How My Bad Luck Turned Into Good Fortune

Life under the parental roof was miserable. I was out of work and broke, an unfortunate pair of circumstances that tested my parents' patience. To make the situation worse, on the morning this tale begins, I received a letter from my friend Gustav, who, you may recall, had moved to France. In it, he reminded me that I owe him thirty pounds reimbursement for a carpet repair he'd paid for.

Gustav was safely out of the way, so I didn't have to worry about paying him, but my parents were another matter. I'd spent all Sunday cadging cigarettes from my mother to the vocal disapproval of my dad, who lectures me daily on what he sees as my lacklustre efforts to find a job.

Dad's bark is worse than his bite, but when he does let rip, he's like a doberman going at a cat on the fence that's giving it the finger. That Monday morning at breakfast, I got a proper earful.

As Dad slurped a bowl of muesli, my mother presented me with a sausage and egg sandwich, which I opened to apply my preferred sauce. An overzealous squeeze of the plastic ketchup bottle delivered a squirt of the red stuff onto Dad's shirt sleeve. He was already running late for work, so he gave a sustained audible demonstration of his canine side.

While the consensus among my peers is that I am a chap of reasonable intelligence, my head's too often in the clouds, and I succumb wilfully to the most frivolous distractions. My mother once said , after I'd gone King Alfred on some baking muffins I'd been left in charge of while she went to the shop , I have the focus of a photographer on a fog-bound moor. It was a fitting description that manifested itself later that day.

Following the ketchup cock up, I tried to get back into my parents' good books by volunteering to do the day's chores. My itinerary was to return my mother's library books, put Dad's bet on, and buy a few items at the supermarket. I slid my arms through the straps of a rucksack and set off.

While walking along a residential street on the outskirts of the town centre, I came across a group of people collectively looking into a garden and chattering as though waiting for something to unfold. Ever curious, I sidled up and joined the small band of spectators. The object of their attention was a black cat stuck up a tree and wailing in a tone that suggested it would sooner be lying on a rug in front of the fire.

I believe when you've observed one cat stuck up a tree -  and I have  - you've seen them all, so I turned to walk away. On hearing the creak of an opening gate, I glanced back, and I'm glad I did. Like a clown entering the big top, a man walked into the garden carrying a ladder, and the situation suddenly had entertainment potential.

The ladder was the narrow upper half of a wooden extension affair that was so old its original purpose may have been to support a painter daubing the higher-up parts in the caves of Lascaux. It looked worn out and rickety, but no more so than its carrier.

The man, who would need a birthday cake with the circumference of a dartboard to accommodate a candle for each of his years, was a slightly built specimen with a bald head and bristling grey moustache. Thick lens spectacles straddled his nose, and cargo shorts showed off his pale pipe-cleaner legs.

"That ladder looks rotten to me," a man from our side of the fence shouted.

"It's all right, I'm not heavy," the would-be rescuer replied, propping the ladder up against a bough of the tree and spitting on his hands to indicate he was ready to set about his task.

He began the ascent, but progress was slow because he raised both feet onto the same rung before moving on to the next one. Finally, he gripped the top of the ladder about three feet below the cat.

"Come on, Freidrich," he said, raising an arm and rubbing his thumb and fingers as an enticement.

The small audience laughed at the revelation of the cat's name and then gasped collectively as the rung on which the man was standing broke.

Displaying agility that defied his years, the man grabbed a branch and straddled the bough against which the ladder had been leaning. The cat, startled by the sudden crack, scurried tail-first down the tree, digging its claws into the bark as it descended. The man's spectacles finished ahead of Friedrich in a race to the lawn, and the ladder fell onto a wall, where it broke on impact.

In a heartbeat, the actors in the comedy had exchanged positions. The man formerly on the ground was now stuck up the tree, straddling a bough and clinging to a branch, and the cat, previously stuck up the tree, slunk across the lawn as though no drama had occurred. It was a switch any illusionist would have been proud to have pulled off.

In response to the man's request for assistance, a woman took out her phone and called the fire brigade. As we awaited their arrival, some in the audience shouted words of encouragement to the distressed occupant of the tree. Twenty minutes passed, and, with no sound of an approaching siren, a man from across the street appeared carrying a more robust ladder of the aluminium kind, which he propped against the tree to bring the arboreal antique safely down to terra-firma. The show was over, but everyone agreed it had been worth watching.

Part 2

After returning the library books, I entered the bookie's shop to place Dad's bet. I slid the betting slip over the counter to the bespectacled female assistant, who looked down at the piece of paper, pressed her fingertips onto it, and slid it back to me. Not knowing why she had done that, I sent it across again, and again, it came back. I was about to ask what the problem was, but before I spoke, the assistant nodded toward one of the TV screens. Dad's race was already off and running.

And, curse my luck, Dad's first horse won at ten-to-one. I felt physically sick.

Dad's other selection, Corsair's Bride, was due to run in the 2.15 race, so I had forty minutes to kill. After obtaining the required items from the supermarket, I went for a game of pinball in an amusement arcade, where my skills at thwarting a Dalek invasion of Earth were such I earned two replays. After playing my free games, I ran to the bookie's, arriving just as the horses in the 2.15 race galloped to the winning post.

"At the line, Corsair's Bride wins by half a length," the excited commentator said. Devastated doesn't come close to describing how I felt.

Back outside, I did the mental arithmetic that would tell me how much Dad was about to miss out on. The bet was a five-pound double, and his first selection came in at a whopping ten-to-one. That made fifty-five quid rolling over to Corsair's Bride, which won at three-to-one. So, Dad's winnings would be four times fifty-five, which is two-hundred-and-twenty notes.

I imagined Dad's reaction to my costly incompetence, and I cursed that tree-climbing twit for waylaying me. I felt sadness for my dad, who had recently paid a hefty car repair bill and could've used the extra cash. What a mess.

Sitting on a bench on a pedestrianised street, I tried to formulate some way of extricating myself from the shambles. The only semblance of a plan I could think of was to say I'd lost the money. Or else they might believe something more urgent than watching a cat in a tree had held me up. Then, in a flash, I realised a possible way out was staring me in the face.

Directly opposite my seat was a shop, the front of which was black with an assortment of hand-written ads and slogans in large letters of yellow and blue. Above the window was a huge sign bearing the legend Landspeed Records in silver lettering on a black background. Below that, a subheading stated, We buy your old vinyl. Best prices paid.

I believe I mentioned that Gustav and I used to run a record stall at the local market. When we gave it up, we split the unsold stock, and I've had several boxes of albums stored in Dad's garage for half a decade.

I shook my head at my slow-wittedness. I'd been living with my parents for three weeks, borrowing money and scrounging cigarettes, and all the time I had a veritable treasure trove sitting neglected in the garage. I looked at my watch, rose, and a gaggle of pedestrian pigeons flapped off in alarm as I ran along the street as well as I could with a rucksack full of shopping on my back.

There were three boxes of albums in the garage. I was interested in the one with the legend RARER STUFF written on the side in marker pen. I grabbed a handful of the discs  -  thirteen, it transpired  -  put them into my rucksack, and hurried back to the town centre.

I stepped through a beaded curtain into the shop, which smelled of patchouli. An unfamiliar reggae song played as I approached the counter behind which the proprietor stood. He was a tall man of late middle age, wearing a Hawkwind t-shirt under a leather waistcoat and sporting a grey moustache much stained with nicotine.

"What can I do you for, Chief?" he said.

"I'm looking to sell these," I said, pulling the albums from my rucksack. The shopkeeper gave each cover a cursory check.

"There's some good stuff here," he said, "but does it stand up to scrutiny? Condition is everything in this game." He put on a pair of spectacles and examined Devo's debut album on blue vinyl under the glow of an anglepoise lamp. I told him I was aware of that, having once been a buyer and seller of records myself. That statement broke the ice, and we chatted about rare records we'd sold as he jotted down what he would offer for each album.

A copy of Electric Warrior by T Rex was deemed a non-runner because of a long scratch on one side, but his offer for the other albums was three hundred and twelve pounds. I felt like jumping for joy but remained composed as I accepted the offer. Knowing I could cover my dad's winnings made me light-headed with relief, but I could also reimburse Gustav and still have a wedge for myself.

Back home, while demolishing a plate of pie and chips, I saw Dad's car pull up outside. I had separated his money from the wad, intending to pull it from my pocket as though the bookie had given it to me. I don't know what a sandboy is, but I expected my dad to be as happy as one when he came in. Instead, I was surprised to hear the barking dog version of the paterfamilias.

I rose from the table and listened at the kitchen door, and  -  mother of all saints  -  what I heard almost caused my legs to buckle. Corsair's Bride had been first past the post, but there had been a stewards' enquiry, after which Dad's selection got disqualified for impeding another horse. Poor old Dad had no winnings to collect, and now all the money from the record sales came to me.

I had to reimburse Dad's five-pound stake, and as I did, I realised how close I'd come to creating an awkward situation. Had Dad not come home ranting about his bad luck, I might have handed over a wad of winnings for a disqualified horse. That would have taken some explaining.

I told the parents I'd sold some of the records from the boxes in the garage, and I handed over forty pounds to help them recover from Dad's hefty car repair bill.

"You may be a chump at times, Charlie," Dad said, "but you're a chump with a heart of gold." As backhanded compliments go, that was a lip burster, but I took it.

Now that I was in funds, I determined to put the money to good use. Instead of converting my cash into beer and thence into urine, I thought about getting new shoes and a haircut. And I'd pay back the money I owed Gustav immediately.

You may recall me saying Gustav is a stickler for order. I ran upstairs and pulled an envelope from a bedside drawer. He would never send an improperly written letter, and, sure enough, his address was on the page. 126 rue de saint-jeannet. I would settle my debt with Gustav, but rather than posting a cheque, I'd pay him a surprise visit funded by the sale of more records.

Now, où est ma valise?