My kitchen sink drama

What I do find an exciting prospect, however, is the year 2001. For on January 1st of that year I've arranged to meet a woman called Velma outside a bathroom appliances shop in Manchester city centre.

Before anyone starts accusing me of being some sort of philandering rat, please let me explain.

On second thoughts, why should I tell you and thus rob myself of my last vestige of charisma.

Which reminds me. When I was a little boy, my mother would sit me in the kitchen sink on Sunday nights to wash my knees in readiness for school the following morning.

In order to stop me from fidgeting during that most unpleasant procedure, she would keep me entertained by recounting stories from her past.

Those reminiscences were usually of a romantic nature and concerned her courtship with my dad.

"It was his little quirks that first attracted me to him," she said.

"I don't have little quirks," my father protested.

"Not those!" mother said. "I mean the way you used to prise the tops off beer bottles with your teeth - and then slip your dentures back into your mouth, both actions executed with the utmost aplomb."

"Why tell the child that!" dad further protested. "I have little enough charisma left as it is."

"What does charisma mean?" I inquired from the kitchen sink.

"It means having your own teeth," mother replied. "Now stop wriggling, son, while I soap your legs."

"Enough of the character assassination," said dad in a huff. "I'm off to He stormed into the lobby and grabbed his overcoat and trilby from the peg.

"But who's going to read me my bedtime story?" I whined as mother hacked away at the caked mud on my knees.

"Your mum can do the honours," said dad, slamming the front door behind him.

"Oh no I can't!" mother shouted as she chased dad down the street. "Sunday Night at the London Palladium is on telly in a minute."

"Help!" I yelled after my parents. "I'm too young to be left alone in the sink. My skin is starting to wrinkle."

Which reminds me. I'd better come clean about this date I've got with the woman called Velma in a couple of years' time.

What happened was this. In the autumn of 1968 I got chatting to this lovely young girl who was helping her dad sell hot chestnuts from his stall in Manchester.

"Would you like to go to the pictures one evening?" I asked her.

"I'd love to," she said. "But who with?"

"Me, silly," I giggled.

"Hmm...okay, then," she said. "I'll see you outside the bathroom appliances shop tomorrow night at seven. And that'll be one shilling for the chestnuts, please."

Anyway, we went to see 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Theatre Royal. It was a great film featuring monkeys, spaceships and an ending I still can't fathom to this very day.

Afterwards I said to the girl: "We've spent several hours together watching that magnificent Stanley Kubrick epic but I still haven't asked you your name."

"It's Velma," she replied.

I 'd better be careful here, I said to myself. Such was my lousy track record with women that I didn't want to spoil our relationship by saying the wrong thing. So I thought very hard before responding.

"Velma's a stupid name," I sniggered and watched open-mouthed in shocked disappointment as she stormed off to the bus stop.

"Can I see you again?" I called after her.

"Never would be too soon, Shorty!" she shot back over her shoulder.

"Okay," I said. "To celebrate our futuristic cinematic experience why don't we meet again outside the bathroom appliances shop at seven o'clock on January 1st in the year 2001?"

"If you insist," she sighed, stepping on to her bus. "But don't wear that horrible gaberdine raincoat again. It makes you look a right prat."

"Yowee!" I exclaimed, punching the air in triumph. "She really does likes me."

I walked home overcome with anticipatory excitement as I considered my second date with Velma 33 years hence...

"What are you looking so smug about?" my wife asked me the other evening as we watched 2001: A Space Odyssey on the telly.

"Oh, I was just wondering if the intervening years have been kind to Velma."

"Not her again!" my wife snapped. "You've done nothing but talk about that woman since we first met."

"I bet she's got a husband now, and two children, and perhaps a dog as well," I said.

My wife threw the teapot at me. "Have you ever stopped to consider that that is exactly your status, too?"

"What?" I asked puzzled. "But I don't have a husband."

"You and Velma," my wife snorted. "A right pair of wrinklies."

"A pair of wrinklies?" I retorted. "That's not fair. Your legs would look the same too if you'd spent half your childhood in the kitchen sink!"

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.