£35 for early booking
Dear Mr Ravenscroft
Welcome from all at Chapterhouse! We offer - a choice of course unrivalled personal tuition a track record of success full assessment of all courses a guide to finding work After a Chapterhouse course you could be set for a full or part-time career earning up to £20 an hour from home. Please read our Brochure and Book of Success We would love to have you as a student! With best wishes
Daisy Crowther, Course Director
And that’s after returning their form with six glaring errors! Christ knows what they’d have offered me if I’d got everything right, a directorship a least I would have thought.
I wrote back to Daisy Crowther and told her to go fcuk herself.
****
December 29 2007. GOOSE.
I answered the door to Atkins. He was carrying what looked to be a coil of washing line. “What’s the rope for?” I said, in a state of suspicion, which isn’t a bad state to be in when dealing with Atkins.
“Didn’t you once mention you used to be in the Boy Scouts?” he said, ignoring my query about the rope. It didn’t take me long to find out. “Can you do a noose?” he asked, stepping inside.
Alarm bells rang. Atkins has been having an ongoing battle of wills with the paperboy, who persists in leaving the majority of his Daily Mail on the outside side of his letter box where it gets wet through if it’s raining when the paper is delivered. Personally I think giving the Daily Mail a thorough dousing can only improve it but Atkins says the he likes it for the cartoons.
“You’re not going to hang the paperboy, are you?” I said. “You’ve only got to tip him at Christmas like everybody else and he’d push your paper all the way through.”
“I’ve never tipped in my life and I don’t intend starting now,” said Atkins. “It’s against my religion. Anyway I’m not going to hang the paperboy, it’s for the wife.”
“You’re going to hang Meg?”
Atkins looked at me impatiently. “I’m not going to hang anybody. She wants a goose for our New Year’s Day dinner.”
It transpired that Mrs Atkins had been very disappointed with the turkey they’d had for Christmas Day lunch and wasn’t about to risk another disappointment. Atkins had been charged with providing a goose.
“That still doesn’t explain why you want a noose,” I said.
Atkins snorted. “Have you seen the price of them? If she thinks I’m forking out fifty quid for a goose she can think again. No, there’s a flock of Canada geese on the canal, must be a hundred of them. I’m going to bag one. Lasso one. Make it wish it had never left Canada. When you’ve made me a noose.”
What Atkins had in mind was a bit ambitious, even for Atkins. “You’re going to lasso one of the Canada geese on the canal?”
“Well why not?”
“Well for one thing they’re protected.”
“What, you mean they were shin pads or something? Give over. Anyway I’m having one, protected or not, they won’t miss one.” He proffered the rope. “So if you’d be good enough to do the honours?”
I took the rope off him. “It isn’t a noose you want,” I said, “It’s a slip knot. You want a lariat, like cowboys use.”
“That’s it, a lariat. Make me a lariat.”
“You can use a lariat?”
“We won’t be able to miss. They’re all together in a big flock just sat there paddling around, the noose bit is bound to go over the neck of one of them. Then all we have to do is drag it out.”
Normally when Atkins says ‘we’, automatically incorporating me into one of his wilder schemes, I demur, or at the very least take some time to consider what I might be getting myself into. Not this time. Atkins lassoing a goose was not a sight I wanted to miss. Geese, especially large Canada geese, are very strong birds, and once Atkins tightened the lasso round the neck of one of them it would be a racing certainty it would be the goose dragging Atkins into the
Dear Mr Ravenscroft
Welcome from all at Chapterhouse! We offer - a choice of course unrivalled personal tuition a track record of success full assessment of all courses a guide to finding work After a Chapterhouse course you could be set for a full or part-time career earning up to £20 an hour from home. Please read our Brochure and Book of Success We would love to have you as a student! With best wishes
Daisy Crowther, Course Director
And that’s after returning their form with six glaring errors! Christ knows what they’d have offered me if I’d got everything right, a directorship a least I would have thought.
I wrote back to Daisy Crowther and told her to go fcuk herself.
****
December 29 2007. GOOSE.
I answered the door to Atkins. He was carrying what looked to be a coil of washing line. “What’s the rope for?” I said, in a state of suspicion, which isn’t a bad state to be in when dealing with Atkins.
“Didn’t you once mention you used to be in the Boy Scouts?” he said, ignoring my query about the rope. It didn’t take me long to find out. “Can you do a noose?” he asked, stepping inside.
Alarm bells rang. Atkins has been having an ongoing battle of wills with the paperboy, who persists in leaving the majority of his Daily Mail on the outside side of his letter box where it gets wet through if it’s raining when the paper is delivered. Personally I think giving the Daily Mail a thorough dousing can only improve it but Atkins says the he likes it for the cartoons.
“You’re not going to hang the paperboy, are you?” I said. “You’ve only got to tip him at Christmas like everybody else and he’d push your paper all the way through.”
“I’ve never tipped in my life and I don’t intend starting now,” said Atkins. “It’s against my religion. Anyway I’m not going to hang the paperboy, it’s for the wife.”
“You’re going to hang Meg?”
Atkins looked at me impatiently. “I’m not going to hang anybody. She wants a goose for our New Year’s Day dinner.”
It transpired that Mrs Atkins had been very disappointed with the turkey they’d had for Christmas Day lunch and wasn’t about to risk another disappointment. Atkins had been charged with providing a goose.
“That still doesn’t explain why you want a noose,” I said.
Atkins snorted. “Have you seen the price of them? If she thinks I’m forking out fifty quid for a goose she can think again. No, there’s a flock of Canada geese on the canal, must be a hundred of them. I’m going to bag one. Lasso one. Make it wish it had never left Canada. When you’ve made me a noose.”
What Atkins had in mind was a bit ambitious, even for Atkins. “You’re going to lasso one of the Canada geese on the canal?”
“Well why not?”
“Well for one thing they’re protected.”
“What, you mean they were shin pads or something? Give over. Anyway I’m having one, protected or not, they won’t miss one.” He proffered the rope. “So if you’d be good enough to do the honours?”
I took the rope off him. “It isn’t a noose you want,” I said, “It’s a slip knot. You want a lariat, like cowboys use.”
“That’s it, a lariat. Make me a lariat.”
“You can use a lariat?”
“We won’t be able to miss. They’re all together in a big flock just sat there paddling around, the noose bit is bound to go over the neck of one of them. Then all we have to do is drag it out.”
Normally when Atkins says ‘we’, automatically incorporating me into one of his wilder schemes, I demur, or at the very least take some time to consider what I might be getting myself into. Not this time. Atkins lassoing a goose was not a sight I wanted to miss. Geese, especially large Canada geese, are very strong birds, and once Atkins tightened the lasso round the neck of one of them it would be a racing certainty it would be the goose dragging Atkins into the
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