Pearl !!!

Monday evening, around 6.30pm to 7pm.
We’d be sitting around the tv set settling in for a night of pre-selected viewing, pre-selected by my father in those days of pre-remote control tv sets where actually getting up and walking to the set to turn it over was a huge effort.

Our mother would be in the kitchen washing up after our evening meal, or “tea” as we like to call it in the north of England, not to be confused with the drink of the same name, its complicated, we’ll deal with that one later, suffice to say our mothers job was cooking and washing up after us male folk, its only right.

Suddenly the outside door would fly open and the cry “Pearl !!!” would rent the air, quickly followed by our mother loosing off a “ooh!” in shock.

It was the man from the Pearl Insurance Company of course, clad in his long beige raincoat, making his once a month call for his insurance premiums. Never a one to knock at the door and wait he seemed to believe that he had some sort of right of entry into everyones house and by a process of simply opening the door and stepping inside shouting “Pearl !!!” it seemed that he was correct, maybe he did have a right of entry, after all, insurance premiums are pretty important things you know.

For some strange reason we all believed that his bloody Pearl Insurance Policies were a really, really good thing, both Ned and I were forced to take one out as soon as we started work although it was usually our mother who paid our premiums because on a Monday night I’d be skint after spending all my wages in various pubs around Leeds at the weekend.

For a handful of coins of the realm once a month you’d be insured against death for a sum of money that would just about bury you and pay for a ham tea afterwards for anyone who had come to the funeral, with the added bonus that if you didn’t die within five years then you could “pay up” the policy for a cash lump sum, usually a cash lump sum that was far less than what you’d paid in, but still, no-one actually took the time to work that one out anyway.

In fact after I had moved away to work in Newcastle I cashed in my policy to raise the £500 deposit on my first apartment, my mother having paid for most of my premiums, so in truth I shouldn’t really be complaining at all, its just the next bit that still rankles our Ned and still amuses me every time we re-tell the story to each other.

The month after I’d cashed my policy in the Pearl man walked in the house again, through the kitchen into the living room where our Ned was settling down to watch tv. Standing in between him and the tv he asked Ned if he was going to take out an additional policy with Pearl.

Ned simply glanced at him and asked why on earth he would want to have two policies with Pearl, especially when he was thinking about cashing in his policy too in order to use the money to travel to Australia soon.

The Pearl man was most indignant and told Ned that he couldn’t cash his in yet, not two in one household, in fact Ned should take out an extra one to make up for the fact that I had cashed mine, he (the Pearl man) had lost his commission on my policy and now he was expecting Ned to make it back up.

After Ned had stopped laughing his socks off our father showed the door to the Pearl man and after another incident when our now-world famous guitar plucking cousin had his insurance claim refused by the Man from The Pearl on the grounds that, well, they just didn’t want to pay for a replacement guitar, we all cancelled our policies forthwith.

And the Man from The Pearl was never seen again.

And we got a lock on the back door, just to be on the safe side.