âI still donât understand how she knew that he knew,â says Sid. âWhen he went down to the waterfront in the rain and they fished the two stiffs out of the drink, the D.A. gave him a funny sort of smile. Did that mean that he knew as well?â
âSearch me, Sid,â I say. âI lost touch when the bloke in the wheelchair opened up with his artificial leg. That bird had a nice pair, didnât she?â
I see immediately that my observation has given offence. â âThat bird had a nice pairâ! â snorts Sid. âIs that all you can think about? Iâm trying to have an intelligent conversation about the plot of the film and all you can do is give vent to your knocker complex. Canât you raise your mind to anything higher?â
âThere wasnât much higher than those bristols,â I say. âHonestly, Sid, that girl had curves in places where other people donât have places.â
âI still canât understand it,â muses Sid. âMaybe they cut something out of it. All those bleeding commercials. They have to make room for them somehow.â
âThey make it so difficult to follow, donât they?â I say. âI was wondering who that mysterious bird was who kept running down the beach every half hour. I never cocoed it was a cigar commercial.â
âYou only watch when thereâs a bird on the screen, donât you?â says Sid. âThe television companies are wasting their time putting out programmes with blokes as far as youâre concerned. Iâd have thought youâd have had enough after our trip home with Nancy and Felicity.â
Do those names ring a bell? If the answer is yes you may well have come across them in Confessions of a Plumberâs Mate. I certainly did. What a right couple of nautical ravers they were. Employed to look decorative on the poop deck of the SK498 at the Indoor Outdoor Exhibition but, in reality, knocking back a couple of bottles of âSouthern Courage â the drink that lost the South the American Civil Warâ â and taking it out on Sid and myself â not so much taking it out as ripping it out! Small wonder that we lost control of the boat as well as ourselves and drove off the marina and through the exit doors at Earls Court. That was all right because the boat was designed to travel on land as well as water. The only drawback was that it did not travel so well under water. We found that out when we ran up the back of a car transporter on the Chelsea Embankment and dived into the Thames. Frankly, I thought we had less chance of coming up than a winning line on a pools coupon but we surfaced just opposite Battersea Funfair â or where it used to be. A bloke who was about to commit suicide by jumping off Battersea Bridge took one look at us and fell backwards in a dead faint â actually, I must be honest, I made that last bit up. Sorry, Mum always said I was a whimsical child.
By the time we got ashore, the romance was deader than a set of election promises and we had drunk all the Southern Courage â or maybe the two things were connected. The girls got a taxi out of our lives and we got a 49 bus leaving a trail of bubbles behind us where the SK498 got its head down for a long kip on the bed of the Thames.
âI hope that the whole distressing incident is not shambolic of the future of British industry,â says Sid as we sip our tea and watch the little pinpoint of light die away in the middle of the telly screen.
âSymbolic,â I say, thinking as I speak that Sid may be right. âCrispin isnât exactly going to cream his jeans over this lot, is he?â
âIâve been thinking about Crispin,â says Sid.
Just in case your shop was sold out, or in a fit of reckless madness, you thought you could exist without Confessions of a Plumberâs Mate â or you have forgotten â let me point out that Crispin Fletcher is our interior decorator boss/partner who has been instrumental in securing us the job of maintenance men at the Indoor Outdoor Exhibition. As I have intimated, first indications suggest that he is going to be less than totally satisfied with our latest contribution to the profit/loss account of Home Enhancers.
âWhat have you been thinking?â I say.
âIâve been thinking that I might have made a mistake,â says Sid.
This statement affects me like an Irish navvy stamping out his cigar butt on my groin. Though speedy to confess to weakness in others, Sid has never won renown for pointing the rigid digit in his own direction.
âMistake, Sid?â I say.
âWell,â Sid double banks his lips in a north-easterly direction and waggles his mitts. âMore an error of judgement than a mistake. A miscalculation.â I breathe more easily. For a moment I thought that Sidâs subterranean passage had played havoc with his down the drains. âThere is a stage beyond Crispin.â