Lockers rings in the new year with more mayhemic mallarkey
Jan 12 2009
A bad jumper, chasing birds, eating Quality Street, then washing it all down with whisky...
By Mike Lockley
HEARD about the new morning-after pill for men? It changes their blood type.
THERE was one day in the holiday when I didn’t stop eating - more grazing, really.
Perhaps I’m like a cow. I’ve got two stomachs. No, I counted them in the big mirror last night. There are four.
That’s why going back to work was so arduous. By 11am my body went into shock because it hadn’t had a Quality Street washed down with whisky and dry ginger.
The woman in charge of first aid gave me a Twiglet to suck on.
Heaven knows how much weight I’ve put on. We’ve got a set of talking, computerised scales which whisper when my wife goes into the bathroom.
When I go in, they squeal: “Don’t let him hurt me again!”
Apparently, I was miserable over the festivities - again. By the third re-run of The Sound of Music - nothing against Julie Andrews, but I was baying for the Nazis to find her and the kids - I snapped. I grabbed a bottle, made my excuses to gathered relatives and retreated to another room to enjoy alcohol-sodden solitude.
“You hid in the loo,” scowled my wife. “There was a queue.”
I was also miserly, apparently. When relatives arrived, I concealed the good booze and plied them with plonk so rich in anti-freeze they could’ve walked Ben Nevis starkers and not felt a thing.
“I’d love a bottle of real ale,” announced my brother-in-law. I told him we hadn’t got any and handed over a can of Romanian lager which tastes vaguely of charcoal.
“You’ve never drunk the entire case of Jester’s Scrotum we bought you for Christmas already?” he exclaimed.
I lied that I’d doled out the beer to visiting carol singers. We were out of chocolates.
“Handing out strong ale to kids!” scoffed the relative. “Isn’t that morally wrong?”
“Like asking for your Christmas presents back?“ I snapped.
My wife even wanted to crack open the champagne we’ve been keeping for a special occasion. We bought it in 1992.
“1992,” nodded my brother-in-law, reading the bubbly’s gold label, “a very good year,”
Not really. Someone ran over our cat.
I always get maudlin on New Year’s Eve. This year, with the credit crunching biting, I was positively tearful. When that bloke came in the pub clutching a lump of coal, I told him we hadn’t got any money on us at the moment and could we pay for it in a couple of week’s time. Force of habit.
“How many more of these have I got to look forward to?” I sighed, clutching a pint pot as revellers in the crowded snug cranked-up the party.
“Not many,” admitted Mine Host, “the barrel’s almost empty.”
I wasn’t on about the beer. I was on about life. In 2009 I’m going to do all the things I’ve dreamt of doing before it’s too late.
“I think you’ll find she’s happily married now, with three kids,” chipped-in Colin. “And she lives in Carlisle.”
I wasn’t on about childhood sweethearts, I pointed out acidly. “I mean things like swimming with dolphins.”
“That’s a non-starter,” huffed my drinking companion. “They won’t let you take them into our public baths. I know - I tried.”
“We’re at an age,” advised Colin, “when we live our lives through our kids.”
That’s a bit of a hammer blow. Mine hasn’t moved from a computer screen for three days.
We were thinking of buying him a commode for Christmas.
I’d like a bit of excitement, something to get the adrenalin flowing. “You haven’t seen the visa card bill yet, then?” chided She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.
I’m going to get fit this year.
“I wouldn’t bother,” said Colin. “I bought a six month gym membership and put on two stone. You have to turn up, apparently.”
It’s not too late for a complete life-change. Take him over the road. He did the same thing, day in, day out, for 40 years. Got up at the same time, arrived home at the same time, had his tea at the same time. Then suddenly, one day, he…
“…had his left leg amputated,” butted in Julie.
MY ITALIAN father-in-law hasn’t yet got the hang of doling out Christmas presents.
This season he bestowed on me a cardie that he’d originally bought for himself , but wore once and, to use his words, thought it looked naff.
Some things are better left unsaid. It is, however, the thought that counts: the ‘thought’ on this occasion being, ‘who can I offload this naff cardie on? I know - my son-in-law’.
It’s apparently the first item of clothing a charity shop has refused on grounds of taste - and the charity shop in question was displaying a chamois leather Elvis jockstrap in its window.
Such acts of selflessness underline why he was a successful businessman.
I’m lucky, really. He had to buy a new pair of dentures just before the break. I was concerned I’d end up with the old ones. That would’ve been a very interesting gift to unwrap under the tree. “It’s…it’s…a set of false teeth. How did you know I was planning to get my real ones kicked out in the New Year?”
In the early 80s I bought a pair of Y-fronts with Bruce Lee’s image on the gusset. I’m going to dig the purple monstrosities out and hand them to him.
Out of duty, I’ve worn the thing. If I’d strutted into work with an albatross round my neck, fellow workers would’ve been less shocked.
One said I looked like Val Doonican’s delinquent kid brother.
“Christmas present?” enquired a colleague, desperately trying to hide a smirk.
“Not exactly,” I answered, shuffling uncomfortably. “It was passed on to me by someone else.”
“Bloody hell,” he laughed, “the world’s first ‘chain cardie’. If you can’t find someone to send it to within seven days do you get a lifetime’s bad luck?”
“Guess what?” he added, fingering the fawn-coloured fashion disaster. “You’ve just got yourself a lifetime’s bad luck.”
A GLORIOUS break embracing the country pursuits that are part and parcel of New Year celebrations in our rural backwater.
For the first time, I enlisted as a beater on the big pheasant shoot: one of a merry band of yokels employed to flush out the birds by making as much noise as possible.
Most had dogs, I had a recorder - a wind instrument my son briefly flirted with at primary school.
Tell you what, those birds hated my rendition of Three Blind Mice.
At one point I got tangled on barbed wire while straddling a fence, which was a tad embarrassing: the fact a spaniel tried to do something despicable to my leg while I was trapped there is still a source of much mirth in our local.
The mutt finally dumped me for a passing black Labrador, which does nothing for your ego.
The ‘guns’ - those folk rich enough to shoot the fowl - are governed by a strict code of sportsmanship.
The birds must be flying at a certain height before they can be shot - a gesture I’m sure they appreciate (you can almost hear them croak the pheasant equivalent of ‘thank you’ as they tumble to the earth). And you can’t shoot a beater, unless you can prove he wandered in front of the shotguns.
I wandered in front of so many, they put me on suicide watch.
“Hopefully,” said the shoot’s head honcho after four hours of yomping across some of Shropshire’s more remote, mud-splattered corners, “we’ve shown you ours is not a barbaric pastime. Every bird is given a sporting chance.”
“It’d be a bit more sporting,” I pointed out, “if you handed the pheasants shotguns, too.”
WHY do we, as a family, each year endure the humiliation of the New Year pub quiz?
The picture round was particularly painful. “How on earth could anyone get that?” I huffed as the MC read out the answer to Question Three. “The reproduction was terrible - it could’ve been anyone in that photo.”
“The answer we were looking for was Bonnie Langford,” boomed the quiz master. “Perhaps you’d like to tell fellow contestants what you wrote down?”
