It has been a strange week in the middle aged FitzGerald household. Monday I was being dropped off on The Barbican when Ratboy pointed ahead and shouted excitedly… ‘It’s one of them party buses.’ I had to explain that the vehicles with pink bunny girls or oiled down firemen were indeed party buses but a transit van with Devon and Cornwall Police written down the side, was not! They do tend to turn up at parties, I told him, normally in the middle, uninvited and with a load of fun prevention officers on board but they do not have a mini bar, mirrored ceilings and/or strobe lights.
Anyway, I alighted from the car and was nearly trampled by a couple from Birmingham who explained that they were ‘plastered’ newly weds. The young man asked if I would like to meet his trophy wife? I assumed he was referring to the young lady who had him tucked under her arm and was blocking my view of the Devon and Cornwall Transit van and, to be honest, most of Mountbatten. I welcomed them to Devon, made small talk on marriage but I refrained from using that old line about a trophy wife as in….what the heck competition did you enter…but did wonder if first prize was…win your weight in wife! I wished them well in life’s journey and entered a darken hollow for some refreshment. Adjusting my eyes to the bat cave with beer pumps, I am afraid middle aged grump took over. I asked for a bottle of beer and was presented with a plastic, slightly squeezy, cold one. Plastic bottled beer!! Gripping the bottle a little too hard I delivered several fluid ounces up my left hooter hole and then spent five minutes foaming from the ears. The barman showed no signs of humour when I asked for a teat and a towel and left said establishment by groping along the walls, heading for the street light like a giant beer stained moth.
I am taking this middle aged thing really seriously and am now showing people my new combi boiler and walk in fridge. I am also about to buy a mid life crisis sports car, it being slightly cheaper than a Thai bride and thus went into my bank on Tuesday to sort out finances. I felt very grown up and swaggered up to the counter to ask for a banker’s draft. It made me sound very important and a little like James Bond and I swear I could hear the cue whispering ‘banker draft’….he must be loaded or middle aged.
‘Not a problem,’ said the lady. ‘That will be thirty pounds!’
‘Not a problem,’ I said. We middle aged combi boiler owners can afford thirty pounds.
And then she added. ‘But it is not a guarantee of funds!’
‘So why issue one?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But it’s not a guarantee of funds. You could write a cheque…but that’s not a guarantee of funds.’
I should have guessed that in this day and age that although it says bank above the door….that is no guarantee of funds either. I left before the twelve year old manger called the Devon and Cornwall party bus. I went home a squirted a beer up my nose.
Fitz
