Lynda Cheryl, Mayor of Cuinchy

 

Myrtle had finally worked herself up to visiting the chiropodist, so I had a little time to myself. After reading ten times through a letter from my legal representative, which explained the difference between subsidence caused by a gas explosion, as opposed to a gas explosion set off by subsidence, I decided to sort out my hair instead.

Edna the hairdresser had been quite cutting when I met her coming out of the post office. Ok, it could be seen as a generous offer to do a ‘touch up’ on my mis-matched roots for free, due to my circumstances, but up until then the state of my appearance had not felt an issue. Now I was staring in every reflective surface and feeling self conscious in the street. 

I thumped my newly purchased packet of hair dye onto the tiny counter by our portacabin sink. An old army blanket was the only original content of the portacabin when I signed my first rental cheque, and had served various functions over the years, today it was a hairdressing cape. I imagined that it would transition back into being a draft excluder in the near future.

Guinee Laboratories Apricot Splendour had served me well for decades, it was the same powder that Edna mixed up in her stained plastic beaker, while she probed me for details about my love life, or lack thereof.

The label on the packet was twisted around, and it was hard to read the instructions. Still, at 49p from the bargain bucket of Roger’s Rejects Stall at the Flea market, I shouldn’t grumble.
I had worked up sachet one into a decent froth when the first knock of the day landed on the portacabin door. Dripping small staining puddles as I went, I leaned outside the window to see who was calling.

It looked like a small woman waving a placard which read ‘Adulterer’s Repent’, but as I had removed my glasses I couldn’t be sure.
‘We don’t want any,’ I shouted, before closing the window.
My visitor had greater lung power than I might have imagined, considering her diminutive stature.

‘I’ve brought you some turkey,’ she yelled, holding up a covered plate to the window, and pointing to it encouragingly.
Some of the mystery of this situation dissipated when I spotted a pink minivan parked outside our plot. The signage on the vehicle read ‘FemLegUH Mission For The Homeless’, with a smiling cartoon style woman holding up a plate of food.
‘Right,’ I said, to myself mostly.

I might have said more, but for the hurtling rocket which was Clinton’s new guard dog, having smelt something tasty from its distant abode, and appearing airborne as it leapt from a handy pile of tyres.
If it hadn’t been for the chain attached to the dog’s collar it might have reached the object of its desire. As it was, the creature spun around in mid air, and just missed hitting my small visitor in the face with its hind quarters. The previously keen FemLegUH agent was discouraged enough to speed climb a six foot fence in a way that would have impressed an army recruitment officer looking out for talent on an assault course. She had left behind her plate of turkey dinner, but not close enough for the dog to reach.

I sped wetly outside to see if the poor hound had injured itself, and looking around to make sure I wasn’t observed, pushed the plate nearer to the dog’s nose. He swallowed three yorkshire puddings and the rest of a roast dinner, then looked at me with something approaching love in his eyes.

Fluffy McDougal, for that was his name, then whined for thirty minutes until I detached his collar, and let him into the office. My hair dying schedule had been thrown off, and having missed the deadline for adding lotion two, and cream three, I decided to mix the two together into a paste and restart the clock.

It was at this point that Myrtle's nephew Arnold rang, to ask me why his Aunty Myrtle wasn’t answering her phone, I simply said ‘Chiropodist’, and he said ‘Oh God,’ and hung up.
The paste had hardened into a dried out lump, so I held it like a large piece of chalk, and scraped the concoction onto the relevant areas. Fluffy McD then jumped up to try and kiss my nose, and in the process knocked down the toilet roll holder.

What with Fur Elise belting out, and me chasing around after the dog to get the paper back, I missed the predetermined slot for applying conditioning solution four.

I had the plastic vial in my hand, when the second visitor appeared on the step. Deciding to squirt and run maybe wasn’t the best plan, as most of it went in my eye, and rest onto F McD, who was utterly delighted to answer the door in my stead, throwing himself at the flimsy panel boarding so hard that the lock flipped open, revealing the Mayor of Cuinchy, Lynda Cheryl.

She started talking as soon as I appeared, turbanned up in my army blanket. Chapter one of her monologue centred around the topic of Mayors being recognised for their achievements rather than dubious rumours that might be floating around.

About two paragraphs in, my knee based friction hold on Fluffy McD gave way, and he launched himself past the babbling politician, and towards the approaching Ken, the owner of a catering trolley selling weak tea and horrible sandwiches. This was the same nuisance who had fallen down a pothole many weeks ago, and who had now branched out into selling hotdogs, amongst his other revolting comestibles.

The unwelcome snack vendor was in the process of pursuing a negligence claim with the Ballina Central Roads and Highways department, so was sporting an unconvincing plaster cast, and when he remembered, limping in a photogenic fashion. FMcD loved Ken, or rather he loved hotdogs, and the annoying purveyor of those goods was now so steeped in their aroma from daily contact that FMcD could barely tell the difference.

Bus stop in Cuinchy. So far as we can see, the paintwork looks in good order.

It would be long winded to give all the details of the chase, so I’ll jump ahead. Mayor Cheryl has moved on to detailing how many bus stops she has had repainted this year and is petitioning me for recognition of her achievements, and Ken is hanging from a telegraph pole, with a rapscallion mixed breed Alsatian dangling from his plaster cast. Meanwhile, I am attempting to lasso the dog with a hosepipe Clinton’s lads use for washing down their tyres.
Unseen by me, a platoon of FemLegUH reinforcements have arrived, in an attempt to retrieve their van and the swiftly cooling turkey dinners contained within.
Into this scene arrives Clinton himself, wondering what all the noise is about, just as I am successful in making a cunning rubber harness and enclosing his new pet.

At this point there was definite potential for a de-escalation, but then one of Clinton’s lads turned off a second unseen hosepipe, in the next yard, and the water pressure shot up.

Let’s cut ahead to the point where all the FemLegUH acolytes are inside the van with FluffyMcD circling the wagon, Lynda Cheryl is denying ever having an affair with the chief government advisor, despite the fact that nobody was accusing her of doing so, Ken the snack man, who had lost his grip in more ways than one, is sitting in the hotdogs on top of his cart, and I, having realised that ‘now rinse’ was an instruction I was meant to carry out half an hour ago, am standing with my head under the hosepipe.

Tyre chief Bill trying to gain some control, slides in the wet mud created by the hosepipe, then trips over the placard, previously dropped by the original FemLegUh visitor, and has landed on one knee at my feet.
Myrtle then rounds the corner, in a fine temper, and slightly unbalanced from wearing foot bandages and beach sandals in a wet environment, she takes in the chaotic scene at one glance, and in a burst of bad temper yells at Clinton. ‘‘If you are going to ask her you’d better get on with it, because if I don’t get my Ovaltine right away I won’t answer for the consequences!!’



The moment of awkward silence that followed was broken when the Mayor of Cuinchy spotted the contentious placard, grabbed it by the handle, and started smashing it to pieces on the bonnet of the pink van. 

‘I don’t think that ego crazed megalomaniac Fairbanks bash bash even likes women, all those boring meetings I went to, bash bash, listening to him rabbit on, and if there’s one thing I hate more than Neil ‘ooh look at me how great I am’ Fairbanks, it’s bash bash bash splinter a misplaced apostrophe.’
The group within the van had shrunk away in fear as Cheryl glared through the windscreen.
‘It’s Adulterers Repent, verb, not the Repent, noun, belonging to the Adulterer.’ Then she said a rude word that I won't repeat, pushed Ken plus cart out of the way, and stomped off up the badly tarmaced road.

I had heard a rumour that the Mayor of Cuinchy used to be a school teacher, I decided at that point to believe it.

Retreating into the portacabin to find the mugs I found Myrtle hanging over the table, seething about cheapskate government funded so called professionals who wouldn’t know a toenail from a corn plaster.

‘You know how I feel in that poxy Chiropodist’s waiting room?’ she asked, and then jumped back in, before I could think up an answer, ‘Old is how I feel, and I’m looking at the old dears parked up on the plastic chairs around me, and I think that’s going to be me, sooner than that!’ she clicked her fingers. I nodded as I swirled the teaspoon around each Ovaltine exactly ten times each. ‘That’s if I can still drag these feet up those stairs to his office after that lousy, incompetent..’
Myrtle paused mid rant to stare at my head. ‘You dyed it purple?’.

The Guinee Laboratories’ label peeled off quite easily, and under the smiling photo of a woman wearing an obvious wig, was another image, of exactly the same woman, just as happy as before, but now with a more modern looking hairpiece, coloured in a vivid shade called ‘Purple Haze.’



Roger, the stall holder of Roger’s Rejects, Wednesdays and Fridays, Boll Road Flea Market would be getting some very stiff feedback about his retail practices. Myrtle meanwhile, had cheered up to the point of chuckling to herself while wiping the condensation off the portacabin windows with the old army blanket.

‘You want to encourage that Clinton you know,’ she commented mid wipe, ’you’re not getting any younger, and he’s obviously loaded with money, you could do a lot worse.’
Fluffy McDougal, after a good rummage through my donated clothes bag, carried over a vivid cerise crop top, which appeared to be held together with safety pins, and had ‘ ‘Rude word’ the government printed across the chest’. Edna’s daughter Julie must have flirted with anarchic punk fashion at one time.

‘He’s a clever dog,’ murmured Myrtle, tickling the hound behind the more complete of his two ears, ‘if you’re not wearing it I am!,’ she laughed.
We spent the next hour trying to prise the dog’s mouth open to check he wasn’t still chewing any of the pins.