Pernicolas Du Bois’ birthday drink
That done, I concentrated for a while on my chosen career of computing. I had a tremendous head start having been hooked at the age of 12 before home computers had even become available. I’d even learnt sufficient to be able to write computer programs for machines that had yet to be released. I wrote data compression algorithms, a complete word processing application, disc storage routines and a series of games. I went on to write an interrupt for the ICL Mainframe that was effectively a rewrite for the standard disc storage algorithm to prevent dreaded page locks.
All this was pointless as Pernicolas did not seem to care, however many times I tried telling him. Perhaps it was because it didn’t affect him, but the net result was I bought a brand new spanking Jag. He could relate to that.
On the day I got it we went for spin round town and it just so happened to be Pernicolas’ birthday. We must have drunk more beers than was sensible as we jumped into the car for yet another and parked right outside the best bar in town. Inside, Pernicolas did his ‘two holes in the newspaper trick, pretending to eye up the girls through the holes.
When we came to leave we staggered and stumbled back into the car shouting “Cheerio” to the bamboozled, rather stern faced bouncers.
Literally 25 yards down the road we were joined by blue flashing lights and the cops yanked me out of the driving seat, slapped me face down on the tarmac and handcuffed me.
“You’re a bloody stupid idiot,” one of them shouted.
“You are under arrest, you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”
I managed to turn my head up a shade by peeling my face slightly off the tarmac road surface to utter the words “We were … we were … were, just going to the snooker club for a beer.”
They did not appear too impressed. Pernicolas was allowed to wonder off into the darkness of the night. I suppose he knew in his own mind that he wasn’t getting a lift home. Off he staggered. I was whisked off in a police car just 300 yards to the police station in the centre of town. Upon arrival I was informed,
“Mr Lowe, following a tip off there is sufficient belief that you have be driving whilst under the influence of alcohol.”
They talked about me as if I was an inanimate object. When my turn came to use the breathalyser they explained that a reading of over 35 would result in my detention and prosecution. Just as I was about to blow into it, the phone rang. An officer answered it.
“Mr Lowe, it’s your solicitor on the phone, I presume you want to talk with him?”
“No thanks,” I replied, “I don’t have a solicitor.”
I thought it could only be Pernicolas prating around, and of course I found out subsequently it was.
I blew into the machine, the reading came, “………. 4” it said.
The policeman banged the machine a bit and asked me to blow into it again. I blew long and hard “……….. 3” it came back with this time.
One of the policemen shouted extremely convincingly towards the central console desk “There must be something wrong with it Sarge.”
“……No,” I said politely, “Have you ever considered I may actually be sober and I’ve just been acting drunk?”
They looked at each other, then looked at me a rather strangely, and for quite some time.
What I had actually done was bought all the beers for Pernicolas on his birthday and secretly, without him knowing, bought myself ‘zero alcohol’ beer. I explained to the police how it was Pernicolas’ birthday and how he was ‘drunk as a lord’ and most likely now being a danger to himself and traffic as he tried to stumble home. I also reiterated that our next point of call was to be a beer at the snooker hall.
They seemed to understand. I was asked to jump into the back of the police car parked outside, the two officers jumped in the front and off we sped to try to find Pernicolas. We eventually found him swinging round a lamppost at a part of town called ‘Five Lamps’.
The police car pulled up gently beside him. He saw the two officers in the front, and then he saw me sitting in the back. The police wound their window down and beckoned him over.
“I haven’t done anything wrong … ossifer” he slurped out.
“No,” they said, “Looks like you and your mate here will be popping off to the snooker hall for a beer.”
They dropped us off at my car and watched in total bewilderment as Pernicolas and I climbed in and sped off to have a beer at the snooker club.
“What the dickens is going on?” Pernicolas slurred to me.
“I hasn’t got a clue” I slurred back to him.
He never could work out how I passed the breathalyser test.
Ace of Diamonds
Pernicolas gave me a marble ace of diamonds that Christmas; it must have been three foot by two foot and weighed an absolute ton. I gave him some ‘Home James’ – drink driving gloves. You drink – the gloves do the driving. The amazing thing I found about this massive marble ace of diamonds when transporting it to my house was that it only just fitted in the boot of my car. An idea came to me in a flash. Every time I gave a lift to someone, as they got out I could say, “Pick a card, any card,” and then get them to look in the car boot.
When my squash mate Chris got out of the car at Chesterfield Squash Club I said my, “Pick a card, any card” bit. Wow-wee, he picked the ace of diamonds. I got all excited inside but kept a straight face and even dared myself to add, “You can change it if you wish.”
Slight pause and he said “No, it’s all right I’ll stick with the ace of diamonds.”
“OK,” I said, “Get out and take a look in the boot.”
At this point I hit the boot catch release button. Chris got out, opened the boot and saw the massive ace of diamonds.
He went potty.
“How on earth did you do that?” he shouted, and started looking under, over and around the car.
“Where are the others” he kept saying.
I just kept totally quiet about how I had achieved this whilst Chris went roaming around the squash club in shock telling everyone what had just happened. His brain was truly baffled and it was not until two years later that I told him how I did it. Even then he found it difficult to believe. Every time we see each other now we greet each other with a shriek of “Ace of Diamonds,” at which point he doubles up in laughter and then adds a few expletives.
Visiting the dentists chair
Convinced I could revise for exams whilst riding a bike, I had got a chip on my front tooth from falling off. Having propped the bar up at the local pub one night whilst chatting away to the local dentist I mentioned this. On the way home he invited me into his surgery, which was just down the road, to see the new dentist’s chair he had just acquired, plus a drunken impromptu dental check up. I remember the automatic mechanism altering the chairs height up and down and spinning round and round until I was dizzy. All this with my mouth wide open saying “Ah…” whilst he checked that all my teeth were OK.
Carrying on dizzily in the dark towards home I bumped into two drunken louts kicking a bus stop to pieces. “WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING” I shouted at them.
They stopped kicking it and turned to me, startled that anyone had actually confronted them. One of them glared me in the eye briefly, looked away and took another, albeit, half hearted kick at the bus stop. There was a clear crack on the plastic timetable cover and wooden parts of the shelter were hanging loose.
“What possesses you to do such a thing as this? Please tell me. I’m interested,” I enquired as I walked even closer to them.
“Well, there is not much to do round here and we hate the police and he’s just been to court and got found guilty, so we hate the police, the courts and everything that goes with it.”
“Oh dear” I exclaimed.
“If that is the case…” I started and paused.
“Have you ever considered how to really get your own back on the police and the courts?”
“No, how is that?” one of them asked.
“Well consider this; if you and all your criminal mates stopped doing this sort of thing and behaved yourselves, and before you committed a criminal act you JUST STOPPED AND DIDN’T DO IT,” I shouted at them.
“Then that would put all the police and court judges out of business and they’d have to become dustmen.”
“ARE YOU OK WITH THAT” I continued to shout at them.
“Yes” one replied, and they scuttled off.
