ThePickards
standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist

Once upon a time, there was a much put-upon husband who was constantly told by his wife not to spend any money, it should all be saved up. Indeed, she had a particular saying that she trotted out at times:

“A pound is a pound is a pound.”

Now this man — I can’t remember his name off-hand, so we’ll call him George — was a lover of aeroplanes, aircraft and anything to do with flying. He’d never been on a flight anywhere of course, because—

“A pound is a pound is a pound.”

— as Maud would have it. However, it’s rapidly approaching his fiftieth birthday, and he’s hoping to do something a bit different, a bit special.

“Maud love,” he began “Can I have a flying lesson for my fiftieth birthday? Just the one.”

“How much is that then?”

“It’s … um … £75 for an hour’s lesson.”

“No you damn well can’t. You know as well as I do that” — you at home can join in if you like — “a pound is a pound is a pound“

And that was that, thought George. No planes, no flying lessons, nothing. He’d already steeled himself to disappointment though, so it wasn’t too bad.

But then he realised that there was going to be an air show on on the day of his birthday. If he couldn’t get in a plane himself, he could at least watch the displays, surely…

“Maud, Maud, there’s an airshow on on my birthday. Can we go to that?”

“Well how much is it then?”

“It’s three pounds admission each.”

“Three pounds? Three pounds? Well, if that’s what you want for your birthday, I suppose we can, but you’ll not be getting anything else. After all, a pound is a pound is a pound!”

And so the day of the air show dawned. George and Maud went along, Maud paid the three pounds for each of them to go in (without any good grace, obviously) and then they had a look around.

George found himself stood next to a small sporty looking plane with a sign up beside it: “Take a tour in the Sky with Our Experienced Pilot. Only £20 per person for half an hour!”

He looked at it. He looked at Maud.

“No!” She said. “We’d already agreed. I don’t care if it is your birthday, I’ve paid for you to come to this bloody air show and a pound is a pound is a pound.”

“Yeah, I know.” George hung his head. “It’s just it’s been my life’s ambition to go in a plane, and I’ve never—”

“A pound is a pound is a pound, as you well know.”

Just then, the pilot of the aircraft leaned over. “I’m sorry to intrude Sir, Madam, but am I to understand that it’s this gentleman’s birthday, and he’d like a trip up in my plane, but your budget wouldn’t stretch to it?”

“That’d be about the size of it, yes.” sighed George.

“Well, how about a wager, then? I’ll take you and your good lady wife up for a spin. If I can make you shout out or scream, you each pay me the twenty pounds. If you don’t make a noise, you get the flight free. Would you be interested?”

George looked at Maud.

“That’s all very well, but you’d damn well better keep your mouth shut. After all, a pound is a pound is a pound.”

So they got in the plane and the pilot took them up high into the sky. George felt dizzy with excitement and he wanted to shout out — but he knew better than to do that.

Meanwhile, in the cockpit, the pilot was trying desperately to make them shout out. He sent the plane barrel-rolling through the sky — but no noise came from his passengers. He sent the plane into a deep dive so it looked as though they would inevitably crash — but no noise came from his passengers. He straightened out of the dive and sent the plane looping the loop — and for the briefest of moments he thought he’d heard a squeak but couldn’t be sure.

In the end, he gave up and taxied the plane back down to earth again.

Helping George out of his seat, the pilot grinned. “You know, you really did remarkably well to keep silent there. You deserve your free trip for that —”.

The pilot stopped and looked at George, then across to the empty seat beside him. “I thought your wife was in the seat beside you. Didn’t she come up with us?”

“Yeah, she wasn’t fastened in properly. She nearly fell out when you did the barrel rolls and she eventually did fall out when you did that loop-the-loop thing.” George shrugged his shoulders. “I had been going to say something, but then I would have lost the bet and had to pay you £40 so I thought, you know — a pound is a pound is a pound“.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 2:01 am and is filed under Funnies. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.