THIS IS A LETTER I SENT TO THE PEOPLE CURRENTLY LIVING AT FLAT 10, COURTYAND A, ROOM A THE VILLAGE (WHICH FOR THOSE OF YOU THAT GDON'T KNOW IS MY OLD ROOM AT UNIVERSITY). I DO NOT KNOW WHO THEY ARE OR WHAT THEY DO, BUT I DO KNOW THAT THEY DID NOT REPLY, AND I THINK THAT THAT IS PRETTY RUDE

51 Swansea Road
Norwich
Norfolk
NR2 3HU

07779 602081
thelardfather@hotmail.com





To Whom It May Concern (well, the occupier of Courtyard A, Flat 10, Room A to be specific),

To begin with let me apologise for the rather odd nature of this letter and let me assure you that I will not try to contact you again if I do not hear back from you.


The reason I am writing to you is because of a bet. Well, I guess in fact the bet comes later, let me instead start at the beginning. With a towel.

Yes, the true origin to this letter lies years ago in the mists of time, way back in the day when I myself was an eager eyed fresher living in the very room you inhabit now.
As you are no doubt aware by now, doing laundry is one of more arduous of tasks that a student ever has to do (probably coming only second to dragging your lasy ass out of bed to put the kettle on for your pot noodle). Personally, I used to put it off as long as I could, or to be honest not do it at all. And so I didn’t and for weeks the laundry piled up. What’s a man to do? The obvious answer to me seemed to be to lug a whole suitcase of washing back down home to Brighton and get your dad to do it for you. And so I did, and it got washed and it smelt fresh like meadows and it looked like I had cheated the system yet again.

Except I hadn’t. I arrived back to halls and dumped my stuff in the corridor, and went to my room. I opened the door and was greeted by a rather unpleasant odour. Well no that wasn’t quite what happened. More truthfully I walked in to a room that stank of mouldy and rancid towel. Even more truthfully I was viscously smacked in the face by a violently heinous stench that made me retch and gag until I thought I was going to pass out. Simply put, my whole room smelt like a sack full of lumpy sheep shit.

The towel.

Yes, I bet you were wondering when the towel was going to come into the picture.

I had made the rookie mistake of leaving my towel in the bathroom when I had gone home for the week and it had now stunk out the room to high heaven. Curled up in the corner, damp and festering it had begun to do almost decompose in a putrid vile heap of cheaply made goo. There was only one thing for it. Braving the fumes I rushed in, flung open the window and threw the towel out with all my might, thinking (somewhat naively) that that would be the last I ever saw of it. The evil disgusting towel that had been so cruel to me, and had caused me to classed as the laughing stock of flat 10 (until a few days later my flatmate blew up the microwave.) I truly thought, or perhaps wished, that that would be the end of it all; the mocking, the name calling, the fact that I was now the skank of the hosue. But alas it was not to be the case.

Fate was weaving its towel based web…

October came and passed, I worked a little, ate a lot, slept even more, and had a generally good time being a fresher. I avoided the Fiveways pub like the plague, worshipped the convenience of the 24 hour Tesco garage (though back in those days it was a BP) and learned to love the L.C.R. What great days they were, and if I were you I’d love every minute of them, you’ll never have as much fun at university again, but back to the story at hand.

November flew by and before I knew it winter was well and truly upon us. The snow was falling heavily, the chill was in the air and most importantly the leaves had now all fallen off the tree.

One day near the end of November, as I was working at my desk (or should I say worked at putting off work – not dissimilar to what I’m doing by writing you this letter) something caught my eye outside. I tried to continue to work, check emails, read, have a conversation, watch porn, but it was no use. It was still there flashing my peripheral vision. A purple something wrapped somehow around the tree, impossibly caught, snagged in its branches. Something blowing in the wind, weighing down the branch just in my field of vision, teasing me, begging me to look. But I didn’t want to. I already knew what it was. I slowly turned, if only to confirm what I already knew in my heart.

Surely it couldn’t be.

It was.

It was my towel.

This was two years ago. And that was the story of the towel. Now, why do I tell you? Well, because this story (like most good stories) has worked itself into the stuff of folklore. Maybe to the point, that folklore (like all good folklore) has worked it’s way into a bet.

Last year, we checked from the roadside and saw the towel was still there. This year, the trees are too bushy and we couldn’t see whether it is still somehow managing to stay up in the tree, defiance of the wind and the rain and the local inbreds. It has been two years since the towel was thrown in the tree and the bet is now more fierce than ever. WHERE IS IT NOW?

Some say the towel must be long gone. Some say it’s still there. This is a dispute that we simply must settle.

I, nay, we ask you to check and see if the towel is still there. Just outside your window to the left, caught on the large branch that Jerry the Squirrel (or whatever you’ve named the resident squirrel) runs up and down as he collects his nuts and acorns and other squirrel tit bits and treats for winter. If you could please let me know by any of the means given above (phone, email or post) we would be very grateful, and if you weren’t too scared to meet us (which I probably would be if all I had to go on was this letter as you do) we’d buy you a pint, or a pint of whatever your favourite tipple is.

I send you this in the greatest of hope,

Yours truly,

Simon Baker

On behalf of myself, of Jamie Ayliffe and the residents of flat 10 and to a lesser extent flat 9.

P.S To prove I did once live there, if the police gave you one of those annoying purple light thingies to check the invisible pens with which you write your details on electronic goods in case they get stolen, check the bathroom door when it’s dark. I left you a note : )

27.01.06 1.21 AM

Hi guys. I have an interesting predicament which i would greatly appreciate your help with. The story begins innocently enough in a local campus store with a make shift sign saying 'play our lottery or we will lose it'. Well, when some one asks you for help, my mother always taught me to do what you can. After emptying out my pockets i have a little over four pounds. I go in and purchase four scratch cards (i'm a busy man, i don't have time to wait for the daddy lotto) and a pack of softmints for lunch (it's now all i can afford.)

One boring lecture later (in which i learnt about the ominously sounding case - The Italian Banana Affair) i manage to convince Dave to buy me a pint, so we go off to the pub and i set about the serious task of scratching off the tickets, and most likely turning the once promising cards into small rectangles of paper trash. The first card gives me nothing. No surprise there. I begin to wonder if this was really such a good plan. However, my faith is restored when i win 4 squid on the next one. Now whatever happens i haven't lost anything, and how silly do i feel for doubting the world. I feel even more like a tit when over the course of the next two cards i win 13 more of your English pounds. That's seventeen in total. Good form if you ask me, and for an instant i'm quite excited, until it's the next round, then the next and the lottery gets forgotten entirely.

The tickets lay untouched on my floor for about a week when as i tidy up (much to the delight of my flat mates, who i think may have even bought champagne to celebrate the occasion) i come across the tickets. Now to me it seems obvious what i should do with them. This is not only seventeen pounds that i shouldn't really even have but it's seventeen pounds i'd forgotten about. Let me surmise. If i keep these seventeen pounds I'll be living on borrowed money. The shop still needs business. I can't be bothered to tidy any more. I like gambling. I think we all know where this is going...

I got a couple of odd looks as i slap the winning tickets on the counter and demand seventeen more, but i'm more or less used to getting these kind or surreptitious glances anyway now. I think it might be my face. Anyway, i walk out of the shop a proud owner of seventeen pounds worth of new scratch cards. For those of you who are good at math (or those of you who enjoy a sly 'alf) you may have worked out that this is approximately (and by that i mean exactly) 10 pints of the finest Carling money can buy (or is that a contradiction in terms?) I waste two out of these ten pints as a slowly and deliberately scratch off the new tickets. And for the record, does everyone evaluate everything by how many pints they could buy? Or is it just a slippery slope to a drinking problem; or much worse it's a slippery slope to drinking the insanely cheap (even though it's cheap for a damn good reason) Special Brew...

Firstly i have to get through the two double tickets. The first one (which promises me a obscene amounts of money or a car) is a complete duff. A worrying start. That's not just a 1.70 carling i've lost but a 1.95 Grolsh. Things are looking down. However, the world taught me a lesson about doubting it before and yet again i fail to take this on board. Straight away i win three quid on the first half of the second card. Now, i just need one more and i'm even with what i originally spent. I'd be a happy man. Not quite as happy as i was however when the second half gave me two pounds. Now i had 5. I'm already in profit. Things are looking up. My pint sipping intensified during the next few cards as i get nothing except a pound. I have six left and only six pounds won. The odds are looking grim. And yet as i start to fear the worst, the next card goes above and beyond the call of duty. It comes up trumps, comes up good to the value of ten pounds. I now have a hard earned sixteen pounds. I can almost taste the possibility of actually making profit out of the reinvesting into scratch cards, i can almost imagine myself smiling at the people who said i was 'crazy' and 'odd' and who ignore me when i tries to insist that one has to speculate to accumulate. But i'm a wary man, loathed to tempt fate. And yet it appears it just might be too late. The next three yield nothing but a slightly disappointing feeling. It's all down to the last two cards. The penultimate one gives me 1 pound. I'm exactly even. It's all or nothing on the last card. Slowly, and with a shaking hand (well, clearly not but i want to try to add suspense to this incredibly self indulgent e-mail) i reveal the numbers which will reveal my destiny, my fate (see, isn't it more exciting now i'm using cool words?) 500, 2012, 50, 16, 1, 2012. Things aren't looking good. But low and behold, with the next two i get another 16 and another 1. Two pound symbols with one last chance, one last roll of the dice, and one last number. I think i lady next to me, and to a lesser extent even Dave was a little shocked as i leapt form my chair, needlessly excited about merely winning a pound. After all, that's only equivalent to a shot of house whiskey. But it's more than that. Not only does it put my tally at eighteen pounds, officially taking me to my highest profit yet, but it reaffirms that the way to live is to clearly make it up as you go along and have a giggle. You can't win them all, but i sure got this one beat...

So what has this entirely pointless e-mail been about i hear you practically screaming. Yes it some ways it was about me not wanting to do my seminar prep that now lies neglected to one side. And yes in some ways it was about me feeling better because i haven't talk to any of you in ages. But really i want to know what to with the 5 lottery tickets that are in my pocket, totaling eighteen pounds in value.

Does the one extra pound go into a proper lotto ticket? Do they all go into proper lotto tickets? DO i do it all again (although this time clearly lose the lot?) Who knows? Who cares. Let the people decide.

Email me back before Wednesday and i'll do whatever is most popular. Now i feel that right now i have to warn you not to simply click the reply button. I'm going to have to ask you to send it to my hotmail account and not here. This is simply my uni account (meaning i never check it) and i'm only sending it from here as for some reason i can't send out from hotmail (rubbish, what am i paying them for) Oh, and if no one replies i will burn them. And you think i'm joking....







RESPONSES……..


From : Adam Rancid
Written in pain, written in awe, by a puzzled man who questioned what we were here for says:
Be a king amongst men and do it! You know it makes sense! you could be
richer then your wildest dreams, or failing that have enough to buy a
round of drinks, or failing that become a quivering husk of a man when
your dreams of winning are dashed upon the cruel cold rocks! Don't be a
pansy and think 'ooo but i could buy a veritable feast with 18 pounds'
because you may be passing up on that golden opportunity of a life
time, yes, enough money to buy a house of lard, nay a mansion!


From : Dave ‘let’s cycle to Chichester’ Shirman
Lord Meat says:
go out for a drink with a mate with half, give half to a charity or to 9 homeless people, it's cold out


From : Sophia Koullas
Sent : 31 January 2006 20:31:35
To : thelardfather@hotmail.com
Subject : W0401641@uea.ac.uk???
My adivce to you is this, luck has been kind to you not once, oh no..but twice. Do not feel that he will be kind to you again. So from me to you...Take the god damn money and run to the nearest public house ( preferably refreshers!) and drink those lovely £18.
Do the right thing!!


From :
Sent : 31 January 2006 05:49:53
To : thelardfather@hotmail.com
Subject : Lady Luck Keep a four squid bank, and keep re-investing. If you hit it big my following my advice, then I would like a 10% cut of the winnings. It is purely optional, but highly recommended.


From : "Emma Muspratt"
Subject: RE: lady luck, a king amongst men....
Date: Tue, January 31, 2006 6:13 pm
To: W0401641@uea.ac.uk hello my dear sweet lard how are you? still reeling from your unbelievable daliance with the beautiful lady luck?! personally...not being a gambler myself and never having bought a lottery ticket of ANY kind...scratch card or otherwise...i think you should split the 6 evenly between full blown lotto tickets and scratch cards...that way you're more likely to strike it lucky with the scatch cards, but are also in with a chance of a BIG WIN on the lotto!hows that? speak to you soon baby doll...






03.02.06

11.37 AM

The damage is done. The decision is made. My bed is now officially made and it's up to me to lie in it (though if anyone wants to join me you can apply at the end of this e-mail.) It is, i believe now 'go time'. I currently have 18 pounds worth of lottery tickets laid out before me.

Now i know what some of you will be thinking. But there was just too much variation from everyone who replied (that is, those of you worldly people who bother to check there junk mail folders.) The advice ranged from keeping it all (Soph), keeping all but the origanal four pounds and keep going hoping to strike it rich (Sheets), keeping half and giving half to a homeless person (Shirman) and simply putting it all back in (Adam). In fact, i think Adams advice in his exact words were :

Be a king amongst men and do it! You know it makes sense! you could be
richer then your wildest dreams, or failing that have enough to buy a
round of drinks, or failing that become a quivering husk of a man when
your dreams of winning are dashed upon the cruel cold rocks! Don't be a
pansy and think 'ooo but i could buy a veritable feast with 18 pounds'
because you may be passing up on that golden opportunity of a life
time, yes, enough money to buy a house of lard, nay a mansion!

and i have to say it is his advice that i enventually ended up taking. Whether that was a good idea or not remains to be seem. As i was buying the new tickets today i didn't have the lucky feeling that i've become so attached to. Gone was that little spark, that feeling of magic, and whether that's down to a preminition of doom, or to the much more likely fact that the last two attempts to 'earn' money involved a certain ammount of alcohol will i'm sure soon be resolved.

Like i say i currently have 18 pounds worth of tickets, unscratched in front of me. I am currently worth 9.230769 (ish!) pints of Grolsh. I just hope they represent the pints i'm going to be drinking to celebrate rather than those which i'll need to drown my sorrows.

Perhaps i'll let you know how it goes.









13.07 PM

all good things must end i guess....

It's funny how the world seems to balance itself itself. I started with four pounds as you remember way back and have after hitting the dizzying height of eighteen of your finest Sterling i have ended up with a rather simular (and somewhat meagre) fiver. Slightly disappointing, but still a profit of a pound in the long run. Down, right down, but not yet out.

Despite a great plan from Sheets, which i believe was to see how many times i could circulate the winnings before i ran out of luck entirely abd lost it all (so far there have been three cycles) i just can't bring myself to do it. The deal this time is is that all my winnings from these scatch cards is going be pumped right into the big Euro Lottery tonight, in which to be honest i'm sure i'll see the last few pounds of my winnings dissapear in a puff of smoke of failed dreams, and fleeting, past glories (that's right, y'all better me giving me some sympathy right now... :) )

No, in truth i'm not that upset. I've still got three tickets in the big one tonight, and with the change left over i'll buy myself 50 pence of good Karma, at least someone on the streets tonight can buy themselves a cup of tea, i hear it's going to be a cold one.

Anyway, that as they say is that. The somewhat long and undoubtedly pointless story of the shop that needed help - a cautionary tale of what you can miss if you do the sensible thing too often.
And there the lesson endeth :) I hope you're all as lucky as i have been this week, but right now i'm off.

Wish me luck for tonight. You can't win them all, but i could really do with winning this one....















RESPONSES:


From: "Emma Muspratt"
em... says:
lol. No-one could do what you do with a few lottery tickets…



From : Dave ‘let’s cycle to Chichester’ Shirman
Sent : 03 February 2006 15:11:25
To : thelardfather@hotmail.com
Subject : RE: read this email second

You're a cock. x

Hello everyone. I have neglected this for well over a month and i feel heartily ashamed. And yet i still can't be bothered to write, so i've decided to just upload some stuff i've already writen. Like this (true) story about how hard it can be for me to use public transport.



Dear Mr. or Mrs. United Airlines,

You are going to find this out sooner or later anyway so I might as well tell you now and get it out in the open. This is a letter of complaint. Moreover, this is a letter for compensation asking for money I had to spend after certain things had gone wrong with a few of your flights. Let me set the scene.

I’m sitting at departure gate C6 at Chicago airport. I’ve got myself a Big Mac from a near by McDonalds, I’m now only one flight away from seeing my girlfriend and I have a very friendly and chatty Irishman sitting next to me. I’m a happy man. However, as time passes I start to become noticeable less cherrful. My flight does not come on the board at the departure gate. After waiting a while, at about the time that the plane should be taking it comes on the board, delayed from 9.50 to around 11.50. Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t want compensation for that. I think we all expect planes to be delayed sometimes (although when I tell you that the flight – UA7512 - was delayed because of a missing crew you may start to understand why I was a little dubious of United Airlines. No, I may as well be honest, a little bit upset with you guys.)

My time in America passed a little too quickly for my liking and after a wonderful couple of weeks with the Woman I had to set off for my home in sunny old England. We arrive at Indianapolis airport and check in to discover my flight to Chicago (where I catch I connecting plane with Air India – remember that, it will come in important later) has been delayed. Fair enough we thinks, we go get some coffee at a nearby Starbucks (they seem to be everywhere nowadays.)

During our refreshment break we continually look at the
departures board and yet my flight does not appear to me up there. Irritating of course, but probably not your fault, that I assume is Indianapolis’ Airport’s problem. ‘No problem’ I think to myself, I’ll just go check with the United Airlines check in desk. Between us, my girlfriend and I checked with three employees. They all said the same thing, as did the automatic telephony service you provide. The plane will take off at 7.15 they assured me. Which it did. However, they also told me that it would be departing form gate D7 which, as it turned out it most certainly did not. After passing security (my, aren’t they thorough nowadays, I’m pretty sure the guy that patted me down did some cupping, and in fact, didn’t even give me his number.) I sat at gate D7 for about quarter of an hour before I got a bit worried. There were no lights and no people. To begin with I thought it may have simply been delayed further (how would I know, it wasn’t on the board) but after another 5 minutes I act on my Sherlock Holmesian instincts and go on a hunt for either my plane or assistance. I find the latter, well ‘assistance’ only to be told my flight has already left. Poor show United Airlines.

However, you know it isn’t even for this crock of shit mis-advice that I want compensation. That was only the start. Oh yes, the plot thickens. In fact, to be fair to you, your guys did amazingly and manage to get me another flight in about half an hour, flight UA7785. We board this plane only about 20 minutes late, which I was rather impressed with. At this rate I might still make me connecting flight (remember, the one I told you about earlier.) However, once we had all boarded and had been through the safety instructions we were still unable to up, up and away because the crew were unable to shut the door. Yes, the main cabin door would not shut. It would not shut when they pushed it, it would not shut when they pulled it and it still (surprisingly) wouldn’t shut after five burly guys came from maintenance another twenty minutes later and ran at with all their strength, causing the plane to wobble liberally (and quite disturbingly may I add.)

At this point in time I was felt uncannily similar to how I feel in the mornings. My alarm clock is set to go off at eight o’clock every morning. However, I invariably reset it to first eight twenty, eight thirty, eight thirty five and if it was a particularly heavy one the night before even down to minutes like eight thirty seven. However, it comes down to a point where you can’t put off getting up any longer. It’s balls to the walls time, either I get up, or I miss my appointment. Either that door shuts now or I miss my flight. Maintenance gives one final push. One more desperate lunge, as he bravely and dutifully throws his entire sizeable, nay, formidable weight at it in a laughable maneuver, a last ditch ‘attempt’ to shut it and save the day. The door gives an unnerving crack but crucially stays open; laughing heartily at all those around it, mocking them to their faces, as it rolls, slowly and knowingly back open.

About quarter of an hour after the maintenance men are finished standing around and looking at the problem some more (bloody hell why not get a cup of tea and biscuits whilst you’re at it) a rather sheepish looking flight attendant informs us all that we all have to deplane and get on a new plane which will be pulling up shortly. We all alight and stand in poor shelter from the howling wind (barely out of the rain) as I assess my options with the sheepish but I must say distinctly pleasant and to a lesser extent helpful flight attendant. I can either travel to Chicago now hours late and miss my connecting flight or I can stay in Indianapolis with my friends. Unsurprisingly I plump for the latter option and go back to the gate to rebook my flight. The attendant sorts me out with a plane ticket and says they’ll contact Air India to sort out a new connecting flight. ‘Aha’ I think to myself, It all looks like it’s going to work out alright. That is until I find out the two following things. Firstly, my luggage has already been sent to Chicago. Meaning I am stuck in Indianapolis overnight wearing nothing but pajama bottoms, a t-shirt, a fleece and a smile. Irritating. Secondly, after phoning up Air India to check if my flights have in fact been rebooked I find that they don’t fly out the next day so I am in fact stuck in Indianapolis for two days wearing nothing but a fleece, a t-shirt pajama bottoms and a smile. It appears that in fact United Airlines had in fact NOT contacted them at all. More than irritating. That verges on lies. Wait, that is lies. Anyway, I’ll come to the point. During the next two days (however pleasant they were) there were various expenses as a consequence of your late and gate changing flights.

Firstly, I had to buy new clothes (as my exsisting ones had already been shipped into the unknown.) These came to about 30 dollars. Food during the next two days also came to (at a minimum) thirty bucks. I would appreciate if this would be reimbursed. I believe these to be costs that my friends and I should not have be lumbered with.

Secondly, come the more serious direct effects of not being able to get to Chicago. I was charged 45 dollars by Air India to reschedule my flight (which I believe I should not have to pay as if it were not for my bad connection (i.e your services) in Indianapolis I would have arrived in plenty of time. Secondly, I had purchased a train ticket (which I enclose) which was valid until the 15th of January. Had I have been able to get my original flight I would have been able to travel that day. However, as a direct consequence of my delay I could not travel until the sixteenth. The ticket cost thirty two pounds sixty pence which is probably about fifty dollars. I expect these to be returned to me as a matter of course.

One last thing that I wish to say is as follows. Although as I have detailed in the above letter your services are somewhat haphazard and in fact sometimes don’t even happen, your crew are extremely friendly about not doing them. If it were truly the thought that counted, then this would be an entirely different kind of letter, namely one of congratulations. Air India it seems are the opposite. Needlessly, churlishly rude in doing it, but at least they succeed I guess. A bit like the people down at Chicago O’Hare airport. The airport keeps on going but bloody hell are they viscous about doing it. Bugger me if they don’t enjoy shouting at you in that place.

Anyway, that’s enough of my blather,

Thank you for reading this,

I anticipate a swift return,

Love from Simon Baker – a disgruntled customer.

P.S I am serious about getting money from you. If you don’t reply to this letter I may have to write yet another, substantially sterner letter.