My Beautiful Blazer

MY BEAUTIFUL BLAZER.

"That's it, I'm off, I'm going. Ta-ra"

"Going? Going where? Where're you going?

"Club, I told you. I've been waiting weeks and now I'm going. Well how
do I look?"

"Oh yes. Oh very smart. I suppose there'll be girls there at this
club?"

"Mum!"

"Don't you 'mum' me. A good-looking boy like you. Well, go on then,
enjoy yourself and don't be too late"

"Right-o.Ta-ra then. Ta-ra dad"

"Where're you going? Where's he going?"

Too late, I was along the passage, out the front door, down the path
and into the street before I could be questioned.
Along our road; a non-descript street in Stoke Newington, past the
common and into the High Street to start the half mile or so walk to
the club on the hill.

Stamford Hill Club, a popular youth club. There was a waiting list and
now I was in at last.

It was nineteen fifty-six, I was fifteen years old and a hill was
nothing to me. As I strode along I considered myself.
A crease in my trousers, a shirt that I'd saved specially and pressed
myself and a tie that I'd nicked fromsuperiority of my argument, " But
if I may be allowed to express a point of view, how do I know that the
infernal thing isn't going into my bit of kitchen? After all" I said,
knowing that this was the clincher, "half of it is mine."

She shot back at me with typical feminine logic.

"This is my kitchen, it comes under 'management' that means I'm in
charge."

"Ah yes" I reposted, "but I still retain part proprietarial rights over
what happens here, constructually speaking."

"Come over here" she ordered, and she went to the foot of the stairs,
stood on the bottom step and pointed at the floor. Now I knew I was in
for a hard time. You see, I am a little less than six feet tall and
management is about five feet and a fag paper, so when she's feeling
overwhelmed by my superior argument she insists on standing on the
bottom step so we are face to face, eye to eye, even-Stevens you might
say. However, I swallowed hard, convinced I was in the right. That's
when she played dirty.

"And what about your shed?" she barked triumphantly.

Suddenly I felt I was losing the thread of the argument.

"My shed!" I spluttered, " What's my shed got to do with it?"

"Exactly my point" she exclaimed, going for the kill, "if your shed is
your shed and I agree that it's your shed because that's where you do
your hammering and banging and mending things, it's your shed and not
our shed. According to you it's 'your shed' it's never 'our shed.' I
never hear you talk about 'our shed'. It's never halvesy- halvesy-
sharesies when it comes to your own personal shed. So, if your shed is
your shed, then my kitchen is my kitchen, so ner."

At that she got down from the step and stormed triumphantly off to her
own territory.
I put my tail between my legs and sloped off to the living room where I
hid in my favorite armchair and tried to read the paper.

Suddenly a thought struck me. I went back to the kitchen, determined
not to admit defeat.
She was doing something noisy with loud saucepans, although I did
notice a delicious smell coming from the oven, but I did not allow this
to divert me from my purpose.

"If my shed is my shed why do you put your stuff in there?"

She then put on her haughty attitude. "I never go into your shed. What
goes on in there has nothing to do with me."

"Aha" I exclaimed, knowing I'd just caught her out. "If you never go in
there how come there's a lawn mower, spades, garden forks and other
gardening implements in there cluttering up the place getting in my
way. I never use any of that stuff. You know very well that I lay
paths, build walls and dig large holes. Apart from that my contribution
to the garden is to sit in a deck chair on a sunny day and mind my own
business. I leave the plants to their own devices. They don't interfere
with me and I don't interfere with them. I never poke at them with
sharp implements and I never, ever mow the lawn."

"I know you don't, that's why we have to have Donald every two weeks to
keep it straight, otherwise it would be a jungle. He has to keep the
equipment somewhere and your shed is the only place for it, but I never
go in there myself.

"Oh don't you" I smaned, "Then what about your basket thingy?"

"What basket thingy?"

"That basket thingy with the wheels on, It's right in front of the
cupboard where I keep all my screwy bits."

"I use that to go shopping to buy us food to eat."

At that she opened the oven door to see what was going on in there and
I got the full blast of delicious aroma. That was it. Case over. I
lost. She hit me where I'm at my most vulnerable, in the stomach.

She bought her dishwasher and to add insult to injury she didn't even
ask me to plumb it in but insisted on calling a proper man in. Of
course I watched him carefully whilst he worked, making it crystal
clear from my arms-folded attitude and snarling features that I did not
approve of his presence. He ignored me. No doubt she had pre warned
him. So there it sits taking up valuable space in a not over-large
kitchen.

What I find totally puzzling, perplexing and annoying all at the same
time is this: our two children are all grown up, in fact they're both
older than me now and they both have husbands and children of their
own. When the rampaging hordes invade us on a Sunday afternoon the
house is filled with laughing, screaming, fighting children, arguing
mothers and daughters and sports mad sons-in-law. All this is very well
and the truth is, I love every minute of it. After they've gone all the
leftover rubble is collected and deposited on the unit above THAT
MACHINE, all ready to be stacked by the management. I'm not actually
allowed to touch it unsupervised. The machine is filled to it's
capacity and I must grudgingly admit, does it's job.

But, and this is the big but! On an ordinary, normal, every day-day in
the existence of your normal, ordinary, every day grandparents, there
are only two of us living in our joint-ownership house.

So why is that bloody machine on almost all day, every day? Why is it
that every morning as I'm trying to have my breakfast and read the
paper is it moaning away in the corner starting my day off with a
headache? And why is there always a loose teaspoon rattling around in
there?

I work at home and all day as I'm upstairs in my office trying to earn
a crust I can hear it's innards whirling away.

During dinner I can see the monster with it's mouth slightly open
waiting to devour the plates as soon as we've finished eating.
In the evening whilst I'm trying to relax in front of the telly I can
hear it grumbling away through two closed doors and a brick wall, and
you wouldn't believe the catastrophic effect it has had on my electric
bill.

Why? That's all I want to know. Why? Where is all that dirty crockery
coming from? As I said, there are only two of us. Are we taking in
dirty washing up? Are people from all over London sending us their
dirty dinner plates?
And another thing, I can never find anything in the cupboard. Whenever
I want my favorite mug it's never where it's supposed to be. I have to
open the door of the infernal machine, that stops the motor, oh blessed
relief, reach into that box of steaming fog and retrieve it.

I then have to wash it out under the running tap, as I don't trust
those chemicals that the management puts into that little sliding
drawer thingy in the corner. I'm o.k. with Fairy liquid, I've lived
with it for a long time and the kids seem to be alright but how do I
know that strange looking stuff isn't carcinogenic? I don't want to die
of washing-up liquid poisoning.

And that's another thing. Why do I have to open the door to stop it?
Why is it that these multi-functional control panels are so designed
that they can be operated only by women? Allow a man to touch one of
these computerized knobs and the poor thing goes into a decline, and
don't tell me that's not possible; if they can make medicine bottles
that can only be opened by children then they can make women-only knobs
and buttons.

I had thought of staging a phony burglary, but what burglar would break
into a house, shut off the water supply, turn off the electricity and
disconnect the plastic waste pipes? And that wouldn't be the end of it.
He (I've no doubt there are women burglars but lets not confuse the
issue) would then have to maneuver the confounded thing through two
doors, drag it over a hundred feet of unkempt garden, over a fence and
then hoist it on to a van. A car boot wouldn't be large enough. I
suppose there must be, somewhere, a burglar who desperately wants a
dishwasher but whilst he was here why would he ignore three television
sets, two computers and various, assorted radios and C.D players?

No, that won't work. I suppose I could learn to live with it except
that something very odd is happening. As much as I hate the damn thing
and resent it's presence, I have the strangest feeling that it hates me
right back. Whenever I enter the kitchen it seems to get noticeably
louder, as if objecting to my presence, and as I approach it, it
actually starts to shake as if it's about to have a seizure. I swear it
knows it's me. It never reacts like that to her. It has reached the
stage that when the wife is out I actually feel uncomfortable just
going into the kitchen.

I wonder if that's the point of the whole exercise, first get the
kitchen designated as a male-free area by frightening me off, then get
to work on the rest of the house.
I'll tell you this; they'll never get me to give up my shed.