The Taxman Cometh!

It could only happen to me! Actually, that’s a foolish and illogical thing to say. It could happen to anyone who happens to find themselves plodding around Camden Town on a summer’s day attempting to collect unpaid tax. For I am that most unwelcome of creatures: the tax collector, loathed since biblical times and beyond. No-one, when I come calling ever says ‘break out the best china, Greta, it’s the beloved taxman come to divest us of money the bastard government says we owe’. And this would be a bastard Thatcher government I’m collecting for, too! Working for the enemy and me a good trade unionist.

Has its perks, this job.  Schlepping around London in the sunshine; like being a paid tourist. This day it is NW1 and NW5; away up to the high hills of Highgate, Archway, Kentish Town, then back down to Camden High Street and this Arlington Road where the ‘sauna’ is. Not hard to figure that it’s a knocking shop but the façade is all ‘legit’ (they even have the nerve to chase the dossers from Arlington House away in-case it discourages the local businessman from gaining access for his daily wank).

I don’t know what can have happened. Maybe I had recently urinated and left what should have been zipped-up unzipped.

“I see you’ve come ready for business” the young receptionist says and she and the other young lady present have a giggle to themselves. Must be a slow day and this is the ‘masseuse’ just waiting for fresh meat.

“Actually, I’m here from the tax office”.

This has them in fits. They’re both looking in the general direction of my groin. Maybe their trade has rendered them obsessed with the male sexual apparatus which they also find humorous as fuck.

Then, of course, the penny drops.

I write on my ‘report of call’;

“Visited premises at 3pm but could not gain access”

At least it would keep the young lovelies supplied with tittle-tattle for a while. The taxman cometh with fly’s a-gaping!

One time I had cause in my professional capacity to visit an old porn-queen. Worn out she was like some old lino that had been left out in the rain to mould. I didn’t say this to her. I didn’t say, by the way hen, you look like a piece of mouldy old lino. I thought it best not to mention this impression of her I had on first sighting.

Later on I googled her and found that she’d been in those 1970’s soft-porn flicks with such as Johnny Briggs who had gone on to play Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street. Probably got her tits out for him. Another thing I wouldn’t have asked her if I’d known.

“Did you ever get your tits out for Mike Baldwin?” This too may have been met with frostiness and reports back to the office.

“You said what to her?” my manager would splurt. Like the time I wouldn’t call Sir Michael Havers ‘Sir Michael’ being the son of a mad Communist who wouldn’t have called him ‘Sir Michael’ either.

“I have early-stage Tourette’s Syndrome and am not always in control of what I say hence the question about her tits and Mike Baldwin. I’ll see a doctor about some pills”.

Either I’m a nosey bugger or am just naturally interested in people’s lives. I mean, if you met a porn-star you’d want to know all sorts of things, wouldn’t you?

Some people tell you too much. This one fella in Kentish Town I was calling on (some Schedule D outstanding?) was determined to show me his operation scar. I seem to be one of those people that folk feel free to show their operation scars to. I have to admit, though, it was some scar alright. Don’t know what had been wrong with him but it can’t have been good. Damn thing, all liverish and fresh, went all the way from his groin to up beyond his chest.

He did tell me what his ailment had been but I was too conscious of this rivulet of a scar and the fact of his semi-nakidity in what was quite a confined space to fully take in the information. ‘Diseased tripes’ or somesuch.

Poor bloke was just dying – maybe literally – to show off his trophy scar to someone and who better than the taxman. You’re no’ getting any money but here, cop for this!

Some of my work colleagues were a tad on the nutty side. Back in old days, even before computers were common in offices things were awful basic. You got a tin with some work in it and you got on with it. 

To be employed in the lower reaches of the British Civil Service all you had to do was turn up at the interview and not swear at anyone. They chose people by ‘the cut of their jib’ and not by any fancified consultancy-engendered  ‘competency-based’ rigmarole that they have now. Even to apply to work for such as the DWP these days you’d think it was NASA doing the recruiting. Three ‘interview stages’ so you can wind up asking folk what work they’ve been looking for and could they maybe try a little harder.

You weren’t really expected to do much work and I think you’d maybe raise concerns with management, who didn’t do much work either, if you did. I had one manager named Avril who looked a little like Crystal Tipps off that cartoon on the telly but without the personality. I think I scared the life out of her with my somewhat ribald Scottish humour (either that or she couldn’t understand a blind word I was saying which, now visualising the bewilderment on her little face anytime I spoke to her, is the more likely scenario).

My first mentor as a tax-clerk was a raspy wee rat-featured wummin that smoked cigars. Being a callow though secretly lustful youth I fancied her rotten. I fantasised about erotic trysts in the store-room among the ink-pads and County Court warning letters. I would have set the place ablaze with my sensual fervour while she set it ablaze with her fiery stubs. We would be discovered eternally encoupled by fire officers, two husks of horny human.

The cashier was Maurice Speigel, a genial Jewish man who lived in a flat in the trendy Barbican. How he afforded what seemed like luxury accommodation was somewhat of a mystery. Maybe he had a rich wife. I had occasion to call at Barbican addresses, usually to chase up some has-been pop star or an agent of such. This was exciting to me as I’d always been fascinated by the environs of The Barbican; those massive high-rises and its little ponds and features. I reckoned that if I lived there I’d have no need ever to appear outside its confines again. It had everything a gentle, cultural lad like myself could want: a library, a concert hall, the Museum of London and several genteel hostelries where ale could be bought.

There was this one bloke – let’s call him Lance – who was beyond the pale altogether. Whichever wise manager that put him on the phones must have been having a laugh for Lance wasn’t quite the entire ticket and was to customer service what Harold Shipman was to the bedside manner.

“YOU’RE NOT LISTENING TO ME” he would bellow before smashing the phone back on its cradle then he’d stamp off muttering to walk the corridors.

If you happened to be walking towards him on said corridors he’d walk this big exaggerated loop around you as if you were somehow contaminated with disease. He’d scale along the walls in an effort to avoid you.

Old Lance was a boy right enough! Funny thing was he’d go on these holidays to somewhere in Wales where they’d let him pretend to work on the miniature railways. He’d bring back photos of himself waving guards flags and blowing whistles and pin them on the wall next to his desk.