Geriatric and the Pacemakers

Veg Man Ray pokes his head round the kitchen door and gives us a toothy grin and a “Hello”. He has the privilege of being the only white supremacist allowed in my kitchen, and on that front he is work in progress, with some eventual hope of success, although I have to admit it’s difficult, and I often don’t have the stamina to immerse myself in the nonsensical arguments.
      Veg Man Ray has a (reportedly) large Greek wife, of whom he is seriously scared, although he would never admit it. She is a lady we have never seen, only heard. When I say heard, I don’t just mean the stories about her emanating from Veg Man Ray, but also the shouted telephone conversations which have occasionally taken place in our kitchen.
      “Whaddya want now?” bawls Ray after his phone rings, and he checks who’s calling and groans.
      There is concerted high pitched staccato from the other end of the line, and he holds the phone a couple of inches from his ear.
      “I told you I haven’t got time now. You should have told me last night!”
      More shouting from the other end, and I suspect a few Greek profanities thrown in.
      “No. Can’t do it now. See you later….. Bye…”
      It is the “Bye” bit that interests me in terms of their relationship. Traditionally at the end of such a conversation one or both parties slam down the telephone and say “Goddam that woman”, or some such, before staring into the distance for a few seconds as the camera pans away. The moderately affectionate “Bye” perhaps gives hope that there is something to salvage from the wreckage.
      Two Soups is also observing all this, as well as the sack of potatoes that Veg Man Ray has just dumped in the kitchen, which she knows she will be designated to peel.
      “Silly Billy,” she says (her default response in any situation). “You shouldn’t argue with your wife like that, you’ll just upset the advocaat.”

 Veg Man Ray is perennially morbid. He also brings us news of a new ailment each week, usually one of his own, but sometimes that of a close relative or friend. This week it’s teeth. He has a broken tooth which is giving him pain, but can’t book a visit to the dentist to get it fixed because of the pandemic.
      “Why don’t you get them fixed properly?” suggests Alex, “You’re always having problems with them, and they’d look so much better if you spent a bit of money on them.”
      “What’s the point?” replies Ray, gloomily “I’m not getting a shag and I’m going to die anyway.”
      This is the sort of dark logic that’s difficult to argue with on a rational basis, hence my reluctance to get involved on this and many other matters on which he has opinions.
      Two Soups hits the nail on the head: “You must be fed up to the black teeth with it all.”

Veg Man Ray does have his good points, in particular patience with Alex’s ordering methods, which in my opinion sometimes leave something to be desired. He doesn’t ‘batter an eyelid’ (as Two Soups would say) at a request for fifty four carrots.
             “Why don’t you ask for ten kilos or whatever?” I ask, exasperatedly.
             “Because I need fifty four carrots,” says Alex, patiently, “One per person. That’s what the recipe says.”
(If I had a carrot for every time she’s said ‘That’s what the recipe says’, I’d have turned into Bugs Bunny by now.)
             “How do you know what size they’ll be?”
             “I’ve been getting carrots off Ray for years, I know how big his carrots are.
      The reason we need fifty four carrots is because we are putting on one of our supper clubs, and we have sold fifty four tickets. At least, I sincerely hope we have sold fifty four tickets. If I have missed one, everyone will be short of carrot by a ratio of 54/55ths, and that will spell disaster. And I don’t need to tell you that, in my capacity as administration and ticketing department, that would be down to me. Previous mistakes of this type have been duly spotted, logged, and brought up in subsequent post-mortems.
      A key element of our supper clubs is The Quiz. As well as being in charge of administration and ticketing, and performing as sous chef, I am also Quizmaster General, a role which brings significant danger with it. You may think there are risks involved with serving people dishes from countries around the world which you have never cooked before, or maybe in booking a village hall and not knowing how many tickets you’re going to sell, but in fact the greater risk comes from setting a quiz which is too difficult, too easy, or worse still has a contentious answer.
      Tonight’s is a picture quiz. A picture quiz makes it much harder to cheat by asking Mr. Google, so I tend to favour them. The subject is pop groups, from the sixties to the twenty tens. Not that I know anything about pop music in the twenty tens, but I am just about capable of looking up a list of recent Mercury Prize winners. It’s simple: name the group by interpreting the pictures. There is one question of which I am particularly proud, which is a picture of a German soldier from World War II, followed by one of a cluster of three small electrical devices with wires coming out of them. Gerry and the Pacemakers, as any fule kno.
             Alex, Two Soups, Curly and I are busy attempting to equitably plate up fifty four portions of carrot when an elderly gentleman bursts into the kitchen waving his quiz sheet.
             “What on earth is this? I can’t see what this is. None of us in my team can see what this is!”
             I take a look at the picture he’s jabbing at, which happens to be that of the pacemakers.
             “Well, it is quite tricky,” I say calmly, “But if you had one yourself you’d know what they were.”
             “Well I don’t!” The gentleman storms off. Five minutes later another customer comes into the kitchen.
      “There’s blatant cheating going on out there! They’re taking photos of the quiz on their phones!”
             I reluctantly break off from my carrot distribution and head out into the hall. I am pointed towards the end table where the offenders are gathered around their quiz sheet.
             “We’re not cheating, we’re just taking a photo of the photo,” they explain, “Our eyesight isn’t that good, but we thought if we could magnify it on our phone we could maybe see what it is.”
             “Which picture are you having trouble with?” I ask. Inevitably the answer comes, “The one with the electrical things with wires coming out.”
             Back in the kitchen ten minutes later and there is another intrusion along the same lines, this time from a customer I’d previously believed to be quite reasonable and placid, to the extent of me thinking he could be a potential pub companion. He has steam coming out of his ears and I have to tell him to go and sit down and get a life. By the time the main course is cleared and it is time to go through the answers, I know I have a potential riot on my hands.
             I nervously work my way through answers 1 to 16 until we get to the offending question. The room is bristling. I read the answer through my microphone,
      “And number seventeen is of course Gerry and the Pacemakers.” There is an undercurrent of mumbling and groaning, shaking of papers, and stabbing of fingers. However I can also see there are a few people sitting quite smugly in their seats. Aha, I think to myself, now I know which of you are fitted with the damn things, and the rest of you will be needing one very soon if you don’t calm down.

The following week Veg Man Ray pokes his head through the kitchen door carrying boxes full of wild mushrooms, cantaloupe melons, celery and a small carton of difficult-to-source red amaranth – a micro herb used by poncy chefs such as myself on occasions, which he has to get for us from the market in London. Ray has a lump on his head which he is keen to tell us about, and has had yet another dispute with his wife, which may or may not be the cause of the lump: we assume the worst.
             Two Soups observes, “You always come off second best after an argument with your wife. It’s so one-sided it’s like the Texas chain-saw moussaka.”
             Alex is more practical: “I know you’re not getting any at the moment Ray, so I’ve saved you half a pound of liver.”
             Now that Ray’s immediate problems have been resolved in an instant, he can return his thoughts to considerations of how and why he can justify his fundamental belief in the superiority of the white man, the subject closest to his heart.

And we the people, who can but try, forever learn as time goes by.

Yes, yes, I could be wrong. Why, why, should I pretend? God only knows in the end.

Notes