I think I've lost my touch!

IN the last seven days I have been through every excuse in the book and still haven't come up with any reason for branding my grandma Bolton's answer to Bernard Manning in last week's Wright On! - and that's just not like me.

You see my brother and I have had plenty of practice when it comes to fobbing people off after spending years doing just that as unpaid receptionists for my dad's central heating firm.

Now, don't get me wrong, because my dad was one of the best in the North West when it came to fixing leaks and broken down boilers, but when you're trying to juggle ten jobs at once and keep everyone happy a couple of white lies from the kids is par for the course.

And the amount of times I've had to instantly conjure up some plausible explanation for why he'd not been to fix a boiler in the middle of March and cover up for the fact he'd given someone else top priority, well, you'd think an angry call from an irate granny was the least of my worries.

At one point my brother and I could have given the inquiry desk for Hoover's free flights promotion a run for their money, but now? I think I've lost my touch, or perhaps I've simply reverted to type.

You see when I was very young - and now to some extent - I was terrible at covering up for anything, however small, and always opted to do the decent thing and come clean about whatever it was I'd done.

But my honesty-is-the-best-policy idea regularly backfired and not least for those I'd roped into the misdemeanour in the first place - usually my brother. But that served him right for blaming everything he ever did on me and, not least, spilling Vimto down the front of my mum's beloved kitchen cupboards every time he made a drink.

I think the general idea imprinted on my brain was that if I owned up first, the punishment would be downscaled accordingly later, but I've reconsidered in the last couple of months - I reckon owning up just gets you a bad name. I mean why tell people about something terrible you've done when they're highly unlikely to ever find out? For example, my friends and I, like many others I'm sure, used to pass notes in class. You know, the kind of notes that get more dangerous each time they are thrust across the desk.

They start off: "Hello, isn't this lesson boring?" and end with the teacher seizing the scrap of paper in a fit of pique only to find the last message littered with newly discovered expletives and references to his overpowering BO.

Thing is, if he didn't manage to get there in time and asked what we were doing I'd tell him like a twerp in a fit of conscience and spend the rest of the day standing under the clock being nipped by my mates. It's not good.

And what about a threatening ransom demand I once received from an obviously unhinged classmate who took the knock after being skitted for wearing a particularly dodgy tartan dress? Next thing I know she's handing me a letter at the school gates and relating a far fetched story about a man in a balaclava asking her to pass it on - despite the fact it was written on a piece of Sindy note paper.

Now it didn't take Hetty Wainthropp's powers of deduction to work out she'd hatched the blackmail plot herself on her dad's antique typewriter.

But I must admit to being a little scared when I read I was to leave £10 under the stone at the old vicarage gate or "have a quackcident on my horse."

But when she owned up after a quick quizzing from our teacher Mr Clarke I promptly - some might say stupidly - dropped myself and the rest of the class in it by revealing the reason for her psychotic outburst was nothing more than the fact we had spent most of the day before doing bagpipe impressions and the Highland Fling!

And I'm just glad that was the end of it or I could have had a serial killer on my conscience too. I still might if I don't come up with an explanation for grandma soon! Did I really say Bernard Manning?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.