The Case of the Offending Turd

A Salesman’s Curiosity.

There are times when natural curiosity becomes a compulsive disorder. For about ten years, on and off, after leaving art school, I made my bread and butter, brought home the bacon, kept the wolf from the door and a roof over my head, by selling things door-to-door, on the knocker, and it was while I was selling vacuum cleaners that I had my education “finished”.

I want to tell you just one story from that time. It is a tiny but illustrative event involving two vacuum cleaner salesmen; colleges of mine on the knocker. They worked together because Morrie couldn’t drive, and was too tubby to carry the machine, while Nicky was fit, had a driving licence, but was intellectually challenged.

Morrie was 63, and lived in a Jewish block of flats in Hove, with a terrifying wife. He had been “struck off” from his career for “professional misconduct”, but his wife decided that if they could not keep up the same lifestyle, they would at least keep up appearances. To this end, on a Saturday after “payout”, she would not let him in the door if he did not push £60.00 (In 1969) through the letterbox first. It was Morrie, who, in the bar of the Landsdown Hotel, one Saturday lunchtime after “payout”, .told us other knockermen the entire tale,

Nicky was 25, and addicted to buying things that he had no intention of paying for. “Send no money!” he would quote gleefully from an advert. He had collected quite a number of court orders and fines already, and in a few more years, he would go on to do some time at Her Majesty’s pleasure. He was a blond, blue eyed, innocent looking young man who had survived so far due to his skill at mimicking “benign incompetence” in front of magistrates. Nicky laughed a lot. I had known him a few years earlier because we had briefly been at art school together. Nicky had been asked to leave after the first year as he could only draw faces, and because he was considered “dead wood” by the staff. One morning during the photography class, in the dark room, he had poured a pint of glue into his friend’s rucksack of brushes, paint, drawing instruments etc, in revenge for his friend deliberately denting his trumpet.

The machine we were selling at that time was heavy, very powerful, and boxed with many impressive attachments that made it good for demonstration, including a “paint sprayer” that fixed onto the blowing end. It was made in the North of England specially for selling door-to-door. Its main drawback was the large motor and the sheet steel casing, which made it too heavy for most normal women to carry, while its other problem was its name - “Bilok”! We usually lied and said it was made by ‘Belling’, a well known manufacturer in those days. The model we sold was called the “Elite” (pronounced E-lite by Nicky).

Morrie and Nicky had managed on this particular evening to get into a "nice" house to demonstrate the cleaner in front of a young husband and wife. They were a ‘normal’ couple of likely punters, living in a conventional suburban cul-de-sac. Nicky and Morrie worked as a team. They both knocked doors, making appointments or getting straight into the house if they were lucky. Nicky did the carrying and demonstrating and Morrie did the sales pitch (the ‘close’) and the paperwork. When Nicky had completed his demonstration he asked the couple if he might use their toilet. He therefore disappeared upstairs while Morrie continued his charm offensive.

The lavatory could be heard flushing, and after rather too long a time, Nicky reappeared, grinning manically. He kept making faces at Morrie and pointing up towards the ceiling. Morrie tried to ignore him of course as he had more important business to attend to, and because it would have been difficult for one or both of the punters not to have noticed Nicky’s antics. He hoped that Nicky would soon grow tired of sending signals and let him get on with closing the sale. It was making him nervous.

Nicky didn’t give up grinning and winking however, so Morrie assumed that there must be something of huge interest to be seen upstairs, and his imagination got the better of him; perhaps it was pornography, kinky underwear, or something even more exiting that he could not even think of. It all became too much for him at last, so he too asked if he might use their lavatory.

Morrie told us that as soon as he opened the bathroom door he knew he had made a mistake. Nicky had had a crap, and in the WC, the huge result lay coiled and jammed across the pan. It was massive, and had refused all Nicky’s attempts to flush it away. Morrie, after trying the flush again, had a go at breaking it with the loo-brush, but only managed to get it stuck with one end in the bend, and the other rearing out of the water. After jabbing and flushing a few times, interspersed with waiting for the cistern to fill again, he admitted defeat and returned downstairs, knowing that the young couple would assume it was he who had left their toilet in such a state. He found Nicky, hugging himself and incandescent with glee!

Whether or not Nicky had deliberately put Morrie in the firing line we shall never know, but at least Morrie had that enviable Jewish ability to tell a hugely funny story against himself. I am unable to tell you if a sale was made that evening, but I hope it was.

Pip, pip,

The Leg