WITH LOVE FROM METER YOU
Drown and Out Headline does not truly reflect content of article about gas man Porn to be Wild
AVISIT from the gas man is a familiar, twiceyearly experience for all British householders. But when we let him in to view the meter hidden away behind a clutter of dusty golf clubs, walking boots, vacuum cleaners and half-used tins of paint, it’s not just the numbers on the dials he’s taking note of.
According to a former professional meter reader, our innermost secrets are revealed by what we keep in our understairs cupboards. 28-stone FRAMPTON MUCOR, spent 18 months reading gas meters in his home town of Chorley, Lancashire, and during that time he got a privileged peek into the hidden lives of his customers.
He told us: “To be an effective gas man, you have to be a psychologist – a student of the human condition, if you will.”
“Before you can read their meter, you have to know what they are doing with their gas, and that means finding out what makes them tick and what turns them on. And during my yearand-a half on the knocker , I used my hard-won professional skills to solve crimes, mend broken marriages … and even save countless lives.”
“The gas man really is the fourth emergency service,” he said.
Now Frampton has penned an extraordinary memoir about his days going from door to door in the Chorley area. And in these exclusive extracts from his book Life in the Gas Lane (Rocum Publishing, 49p), he reveals the sensational secrets of his meter-reading career.
“Early one morning, I was out doing my rounds and I called on a house in South Ribble. The young woman who answered the door was in her dressing gown, and she explained that she was just on her way up for a bath. I showed her my official ID and told her that I would let myself out as soon as I’d read the meter, and she went off up the stairs as I let myself into the cupboard.
As it turned out, it was quite a difficult meter to read, and I w as in the cupboard for a good ten minutes trying to read it. Suddenly, I heard the water up in the bathroom stop, and my mind began to race. What had happened?
Maybe she had finished running her bath, turned the taps off, and got in it, I thought.
But then again, what if the woman had fallen, and knocked the tap off with her head as she fell to the floor? Admittedly, I hadn’t heard a bump, but then again, she might of had a rug in the bathroom with a thick pile, and she was lying on it now, bleeding to death.
One thing was certain, I would never of forgiven myself if I’d left her there in a spreading pool of her own blood, so I crept out the cupboard and silently made my up the stairs. After all, she probably thought I’d left ten minutes earlier, so I didn’t want to make her jump if all was well.
top
At the top of the stairs, I pushed the bathroom door open half an inch and peeped through the crack. You can’t imagine my relief when I saw that all my worst fears had been unfounded; the woman was sat in the bath, completely uninjured, and was happily soaping her arms, long legs and ample breasts.
However, the bathmat was a bit rumpled at one side. It looked like a bit of a hazard to me, and I was suddenly gripped by the fear that as she got out the bath to dry herself she could trip on it and bang her teeth on the sink. I would never of forgiven myself if any harm had come to one of my customers, so I resolved to wait until she had towelled herself off and got her dressing gown back on.
Twenty-five minutes later, once I had watched her get out the bath, dried and safely back in her dressing gown, I crept back down the stairs and let myself out, closing the door behind me as quietly possible.
A meter read and a life saved; it’s all in a day’s work for a gas man.
“You’d be surprised at some of the stuff people keep in their gas meter cupboards. In fact, some of the things we see would make your hair curl. But a gas man is like a priest taking confession – we never reveal the secrets of the meter cupboard. But even I was shocked at what I
At the top of the stairs, I pushed the bathroom door open half an inch and peeped through the crack.
found when a young housewife in Duxbury showed me under her stairs.
I flicked my torch about, looking for the gas meter, but something else caught my eye; a flash of lurid colour behind some old cans of paint. I investigated further, and what I found shocked me to my core; it was a pornographic DVD.
The vid clearly belonged to the woman’s husband, and as I turned the box over in my hand and read the lurid description of the filth it promised, and looked at the disgusting screenshots of the depraved contents on the back of the box, I felt sick to my stomach. Worse, as a student of the human condition, I knew that anyone who owned one of these disgusting DVDs probably had a big collection of them hidden away elsewhere in the house to feed his depraved and perverted sexual appetites.
finger
Then a thought struck me. If his poor wife were to find these DVDs, the couple’s marriage would be finished. No relationship could survive the discovery of such a pile of filth as the one I was imagining. I was going to have to intervene. It was risky, but I would of never forgiven myself if their marriage broke up due to my inaction. Tucking the DVD into the pocket of my gas man’s mac, I came out of the understairs cupboard and asked the lady of the house if I could use her upstairs toilet.
But when I got to the landing, instead of going in the bathroom, I ducked sideways into the master bedroom where I had a hunch I would find the rest of the householder’s sordid stash. And there, up on top of the wardrobe, I found the rest of his hardcore vids – each one more depraved than the last.
Nauseated by what I had found, I started filling my pockets with the filth, resolving to destroy it as soon as I was able. But as I left the bedroom, I came face to face with the woman coming up the stairs, and she asked me what the eff I was doing. Only she didn’t say eff, she said the eff-word. Fuck.
Thinking quickly, I said I had taken a wrong turn at the top of the stairs, but she didn’t believe me and started shouting and screaming at me, calling me all the names under the sun, including a filthy c-word. Cunt.
She was still shouting at me as I left the house; she clearly didn’t realise that I had just given her husband a second chance to save their troubled marriage. But I didn’t get into the meter-reading game for thanks. Let’s hope her husband saw the error of his ways and didn’t mess it up again by giving in to his base desires.
Fire Down Below
Police had been on the local news, warning residents about a bogus meter reader who had been working the area and preying on local housewives, so I was on the lookout for any suspicious activity when I headed out to do my rounds in Grimeford. On my first call of the day, the woman of the house invited me in and showed me to the meter cupboard under the stairs.
It was a big cupboard, and I found the gas meter in the back corner, obscured behind an ironing board and a basket of ladies’ smalls waiting to be ironed. However, as I tried to move them out of the way in order to ply my professional trade, the basket toppled over, spilling skimpy knickers and frilly bras all over the floor. As I knelt down to pick them up and replace them in the basket in a professional manner, I froze in horror.
tank
Examining the labels carefully in the torchlight, I noticed that many of the lingerie items did not bear any labels showing them to be flame retardant in accordance with nationally applicable safety standards. Every time she put them on, the lady of the house was putting herself at risk of serious burns to the arse, tits and fanny if she went near a naked flame.
I knew that I would never of forgiven myself if that had of happened when I could of prevented it, so I qu ickly st uffed the lethal grundies into my pockets to smuggle them out of the house. I planned to then immediately take them to the fire brigade for safe disposal, but I never got the chance to carry out my good deed. For the lady of the house had heard the commotion in the cupboard and came to see what was going on, catching me stuffing her scanties down the front of my shirt as my pockets were all full.
She began furiously screaming at me. I tried to explain about the grave fire risks she was running – even offering to carry out a free fire safety assessment on the scads she was wearing now – but she was having none of it. Looking back on it, she had probably heard the news report about the bogus gas man operating in the area, so her hysterical reaction was understandable.
As she chased me down the path, hitting me with a brush and calling me all the names under the sun, I reflected that it would all be worth it as long as she replaced the deadly lingerie stuffed into my overalls with safe alternatives carrying the BS Kitemark.
spud
Sadly, Frampton’s meter-reading career came to an end not long afterwards. He told us: “I was out on a routine housecall, reading a woman’s meter, and I ended up in her bedroom. I was fixing a faulty underwear drawer that could easily have trapped her fingers, when her husband came in and mistook me for the bogus sex pervert gas man who’d been all over the local news.”
“I was convicted on faulty DNA evidence on counts of gaining unlawful entry to premises by impersonating a gasman, theft, and various sexual offences, and sentenced to eighteen months.”
“I decided not to appeal the conviction, as I was already on probation for something else I didn’t do.”
“To make matters worse, the real fake gas man who had b een preying on innocent housewives in the area decided to lay low while I was inside, so it made it look like I was even more guilty than I was. Which I wasn’t.”
“All in all, it was a sad end to a glittering career, even though I didn’t technically work for the gas board; I was more of a freelance operative. But I do still have the figures off all the meters written down if the official authorities ever want them,” Frampton added.
Nauseated by what I had found, I started filling my pockets with the filth, resolving to destroy it as soon as I was able.
Examining the labels carefully in the torchlight, I noticed that many of the lingerie items did not bear any labels showing them to be flame retardant in accordance with nationally applicable safety standards.