Sally - Part 2. MY INVISIBLE WIFE!



1973. MY FIRST STALL ON THE QUAYSIDE MARKET, NEWCASTLE. WITH MY HELPER PAUL HOLDING MY FIRST BORN JONATHAN AND MY FATHER-IN-LAW, THE IRREPRESSIBLE TOM.

I really like my life. It's full of work and holidays. I go to market every Sunday and to a few longer shows during the summer.

WE ALL LOOKED LIKE JOHN LENNON IN 1973 ! MY JUMPER WAS COVETED BY MANY !

Shirley, my wife, who respects me deeply, has become a "Mrs.Mainwaring" character out of 'Dad's Army'. No one has ever seen her and we appear together in public so rarely and certainly not at market that some people think that I have made her up. People may wonder why that is and I can assure you that it is not because she dreads the world seeing her for the fool she thinks she is for having made such a crap marital choice !

 When a friend bumped into the pair of us on the day in 1993 when she last went shopping, he poked me in the ribs and said, "Hey! You're really quiet when ' THE BOSS' is around!"

I can't think what he meant!

My three children adore me and are very proud of me. I see it in their eyes as they sit at my feet listening to my words of wisdom with their earphones in and I hear love in their voices where others might hear disdain! I'm sure it's their desire to help me feel important that makes them keep coming back to borrow more money.

Because I work such long hours I have no social life, which is odd for a man who likes to hear idle malicious gossip and then spread it around without any thought to the terrible hurt that others might subsequently suffer. Shirley often tells me that I'm turning into a  woman because of this love of gossip and turning into a woman is probably the one thing I haven't been to the doctor's about !

Oh! Shirley is such a joker!

The trouble I have is that when Shirley tells me something in secret, on pain of death if I mention it to the person concerned, which she has just heard in secret from someone else who has made her promise not to tell anyone else, "Especially David! " because they had promised their informer that they wouldn't tell anyone else, I forget all about it until I see the poor victim and immediately say something like, "Hay you'll never guess what I've heard about someone, can't remember who for now.....anyway."....Etc,Etc, Etc.

EVERYMAN MUST RECOGNISE THIS.......THE 'WARNING' LOOK ! IGNORE IT AT YOUR PERIL !

Just don't tell me anything! Right?

I don't smoke because it makes my clothes stink and my lungs suffer and anyway I could never inhale in a manly way without coughing my guts up. I don't drink because after two halves of lemonade shandy I believe myself to be a most charming erudite man with a deeply seductive voice and  a remarkably wonderful sexual technique until the next day when someone tells me what a complete prat I'd been, telling dreadfully inflammatory jokes which simply weren't funny and braying like a donkey into the faces of beautiful women who were completely embarrassed  and unamused by my behaviour.

I don't recall successfully or unsuccessfully seducing any of them !

So I seek solace in music but much of what I hear is dross, presented by condescendingly smug idiots with hangers on in the background whooping and cheering. Sadly even Classic FM has it's share of them. There was an Irish one in the mornings who lacked charm and sincerity and referred to the great Leonard Bernstein as "Lennie" when he wasn't fit to tie his shoelaces. I heard him say, "Woodya beleaf it's Lennie hisself condoctin? And after dis onta der horses." !

And that's how I came to lunge at the radio to get him off and back to the hopefully better world of Radio4.
I tuned into a medical phone-in where a chairman and his panel were answering questions specifically on kidney disease .He was in mid-sentence....."And our next caller is Sally of Forest Gate in East London. Hello Sally and what's your question ?"

You see, I was born and brought up in Forest Gate and I immediately wondered if my mother, Sylvia, could possibly know Sally amongst the thousands of locals.

Sally started to speak, "Hello darling..." and my worst nightmare began to unfold for it was my mother's poshest telephone voice that the nation heard. The woman who as a doctor's wife was single-handedly responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of my father's patients and who as a mother produced at first four emaciated sons who can be seen stick-thin in the few family photos that were ever taken ! The fifth, born many years later, was fed on Wimpy Hamburgers and fattened up nicely !