Fair Do’s
The classic follow-up to A Bit of A Do, about the comedy of Yorkshire life, told through seven more do’s is now available in ebook format.Life is still a social minefield in this small Yorkshire town. From the opening of a vegetarian restaurant to the inauguration of the Outer Inner Relief Ring Road, join Ted and Liz as they struggle through another series of excruciatingly funny ‘do’s’ in this sequel to A BIT OF A DO.Can Ted find happiness with a waitress, now that he and Liz are no longer an item? Can Liz bring comfort to the grieving Neville, her strangely immaculate second husband?Above all, how will Ted’s ex-wife Rita manage as her family becomes more dysfunctional at every function? Can she possibly be as happy as she seems?
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David Nobbs
Fair Do’s
Contents
April: The Grand Opening of Sillitoe’s
August: The Inauguration of the Outer Inner Relief Ring Road
A scruffy pigeon, a hopeless straggler in a race from Leek to Gateshead, shuffled across the hard blue sky as if embarrassed to come between the Social Liberal Democratic candidate for Hindhead and his Maker. Gerry Lansdown didn’t see the pigeon. His eyes were closed. He was praying.
‘Oh God,’ he prayed silently, gripping his top hat with tight, tense fingers, ‘thank you for what I am about to receive. Thank you for Rita Simcock.’
He opened his eyes and gazed up towards the God whose existence he had never doubted, although he had never thought of Him as a being so overwhelmingly superior to himself that it was necessary to worship Him, except during election campaigns.
The sun was astonishingly powerful for January, as if there were a hole in the ozone layer directly above Gerry’s head. The pigeon had gone. There was no sign of God either.
The ravishing Liz Badger bore down upon Gerry, arm-in-arm with her second husband, the immaculate Neville Badger, of Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger.
‘Hello, Gerry. You look wonderful,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’ Gerry tried to look as if the compliment was undeserved. He smiled cautiously at the woman who had once run off with his fiancée’s first husband. He kissed her, carefully, so as not to disturb her make-up.
‘Doesn’t he, Neville?’ said Liz.
But Neville Badger, immaculate in his morning dress, was months and years away, attending other services at this massive Norman abbey: his marriage to Jane, Jane’s funeral, and the marriage of Liz’s daughter Jenny to Paul, younger son of today’s bride.
‘Neville!’ Liz sounded as if she were summoning a recalcitrant Pekinese.
Her husband of four months sailed gently through time and made a soft landing beside her.
‘What?’ he improvised.
‘I was saying, Gerry looks wonderful.’
Neville gave Gerry a brief, unseeing glance.
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Absolutely. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.’
‘Isn’t Rita lucky?’
‘Oh yes. Absolutely. Lucky old Rita.’
‘I mean … isn’t he a simply gorgeous man?’
‘Yes, he … er … I mean, gorgeous isn’t a word I … you’re looking very handsome, Gerry.’
The rising star in the Social Liberal Democratic firmament simpered. ‘Well …’ he said. ‘So are both of you. I mean, you’re handsome and Liz is gorgeous.’
‘Thank you …’ said Neville.
‘Very much,’ said Liz.
The Badgers walked slowly towards the West Door. The path ran between old, neglected graves. Beyond the graveyard, blackened stone and brick and rusting concrete buildings jostled in narrow, untidy streets.
At the porch Neville stopped. ‘Liz?’ he said. ‘I don’t query the basic truth of what was said, but wasn’t that rather too much of a mutual admiration society?’
‘Oh, Neville,’ she said. ‘I was trying to make you jealous.’
‘What?’
‘By praising Gerry.’
‘Why should I be jealous?’ Neville was struggling to understand, knowing from experience that his puzzlement would irritate her.
‘I wanted you to think I find him attractive.’
‘Maybe you do. He is attractive … I imagine … to a woman … which you are.’
The wedding guests were strolling slowly into the church. Two glorious hats bobbed past, wide-brimmed navy to the left of the stationary Badgers, bowl-shaped orange to their right.
‘I’m trying to get you to show me how fiercely possessive you can be when aroused,’ explained Liz.
‘Oh, I see,’ said the doyen of the town’s lawyers. ‘Sorry.’
‘Oh, Neville, you’re hopeless.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No. It’s why I love you, I suppose.’
‘Because I’m hopeless?’ Neville was aroused now that Liz no longer wanted him to be. ‘I see!’
‘No, you don’t. You see nothing.’
‘I see Jenny.’
Liz’s daughter Jenny was smiling broadly but nervously. Her hair was cropped shorter than her mother would have liked. She was almost eight months pregnant. She would soon become the first person ever to enter this most English of churches wearing a dress which illustrated the life cycle of the llama.
‘Hello, Mum,’ she said, knowing that Liz preferred to be called ‘Mother’. ‘Hello …’ she hesitated, as if making a serious attempt to call Neville ‘Dad’ for the first time. ‘Neville.’ She kissed her mother and almost kissed Neville.
‘Where’s Paul?’ said Liz.
‘He wouldn’t come. He says he’d find it impossible to dredge up a smile.’ Neither of Rita’s boys had welcomed their mother’s engagement to a man more than ten years younger than herself.
‘Oh dear,’ said Liz. ‘Honesty can be so socially inconvenient.’ She made the remark sound as though it might just possibly be witty.
Neville had dredged up a faint smile which appeared to be set in concrete as he listened to the conversation between his second wife and her daughter.
‘I think Paul’s trying to be ultra-honest in order to try to make me forget the time he was dishonest over Carol Fordingbridge,’ said Jenny.
