Free Stairlift to Heaven by Terry Ravenscroft Page B

unlike today when I’m likely to be given the once-over by a moonlighting Albanian over for the weekend who can speak about as much English as our budgie; a time when the England cricket team still didn’t win any more often than they do nowadays but at least more than half of them weren’t born in South Africa; and when politicians, even in those days, were people you wouldn’t trust as far as you could throw them, but were still a quantum leap better than the lying, thieving, self-serving excuses for human beings we have representing our interests today. No, like I said, I’ve had the best of it.
    Whew, glad I’ve got that off my chest. I might start to enjoy myself again now.
     
    ****
     
    August 2 2007. FENG SHUI
     
    You would have thought that after seventeen years in our present home I would know the whereabouts of the bed, but no, for when I went to bed last night I walked straight into it. Naturally I hadn’t switched on the bedroom light as I am under strict instructions from The Trouble not to do this whenever I turn in after her as it wakes her up and she can’t get back to sleep, but that shouldn’t have presented a problem as I’ve been finding my way to bed for some time now without the assistance of the North West Electricity Board or whatever fancy new meaningless name it calls itself nowadays.
    Another factor which may have influenced matters was that I’d had one of my rare nights out at the pub with Atkins. At first it led me to believe I’d maybe had a little more to drink than was good for me, and that this was why I’d been unable to successfully navigate the two yards or so between the bedroom door and the bed. The truth is I did successfully it, or at least I would have done if the bed hadn’t been rotated sixty degrees to the left.
    “Feng Shui, and there’s no need to swear,” said The Trouble, after I’d picked myself up off the floor and asked her why the bloody hell the bed was where it was. “Having the bed facing east to west will ensure optimum happiness for the occupants,” she blithely went on.
    “Not if they can’t find the way to it,” I said, rubbing my shin where I had barked it on the bedpost.
    “The trouble with you is that you won’t make an effort to embrace other cultures,” said The Trouble.
    “Not other cultures that believe moving the bed will make a ha’porth of difference I won’t.”
    I might have known of course. In the two days since The Trouble allowed herself to become influenced by the oriental claptrap that is Feng Shui she had already moved the three-piece-suite to a position from where it’s impossible to see the television from my favourite chair without getting a rick in my neck and moved a standard lamp from a perfectly good position in the corner to a perfectly crap position just by the door where I keep walking into it every time I come in.
    Normally The Trouble is one of the most level-headed and pragmatic of people who views the latest fads and fashions with a degree of scepticism, but a couple of years ago, shortly after she bought a wok, a Chinese acupuncturist cured her of a long-standing back problem. This, along with the fact that she claims to have felt a lot better since employing the wok to cook healthy stir-fry dishes, seemed to influence her judgement because from then on all Chinese beliefs, no matter how outlandish, were the bees knees, and soon the mysteries of Tai Chi and acupuncture and Yin and Yang had joined the mysteries of the local Chinese chip shop in our lives. I’m just glad that Mao Tse-Tung is no longer with us otherwise she might be quoting passages of his Little Red Book at me every five minutes.
    “You’ll soon get used to it,” she said. “Think of the optimum happiness you’ll soon be getting. Now turn off the light and get into bed and try not to snore too much.”
    I sighed and did as she bade me. She was right I suppose, I’d soon get used to the new position of the bed, but these things take