Every Little Helps

Mrs M advises me that the key to enjoying a holiday is anticipation. In bed, she reads me extracts of her guide to Majorca. 

It is but a small step, barely worth donning the slippers for, to a shopping expedition.  

I mustn’t moan. It is true that a holiday is a good excuse to stock up on swimwear, but a forthcoming tour of duty makes the old Barclaycard quiver with anticipation. I can feel its chip gently sizzling in my back pocket. There is no getting away from it: a freelance loves to shop.  

Of course, I would like to shop locally. Viv and Alf’s Post Office in Moor End used to be the place to buy a coal scuttle, a wedge of cheese, and an airmail stamp for Mongolia. Alas, no more. Down on Town Street, butcher bank and booze shop have all gone too - though you can still buy a second-hand book to enjoy at the Royal Scot next door.

Marple Bridge Post Office thrives too, and Town Street Stores does a great line in Bacardi Breezers and Haribo sweets. 

I can’t understand what the kids see in Haribos: they would make a tube of green Fruit Gums taste like heaven. 

Forget the Haribos, mum. There's not much here for the freelance either. 

Fear not: we still have a clutch of corner shops. On the corner of the M60, down in the valley that is forever Stockport.

Ray the Taxi recalls when the valley was all factories and engine sheds. Now just the viaduct and a few mills remain to remind us of past glories.

Pear Mill Stockport

by James Photo Dyson 

The new sheds are retail - much more fun! Here is everything a freelance needs. Just a stone’s throw from the Bridge – provided Dan Bank’s open and you pick the right time of day (or night). 

B&Q’s got just the thing to touch up my breastplate. 

Then there's Decathlon for the collapsible canoe.

And Tesco’s got everything else. Especially phones.

 Just what we need! As they say at Tesco's, "Every little helps".

** *

On the way home, Dan Bank is closed again. Do you remember those days before the M6 Midlands Link, when traffic jams in Wednesbury lasted until Thursbury? 

What a moment to relive the glory days when the Singing Kettle saved the Mandall dynasty from Pulp Fiction. 

“Let’s play Keep the Kettle Boiling.” I offer. 

“I don’t know any songs: let’s play the shopping game." 

M3 starts: "I went to Tesco’s and I bought an apple – ”  

“Was it an Air Book?” interrupts M2. 

“No, it was a green one.”  

“I went to Tesco’s and I bought a Burger Bun and an Apple Air Book” insists M2. 

“I went to Tesco’s and I bought a Hannah Montana Celebration Cake –”  

“Girlie. You should have got a Man U cake.”  

“Crap. Hate U. Alright a City Celeb Cake, a burger bun and an Air Book”. 

“City begins with an S”.  

“Stupid. Crap begins with C.” 

Enough!

M3 has brought along his Quentin Tarantino boxed set. Peace at last.

I'll play the supermarket game all by myself. 

I went to Tesco’s and I bought:

a zapper 
Ya-yas in Bloom 
an X-Box
a Wii 
a vile violet vase 
Ultimate cheese-cake 
Tsingtsao beer
sliced smoked salmon
recycling bin  
The Qu’ran  
phish food (ice cream) and three phree 3G phones for the boys ...

... olive oil  
nobby’s nuts  
more mobile phones ... 

... a large lamb leg  
kinky knickers  
jelly babies  
insurance for iPods, and just about everything  
a house  
gravy granules  
fish food for Fannie and Freddie – alright, free fones for the fish too ...

... England World Cup Razor (special purchase)  
DVD players for the back of the Fiesta (buy one get one free) 

 “Shut up, dad." M1 this time.

 “Why?” 

“You’re annoying me even more than usual.” 

“Every little helps.” 

“Shh. I’m trying to watch this DVD. The screen’s rubbish. Don’t you care about the people in China, dad?"

“Yeah." M2 joins in. "What's the point? Why didn’t you get some decent ones?” 

“They were on Bogof. Eat up your phone. It’s getting cold.”

 

Every little helps

Country Matters

“I think,” said Mrs M – always a worrying start this – “I think,” said Mrs M on Tuesday night, “that it may be time to open up a new line of communication.”

We were watching our very own lib-dem MP, Andrew Stunell, on the TV news, seated at a wood-effect Round Table. He really is looking a bit thin: we should have him in for shepherd’s pie.

Not quite knight

“God’s Truth, Woman!” I was tempted to say. Why should anybody want to open up more communication, when there is clearly far too much already? Andrew and co. were already far too busy, nipping in and out of Millbank and Walworth Road. If they had to enter into discussions with Mrs M at number 72 as well, we would have no Government this side of Whitsun.

Mind you, Andrew’s battle-hardened for Westminster. All these years he’s been fending off Staffies on the Cherry Tree estate and bottled blondes in Marple. Yes, we’ve got a bit of most things in Hazel Grove constituency: a few vestigial mills making cardboard under contract for China; green hills to set off desirable dwellings; posh preps and bog standard high schools; air-conditioned executives waiting on Dan Bank for the A6 Relief Road. There are inter-war estates with privatised porches; dying pubs and late night clubs. We can even rise to an occasional gangland shooting.

You’d think that 13 years of listening to us all moaning on would be ideal training for Westminster. But I worry this coalition might be more interested in what make us the same than what makes us different. We’re now in the civil sinews of a con-dem embrace. Those who aren’t with us are... with us.

At least the election was good fun while it lasted. M3 was up all election night, or at least long enough to discover that the big blue numbers were not Labour seats after all. (He set his iPhone for 3 am, but we have been sabotaging their gadgets ever since Mrs M dropped M1’s bleeping Tamagotchi in the bath.) Our newspaper has a new section called a “viewspaper”, which its new owner feels conveys the mission to his intellectually challenged readers. However, I’ve been pleased to report that the “viewspaper” has been getting quite well buttered at breakfast over the last week.

“I wonder what my brother thinks,” says my lady. It is now Wednesday evening. On the TV, Nick ‘n’ Dave are in matching grey suits, but sport coloured ties, so you can tell them apart.

Ah, that’s it, then: The Brother.

“Do you think it’s a good time to ring him?” It’s too late for golf, and there are no Rugby Union fixtures that I know of. So the worst risk is a police drama on Sky HD.

Mrs M goes in search of a telephone, saying something about a “constitutional”. That would be nice: a pleasant stroll over the hill to Knowle Farm perhaps, exchanging greetings with sundry canines and ladies in riding boots.

“I wonder what he thinks about it all”.

At this point, it is important to state plainly that The Brother has nothing in common with Gordon’s opinion of Gillian Duffy. No one would accuse The Brother of being other than forthright in his opinion, and of backing it up on the stump and in the bar.

I don’t care whether he’s with the Levellers or the Luddites, the Monday Club or the Moonies. At least he knows they’re all different.

By Thursday, a third young man has taken to the podium. This one has a red tie. That’ll be nice then: Dave ‘n’ Nick ‘n’ Dave Miliband too.

Were we at school together?

Is that how it’s going to be now? All the same except for the colour of our ties?

Not here we’re not.

Stabilising the Banks

As in so many aspects of modern life, Marple has led the way in stabilising the banks.

We get to the root of things here. I feel it my duty to use this column to record my personal thanks to Stockport Council and HM Government for their foresight and commitment to putting our banks on a sustainable footing.

If you think back to 2007, you may remember that problems in the sub-prime mortgage market seemed distant and foreign.

I don’t want to claim any personal credit for bringing the problems of our banks to the attention of our Council, let alone to that of our Prime Minister. However, my small contribution to local awareness of the looming credit crisis was to rename the two goldfish that I had rescued from the choking swamps of the boys’ bedrooms. I named these innominate swampies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in honour of two American financial institutions that were having some difficulty in staying afloat at the time.  Fannie and Freddie are now thriving, rather better than Goldfish Credit Card, which was swallowed up by Barclaycard in April 2008.

Stockport provided especially valiant support to our danbank, but when local measures proved inadequate, our Council petitioned central government for funding to put it on a sound footing, thereby ensuring our plucky citizens and businesses a safe homecoming in these troubled times.

So it was that, in November 2007, the Department for Transport of Her Majesty’s Government made an award of £3.22 million to stabilise Dan Bank for future generations. Yes, here where the River Mersey may once have marked the border between Mercia and Danelaw, Dan Bank is still the place for a Dane of substance to stash his or her hoard of Geld.

No sooner had Dan Bank been rescued than we received a Letter to the Householder at number 72, Mandall Mansions. Reading over Mrs M’s shoulder, I was horrified to learn from the Borough Engineer, that the Bank on which we rest was in imminent danger of slipping into the old Tan Pits below. Their plans involved a 50 foot high apple-corer, a very large concrete mixer, and a pair of traffic lights stuck on red for the next 3 months. They also decided to raise the height of the parapet wall, so our teenagers won’t wobble off it when they’re drunk.

It's a big one, John

I may have heard someone suggesting that a tanning would do no harm, but here in the Bridge, most of us take a more relaxed view. We look at the big picture: today’s carefree teenager is tomorrow’s carefree banker.

I digress. Let us also commend Stockport’s communications on the Dan Bank project. Every household has received not one, but nine periodic newsletters, each printed on recycled paper, in a natty poly-ethylene wrapper.  Our Council has provided not one, but two web sites. And a podcast. We have an Information Line phone service, with an answer phone facility and interpretation. Twits can even get txts. And when works are afoot, an electronic display board is erected by the Texaco garage, so that we know about any closures, to mitigate bank rage and avoid a run on the bank.

I feel confident that every penny of the £3.22 million dedicated to this 500 metre stretch of road is being well spent.  The Dan Bank Stabilisation project surely deserves an Award for Exemplary Effusiveness in Engineering. I will pass the idea on to someone who is planning a campaign called “ENGLAND NEEDS MORE NOTICES”.

Really, I had only myself to blame the other day when I found that the A627 past Dan Bank was closed due to road works.