DO YOU HEAR BELLS BABY?

Sometimes I find myself telling the kids 'there's no need to shout, I'm not deaf'. Then when I am asking them not to touch something or other I find myself shouting 'are you?' Nobody listens, everybody shouts, even those who can't speak. I was walking along to the dentist's when a man ahead was gesticulating wildly and I soon gathered he was mute and needed me to press the doorbells of a block of flats to let him in as he was keenly delivering leaflets advertising the local paper The Altoaragon. I did the old 'yeh, yeh no problem' bit when he thrust a piece of paper in my face that said 'soy sordo', 'I'm deaf' or 'I'm deaf and dumb' so to speak, boom boom. It was for an instant that I felt compelled to say this to the many people asking 'who the devil is it' after I had rung all the bells needed to get someone up from their siesta and open the door for the poor man. 'Hola, I'm dumb, I can't speak right now, can you open the door please?' Later Henderson told me that the man was the same fellow who rang our bell at three in the morning to let him in to deliver those damn leaflets and Henderson just told him to clear off leaving the poor man to swear as best he could finally giving the finger at Henderson's disgruntled face. I get the feeling the story doesn't end there.

As everything falls on deaf ears I attempted to thwart the advances of the above dentist by asing her if it was really necessary to remove what is left of a tooth I once had. She listened and said that it would be OK but eventually the tooth would start to annoy me and probably would need a yank but for now it would be fine. So I walked away fifty quid better off and a spring in my step. I have decided to keep the money and spend it on my next filling next month. Toothless old hag seems to be the future but one day I will be dead and as Kingsly Amis said 'almost nothing is worth giving up for the sake of a few more years in a nursing home in Bournemouth' and for me that also means teeth. I'm thinking of leaving my body to science like Jane Asher's brain with a list of things I tried to tell them were wrong while I was alive.

The big fat Gypsy is definitely and defiantly back and so is his chair. I wonder if it bears any relation to the old mattress I saw dumped on the side of the road today. When I worked in The Coach and Horses all those years ago, Norman, the landlord, had it in for the sex shop and it's workers next door and when they finally had to close down they left a dirty old mattress leaning up against the door of the pub as a fit of pique I suppose. I can't look at a mattress abandoned anywhere without remembering that sordid day.

Talking of pique, I tried to find out what the Spanish press had made of the recent scandal involving the Formula One driver of a similar name. You can rest assured that no mention of Jews has been found so far unlike some of the articles on the world recession.

Lastly, tomorrow I shall attempt many things. One being my second go at making mincemeat as opposed to making mincemeat out of someone, and the other one is to write about Nunilo and his friends.