get around you’d need one for life. It crossed my mind that maybe its former owner had been suddenly cured by a faith healer and having no further need of it had dramatically cast it away, a bit like the cripple who, on being cured by Jesus, had taken up his bed and walked. Or perhaps it had simply been thrown away by someone who had taken delivery of a new, lighter, faster, aluminium, tungsten-tipped , you-must-have-the-very-latest Zimmer Frame? I don’t know. Anyway it was there in the park and I found it.

  You have to take your opportunities for a bit of fun when and where you find them so when I noticed a man of about my age approaching I picked up the Zimmer Frame, twirled it round my head a couple of times, and heaved it into the distance. It had not long since been announced that Britain had been granted the 2012 Olympic Games, and with it the Paralympics, and it was probably this, and the thought I’d just had about cripples taking up their bed and walking, that put the idea into my head.

  After I’d gone to recover the Zimmer and started to walk back the man had stopped to watch, and now looked on, puzzled. I turned to him and said, a little self-critically, “Not bad.”

  His face was a picture of inquisitiveness. “What are you doing?”

  “Training for the Paralympics.”

  “Paralympics?”

  “Throwing the Zimmer Frame,” I explained. “Apparently the host country can pick an entirely new event and Britain has chosen ‘Throwing the Zimmer Frame’. It just nudged out the ‘Hop, Hop and Hop for the One-legged’ I believe.”

  I returned with the Zimmer to the spot from which I’d thrown it. Two twirls round my head and I launched it again. This time it went about five yards farther.

  “Better,” the man observed, encouragingly.

  “Yes, must be close to my PB that one,” I said, sounding pleased with myself. “That’s Personal Best,” I explained.

  “Yes I know, I’m a fan of athletics,” he said. He thought about it for a moment. “Can anyone enter?”

  I shrugged as though I didn’t really know. “Well I suppose. You’ll need a Zimmer Frame of course.” I had a thought. “It’s possible you could qualify for a grant - you might be able to get funding for one if you show you any promise, I’m sure I’ve heard of pole-vaulters getting grants for fibre glass poles.”

  I retrieved the Zimmer and made to throw it again.

  “Can I have a go?”

  I handed him the Zimmer. He drew his arm back and threw it as hard as he could. It landed a good ten yards farther than my last effort.

  “You’re a natural,” I said.

  “Wasn’t bad was it,” the man said, pleased with himself. “For a first stab at it.”

  First stab at it! I had him hooked. I commenced to reel him in. “I tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you get a Zimmer Frame of your own and join me? Apparently there’s going to be an individual competition and a Pairs, one of you throws the Zimmer and the other one throws it back, sort of piggy in the middle but without the piggy. Then there’s a team event, the four man lob - I think that involves passing on the Zimmer to the next thrower like a baton, but we’d need another two for that. I train every morning at ten.”

  He said he’d be there the following day, prompt.

  Atkins, never a man to turn down the chance of a bit of fun, joined me for my next Throwing the Zimmer Frame training session at ten the following morning.

  Ever resourceful, Atkins already had his own Zimmer Frame, having picked it up at a charity shop some time ago in readiness for when the time comes when he’ll need one, and employed in the meantime in his back garden as a support for his climbing strawberries.

  We arrived at the park to find that the man whom I met yesterday, Mr Jefferson it transpired, was accompanied by two of his friends, who were also interested in training for the Throwing the Zimmer Frame 2012 Paralympics event. They looked to be aged about seventy. One was introduced as Mr Barnaby, the other, a Scot, was Mr Ross. It turned out that Atkins knew Mr Jefferson. He had been Atkins’s milkman years ago before he ran off with a woman from across the road - Mr Jefferson that is, not Atkins - which had forced Atkins into making his milk arrangements with the Co-op. Atkins mentioned this to him, and that he had been left milk-less and
strawberry yoghurt-less for a time, and Mr Jefferson apologised profusely. Atkins said there was no need to apologise, if he himself had been running off with the woman from across the road the last thing he would have had on his mind would have been someone’s milk and strawberry yoghurt because she was a cracker. Mr Ross remarked what a small world it was, Mr Jefferson said it certainly wasn’t big enough because the cracker’s husband had found them and given him a right going over, and then we got down to some serious training.

  Before we did this however Mr Barnaby felt constrained to point out that he didn’t actually use a Zimmer Frame - the one he had brought along was his wife’s - and enquired as to whether it was in the rules of the competition that a competitor had to be an actual Zimmer Frame-user, as if this was the case he didn’t want to waste his time training up for the event only to be denied at the last moment. I confessed that I didn’t know but asked him who was to prove otherwise? I also pointed out that the Paralympic Games were over five years away and by then he could quite possibly be genuinely in need of a Zimmer Frame, as indeed might the rest of us. This seemed to satisfy him.

  Before we got down to some serious training I added a refinement in the shape of an 8 feet diameter circle, rather like the circle one sees in the sport of ‘Throwing the Hammer’, which I painted on the grass with some white emulsion left over from when we had our bedroom ceilings decorated.

  The training went very well, the only problem being that Mr Ross, who is a genuine Zimmer Frame user, fell flat on his face every time he threw his Zimmer Frame. I assured him that this wouldn’t lead to disqualification as the rules stated that provided the competitor didn’t step out of, or in his case fall out of, the circle, it would be deemed to be a fair throw.