A woman came to ask the doctor if a woman should have children after 35. I said 35 children is enough for any woman!
Gracie Allen.
The Gas Bill
The envelope bearing the red and green logo of Northern Commodities lay on the broken tiled floor, beneath the letter box. Karen, her pink dressing gown wrapped and belted tight against the cold, looked down at it with bleary eyes. She hadn’t slept well ever since she and Martin had returned from Penrith three weeks ago and found that they had lost everything. She blamed the banks, the government and her husband for the plight they were in: the banks for the economic crisis their greed had caused; the government for not taking steps to prevent the disaster happening; and her husband who’s idea it was to go on the trip. ‘Let’s get away from all this gloom for a few days,’ he’d said.
‘Maybe we should just stay at home and save the money, in case.’
‘In case of what?’
She’d shrugged. ‘In case one of us should get made redundant.’
‘If we’re made redundant we won’t be able to go anywhere. So why don’t we go now while we can? It won’t cost us much, not at this time of the year.’
She’d been dubious. But after having had her son and grandchildren over from Perth for the Christmas holidays, followed by having to look after her eighty-year old mother until she got over a bad chest infection, she had felt ready for a break so she had agreed.
They’d left home on the Friday evening, spent two day relaxing in The Lakes and had come back to find a blackened crater where their house used to be. All they had left was what they stood up in, the clothes in their suitcases and the car.
True, the council had given them temporary accommodation in a grotty flat and the insurance would eventually pay out. But since they had reinsured at the new lower value of the house to save money on the premiums, it would be a much smaller amount than it would have been a year ago. All this worry was bad enough. But then, by the magic of postal transfer, she had received her gas bill from Northern Commodities and had almost died of shock. There was no way possible that they could have used the amount of gas that the company claimed and she was on the phone to them as soon as she had recovered her breath. She had demanded an explanation, and a revised bill.
The said reply, now lay at her feet and as she bent to pick it up she was somewhat reassured by the smiley face and slogan beneath the logo, “A fair deal for every customer“. She ripped open the envelope, began to read, gasped and continued to read as she slid slowly to the floor:
Dear Mrs Edwards,
With reference to your telephone call, I must inform you that there was no mistake in our invoice of the 22nd and the additional amount of £552,336.00p plus VAT was for the 222,000 kWh of gas consumed by the explosion that was caused - as you yourself admitted - by your husband leaving an unlit gas ring on while you were away for two days.
