Chapter 16

We don’t know when or how the tale below was submitted to us. The original bears no date, address or signature, and was found in a plain envelope. Editor

How Are You?

I imagine many of your readers share my view that queries about one’s wellbeing are usually rhetorical. People ask how one is faring, but most of them don’t really want to know. My old RAF mate Colin and I settled this point long ago by agreeing to contact one another at the same times of the same days each week, so we never bother with introductory banalities. Our conversations start with the recipient picking up the receiver and saying something like ‘Do you want to buy an ostrich?’ or ‘Look, nobody gives away fitted kitchens.’

This doesn’t work with other callers, who are usually discomfited by such overtures. There are exceptions, these including salespeople, who seem to have a prepared spiel from which they can be deflected only by drastic measures, and sometimes not even then. Almost invariably, they ring me between midday and one-thirty p.m., or at any time from five to seven-thirty in the evening. Nowadays, I ignore the phone in those periods, but there was a time when I enjoyed myself with the near-daily chats, usually explaining that the timing was inconvenient, as I was (a) hurrying to a funeral, (b) expecting news from the hospice where my father was confined – he died thirty-odd years ago – or© waiting for a fire engine to dowse the conflagration in my flat. Perhaps the high spot was when I announced myself as the sales manager for Maserati Fork-lift Trucks. My offer of our new Megalifta – with one twitch of its mighty prongs, it could handle four thousand house bricks – failed to derail the stout fellow at the other end.

Anyway, I’m getting off the point, or not getting onto it. The theme is acquaintances, in this case David, a former office colleague who has the mistaken impression that I am a fount of general knowledge. He is extraordinarily self-obsessed and calls only when he needs advice. For this reason I had decided to turn the table on him at some juncture. The opportunity arose when he rang two months ago. “How are you, Jack?” he bawled.

“Not so good,” I groaned. “I’ve just fallen onto a circular saw. Damned thing sliced through my right bicep. I’m bleeding like a stuck pig.”

“Hard luck,” he said. “Listen, I was wondering if you have any idea how to get engine oil out of asphalt. I’ve a great patch of gunge on my drive.”

Damn, he’d hit the Achilles heel. He was speaking to one of the very few people able to solve his problem. I was torn between brushing him off and telling him what to do. Decency prevailed, albeit briefly. “There’s a way,” I said. “Get some sand and tread it into the area for ten minutes, leave it for half an hour, sweep the residue away, then do the same again six or seven times and you’ll be okay.”