How I became Mr Grumpy

As I am truly fed up with Covid, Trump, Boris etc. here’s the story of how I became Mr Grumpy. It’s 100% true and about my first wife.

Back in the early 70s, I met this girl Jackie at the Ideal Homes exhibition in Brighton. She was a model there and I was selling non-stick frying pans- a story on its own but anyway but after just a few months we were married.

We bought a house in East London and that was it. The problem was back then when I was in my 20s, I did what a lot of 20-year-olds did, which involved drugs, alcohol and parties. My neighbour Fred owned a car lot and also raced a Formula 1 stock car and we used to go to race meetings with Fred and his wife.

One day I woke up and asked Jackie why Fred’s stock car was parked on a trailer outside our house. She informed me that I had got so drunk the night before and bought it off him. I didn’t have a clue how to race but over the next few months, I learned and raced at various tracks around the country. I wasn’t very good compared to the experienced racers who mostly were all in the motor trade and had their own mechanics.

I had to pay for a mechanic as I was selling dress fabrics in East Hamshopping hall. Jackie and I had been married about 5 years at this point and she’d decided to leave me. But I came up with a cunning plan to make her stay. I asked her to come to my next race. My plan was to crash, she’d rush over to save me, fall in love all over again and decide to stay.

She agreed to come and all was going to plan until I realised I was in 3rd place and actually had a chance of winning. Now I had a tough decision to make. Go for the win and lose my wife or crash and lose the race but hopefully keep my wife. I fulfilled my dream of standing on the podium finishing in 3rd place and I’ve never seen my first wife from that day to this!

I also never raced again as it was too damn expensive. But things always turn out for the best–the current Mrs S and I have been together for over 35 years!

Email:mikesenker@gmail.com

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