The Devil Rides Out by Paul O'Grady

Author:Paul O'Grady [O'Grady, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Humor, Form, Anecdotes, Entertainment & Performing Arts, General, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Fiction, cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9780553824636
Publisher: Transworld Publishers
Published: 2010-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Wedding Bells

ON APRIL FOOL’S DAY 1977, VERA ARRIVED FOR ANOTHER weekend but this time stayed three years. Since he didn’t have a job he needed to sign on and so I duly went round to W. H. Smith to buy a rent book which I then gave the ‘treatment’, enabling Vera to claim rent. I was an expert at ageing rent books, fancying myself as a master forger, the John Myatt of rent books.

My technique was simple but effective. I’d start by rubbing both sides of the cover with a used tea bag until it had reached the right depth of sepia to pass, even under the closest of scrutiny by the most officious of social security employees, as a document of suitable maturity. A little fag ash rubbed on to parts of the cover for depth, the corners dilapidated with a few dog ears and then, as a finishing touch to this masterly piece of fakery, my signature mark – a casually placed ring from a coffee cup on the cover and a couple of doodles and phone numbers scribbled hastily on the back. Inside I’d laboriously fill in the dates and the amounts supposedly paid over the months, using a selection of different biros and adding a little extra of course to the amount Vera would actually be shelling out in the way of rent as a way of making the entire enterprise financially viable. I could put years on a brand new rent book in under an hour, and by the time I’d finished with Vera’s it could’ve passed for the one that Mary and Joseph had used to pay the rent on that stable.

As it happened, after all that work Vera didn’t bother using it. He got himself a job in a pub in Islington called the Sportsman instead.

The Royal Northern was downsizing and both the physiotherapy and the occupational therapy departments were told to shed a few staff. As it was a case of last in first out I was one of the first to go. Privately I’d often felt that I was superfluous to requirements anyway, often finding myself on a quiet day with nothing to do, and wasn’t particularly surprised when I was given my marching orders. The blow was softened by the two months’ wages and three weeks’ holiday pay that came with it.

First thing I did was pay off the Access card that I’d allowed to build up when I’d overused my ‘flexible friend’ to pay for Christmas presents and clothes, and then I rented a black and white telly from DER. There was no aerial on the roof of the house so we had to make do with an indoor one that proved to be absolutely useless. The reception was – and still is, I’m reliably told – crap in Crouch End and it wasn’t until Vera replaced DER’s standard My Favorite Martian aerial with a bent wire coat hanger that we made contact with Weatherfield and were able

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