Thursday 19 February 2009

The Chapelton moors and Mike Baldwin

Things all seem a a bit hectic at the moment. We were pretty relaxed for a while there. Unfortunately, however, Ka received a letter the other day informing her that the company providing her bridesmaids' dresses had suddenly folded, or in this case creased, leaving the bridesmaids to be, without dresses. This has obviously caused some anxiety as there is a mere four months to get new ones sorted. This is proving harder than at first expected with neither of the bridesmaids being able to help till mid March. As a bloke I was dismissing Ka's concerns with a blase wave of the hand and a relaxed 'plenty of time'. However, it would seem these dress shops take at least three months to turn a bridesmaid dress around. Gawd only knows why it takes so long (what's wrong with a swiveling stand?). My sister managed to get a day off in March today to try and rescue the situation later in the month. Lynsey Ann works in McDonalds and, for some reason, her manager finds it extremely difficult to allow his staff some time off. Members of the family have often toyed with the idea of going into McD's ourselves and smashing one of those fast food trays over his head but we've always given in to reason in the end.
My Mum offered her dressmaking services at Gran's bedside in the hospital tonight. My Mum is an expert seamstress, or at least was, before she went to work for Motorola. Now that that factory's current incarnation is closing down at the end of February, however, she is now being made redundant. In my opinion she should start up her own wee business making curtains, dresses, and any other manner of clothing. I could design and control her website and before we know it she could have her very own Underworld factory going on from Chapelton. Underworld being the factory on Coronation Street not the dark horror film starring Kate Beckinsale and a bunch of werewolves. It is Chapelton though, a bunch of werewolves making knickers would not surprise me, stranger things have happened up there. We used to hear strange noises coming from the surrounding fields at night, and they did not sound like the cows mooing or the sheep bleating. And don't even ask me how I know the name of Mike Baldwin's Coronation Street factory! Saying that, I think Mike Baldwin is dead now... and I doubt my Mum would make knickers for a living anyway. She will not stay redundant for long though, I know that much.
Gran is looking a little better by the day, but it will take a while before she's releasing herself from hospital and jumping on the No. 265 home. If you knew my Gran, you'd know that to be no idle threat. It does not matter how many sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters and friends she has with cars, she would still either run out the hospital and jump on a bus or go out onto the Hairmyres road and try and flag a taxi. Here's hoping she will be able to do that soon enough anyway. She did not even get to meet Princess Anne yesterday. I'm not sure she was bothered about that particular visit though. Ka and myself were even kicked out tonight when we turned up after the gym. Cousin Craig, Mum, Dad and Lynsey Ann all turned up to visit and we were obviously considered expendable. It was fair enough I suppose since Craig had travelled all the way from Pollockshaws and the other three from Chapelton. It can be a treacherous journey coming down through those moors remember. You never know what's round the next corner. Especially on those, dark, twisting roads to Chapelton. The full moon shining in the blackness above... the sound of a sewing machine echoing over the fields...

2 comments:

Miriam Vaswani said...

That was a brilliant rant! You went from A to Z and back again before I had time to blink.

Glad to hear Gran Reid is on the mend.

Michael Reid said...

Faster than a speeding train!