Keith Floyd - Out of the Frying Pan - Scenes from My Life

Scenes from My Life

HarperCollinsPublishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2001

Copyright © Keith Floyd 2000

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non–exclusive, non–transferable right to access and read the text of this e–book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e–books.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007122813

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 9780007375295

Version: 2014–08–29

FOR POPPY AND PATRICK

I hope you’ll understand some of this and therefore understand a bit of me

Cover Page

Title Page Out of the Frying Pan Scenes from My Life

Copyright Copyright Copyright Dedication Ferrets, Faggots and Fishing Typewriters and Burgundy Floyd on Parade – Almost Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane Bistros, Boots and Bentleys Halcyon Days Flirty and Freedom Afloat on the Med. Attention all Shipping Draw Sword and Charge Cameras, Fish and a Walk in the Garden Food, Frying Pans and Fame The Irish Period The Leap Out of the Frying Pan Keep Reading About the Author About the Publisher HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2001 Copyright © Keith Floyd 2000 The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non–exclusive, non–transferable right to access and read the text of this e–book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e–books. HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication. Source ISBN: 9780007122813 Ebook Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 9780007375295 Version: 2014–08–29

Dedication FOR POPPY AND PATRICK I hope you’ll understand some of this and therefore understand a bit of me

Ferrets, Faggots and Fishing

Typewriters and Burgundy

Floyd on Parade – Almost

Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane

Bistros, Boots and Bentleys

Halcyon Days

Flirty and Freedom

Afloat on the Med.

Attention all Shipping

Draw Sword and Charge

Cameras, Fish and a Walk in the Garden

Food, Frying Pans and Fame

The Irish Period

The Leap Out of the Frying Pan

Keep Reading

About the Author

About the Publisher

The outside lavatory at 16 Silver Street smelt of urine and Harpic, dampness and earwigs. The green, gold, blue and red transfers which were meant to simulate stained glass were peeling. A rusty chain with a much-handled wooden handle hung from the hissing and leaking cistern. The copper pipe of the water supply was mildewed green. The shiny hardwood lavatory seat slid to one side if you sat on it and both it and the wooden cover on its old hinges would fall down when you tried to pee in it. From the outside lavatory were six steps that led into a small, walled yard. At the end of the yard, beyond the red sandstone wall with its purple and red weeds burgeoning defiantly from the simple mortar between the stones, beyond the smell of wet privet hedges dank with the slime of snails, and before a fertile garden of voluptuous plum trees, bleeding raspberry canes, blackcurrant bushes and runner beans, was my grandfather’s workshop.

My grandfather had a tin leg. Strapped across his shoulders by broad braces, over this thick brown trousers he wore a wide leather belt, and at precisely ten to one you would hear his huff, hiss, puff and his stomp as he clunk-clacked down the yard and down the six steps to the outside lavatory, the one o’clock news (previously, anxiously and obediently tuned in on the big, mahogany wireless that sat on a big brown sideboard by my grandmother) and his lunch.

He stomped down the steps and clumsily crashed into the kitchen, with its grey and white speckled gas range the colour of a heron and its brightly burning cast-iron burners. The kitchen units were cream-enamelled with red piping, a large copper boiler with a massive gas burner fed by a rubber tube issued the odours of washday. The steam from the boiling sheets billowed and entwined with the little jets of aromatic steam from the big aluminium pot which contained the beef stew and dumplings.

In the living room a Victorian mahogany table was laid with embroidered table mats and set with bone-handled knives and forks. Some of the little metal bands between the bone and the blade were loose. There was a large and softly chipped cut-glass salt cellar. There was a freshly cut loaf of burnt, crusty white bread from the Golden Hill Bakery. There was a weeping, golden yellow brick of salty farmhouse butter. There was a small, ten-year-old boy in a white shirt, tie, grey serge short trousers with a yellow and purple snake belt and sandals sitting, elbows off the table, waiting for his lunch which would have to be served and eaten in silence while his grandfather grumpily slurped his stew, as the announcer said, ‘This is the BBC Home Service…here is the one o’clock news.’

Sometimes my grandfather, noisily sucking Rennies, and smoking strong cigarettes always with a long drooping piece of ash on the end, which to my grandmother’s fury he would flick casually onto the carpet, would tell me stories of the First World War. He had lied about his age in order to join up, but he never communicated to me the horror of it, rather more the lighter moments like playing football with the Germans one Christmas, drinking wine on leave in France, which made them tiddly. Sometimes there were subtle allusions to farm girls. He said he knew nothing of the shell that blew off his leg until he woke up in a field hospital and wondered why he could feel a pain in a limb that was no longer there. He had given me a sort of illustrated boys’ Bumper Book of the First World War, which of course showed war in its glory and not in its shame and 1 could sometimes sit with him for hours as he explained the trench systems to me, how the artillery was placed and such like. Only once did he ever refer to his officers and generals in a mildly angry way when he quoted the title of Henry Williamson’s book (also author of Salar the Salmon and Tarka the Otter), Lions Led by Donkeys.