Noggs Back Issues
And...?
Have you heard the story about the chap painting a sign for a fish and chip shop? He gets it done, like, and he calls the owner out to have a look - he's expecting a pat on the back and maybe a few bob extra. "Reckon I've done a damn good job there, although I says as shouldn't," he says. But the fish-and-chip man cocks his eye at it, a bit old-fashioned, like, and says "You've left too much space between fish and and, and and and chips".
Five ands in a row, you see. Clever, that. Five ands.
There's another one with seven thats, but that one don't flow half so well. Tried it on the lads down the rank, once, and they looked at me as if I wasn't right. Don't reckon they understood it. Took a while to cotton on to that one myself, to tell you the truth.
They're a rum crew down there, and that's a fact. Don't rightly know what it takes to be a cabbie; to look at that lot, you'd say it must be a liking for pubs, football, stripped-down engines, and them stripped-down women you get in the papers. Which in my case I have not got - and my Olive wouldn't be too pleased if I did have. So here's me cabbying these thirty-five years, and a square peg in a round hole all the time. Funny how things turn out.
The old town hasn't turned out the way I expected neither. Twice the size it used to be, all these new roads, joining up places as never used to be anywhere near each other... "parkways" they call them, don't ask me why... new estates, too... though we're not supposed to say "estates", they're "townships", apparently - that one down there's called Orton Brimbles, if you please. Brimbles! The genius as dreamt that one up wants shooting, if you ask me. He'll have got a pay rise for it, though, I'll be bound.
Had a genius in this cab the other day - well, I say genius, he were a bright lad anyroad, one of them university types. He were telling me how they set about counting the fish in a lake. They go and catch a netful, mark them all - don't ask me how, ring round their leg or summat - then put them all back. A week later, they come back and catch another netful, and they see how many of that lot are the same as what they caught last time. Then they've got some way they can work out how many fish there are altogether, near as makes no matter. Clever stuff.
"You could do that with taxis," I says to him. "What?" he says, none so quick on the uptake after all, when it comes down to it. So I tell him: you go to the station, say, and take the numbers of all the cabs at the rank; then the next week, when you come back and take the numbers again, you can work out... "The taxi population of Peterborough!" he says, looking at me in the mirror a bit old-fashioned, like. He likes that idea, and for the rest of the trip he's planning the papers he says he's going to write, on "The mating habits of the urban taxi", "The effect of pre-dation by buses", and such... Reckons he could get them published, too... Worth a few bob on the tip, I'd have thought, but he didn't... tight as a fishes bottom, he were...
I'm a dab hand with figures, mind... not like the lads at the rank, it's digits I'm talking about, numbers, like... There’s patterns in numbers, you know, for them as can see them… beautiful, they are, sometimes - most folk’s got no idea. Could have gone to college myself, I reckon, but they had the eleven plus in my day, and that did for me. There I am, bright young lad - no false modesty, after all this time, what’s the point? - my whole life stretched ahead of me, it did, accountant, scientist, maybe prime minister, who knows? I mean, Prime Ministers have to go to primary school too, don’t they? But then along comes the eleven plus, and next thing I know, it's no King's or Deacon's for me, it's Dogsthorpe Secondary Modern... and the rest is history. Ten year old I were, and never stood a chance after that. Do you know how many prime ministers came out of Dogsthorpe Secondary Modern? How many Nobel prize winners?
Well, you come round to accepting things after a time, and life with Olive's not so bad, she's a good sort, specially with me to put up with... then a few years ago I had this... revelation, you might say... road to Damascus... or in my case Yaxley... anyroad, all of a sudden, I says to myself, "Eric, old son, if ever you're going to make your mark, you'd best get a move on." So I start looking around for ideas, like, and of course what should catch my eye but the Guinness Book of Records. Getting into that would be something, and no mistake. There's some rum stuff in there, I can tell you... did you know, there's this kind of worm where the female is eight million times as big as the male - that's under "Greatest size difference between the sexes"... I showed Olive, but she couldn't see the funny side, bless her. Anyroad, we weren't going to get in that way, so I kept looking. I thought I'd found it with "walking backwards", where the record were less than a hundred mile, it said, but I looked at the date on the book, and I thought I'd best check in the latest edition. It's as well I did, 'cos in the meantime some daft bugger's walked backwards right across America! Would you credit it?
I found the right one for me in the end, and that's what I've been doing these past six years. Olive didn't see the point of it, not ever, and she never told her friends what I were doing when they came round - "Don't you mind our Eric," she'd say, "He's wrapped up in his Great Work as usual." So they let me alone, and I didn't have to pretend to be interested in WI business and such, so it suited me down to the ground.
Then last week I finishes it, and everything goes haywire. I ring Guinness Super Latives - that's what they call themselves - to claim my place in the annuals of human achievement, like - for one year, anyroad - and they start taking details - name, address, and so forth, then when I started, how long it took, and all that. Then they ask me:
"Can we just confirm, Mr Barsby, did you use the English form or the American - 'one hundred and fifty' or 'one hundred fifty'? It makes a big difference - there's a lot of those ands along the way!"
"Don't see what difference it makes," says I. "They both look the same when you write them down."
"Ah," they say. It takes us a while to sort it all out, mainly 'cos I can't believe it, but the top and bottom of it is, damn me if I weren't supposed to write out the numbers in words, not in figures. So that's six years down the drain, just like that.
Olive were very good about it - says she's right behind me if I want to give it another go. Reckon she means she wants summat to keep me quiet in the evenings, out of her hair, like.
I don't know though. It's not the size of the job that bothers me, mind, it's all them ands. I reckon there must be nigh on two million of them along the way before I come to write "one million" at the end. That's two million ands I wouldn't have to write if I was American, and... well, for the life of me I can't see the need for them, you know?
The BBC came round this morning, wanting to interview me. I let Olive talk to them instead. Just as well I did; they thought it were a huge joke; didn't see the point at all.
Not sure I do any more, to be honest.
Down Paston Lane this morning, funnily enough, there were this chap working on the sign outside the chippie. "Fish and Chips", all in capital letters, bright red, fresh painted, like. As I were going by, he stepped back to look at what he'd done. And damn me if he hadn't made exactly that mistake, too: the gaps between the words were way too big... but I hadn't the heart to stop and tell him... well, you don't like to, do you?
Anyroad, here we are, squire. That'll be three pound sixty, if you please.
