Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales

Friends’ wives, customers called Sue and even cats can confuse Chris…

Last week’s article briefly touched on the subject of mistaken identity, a mistake that culminated in my father dragging a random stranger through his front door and hugging him with the assurance he wasn’t going to let him go.

This got me thinking about a few cases of mistaken identity I’ve been involved in myself over the years, the worst of them in an Asda car park in Slough (I go to the most glamorous places!).

While returning my trolley and plugging it into its fellow trolleys, I spotted a woman I was absolutely convinced was the wife of an old friend of mine from years back.

I immediately headed over to her with a beaming smile, but en route realised that I had no idea of her name and couldn’t remember her husband’s name either. Was it Mark, Mike, or possibly Peter… it had completely gone from my mind. The only thing I knew for sure was that he’d been a milkman… no, wait, was it a postman?

As I reached her, I blurted out the only thing I felt I could get away with in the circumstances.

“Hello, how are you? It’s been years! How’s his lordship? Still doing the rounds, is he?” A question that could reasonably refer to either occupation.

Her initial welcoming smile faded into a frown.

“Still… doing… the… rounds?” she repeated, virtually spitting the words out.

My mind began racing; what the hell had I said here? And then it hit me (and I’m surprised she didn’t).

This woman was not the wife of a very old friend, but rather the girlfriend of a far more recent one, who’d proved to be a serial adulterer throughout their soon-to-be-over relationship.

Given these circumstances asking if he was “still doing the rounds” was an unfortunate conversation opener. It proved to be a conversation closer, too – she drove away without another word, still shaking her head in disbelief all the way out of the car park.

Another case of mistaken identity that I’ve been trying hard to forget involved not a face, but a voice.

A few years ago I answered my catsitting business phone in my office (or as my daughter likes to call them, the Catphone in the Catcave), and took a booking from a lady named Sue.

I was absolutely sure throughout our brief conversation that this was a customer of ours named Sue Johnson, for whom I held a front door key. It wasn’t. It was actually another Sue, for whom I also held a key.

Consequently, one week later I arrived at Sue Johnson’s house, let myself in, fed her cat, made a cup of tea, and settled down on the sofa.

To say Sue Johnson was surprised to see me is a bit of an understatement. She’d only nipped down to the corner shop, to return a quarter of an hour later to find a fat bloke sprawled on her sofa drinking tea and stroking her cat.

Happily, an hour later I was in the correct Sue’s house, stroking the correct cat. Sue Johnson was probably still in recovery.

To say Sue was surprised to see me was an understatement

Chris Pascoe is the author of ACatCalledBirmingham and YouCanTaketheCat OutofSlough, and of Your Cat magazine’s column Confessions of a Cat Sitter.