Monday, May 05, 2008
Ham Shanks Secret Diary - The Letter
Ham Shanks Secret Diary we
Fimbriate adj (also Fimbriated) 1.Bot & Zool. Fringed or bordered with hairs etc. Great word that isn’t it. Not only would it win you maximum points on countdown and a wee wink from Susie in dictionary corner it is also a pretty accurate description of the contact lens after I carelessly dropped it on the floor the other morning. I had to fumble about blindly and fish it out from under the sink. It certainly nipped a bit when I inserted the afore mentioned optical aid into the correct eye. Naturally if I’d noticed its fimbriated nature then I would have cleaned it first; but of course I didn’t have my lens in so couldn’t see. It was a lose-lose situation.
But let’s cut to the chase, I’m not here to talk about the hirsute nature of my contact lenses, oh no, I’m here to talk about something far more sinister, something so dreadful and heinous that words can scarcely convey the true magnitude of it’s ghastly nature; I’m here to talk about filing! Daah daah daa daaa DAAAH! (that was sinister music reaching a crescendo by the way)
I sense by the stony silence and the sneering nature of your upper lip that you’re less than impressed by my ground shaking revelation? Well that’s fine but don’t come crying to me when you can’t find your bank statement from August 1973! Ok so I may have over played it but I did have a particular reason to rue my lack of home filing.
I recently received a Jury Citation in the post and after cursing my luck in a loud, blasphemous and particularly sweary fashion that I had been chosen to pass judgement on the guilt or otherwise of some Burberry clad Ned I filed the letter away somewhere safe; I would be required to produce the citation when I attended court.
Fast forward four weeks and the time to retrieve said letter has arrived. Luckily I’d put a reminder in my calendar to prompt me to look out the letter from it’s secure storage place and phone the ‘Jury Helpline’ as mentioned in the citation; but I would of course need the actual correspondence.
Historically my approach to filing letters has been to have a quick glance at the front to see if it’s got big red writing on it, and if not, shove it on top of the coffee table until I’ve got time to open them later. Once the coffee table is at a state of near collapse I am forced to ferry them upstairs into the spare room and stack them in piles, not organised piles of course; that would be too sensible. I’m very much an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ kind of fella. This works well right up until the point I need to find something.
Having spent an hour sifting through the contents on the coffee table it became apparent that a) the letter wasn’t there and b) dairy products don’t fare well when left at ambient room temperatures for several weeks. I couldn’t be sure but I think my half eaten Muller fruit corner had evolved into a sentient life form. Possibly photosensitive as it appeared to shun the light. I gave it a good thrashing with a rolled up newspaper until it stopped moving anyway; better safe than sorry.
No sign of the errant letter meant a trip to the upstairs ‘archives’ was going to be necessary. Sighing wearily I got tooled up for the job ‘Headlamp – check’, ‘ropes – check’, ‘respirator – check’, ‘Packed lunch – check’ I was ready to tackle the North face of the wardrobe. Popping a
I could hear a gentle rustle of paper as the opening of the door let a light draught enter the gloomy interior. My jaw dropped open as I surveyed the scene; possibly referring to this as the ‘spare’ room was no longer appropriate. Sheer cliffs of brown and white paper towered above me as far as I could see. The floor, what little was left was buried under drifts of bank statements and junk mail. I could barely squeeze inside ‘Hmmm a birrova tidy might be in order’ I mumbled weakly as the scale of the task dawned on me.
At least I knew the document had arrived in a brown envelope so I focused on the darker strata and fished out my starter for ten ‘okay what do we have here?’ it had already been opened which was encouraging ‘congratulations you are in with a chance of winning two hundred Guineas in the Readers Digest prize draw!’ checking the post date it would seem I was thirty years late with my reply. Not an encouraging start. A quick inspection determined that the lower layers of correspondence had matured into a form of peat so it was logical to assume my letter was somewhere near the top of the pile.
Hauling myself gradually up the sheer North face I made good progress for the first hour. After traversing a particularly tricky cornice of tax disc reminders I bivvied down amongst the ‘consolidate your debt’ flyers and made myself a brew. A quick date check revealed I was in the 1990’s now; not far to the summit. Steeling myself for the final push I hammered in another piton; my last as it turned out.
The piton struck a fault line in the face, I’ll never know what for sure, I think it was a polythene magazine wrapper. It doesn’t really matter, the result was an avalanche and I was caught right in the middle ‘wooannngffmppffff’ nothing was stopping me now as I tumbled down the mountain engulfed in a river of letters ‘ooh aah’, ‘oooya fuuuckr’, ‘oww paper cut! ow oww’ ignoring my wounds I swam for the top with all my strength, it was my only chance. My face burst through the surface and I sucked in lungfuls of dusty air ‘ooohthankfuuuck’ I was on top but still travelling at great speed.
Snatching on to a large cardboard package I jumped on board ‘Wooaahshiiiiit’ I’ve never surfed before but I was now learning fast. Fast being the operative word as my velocity also seemed to increase dramatically. Worse still I was running out of mountain and there was no gentle nursery slope to coast into. My flowing tears only lubricated the descent and I briefly reached my terminal velocity; ‘Ooommpfffff!’
All was still, after the roar of collapsing paper an eerie silence now filled the room. Only the sobbing of a small child could be heard; unfortunately that was me ‘Uhuuu huuu I’ve got a pp.p.paper c.cut … uhuu huu’ Pulling my head out of the oak bookcase that had been my crumple zone I wiped the tears from my eyes ‘ffckin jury bastar-‘ I stopped abruptly. There, right on front of me, placed carefully between two books so it would be safe was the citation
Feelings of goodwill? Naaaaaw; somebody is going down today!
