Electric chair is shock to system
IBOUGHT an electric chair by mistake. Volunteers to plug it in can start queuing at the back door. It’s actually a recliner chair with an electric motor. We already had one recliner which operates by releasing a lever in the side that kicks out the leg-rest part with sufficient force to throw a small child across the room.
Not that we’ve tried that, although it may have been threatened.
The manual version can also be viewed as an exercise machine because it takes so much effort to push the leg-rest back into place that it’s suitable muscle training
HOLD friend Laurie Stead, jazz writer and music aficionado, who interviewed everyone from The Beatles to the Stones and took Dusty Springfield home to tea back in the 1960s, had his curiosity piqued by four large black and white photographic murals.
They cover bricked up windows in Wood Street, Huddersfield, almost opposite what used to be the legendary Builders Club.
“Two of them are taken inside for fell running and the squat lift. I intended to buy a matching one so Maria and I would have one each, but ticked the wrong box.
In contrast, the automated version raises my legs and declines my back at the pace of a languorous Sunday afternoon.
Once sprawled in Caesarian splendour, and whilst waiting for wine to be served and grapes to be
a mill, another is a concert inside the Town Hall and the fourth one – which intrigues me the most – is of what looks like a 1930s dance band under the name T M Debonaires.”
Laurie wonders who is responsible and why they have appeared. “It obviously cost a considerable amount of money to display them,” he says.
Mills and a choral concert are obviously relevant to the town’s history but who were the T M Debonaires? Can anyone help? peeled, I am trapped and unable to escape its confinement.
I tried getting up by spreading my legs and attempting to shuffle out like a cowboy with haemorrhoids but almost did myself a mischief.
The only way to exit the contraption is to put it into reverse, a process that takes such an age that Amazon delivery drivers have been known to burst into tears at the shredding of their schedule as they wait while I struggle to regain my feet to answer the door.
“Sorry, I was trapped in my armchair,” sounds like sarcasm of the worst kind after they’ve been on the road since seven in the morning and are now using a torch to fulfil their final deliveries before they can make their lonely way home to Sheffield.
Landline callers have become used to being diverted to the answer machine.
“You’re never in when I phone.” “I was in a compromising position and couldn’t answer.”
“At your age?”
The acts of both reclining and regaining upright equilibrium are conducted in extreme slow motion and occasional confusion. I’ve tried to change TV channels and found myself rising sedately like Christopher Lee from his coffin.
But it is comfortable and, yes, I’ve bagsied the one with the electric motor. But I’m still waiting for the wine and grapes.