Millom in the Dock Read online

  ***

  6: THE POTATO CHIP SOFT WRAPPING PAPER (circa 1932)

  This was invented by S-V’s famous ‘Mick the chip’. Unfortunately there was nothing much happening in the town, so therefore no fantasy filled tabloid pages in which to wrap the chips. Mick simply reverted to wrapping his creations in soft toilet roll … solved! Some locals neatly folded and kept the greasy toilet roll and used it later and, as a result, their kecks keep slipping off (underpants, pants, Y fronts).

  ***

  7: THE HOVERCRAFT (circa 1974)

  The Sealand Hovercraft was actually built in S-V. My uncle Arthur worked there, the whole area around the factory was strangely devoid of rabbits. The project was abandoned though when an amorous local lad in rutting mood got carried away on a raft of niggling hormonal frustration. The craft was the first thing he had ever been near which was wearing a short skirt, because him being a local, but a ‘non’ rugby league player, he had no chance whatsoever with the local women as genetically acceptable breeding stock. Those propellers underneath could do some damage to the dingly dangly bits, especially at 15,000 RPM. However he was lucky, he ended up as the only twenty five year old bloke (the only bloke actually) with a Brazilian. It wasn’t totally neat but, it was free. He was still frustrated though.

  And that M’lud, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, dear reader completes my short statement on a smidgen of local genius which has been sadly missed by the unlucky outside world. I hope the jury can comprehend the potential of such a boring ‘End of the Line’ place?

  M’lud: “Well Mr Lassut, very interesting indeed. I think we will now conclude today’s proceedings. The next session will be tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”

  “ALL RISE FOR M’LUD!”

  END OF DAY ONE

  (“Mr Lassut, do you think it may be possible for me to have a ride on Peg? Do you have Mr Hunter’s number?)

  Why yes M’lud, it’s here in my executive Filofax. I’m sure Freddie won’t mind”)

  ***

  ONLY A GIFTSHOP OR TWO? DON’T THINK SO, FANCY A SHOPPING SPREE?

  TUESDAY 10 a.m. – SECOND SESSION

  Court Clerks (sober!!): “All rise for M’lud!”

  M’lud: “Good morning everybody, Mr Lassut, I hope you all had a good evening. Now then, I see the next thing on the agenda which has led to a good tabloid kicking up Millom’s Northern nethers was ‘hustle and bustle’. Apparently, according to the Courts and the press, poor old Millom has only “a gift shop or two”, which wouldn’t exactly render the town a magnet for shopaholics? So then Mr Lassut, should I bother visiting with my lady wife who, it should be said, enjoys spending my money a great deal, she is a black belt in fact. What would be likely to keep her busy? What is interesting about Millom’s frontline consumer metropolis which separates it from say … ahm? Coventry City precinct? What variety of ware is on offer?”

  Well M’lud, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, dear reader shopping in Millom is a juxtaposition (dictionaries everyone! Ho! Ho!) of both normal and different I suppose. Apart from the usual everyday things like mops, buckets, birthday cards etc., there is a large industry catering for anything the consumer would ever need which hails from the humble cow, bull, sheep, rabbit, pig, chicken or fish, you have literally found your paradise. I could have added horse to that list but, as Peggy is much loved and is also the star attraction at Farnborough every year, no way Jose.

  Oh sorry! I do unwittingly tell a fib, my language is all a spin and I don’t wish to be accused of genuine perjury this time by the defence. Peg, bless her non-cotton hooves, is an industry in herself! She not only provides transportation, she supplies every school in Millom with violin bows for the music departments (being cut by the Government. Mind you I don’t blame them, bloody screeching untalented whelps”), manure for heavy duty shaw kite lamps, flowers and vegetables and, not forgetting, lucky horseshoes of course. Peg is to Millomites and Haveriggites what buffalo was to the Wild West.

  King Arthur, if you remember made Peg a supplier by ‘Royal Appointment’ which makes her actually invaluable. I cannot, (will not actually), pass this point without telling of Peggy at the Farnborough Air Show. After her first year’s appearance, she was banned from flying over one hundred feet in altitude with attitude (gauged by Freddie’s nosebleed and audible maverick flyers flatulence). It just got a tad too dangerous because her aerobatic display, good as it was, still made the poor old girl nervous, (fear used properly aids us) resulting with her covering the windscreens of the Lancaster (people) bombers and other WAR planes with her fertile bum crud. The side windows of the planes would then open and the pilot(s) would lean out with colourful seaside buckets and spades gathering Peg’s previous feast for their garden, not for power, having electricity in their towns, cities and villages. Mind you this caused some static from Arthur Ferg who had somehow gotten himself invited into the control tower and onto the radio … although he couldn’t understand how it worked without shaw kite? So being Ferg and always looking for a market, he left a free ‘half’ bucket for the hams to try, licking his lips with relish at the thought of 30 years of repeat orders! This letting go of the aeroplane joystick would lead to unintentional low level aerobics where peoples wigs would be removed in the draught and land sometimes skew-whiff on someone’s head, giving the crowd a treble experience of fear, flatulence and a totally new look. But apart from Pegs’ products you can get most things (especially from Ferguson’s) but unfortunately because the town has been dismissed by the outside world, forgotten by God and unjustly criticised by the press and the Police you can’t get electrical goods (as of yet????).

  But you can get …

  WHAT ‘WOULD NORMALLY BE’ ELECTRICAL GOODS

  Because, as already stated, the concept of moving electrons along copper hasn’t yet arrived, on Summer nights some of the locals go walking and glance across the estuary at the not too distant Barrow in Furness and see the lights glittering away, sometimes reflected in the calm tide waters of the Irish Sea and think … “My! They have big earwax candles and powerful kite lamps over there!” The nearest thing to your electrical normality is the Dames Ison cleaner as mentioned in the inventions section. It does not have a plug but uses power as in ‘Human Power’. The cleaner has been cleverly fitted to the front of a bicycle. A complicated chain and pulley system breathes life into the ‘cyclone’. If the owner can’t balance on a slow moving bike very well they may have problems. There have been many insurance claims, none of them Acts of God of course, the reason you well know. Some of them were actually valid though, where the user has gone tumbling over the settee or worse still, out of the living room window. These acts were caused by the domestic toiler trying to be clever and using Shake ‘n’ Vac. Poggy has had many cases in his surgery of sore toes after the man of the house has refused to lift up his feet when his missus has politely asked him to do so, so many times, such is married life.

  M’lud: “Mr Lassut, you did say that this cleaner is constructed from a large jam jar didn’t you?”

  Yes M’lud I believe I did.

  M’lud: “Good, I like that design, it allows a woman to see the results of her naturally, unconditioned, genetically attributed labours, her birth right, her talent. I may get one for my wife and abort her membership at the expensive Bodystation Gym. She can have her exercise bike and Hoover the living room at the same time. Must remember to lift my fee though, carry on Mr Lassut”.

  Thank you M’lud, you can also get … erm, ‘buried.’

  THE UNDERTAKERS

  Who are not exactly thriving, so survival strategies are employed to ensure a steady flow of cadavers. They dress up in SAS style camouflage gear then render themselves as invisible in the bowling green’s surrounding privet hedge a couple of hours before sunrise.

  Later, when surface temperature facilitates joint movement and the old lizards … sorry … ancient bowlers arrive again for the first time in their dehydrated memories. The grimmer reapers wait patiently
until one of the squeaky shoed crew stands with their back to the privet. The Undertaker simply shouts “BOO!” milliseconds prior to the jack being rolled, as there is no point at all in ruining the exciting game once it has begun, may as well sit back and watch the fight and then BOOOO at the end.

  The undertakers used to / still do (?) get a Christmas card from Elgar’s family each year. Should the hit be successful clothes from the now ex bowler are donated to the Costume Department of Millom Amateur Operatic Society, narrowing the choice of show to ‘Hobson’s Choice’ for yet another year. You see, you can also successfully shop for entertainment in Millom. On some weekends, when no one has snuffed naturally and, the military trained scare tactics fail, as they sometimes do, in order to avoid any depressing between show / funeral boredom the thespians enthusiastically provide an ‘actoor’ usually John (JR) Clarke … typecast to play dead. They then solemnly, melodramatically have a ‘mock’ burial … well it’s a bit of overtime for Peg as well. It is also the only time that John does not forget his line(s). This is where the term ‘corpsing’ comes from and, also the concept of the Real Fun funeral (think about it). On one memorable occasion, JR asked to be really buried! (It’s the David Blaine in him). He wanted to check out whether his wife Sue would miss him? “Of course she would John!” everyone assured him. His friends told the Reverend that he had died immediately after paying for a large round so could he, the Reverend, bury him before his wife found out and played hell with him? The Reverend Joe agreed and, just to show how much he really cared about JR, he went by himself into the chapel of rest and said a few good words over John’s pauper, paper-mache casket. One week later his wife Sue asked the neighbours if they had seen him because his plates of gruel (all he ever gets and still asks for more) were gathering on the table and no hemp Y fronts had appeared in the washing basket for a while. On finding out (after much asking around), Sue dug him up. Upon the opening of the lid John looked up at Sue from the pocketless shroud and asked “Did you miss me?” she replied “Of course, but have you got anorexia? And where are your Y fronts? Because I don’t want to have to hand wash in the tin bath twice!”

  Sharpo was advisor for the Undertakers, because one time after I had espoused a monologue about troubles I had with my dad, who I never really got on with (a fight my mother fuelled), Sharpo’s advice was ... “He’s had a heart attack, so if you sneak up behind him and shout waaaa! Or something, he should drop dead, problem solved.”

  He also wrote the most down to earth T shirt ever seen in Millom and Haverigg in the eighties. On the back, it said simply, FUCK OFF AND DIE. Again, I thought the Undertakers had bought him it (I tell people now and they laugh).

  John before, or after the funeral? Still wearing the shroud – that’s the Great Midge cairns in the white shirt and Sue, John’s wife, is in light blue.

  “He’s up to no good Midge.”

  “Smile John, there is no such thing as bad publicity.”

  John couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried, get his auto windup Rolex Oyster Perpetual wristwatch back from the Reverend whom he’d wanted to stop taking from his stiff (limp) wrist but, obviously couldn’t, because he was supposed to be dead. All the Rev said was “God told me that the watch was a gift from your departing/cheating soul to my hanging round soul, so to merely ask for the return of said Divine ‘gift’ will certainly put you on the path to limbo, or worse! If the gift is actually returned. However, here you are, have it back!! With my blessing my dear and precious child. Amen”. The Rev is actually a spinner, and I’m not talking fishing. John of course begged the Rev to keep the watch.

  Authors Note: Even though God forgot about Millom, not even such Divinity can ignore the Reverend Joe.

  As I was saying … before the folklore about JR came to my mind, the clothes from the ex-bowler(s) are donated to the MAOS, while the wallet …??? Maybe they, the undertakers, leave it at the home for the next of kin? They do live in big houses though don’t they and drive really expensive cars?! And ‘still’ manage to look grim most of the time. This is actually quite an achievement; because they are in competition with … here we go …

  Dedicated to the Rev Joe ... (he really, really likes me).

  WANT TO SAY HELLO TO YOUR SOUL? THEN SHOP AT … ST GEORGE’S CHURCH! AMEN. The Rev’s office.

  The hill in the background is Black Coombe. Famous because the summit is where King Arthur first saw Millom. That’s the pitch and putt in the foreground, near the place where the feathered Noddy Holder died.

  This Ho! Ho! Ly est establishment is the barbed wire protected switchboard for Reverential (or so he says) one to one with the one who missed them off the map in the first place, yet talks, if a little fearfully, with only the Reverend (or so the Reverend says), who then kindly passes on relevant thou shalt / shalt not, unedited (!?) messages to the flock. This is where some of the residents shop for peace and go a blabbing everything they wouldn’t tell their mum … cos she’d tell the cops, boring them just a little more. Yes folks, the townsfolk are not too happy at all with the Almighty and, you can bet that when it’s all over and they walk through the Pearly Gates and go straight to Complaints, there is still one resident who feels mucho glee, because …

  Where there’s a will, there’s usually a relati … sorry … a Reverend.

  (A REVEREND WITH JR’S A ROLEX OYSTER PERPETUAL ... A GIFT FROM GOD! To be exact).

  This is why the Reverend has no trouble smiling in Sharpo-Ville, even when there is a good stiff chilly breeze plus rain coming from the gusset of Haverigg shore, Hodbarrow Point, or the Duddon Estuary. You’d smile too if ‘God’ prayed to ‘you’ and, you also had a watch with jewels to shame the Crown, wouldn’t you M’lud, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, dear reader? But still! Hell! (Oops! Hail Mary!). A cold wind straight off the Irish Sea, brrrr! It makes everyone else miserable, especially at night when some poor soul finds it necessary to open their back door to put the cat out and let the kids in or vice versa and the wind blows out the living room light.

  As the Winter draws in some of the locals i.e. ‘the poor’, huddle in groups around the Reverend’s front garden as they dare not stand on the holy consecrated grass (freezing is one thing, but if a little wrath is thrown in too that could be serious). They’re hoping for Alms i.e. scraps of bacon, bread etc., which he throws into the crowd for holy power amusement between penning profound philosophical sermons. Sometimes if it is really, bitterly, beyond a joke cold, he will open the door and throw out onto his crazy paving, a real gift from God via him the Divinely appointed finger of condemnation, a glowing ember from his blazing antique Dickensian hearth (a goodwill ‘good Will’ gift that one), from which bitterly cold hands may glean a little warmth. “See you all Sunday” shouts the Rev. “Remember now, in the meantime, if you can’t afford bread you must eat cake or starve! God bless me and maybe remember you with great ‘massive’ effort, goodnight!” Through his closed curtains, they can see many people in silhouette, stood talking politely to each other it appears, while the Rev floats amongst this obviously blessed throng. Yes the perfect host, visiting with all of his guests. Occasionally he is seen to sit down and lean over what is presumed to be his work desk … exhausted no doubt? “Oh! Ooooh! The pooor, pooor man” say the shivering ragged trousered philanthropists to one another. Some of the women cry with emotion at being blessed in having such a martyr seeing to their souls needs and tears have been known to freeze on cheeks.

  There was one memorable night when a lady with no arms came to a party … this saintly man even entertains the disabled??? Well “HELL!” (Hail Mary!) Where is he supposed to put all the inherited Italian marble statues? Thank God for widows (not Windows, that’s Microsoft or Stormglaze). The armless one disappeared from view after partying constantly for a week (such rock hard stamina), soon after which the Rev had four large crates of money delivered by the postman’s cart, dragged huffingly, puffingly by Peg. I’m assuming it was money because each crate had ‘MONEY’ written in larg
e letters on the top and sides, so I’m told by the Catholic Priest (Hisssss! Blasphemer!) in his chilly living room one afternoon when he was chatting to me about his neighbour Sharpo’s loud rock music, from his Kite CD. The gorgeously huge amount of money received by the Reverend from a deceased relative via the Rev’s personal grovelling butler … God, was for the roof fund said the notice board A4. This was rather confusing because soon after the money arrived, that notice disappeared and this one appeared … I think the first bit is from Bambi?

  Pit pit pat little April showers … drip! Drip!

  CHURCH NOTICE

  WE WOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR THE LOAN OF UN-HOLY BUCKETS … THANKS. RETURN NOT GUARANTEED … THANKS AGAIN.

  His Holiness … THE REV

  P.S. TO NOT LEND OR, TO TAKE BACK OR DEMAND THE RETURN OF YOUR DONATED BUCKET IS A SIN! BE WARNED!

  SATAN IS WAITING FOR YOU.

  A large bird in silhouette appeared on his living room curtain show one night. To the locals it did not seem to close its wings so, they assumed it must have been waiting for the set bones to repair? The Rev must also look after God’s sick creatures, convalescing after local Vet Rick Brown has repaired them? He is like Saint Francis of Assisi!