Her name was Rosie and she lived in a on Apple Lane. I’d do anything for her, anything, including whatever it is Mr. Meatloaf refuses to do on his catchy nineties hit, ‘I’d do anything for love but I won't do that.’ Well whatever ‘that’ is, I’d do it for Rosie from Apple Lane.

                                    That’s how it started, wanting to impress Rosie from Apple Lane, however, to impress a woman costs money and that was the problem. What I hoped impressing her would lead to, well, that’s free, once she sees me for the ‘Love God In A Donkey Jacket’ I was once told I was by an old girlfriend who was 76. She will invite me around for afternoon delight in front of a roaring gas fire and an embarrassed budgie. You can of course spend the money you are intending to use to impress her, to buy sex. The price of this sort of sex is variable depending on who you want this sex to be with. The old saying ‘You get what you pay for’ has in my opinion, never been more applicable when it comes to two things, paint brushes and ‘paid for’ rumpy pumpy.

                             A fat housewife on a battered estate in Birkenhead who has been subjected to regular blows of the hairy side (of the hand) by a Husband who has forgotten her name, will engage in horizontal refreshment and in return, will expect remuneration in single figures, she’ll also accept milk tokens and if pushed, money off coupons from the back of Daz boxes (‘two bob and a conker’ as they say around the Bootle area). However, an  ex ‘Sunday Sport’ model in a peroxide wig and a bottom that looks like it’s never been kissed (yeah right) will set you back roughly the amount of money you spend in Ikea, when you’ve only nipped in for a couple of light but end up filling the big yellow bag with things you don’t need.

                            Job one was to get those silk knickers she leaves drying on the radiator in her living room, onto her lavender-scented bedroom floor next to my M&S boxer shorts. Job two was to make sure ‘making the beast with two backs’ happened at least twice a week.

                               She likes the finer things in life does Rosie, like bread with poppy seeds on and tea that tastes like someone’s poured perfume in it. She even gets ‘Paris Vogue’ whatever that might be. She was the talk of The New Strand Shopping Centre when she ordered that. Jimmy the Newsagent, who has bits of porridge on his overly long moustache and has extraordinary thin legs for a fat man, thought ‘Paris Vogue’ played for Arsenal. It’s in French of course, but being fancy and wearing silk knickers and eating poppy seed bread, it was agreed in the local betting shop, after much debate by men with one packs in tight jumpers, that Rosie from Apple Lane probably could read that sort of stuff having agreed went to a scholl where the girls wore straw hats in the summer.

                                 It was that information that made me decide on Paris as venue for a romantic weekend away. We’d travel first class on the train from Seaforth And Litherland to Lime Street, then from there straight to Waterloo, onto The Eurostar, which would glide us over to the most romantic city in the world (According to some, but I reckon it’s hard to beat a Crosby Marina sunset on any payday in August) The itinerary was to get a quick look at that big arch thing, an eyeful of the Eiffel tower, then back to the hotel for some mixed wrestling. I had it all planned, even down to what vest I was going to wear.

                         The trick was how to raise the seven hundred and eighty two pounds ninety pence to fund the trip. She has said ‘yes’ to the invitation, after a lady like pause of three days two hours and seventeen minutes.

She’d insisted on separate beds but I’d told her French beds were never separate, as the French were such a passionate Nation. When she wouldn’t budge on this point, we agreed that I'd sleep on the floor?

                            Working on the Bootle docks there were plenty of opportunities to have ‘things away’ to make a quick dollar, it was almost a duty. Tinned goods were the best, very saleable, salmon was a favourite, tinned salmon is still regarded as ‘only for adults with a job’ to most households in Liverpool and there was never any trouble finding a buyer, ham and tongue likewise, the scale only coming down when we’d get to the corned beef and eventually bottoming out at the cling peaches and pears in their own juice and hot dogs in brine. Tinned goods are a bona-fide currency on all buses within a three mile radius of the docks, solid as Sterling, however with a variable exchange rate, depending on the mood of the driver. All you have to do is give the driver your destination, then hand over a tin of salmon. You’d get a small tin of corned beef and a large tin of cling peaches as change.         

                                    Some drivers would try and have one over on you, but I’ve been doing it long enough to demand the proper change. All this aside, my dilemma was simple, at current theft levels of a couple of tins every other day, it would take me just over six and a half years to get the seven hundred and eighty two pounds ninety pence together to get to Paris and wrestle naked and erect with the delicious Rosie from Apple Lane.

                                         I had two weeks to hit my target and this was clocking off time on day one. As I approached the gate, I could see the familiar outline of P.C. Shiraz stood with his arms (which were as big as legs) folded. His shift started at dinner time and finished long after Coronation Street. Everyoneand his unloved wife called him Shiraz, this being because of the birthmark on his face, which, much to his embarrassment, was shaped exactly like Brazil.

                                         Shiraz looked up from under the caterpillar that slept above his eyes, the wheel on the barrow I was pushing towards him was squeaking on each revolution, I had my dock issue oilskin coat tied over the top tight and secure, hiding any contents from the rain and an inquisitive cooper. I strolled past him and winked.

I thought I was clear, but the barrow came to a bouncing halt on his size thirteen Police boot.

“Come on John, he smiled, are you having a laugh?”

”I looked at him as innocent as a hard on, on the bus to work.

“What’s in the barrow, let me guess, enough salmon to get you to work on the bus for the next three months?” He laughed and farted at the same time, he was famous for that, ‘Shiraz, the laughing, farting copper’ was his proper title, which gave his name more points in Scrabble than anyone in Bootle. I shook my head and tried to look like I did on my Holy Communion picture, innocent and God fearing. He took a surprisingly large knife from out from out of his heavy overcoat, it was one of those big ones you see in movies, like the one that Rambo had in the first and best film of the First Blood movies. He cut the string that held the oilskin on and threw the coat back.

“Empty?”

I nodded confirming his findings, he had no choice but to wave me through, he knew I’d have the Union on him as quick as you could say Transport and General Workers. I grabbed the handles and whistled Tommy Steeles ‘little white bull’ all the way home. Same routine the next day, just as I thought I’d made it through, the leather canoe with the Doc Martens sole blocked the way.

“Think I’d be lulled into a false sense of security did you?” Shiraz grinned like a wanking Jap as the Rambo knife whipped through the string.

 “Empty? – On your way.”

                               He let me through, however, three hundred yards down the road, he leapt on me out of a back alley, He was all out of puff and Brazil on his cheek throbbed, glowing a purple that justified a place on a Dulux colour chart, some crazy place in the imagination ibetween plum and magenta. But once again, the same result, the knife slicing through the string, the oilskin thrown back, empty.

                           A week later I could see him waiting for me at the dock gate smiling like he'd shit his pants and met the queen.

 “Gotcha, he said, having the previous night watched Chas and Dave on Morecambe and Wise, there’s nothing in the barrow because it’s on you” and he began slapping me all over like a demented Bavarian at the Munich Oktoberfest. When he found nothing he cut the string anyway and once again, he had no reason to detain me. He stopped checking for a week, he just let me glide past, he looked though, his eyes darting like a shithose rat, first at the tyre to see if it looked like it was bearing a load, then at my coat to see if my pockets bulged with the shapes of tinfulls of John West’s finest.

                           Five weeks later I stopped. I’d got enough money for the trip. Shiraz, god bless his South American blemish, was moved to a desk job when it all came out. How could he have not noticed the theft of 45 wheelbarrows, right under his nose and his Brazillian blemish? They came around to my house, his mates, for a bit of ‘justice’ mob handed like the Sweeney but fatter. They expected no doubt, to find a yard full of one wheeled muck tubs, but sadly not. All they found was my 10 year-old barrow with the oilskin tied over it, they must have thought my brains were brand new.

“Little Teflon bastard” Shiraz called me the dat after the raid when he saw me in the Aldi buying German Sweetcorn. His fat mates had found no evidence to prosecute.

                                         So here I am looking out at Gay Paree from the top of the Eiffel tower, the wind off the Seine reddening the tips of my ears and my hand on Rosie’s generous bottom, running my thumb repeatedly over the seam of those silk knickers. We’ve got friendly with a couple from the wrong side of Halifax. The side where in all the pubs, the arms of the chairs have tattoos on them and on Sundays they serve broken leg of lamb. They’re alright though, their names are Eddie and Anne, a good sort the both of them.?

                                   “Did thee fly from Leeds Bradford?” Eddie asked as we all  slobbered over a big pancake full of bitter chocolate sauce, a crepe I think they called it,

          “No I replied, to be honest Eddie lad we came by muck tub”.

Even Rosie gave me a funny look.