A fish and chip tale

Once again we reach the end of yet another pointless week here at the Lazy L where nothing at all has happened - nothing of any interest to me, at least. Mind, to be fair, that’s not entirely correct, although what IS new isn’t exactly earth-moving. This week, all I have been able to discover or find out is that I WILL be going to North Sea Camp as soon as there is a space for me there - I have to wait for room, a place. That’s all I ever do - wait. I’m thinking about changing my name to Mr Wait - maybe I will be able to claim Terry as my brother. Having said that, would I want to?

So, North Sea Camp (or, as Boudica calls it, the Home for Gay Sailors - she only thinks she's funny!) - when will I be off to the world of fresh air, cabbage fields and seagull guano? (I was going to say seagull shit, but that sounds a bit rude.)

Speaking of Boudica, I understand that she wasn’t impressed by my little vignette of last week and the fishy fingers. She says everything about me is fishy, but she only says that because she likes me. Apparently she objects (not very strongly) at my hinting that she was travelling around in trains in the swinging sixties, and she says we never met like that anyway. Okay, fair enough - I’ll tell another story then about how we first met. Of course, people will ask, "Is he telling the truth THIS time?" and the answer is, "Of course I am." Well, as near to the truth as a policeman gets when he is swearing someone’s life away in a Crown Court.

Is it any wonder that policemen and supergasses get on so well? They both have the same kind of mind - they can remember things that never happened in the first place and are willing to swear to them on their mothers’ lives.

Anyway, to get back to how I met Boudica. Many years ago, when I was a mere youth in my salad days, I took to the sea and travelled around a good deal. I used to ask the local populace, “Where am I?” Come to think on it, I’m still doing it - I rarely know what I am doing or where I am.

What was I saying? Oh yes, Boudica and the meeting of the same. So there was I, docked in Middlesboro and, for some strange and unfathomable reason, I went to Hartlepool one evening to sample the beverages being retailed in one or three of the public houses, as was my wont in those halcyon days.

I was in a pub called the "Lord Nelson" (I'm safe with that one - every town has a "Lord Nelson" public house), and I was doing my best to "score" for one of the local girls and meeting with very little success - the story of my life really. So, come closing time it was me for a solitary taxi ride back to the ship and an evening spent in the company of Palmler Handerson and her five skinny daughters.

I came out of the pub at about ten-thirty in the evening and across the road was a fish and chip emporium with a bus-stop just outside, one of those with the shelters.

I wandered across toward the chippie and then saw that standing in the bus shelter was a young blonde eating fish and chips from a paper parcel held in her hand.

Nothing unusual about that, it’s a scene being enacted in every town all over the country every day, but what I didn’t tell you, and what caught my attention, was the fact that she had her knickers down around her ankles.

"Erm,” said I approaching hopefully. “Excuse me, Miss, but your knickers have fallen down!”

She looked at me, looked down, looked back at me and said, “Oh! My boyfriend must have gone home.”

Oh dear - she'll make me pay for that one.

The Voice In The Wilderness