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I paid a visit recently to my old friend, Jack. He is 94 and confined to a wheelchair by a hernia the size of a third leg. From time to time he pats it as a loving husband might pat his wife's pregnant stomach. I asked him, "How's your hand?" He showed me. It looked fine. Jack had suffered from a nasty cancer of the hand. True to form, our National Health Service took its time about operating on him by which time his cancer was the size of a chicken's egg.
After some talk about Jack's health I said, "I see the fridge-freezer has gone." The fridge-freezer had stood for months outside his kitchen door - gathering rust. I had asked him about it several visits ago. Jack's daughter had phoned the council to arrange for them to take it away. Yes, they would - but for a price. When Jack learned the price - £20 - he wanted nothing more to do with the council. He told his daughter, "They shan't take it away. I'm not paying them that sort of money." I wondered where it had gone. Had Jack succumbed and paid the council to remove it? He replied, "There's a bit of a story attached to that." After some humming and hawing, for he knows the danger of telling me stories, he started his tale. Several of his neighbours had promised to dispose of his derelict fridge-freezer but as the weeks passed none showed any enthusiasm to remove it to the dump. They are awkward things to handle without straining your back or inducing a rupture. One Saturday Jack said to his daughter Joan, "I'd like you to help me. I'm going to break up that fridge-freezer." Well his daughter no more liked parting with £20 to the council than Jack and so she agreed. She pushed her father out into the garden and equiped him with a sturdy pair of garden shears and herself with sundry spanners. While Joan unbolted the pumps from the frame Jack began cutting up the panelling and chopping through the tubing. Who knows what damage he did to the ozone layer as the fluoro-carbons hissed into the atmosphere Eventually the task was completed and a pile of detritus replaced the fridge-freezer in the garden. Week by week the pile grew smaller as various fragments of freezer were secreted into black bags and put in the wheelie bin for the refuse collectors. In the end the council removed Jack's fridge-freezer without receiving a penny. Jack said, "I've been giving the bin men presents. A fortnight ago I gave them a can of beer each. Last week I gave them a basket of apples and this week a bag of cherries. They think I'm a bit simple." That made me laugh. Jack simple! The beer, apples and cherries were his insurance against the refuse collectors querying the weight of his wheelie bin. I thought 94-year old, wheelchair-bound, Jack's resolve to beat the system stood in sharp contrast to my determination to fight the world, the flesh and the devil to serve the risen Saviour. When I departed Jack gave me a bag of cherries - but I wasn't asked to dispose of the final remnant of the fridge-freezer. Jack had plenty of cherries left for the bin men.
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