It was in such a lovely environment that I used to hear this “bird” asking in a tempting but rather bird-like voice as you would expect if blind:
“Would you like the present”?
We had budgies at home so naturally I gave him a friendly whistle so one up for me with the Animal Rights movement but not really. Here’s why.
Every week the same. Go in, fearful of meeting disapproving old goat again. Remember him? Best forgotten and probably gone by now, hot post office, long queue and Monty Python’s parrot sounding very far from dead, calling again and again and again:
“Would you like the present”?
I thought this would go on for life, just like taxes and meeting silly old goats who don’t know what a guide dog is for but a child with more wisdom than anyone else put an end to it with this phrase:
“Mummy. Why is that blind lady talking to the sweet machine”?
Reality hit
It still beats me to this day why the hell an adult didn’t say to me:
“Excuse me! That’s not a bird you are whistling at and talking to. It’s a machine containing toys or sweets which is meant to lure unsuspecting little ones to part with their pocket money or carry on alarming to their parents to give them more money to feed the damned thing”.
I wouldn’t go back there for a few weeks, in the hope that most people who visited the post office wouldn’t remember what I’d been doing, not for days, not for weeks, not for months but for eons! I felt like a right plonker I can tell you.
Who would think that this incident, recalled many years later would cause such mirth?
I needed to waylay this little cherub so placed a comforting hand on talking head which probably have me up in court today and done for assault, but back then we were still in the dark ages when you could legally beat children to within an inch of their lives and hear the idiots of the world applauding from the rafters to the basement. Thanks smart Alec, yes I still am in the flashing lights in my right eye ages and don’t have me up for being “namist”. I asked this little saviour from future embarrassment and humiliation:
“If that isn’t a parrot what is it then”?
“Oh it’s a sweet machine. You put money in it and it asks in that voice if you want a toy or a sweet or something”.
I wanted to give it the “or something”. A ruddy great kick up the mechanism.
It isn’t that funny!
How it came up I don’t know now but I was hapless enough to tell Lisa today just before or as we went shopping. I never heard such laughter, enough to make “Doddy” turn in his grave. I still blush when I think of it but small incidents like this make good content for after dinner speaking. Now if she thinks for one minute I am going to tell her about the time I asked a pillar box to help me over the road and tutted at it when it didn’t answer, she’s got another think coming. Not only did I hit my head on it sometimes when out with my cane but it didn’t answer but then they don’t do they?
I hope the child who asked his mum why the blind lady was talking to the sweet machine now has children of their own and is happy and I have started to learn how to use the banking app. That way I can say rude things or just chat to the phone in peace or I will be able to once I am confident with the app and the only question suitable for a child or an adult will then be:
“Mummy, why is that blind lady’s money disappearing so quickly, so often”?
The response is likely to be something like:
“So is mine and it’s because you keep pestering me to buy you things”.