Teeth Like Sugar Puffs - New Version

A begging letter dropped onto the boot sale carpet square ( that was more oblong than square to tell the truth) on the morning following the win.

‘Dear Eric,’ it read and assumed an air of familiarity that I suppose only a lottery win or an appearance on 'Watchdog' can achieve.

'Dear Eric, I was pleased to hear of your good fortune on the lottery. Although you don't know me, I have long admired you as an upstanding and decent man. You might remember me, I passed you two Thursday's ago in the park. You were walking your delightful dog and I was on my way to the DSS. We passed on the footpath. You attempted to say hello, but I pretended to be looking incredibly interested at a non existent object on the floor at the crucial point of potential eye contact. You see I don't like smiling at people, I am in unfortunate possession of poor oral hygiene as a result of a three year lust for mattels refreshers (those yellow sweets with the sherbert filling) those sticky yellow devils, and the fact that I have never owned a toothing brush have burdoned me heavily with teeth like the breakfast cereal formely advertised by a monster on my black and white Solid State mini television as Sugar Puffs. My brother who is a clever man ( As he chose not to come to England) and has an autograph of the Saint Bob Geldof on his hairy leg. says I am only in need of a white tooth for a set of pool balls.

I would have said 'hello', I wanted to say, ‘hello,’ you are my friend, we go back a long way, well not exactly ages but at least the four months I've been living in your road. I was disappointed you didn't come to my recent party. No, I realise I never invited you, but I never invited the man at number eight but he turned up, ate all the chicken drums, did three laps of the garden in a solo conga eel dance and was laughing liquidly down the back of the bargain real leather from a happy cow settee. Mr. Crazy George is going to be a lot crazier when he finds out I am sure. Still at 37 per cent apr what's the liquid chuckling of an uninvited guest to such a man, a man who preys on peoples poor credit history and lust for big unbranded electrical goods.

How is your family my old muckeroony? I must say your wife has looked particularly good in those Dr.Scholls she's been wearing to nip to Mr. Patel's in lately. ( Although the doctor,who has become the patron saint of corns, must have been Darren Day (the evil Cliff Richard according to The current bun, we love it Sun newspaper) to end up making shoes for older ladies with cracked, dry heels, perhaps the seven years training, the sleep deprivation and the experimentation with stolen pain killing drugs would have been better spent cutting keys and engraving dog tags at a Mr Mint 'cobblers')

What a fine figure she shows to my unfair she glides across the road, like Mr. 'odd eyes and married to a model named after a country, Bowies tiger on the Vaseline. Now my friend you can sit back and rub your big buddah belly, as you have it all, a beautiful wife and wealth I could only dream about if I had a bed and a pillow that smells of hairspray .

On the other hand, I, your good friend, have nothing, no substantial wife to samba to Mr. Patel's for half an ounce of the rolling tobacco. Not that you'll be sending her over for the rolling tobacco anymore. You'll now, no doubt, switch to the cigarettes for people with jobs. I suspect you'll also get them delivered by Mr.Benson or Mr. Hedges himself. Specially packed by the pretty girls with no boyfriends in their tobacco factory.Perhaps, now that money is no longer a dirty word, you will chose to have them delivered by a celebrity like the camp outspan Dale Winton or perhaps that Harvey, the ex-marine from Celebrity Fit Club.Whatever you choose, holding the champagne in your rough hand, I have no doubt they would arrive in a black velvet sack.

You could buy out Mr. Patel, make him an offer for his overstuffed shop.Then you could replace those cakes he has filled with shaving cream for something that doesn't make you feel wrong, I suggest the UHT spray cream, being as it has the picture of a happy coe on the tin. Speaking of Mr. Patel, I'm sure he has got his very own 'best before' date stamp. He's had that Tom Allinson small wholegrain on the shelf for at least two weeks and I know, like I know I am not a hamster and life is not a wheel, that it's the same loaf because there's a scuff mark where that bit about 'Nowt Taken Owt' should be. You could be my friend at the newsagent's, with fresh bread and real spray-cream doughnuts. Your good lady wife, my friend also, who my unemployable and large handed cousin says 'probably walks away from a good shitting' could write unreadable addresses on the newspapers, dressed in a designer overall. Perhaps by someone like the Alexander McQueen but a bit taller. You could even I bet, get smiley all the whiley Mr. Jeffery Banks, also my friend, (as I got his hasty but erotic autograph on my smooth waxed, but concave chest at a Leeds Marks and Spencers) He could take some time away from the sunning bed and design some nice new paper bags for the paperboys and girls. Perhaps he could design some ugly even on a pretty girl , uniforms like he did for British Airways. Then instead of snotty-nosed children in sportswear and hoods who carry the bright orange paper bags over bony shoulders exposing love bites Prince would love, we'd have smartly- dressed youngsters with some pride in their appearance. You could also employ a double shift of these young people on Sundays, to avoid 'Sunday Times shoulder' these poor mites fuelled by no more than a thin slice of white bread and weak tea from a chipped cup, will no doubt suffer in later life.You, my friend, can achieve all this, with your fortunate stroke of remarkable luck, bestowed upon you by a white middle class God who looks like Robert Powell, you, and your lovely short legged wife.

However, this may not be possible, as it is with a heavy heart, beating in a chest that has always been a disappiontment, I bring alarming news, my good friend who has a liking for a too-tight Pringle jumper.I have a confession, an hour ago I dragged your protesting wife into my house and imprisoned her in my damp cellar. So my freind, I have a request, a ransom demand to be blunter than those strange people from The Yorkshire.You understand, the real purpose of this letter, apart that is from cementing our friendship. Is to demand from your deeper than the girl you should have married pockets,one thousand english pounds.

‘Ha,I hear you say, ‘A drop in an ocean far away from this Liverpool city of ours, a blue rich ocean, containing none of those sausage shaped Mersey Goldfish.

But it is a fat mans swimming pool spalsh in my ocean, as I am Desperate as the comic book hero Dan, If my rent is not paid friend, they will come and 'boot me up the arse and kick me out of the place' as my landlord Lenny shouted through the squeaking brass letterbox yesaterday. If they do I will sit shamed sore arsed on the pavement, and they will find the body of your dead wife in the cellar. Yes I said 'dead wife' 'because if you don't make this act of financial friendship, then I'm afraid

I shall have to kill her.As the fear of life (eight years if i don't kill anyone else) in a prison cell pales into insignificance compared to a boot up the arse from one or several of Mr. Lenny's ugly, sovereign ring wearing friends.I know, 'fine friend I am ' you must be thinking?Well, needs must as they say in this Merry England of opportunity and litter.

So,I ask you in a soft voice, please don't try and contact the policemen, as Lenny has told me they are very busy making that programme 'The Bill,' although being a new friend like you are, I'm sure you wouldn't do such a thing.Remember, I hold your future happiness in my lonely,small shaking hands and your wife in my cellar.Please organise for cash in a yellow Netto carrier bag at your earliest time. I'd ask for a pack of your cigarettes but I don't smoke because I don't want to fight with the cancer.

I'll be in touch

Your friend .

I had no choice but to reply. I took a pen and a pad of paper, surprisingly calmly all things considered and began to write.

'Dear Friend, Thank you for your ransom demand for the safe return of my wife.'

How terribly English this was. This lunatic had my wife and here was I thanking him for the note. Still old habits die hard unlike Bruce Willis who refuses to do so and makes another 'dirty vest' apperance at a cinema near you soon. Back to the letter.

'I was somewhat surprised by your letter and the news that my 'substantial' wife was imprisoned by your good self... There I go again, 'Good self ', Good self! This monster was holding my nearest and dearest trussed up in some rented cellar, sat no doubt amongst the long out of fashion tins ofDulux paint in tangerine and petrol blue, and I was calling him good.

'As a former small business development officer for Rhyll and the feilds aound it, I was impressed by your suggestions for the newsagent's. If you weren't a godsend, I'm sure you'd have a future brighterthan a thirty pound torch as an independent newsagent.Think on, as there really is a lot of money stolen from a fat purse in charging school children a pound for a can of Panda Cola. I particularly liked the bit about the image of the paperboys. It has long been an opinion of mine that our paperboys and girls are poorly kitted out. Only the other week I mentioned to my wife, (who you have trussed like a Christmas goose in the cellar), that young people of today dress in shabby sports gear all of the time. They have the peculiar habit of having their hoods up when it's not raining an adopt the haircut of a dirty tennis ball.

As for the bread, I must say I couldn't agree with you more. Usually each week myself and my now sadly imprisoned wife purchase our weeks supply of the staff of normal life,two wholegrain loaves from the Asda.One goes in the freezer in the garage and we defrost it on Wednesday.However, on two occasions, once when my sister Eunice came unexpectedly and ate us out of house and home and once when the freezer defrosted late at night and the economy fish finger juice soaked through a air hole in the defrosting loaf, have I had to purchase it from Mr.Patel. I was disappointed and too hungry to complain so both myself and my now ,hostaged good lady ate a displeasing supper of toast. As for the 'cream cakes', well I'll take the word of a friend on that point.

One thousand pounds is a lot of money. Not that my other half imprisoned is not worth that. You can't put a price on a life as they say in all good countries without palm trees. Although if you were enterprising and not jusy copying a Danny Devito and Bette Middler movie, you could get much more than a thousand pounds for one of her kidneys on the internet via the obsession of tight people who don't like shops - Ebay. Not that I'm trying to get you to break her for spare parts like some old MG, oh no my friend, I'm just pointing out that one thousand pounds is a lot of money,and there may be ways of raising much more than that depending upon whether you have a digital camera, a computer, and good pen knife skills.A question needs to be asked, although it is as uncomfortable as new dentures, is my lovely wife greater in value than the sum of her parts?

I think I remember you. Are you the bloke who wears the second-hand army clothing and the T Shirt of Che Guevara that looks like a chubby Robert Lindsay? I hope that is you. as it is a small comfort to have a mental image of the man who has taken custody your wife. Are you feeding her? She's very fussy you know, too fussy I say. What ever you do, remember, no salt. Her ankles will swell up and you won't hear the last of it. I myself made the mistake of being too liberal with the sodium chloride on some young carrots from the allotment. She had her Artctic Rolls up on a piano stool and the yellow chair from the kitchen for four days.

She still blames me for the fact that a nice pair of flat court shoes- 'the most comfortable pair of shoes she's ever owned', Between you and me, the fact that she sits on her brown velour throne in the corner of the living room, like she's sitting on a clutch of eggs and stuffs Fry's Chocolate cream after Fry's Chocolate Cream into her mouth, might have something to do with the fat ankles.

As you probably know if you've had to carry her bound body anywhere, it's not just her ankles that are fat. you've probably noticed, shall we say 'her broad beam'. It used to be as tight as a drum in years gone by, tight as a drum. you could bounce a table tennis ball on it. I often did in the sixties, on those summer Pontins weekends as soon as all those snotty-nosed kids buggered off from the games room.Now she need a boomerang to put a belt on and doesn't wear black for the fear that total strangers will see her, raise an arm and shout 'Taxi'

They were the happy days before she took root in the chair and sucked on the big glass teat in the corner of the living room.l She may look good to you trussed like a festive goose in the half-light of the cellar, but believe me, in the cold light of Wednesday morning, she's no oil painting. Oh no, more like a cheap photocopy on a second-hand machine,low on toner. Not that I don't love her. It's just that your description of her in your very nice letter seemed to play her part up a bit. You gave her a starring role in my life instead of the hero turned villain. I'm not unhappy,happy as a sandboy I am. She gets on with her life dipping her fist in a bag of sweets, packing more fat onto those cow hips of hers.Me Me I have my pint and my special relationship with Sandra, who's the bingo caller at the club. When I say 'special' you know what I mean. It's not love, no, we're both too old for that. We have needs and luckily enough, the fact that Sandra's need to be taken' shall we say, every second Wednesday whilst in full stocking and suspenders rig out ties in quite nicely with my desires on that front. The woman you have lashed to a central heating pipe in the bowels of your house gave all that up years ago. Oh yes, one evening when I had one too many rum and peppermints I was a bit rough with her, nothing violent, just more dominant than usual. After we'd finished she calmly said,'That'll be it for that sort of thing from now on.' And that was it, my sex life was over.

I went to the shed and wept into a jar full of screws. The next day when I was putting a copy of The Examiner in the bin I saw a nylon clump of fabric, it was of all her suspenders. The fat bitch you justifiably have clamped deep in your rented accomodation was watching from the kitchen window, face like the smell of gas. It's hardly surprising is it my friend , that I had to go elsewhere. Saying that, Sandra's 'need' has been on the increase of late. She even suggested we lay together as man and bingo caller in between the first full line and the full house link the other evening, although that might have been down to the Asda gin she'd been swigging from her bag. It always makes her randy. Some drinks are like that aren't they? I mean, my brother is as placid as anything, but give him a whisky and he'll want to take on the world and his peroxide wife.

That ugly lump of chip lard screwed to the floor of your basement used to cry when she had gin. It used to sicken me when the fat-gobbed sow would sit balloon-faced, sipping gin and watching those stupid soap operas. She'd shush me loudly and whine on about how 'Wayne had found out Charlene was his sister' on the eve of their wedding. She'll not like it in that cellar of yours,she'll be missing thoe soaps. Serves her right. It'll do her good to have her lard arse dragged away from the big tit.

Anyway, I'm rambling on what is starting to feel like somebody else's feild, back to your request for her release. You've guessed haven't you? You little tinker. Go watch the movie again,that's right, you can bloody keep her! I'm off with Sandra for a week on Southport sands. Cooking our breakfasts on calor gas in a nice eight berth caravan she bought with her former husband in the heady eighties. A nice chap by all accounts. A welder. Anyway, yes, you can keep 'chunk legs'.

As for the lottery win, your information was indeed correct. I am a winner,twice over thanks to you, but it was only a bloody pound on a scratch card.

I'll send you a postcard from us both 'my good friend'

And give the hippo in the cellar some salt from me.