Chapter 16

On Tuesday, I used a free period (when I really should have been in the library catching up on the reading I hadn't done at the weekend) to dash across to the bank to draw some cash out, and then went down town after my lectures were over, to look again at the tray purses that I had seen in the shop window.

My Mum had bought Dad one for his birthday because she said she was fed up with him jiggling a pocket-full of coins whenever they went out anywhere, and he had actually found it really useful.

They folded in half, so the coins were kept safely in the purse bit when it was in your pocket, and when you extended the rigid tray, you could shake the coins into it and easily pick out the ones you wanted.

It was a lot better than groping in your jeans pocket for a handful of coins, which of course always came out complete with the bits of old tissue and sweet wrappers that also inhabited my pockets!

The ones on display had a little zip compartment for bank notes, not that I often had many notes, and that seemed a good idea too.

I've always liked the smell of new leather; one of my favourite shops as a child was the cobbler, where the aromas of leather and wax polish competed. It was always warm in there, and Mum used to chat to the cobbler's wife while I looked over the counter and admired his dexterity with a fast-spinning wheel to burnish and polish the welts of newly-soled shoes. And my shoes came back from the cobblers so well polished that they looked like new - well, for a few days, until I had scuffed them again...

I decided to buy one tray purse each for myself, Adrian and Malcolm, but in three different colours, a black, a dark tan and a light tan, so that we wouldn't get them confused.

I got home to find that Malcolm had nipped over to his house, so I took the opportunity to ask Sian if she thought Malcolm would prefer the black or light tan tray purse - I was going to get someone to give me the dark tan one.

She decided that he would probably prefer the black one, and also mentioned that she was going to spend Christmas with the twins, so I asked her to take my presents for them with her. That was a stroke of luck that would save me quite a bit of postage, especially for Sheila's hot water bottle and zebra cover.

Malcolm got back before I could get on to the vexed subject of what to do about Vee, but we heard him coming up the stairs so I was able to hide the two boxes with the tray purses.

He and I had the job of making supper that night; he did a mean variation of meatballs using faggots, and I did the spaghetti and the table-setting while he knocked up a tasty tinned-tomato-based sauce. It was good and warming, and the girls all tucked in.

Over our second pot of tea, I broached my idea about Christmas presents; it was close to the end of term and the coffers were running low for all of us, so there was no dissent. We knew that we were all good friends, and there was no need to try to prove it by buying each other extravagant and possibly unwanted presents.

Sian volunteered that she had seen a good offer on wrapping paper at the market, so was deputed to buy three rolls and some festive Sellotape out of the housekeeping money.

Mind you, I still wanted to buy Julie something special, and I had an idea or two there.

xxxxxxx

On the Wednesday I spent much of my sports afternoon wrapping the hot water bottles and tray purses in the paper that Sian had bought first thing that morning.

Julie and Vee were both feeling much brighter, and had gone off window shopping for the presents they were hoping to buy. I had told Julie that I had bought a couple of small things for the twins and was going to label them from both of us; she was happy with that, and I breathed a sigh of relief. She was such a lovely girl that she'd have spent the last of her money on giving presents, and then gone without herself.

Sian and Malcolm were closeted in her bedroom; from the sounds that I couldn't help hearing, I gathered that they were taking vigorous indoor exercise. I kept quiet in the hope that they wouldn't realise I had stayed behind, because I didn't want to put them off. I liked both of them very much, and was delighted that they seemed such good friends as well as lovers.

Gustav seemed to be healing extremely fast; by the Thursday the scabs had fallen off the bottom wounds, and when I manipulated Gustav in the privacy of the bathroom, I confirmed that even when fully erect, he could now stretch down to touch his toes. Dr Baxter certainly knew his stuff!

Vee and Julie came back home on Friday afternoon giggling; over a cup of tea and a Burton's Wagon Wheel biscuit each (for those of you who don't know them, a large chocolate covered marshmallow biscuit, and they were a good size in those days!), they explained what they had found so funny.

"Doc Brown had a filthy cold, and was sent home to give it to her cats rather than her colleagues, so she got one of her Ph. D. students to fill in and tell us about her etymology research."

Julie could tell from my expression that I hadn't heard the word 'etymology' before.

"It's about the origin of words and where they come from. This girl was studying the Puritans in Sussex in the 1600's, and the names they gave their children. It was hilarious; it's almost as if they were having a competition to see who could burden their kids with the most sanctimonious name!"

"They seemed to start with Old Testament names, none of this trendy modern New Testament Apostle rubbish like Peter, James and Paul, but good reliable prophets names like Ezekiel, Obadiah and Micah. Then they moved onto virtues - especially for the poor girls, like Purity, Charity, Prudence, Verity and Patience. And then they really started to get carried away - hang on while I find the right page in my notebook!"

"Oh, there were some real crackers! They had a thing about giving their kids a constant reminder about Sin and pain. Here we are. There was a Member of Parliament just after the Civil War, called Praise-God Barebone, and he named his son 'If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned'. He became an MP as well, but was known as Nicholas! She wasn't sure if he was related to 'Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith' or 'Job-raked-out-of-the-ashes'."

"You're joking! Did she make these up?"

"No, she showed us one of her sources - some Victorian wrote a book, which got her interested in the whole thing. She spends a lot of her time looking at old Parish Records and Jury Rolls, things like that. She had made some overhead projector slides from some Baptism Registers, and the old copperplate handwriting was beautiful! Some of the names were really cruel, a man named Humiliation Hynde gave BOTH of his sons the same name, and there were 'No-merit' and 'Helpless' as well. The Sykes called their sons 'Die-well' and 'Farewell', and other children like 'More-triale', 'Abstinence', 'Obedience', 'Handmaid' and 'Forsaken' can't have had very happy childhoods!"

"Oh, those are dreadful!"

"She said that one person who did Jury Service in the 1650s had a double problem with his name - he was called 'Kill-Sin Pimple'!"

"Poor bugger!"

"And they all had lots of children, so naming a child 'Be-Fruitful', 'Increase', 'More-Fruit' or 'Love-Well' was all about keeping the sect going."

"But you have to pity the poor sod called 'Zeal-of-the-Lord' - can you imagine the whole class answering to their names before they get to you?"

"You haven't written down the best one, Julie - you were laughing too much!"

"Oh? Which was that one?"

Vee had the decency to wait a moment, as Sian was taking a gulp of her second mug of tea.

"Fly-fornication!"

Sian lost it anyway; there was tea spilt all over the table, and it took us a while to get cleaned up after that.

While Julie was adding 'Fly-fornication' to her notes, Vee admitted that her fiance Jeff's grandfather was an elder at the Ebenezer Chapel. With Christmas coming up, Mr. Scrooge's first name was of course familiar to anyone who had ever read of seen a film of "A Christmas Carol". It gave us an idea quite how fun-loving Jeff's grandad might be!

Malcolm and I decided not to bother the girls with our doings of the week; we knew that we couldn't possibly compete with that lecture.

It would have been no interest at all to them that we had been told to hand in our Platinum crucibles for recycling - although we vaguely knew that Platinum is a precious metal as well as one that is almost totally non-reactive, the discovery that the crucibles were sold by the Troy Ounce at that day's London Spot Market valuation had been a surprise to us.

Our lecturer had told us that the last batch of Platinum crucibles and lids had cost about £450 EACH! He said that there was far less Platinum in the world than Gold, and that he wouldn't be at all surprised if the price of Platinum went higher than Gold, now that it was becoming fashionable for jewellery.

The world price was apparently set in U.S. Dollars, and was around $1250 per troy ounce, which at very roughly $2.50 to the Pound was £500. That was more than I had earned over the whole of the last summer!