Mike Priestley: Who's Counting?

The thought of having to paint the upstairs windows of the house every couple of years, spending many long hours juggling with a paint can and brush while trying not to look down, has become less and less appealing as each year passes.

It's not a job that most men can hand over to the woman who shares their life with them, particularly in middle age.

Although there are no doubt plenty of exceptions, for some strange biological reason many women claim that climbing ladders is not one of the things they do. It's man's work.

Holding the bottom of a ladder is another matter. They'll do that willingly - until they understandably get bored of leaning there against the bottom rungs, spot a bit of weeding that needs doing and wander off, taking your sense of security with them.

It was because of a growing reluctance to both climb and hold ladders that we decided, the other week, to do what many other people do - particularly when they look ahead to their advancing years. We invested some of the money which would otherwise go eventually to the heirs to the Priestley fortunes (or nursing-home proprietors) in uPVC window frames which will only need a wipe down now and then by the window cleaner.

Great idea? Indeed. But there's a built-in snag. These uPVC window frames come in a wide range of colours, every one of which is white. If the woodwork in most of your rooms isn't white, they don't match it. So what do you do?

You find yourself embarking on a giant round of internal redecorating, turning all the woodwork white. And that, of course, means that you have to repaint the ceilings as well. And paper the walls.

Fortunately we work well as a team at Priestley Towers. We should do, after 36 years of marriage and countless bouts of redecorating. We measure up, cut the paper, slap on the paste, stick it on the walls and crack on at a great pace.

Mind you, we're a bit out of practice because for the last decade or more we've been happy to stick with the trend for wood-chipping the walls and slapping coats of emulsion paint on them.

Sadly, fashion has shifted against us. Wallpaper is back in. It now takes days to redecorate a room that could be done in a couple of hours with a roller and a can of satin-finish magnolia.

But we're getting there, bit by bit. And when the time comes round to do it all again?...Well, who knows, with a bit of luck by then woodchip and emulsion might be back in fashion again and we'll be able to set ourselves up for easy decorating in our old age!

I Don't Believe It!

This has been one of those weeks when people have found plenty to grumble about. Among them is Mrs J Hoggarth, of Thorpe Edge, who is less than happy with the bus services on Bank holidays.

"The local Hopper doesn't run, so we can't have a nip up to Morrison's or Shipley and have a spot of lunch and enjoy the mild weather," she writes in a letter to the T&A that's been passed on to me.

"I inquired about a bus to Otley, which runs through the village all through the week. They don't run on Bank holidays. My husband's a poorly man and can't walk very far, so he enjoys a bus ride. It's better than being sat in our flat all day. It's not much use giving us bus passes if there are no buses to get at holiday time. So we stayed in."

Mrs Hoggarth remembers the days years ago, "before progress reared its ugly head" when it was possible to go to Chester Street bus station and get a bus to anywhere.

"The world's gone mad!" she says. "I'm sorry, but there's lots of things, too numerous to mention in this letter, that would have been best left alone. Bus conductors, for instance. Always there to help with prams and shopping and people on and off buses. The old-fashioned ways and courtesies were the best. Some things need to go backwards, not forward."

I can't think that many of the people who read this column would disagree with you, Mrs Hoggarth. I certainly don't. What annoys me about the buses, too, is the way they stop running at Christmas. People without cars can't go to visit anyone who lives further than walking distance away. And neither can people who have cars but would rather leave them at home so they can have a drink.

Yet we're all asked not to drink and drive. And we're forever being asked to use public transport. Daft, isn't it?

The title of this column sprang to the mind of Mrs Stella Ward the other weekend when she was in the restaurant of a local garden centre. "There was a couple sitting at a nearby table and the woman was breast-feeding her baby," she reports. "You accept that sort of thing nowadays. The woman was eating chips with one hand and holding the baby to her with the other."

However, what happened next was rather less acceptable. It was Mrs Ward's acute sense of smell which alerted her to what was going on.

"They had the baby changing mat on the floor alongside their table and were changing the dirty nappy!" she says. "In a restaurant! I wish I'd said something, but I didn't."

Not many of us would, Mrs Ward. We just grumble inside, don't we, about the way people behave. Or we grumble in this column - like I did last week about people spitting.

That brought a response from Douglas Lumb, of Shipley, who writes: "When I did my National Service we had a sergeant who would call back young men who spat, telling them that the Army didn't want their spittle. 'Pick it up, soldier - and take it away!' he would tell them.

"They had no implement - apart from their handkerchief, if any - with which to carry out the order. So it was a salutary lesson they remembered."

That's a bit of rough military justice, Douglas. But I'll bet it did the trick.

If you have a gripe about anything, drop a line to me, Hector Mildew, c/o Newsroom, T&A, Hall Ings, Bradford BD1 1JR, email me or leave any messages for me with Mike Priestley on (44) 0 1274 729511.

Yours Expectantly,

Hector Mildew

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Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.