We met at The Accident Prone Society Annual Dinner and Dance. Always a messy affair. I’ve been going for three years now and it always seems to consist of a group of awkward people dancing in their dinner. I can never work out why they book the same ballroom, up three flights of stairs. Either they have a
strange sense of humour or they get commission from medical supplies companies. At this event ‘tripping the light fantastic’ had another meaning.

Mary caught my eye immediately. Fortunately, I had some Optrex on me. I asked her to dance. It started off okay but then a chair decided to join us swiftly followed by a curtain and curtain rail. I can’t remember how we ended up in the caretaker’s supplies room but she looked fetching with a bucket on her head while I found the mop handle down my trousers a little uncomfortable.

•••

“Would you like to come in for coffee?” she asked as the car’s airbags deflated.
I was thrilled. “I’d love to.” This was my first proper date for ages. During my last one my ardour had had been dampened by the sprinkler system.

Picking our way through the debris of bits of car and lamppost, Mary showed me to her basement flat. “I really ought to get that loose railing fixed” she said as we examined our cuts and bruises at the bottom of the steps.

“Never mind,” I said. “I always carry Savlon and Elastoplast.”

“So do I!” she gasped. “We’re so alike!”

I settled down on the settee while she scalded herself in the kitchen.

“Could you use any help?” I called through.

“Well, yes. The biscuits are on a shelf out of my reach. Could you get them for me?”

Like a knight to the rescue of a fair damsel, I tripped over the runner and somersaulted through the louvre doors into the kitchen. One of the doors swung back and clouted me on the head. “Oh dear,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault, Mary,” I said manfully. “Now, where are these biscuits?”

“They’re on the top shelf, there, above the sink.”

The kitchen was tiny so I had to proceed with great care, stepping onto a three-legged stool behind my hostess who was engaged in a titanic struggle with kettle, teapot and boiling water.

I could steady myself with my fingertips on the edge of the shelf while leaning my right knee against the kitchen sink.

“My goodness, what a lovely mosaic,” I said, catching sight of the bit of wall above the sink. “Did you do it yourself?”

“Yes,” she said. “But it wasn’t meant to be a mosaic. It was my first attempt at tiling.”

As I stretched up towards the biscuits, the first thing to go was the stool. My left foot swung backwards, burying my left foot in Mary’s groin. She gasped and bent forward, jamming the teapot spout down the back of my belt, pouring its boiling contents down my trousers. With Mary clinging onto both legs, the shelf was about to collapse and I didn’t want to fall on top of her, so I levered my right knee into the sink and managed to direct the biscuits and tinned fruit behind my head as I propelled my body through the tiny window. I only got half way through. Thankfully it was single glazed and broke quite easily. My legs were stuck in a sink full of washing up and my upper body and arms were dangling out into the tiny space between the buildings. The taps found parts of my body I never knew I had. Mary was draped over my backside with her hand down my trousers trying to extract the teapot. This would have been just the right moment for the vicar to call but this was real life, not a farce.

•••

“Well, I didn’t really feel like biscuits anyway,” she said, sticking the thirty-ninth plaster to my face. We now almost matched eachother with the range of surgical dressings on our faces and bodies.

We had managed to make a safe retreat to the living room and had settled for glasses of cold water instead of tea or coffee. “Best to be on the safe side,” I said.

“That’s what I always say,” she said. “We’re so alike!”
Mary had a lit a couple of candles and placed them on the coffee table for atmosphere. I reckoned I was in with a chance.

All of a sudden, she pushed me backwards on the sofa and pressed her body against mine. My head was hanging off the end near the coffee table.

“I’ve heard them talk about you down at the Society,” she purred, pushing her face closer to mine. “Apparently you’re really hot stuff.”

“Well, you know,” I blushed. “You might find yourself playing with fire.”

“I think you might be right,”she squealed as I pulled her closer. “Your hair’s burning!”

There’s always something, isn’t there? I thought morosely as I ran to the toilet and doused my flaming head in the bowl. The toilet seat came crashing down and I accidentally flushed the cistern.

“Thank you,” called Mary. “I forgot to flush it the last time I went.”

We decided to call it a night. “I’ll call you,” I told her as I staggered up the steps.

As I walked home, I wondered what the lads back at work would make of it. We were always swapping our stories of romantic conquests back at Sizewell B’s Department of Health and Safety. [/img]

Editor Edited

‘I know I shouldn’t be doing this,’ I said to the frightened man tied to a chair. ‘But your physical pain will be much shorter-lived than the psychological traumas you have inflicted on me.’ Of course, he couldn’t talk or scream with the parcel tape over his mouth. His eyes expanded under a sweaty brow as he watched the scalpel approach his naked chest. 

So, this was the man. This was the thwarter of my one life’s ambition. This was the one single cause of my screwed-up marriage, my stinking poverty and my need for therapy. This was the editor of Snout, the one remaining satirical magazine in country. 

‘Well, Mr Langham,’ I spoke in a deliberately civilised manner. ‘This won’t take long.’ I pressed the ink-dipped tip of the blade into the flesh of his right nipple. 

‘Hmmmuuuhhh!’ was all he could manage in way of a scream. The pompous git was struggling so much that he would have fallen over if the chair had not been jammed between a filing cabinet and a photocopier.

‘Stop, jerking around, Mr Langham, you might hurt yourself.’ I drew a vertical line down his right side. The mixture of blood and ink on his skin made a very satisfying medium. If only he would stop bloody flinching and banging his stupid head on the wall.

‘Now,’ I continued, ‘This is going to be one of my cartoons that you rejected. I wonder if you’ll remember it?’ I worked quickly and deftly with the blade, ignoring his muffled sounds of suffering. Most of the time I sliced conventionally, while sometimes I had to drag the blade sideways to get a thicker line. My left hand on his shoulder kept him firmly pinned to the wall while I drew, pausing only to dip the knife in the ink.

‘I’m drawing it upside down so you can see it.’

He seemed to be resisting less as I finished, which allowed me to slash in a few areas of cross-hatching I had earlier been resigned to omitting on account of his wriggling and squirming. The bastard was breathing heavily and his eyes were half-closed with his chin slumped forward onto his chest.

‘There. Now, nod or shake your head, Mr Langham. Can you see the cartoon?’

The drawing was zig-zagged by thin streaks of blood from each line drawn, but this added an unusual stylistic quality which I found quite fascinating.

He nodded.

‘Good. Do you remember it?’ He shook his head.

‘Oh, come on, now. Can’t you read the lettering?’ I waved the inky, bloody scalpel under his nose. ‘Maybe I should underline it.’ He shook his head vigorously.

‘You should remember it. You fucking rejected it.’

He nodded resignedly.

‘But not only that. You got one of your wanker cronies to copy it in their inferior style and fucking printed that, instead.’

His eyes, which were nearly shut, now, just stared blankly downwards at the cartoon on his chest.

‘And this wasn’t the first time. Oh no. Your elite circle dominated Snout. Mostly from fucking Oxford. If they couldn’t come up with something, you passed on other people’s ideas, like mine, for them to bleeding draw up.’

His eyelids flickered and he rolled his head in my direction. 

‘And you know this isn’t the first time you’ve done this to me. Do you remember the other eleven ideas you plagiarised? I bet you don’t, what with prancing about on so-called comedy television shows and getting plastered at some meeja haunt with a bunch of bloody, slimy sycophants.’

The first light of dawn was permeating through the office window shutters. Time to vanish. After rummaging in my bag for a second I withdrew a long, shiny bayonet.  ‘Oh dear,’ I chuckled, ‘I forgot to sign it.’ 

Mr Langham’s eyes opened wide one last time just before I drove the steel through to the wall behind him. 

The police, it has to be said, were quite civil. It’s not every madman that has the courtesy to give themselves up immediately. I’m awaiting my trial. Pleading manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. In the meantime, I’ve become quite a celeb. My solicitor says that all the newspapers and TV stations want to find out about me. Unusual for any cartoonist, but my cartoon has appeared, in all its gory glory, in almost every newspaper throughout the Western world.

I've noticed other people seem to have taken this activity to the level of an artform and there is a complete vocabulary of actions, tics and mannerisms that mark out a professional 'Boulevardier'. (Peter Sarstedt sings a great song about just such a man – possibly himself – "Boulevarde, lovely café home from home where I watch the people roam…") The perfect picture is formed if you are a tall, gaunt, dark Italian-looking man who doesn't mind smoking copiously whilst drinking endless double strength espressos and draping himself over a newspaper in the manner of someone earnestly coming to terms with the tragedies in the world, which rather rules me out. Okay, I can do 'tall' but the rest is plump and Irish with a touch of comedy which precludes me from all parts requiring an element of 'man of mystery'.

And then, while I'm struggling down the hill to return home with elder dog on one side with leaping and dancing pup on the other pulling and tugging on her own lead, the mind turns back to work and the struggles that lie ahead.

AMONGST OTHER THINGS whilst staying in lovely Devon, we thought it might be a good idea to visit the Tiverton Canal Centre.

The appeal of driving along the B roads was very strong after the recent traumas of getting stuck in traffic jams on the M5. So, we set off.

The hours passed by. Or at least they seemed like hours. The nerves set in. Then to the hilarity of my son and daughter I announced that I had to find a toilet – and quick. Their enjoyment of my predicament merely served to increase the urgency I felt.

We were hurtling through various tiny God-forsaken villages. With great relief I spotted a pub and careered into its driveway only to find it was boarded up for demolition. Oh no! Girding my loins as much as I could, I carried on, the laughter from the back seats ringing in my ears.

Over an oh-so-picturesque humpback bridge whose qualities were completely lost on me in my wretched state, there was a sign to the 'Ship Inn'. Fantastic! At last! Only, there was no Ship Inn at all. Only a group of newly-built houses. We were really in the wilderness now.

I was beginning to check hedgerows and public footpaths for possible venues of secluded relief when we came to the next village. As if I wasn't nervous enough, we were greeted by a couple of life-size mannequins fashioned out of old stuffed clothes and eerie faces painted onto paper plates. They were just hanging on a fence looking at all who chose to drive through. Gawdalmighty! This was like being trapped into a League of Gentleman-esque nightmare. I pressed the accelerator through the floor and sped on with my wife gasping as she held her sides and the two offspring in the back rolling about killing themselves (metaphorically).

By now, any old bush would have done. I was well equipped with tissue paper, after all. This sort of thing must happen quite often. It's only surprising that we don't come across more semi-distressed people having a crap on grass verges all the time.

Then, appearing like an oasis in the middle of the Sahara, the very well-to-do pub/hotel The Poacher's Pockets appeared. I didn't turn off the engine as I virtually flew through the half-open car window to reach the hallowed destination of ultimate relief.

I can only say, in all sincerity, that finally achieving this happy ending (intended) can only be described as the Greatest Pleasure Any Human Could Ever Experience.

Information from the Toenail Society of Great Britain.

NOTHING EVER HAPPENED to Jim Collins. Nothing, that is, apart from commuting into work at the bank and commuting back. Five days a week, then a weekend taken up with the lads down the pub. And Sunday spent recovering and regaining any reserves of strength to start the whole cycle all over again. Nothing else happened.

Is this it? he often thought, looking back with regret at an educational wasteland and missed opportunities.

Jim would often lose himself in a pile of adventure DVDs, usually involving Bruce Willis saving the world. He could imagine himself easily fitting into the same role and always getting the girl.

“Women, huh?’” snorted his friend Rob. “More trouble than they’re worth, mate. Now that Phyllis is gone I’ve got more money and more time to be down here playing darts with you lot.”

And so Jim idly concurred, in public at least. In private, a stash of magazines and more DVDs provided him with meagre companionship in the long, lonely nights.

What was a rapidly ageing twenty-six-year-old going to do?

Nothing. Convention demanded that he keep himself off the streets and bear the resemblance of normality with a steady job and to live in a bedsit. At least he had achieved that.

Nothing ever happened to Jim Collins.

On the 8.10 to Waterloo a tiny downy white feather floated down and landed on his sleeve. It interrupted Jim’s reading of a rock magazine. Looking up, he saw a smiling woman hanging by one of the Tube straps.

“Do you want it back?” he asked her, with some puzzlement.

“Yes please,” she smiled.

She took the feather and very carefully put it in her bag. She was quite attractive in a sort of Mediterannean way. And she intrigued Jim.

What was she doing with a single downy feather in her bag? Why did she want it back? Was her handbag full of downy feathers?

As the train thundered on, Jim’s imagination expanded upon the theme. Perhaps she worked in a duvet factory and would get into trouble for nicking a single feather and so was looking forward to bringing it back.

Maybe this is my chance to form a real relationship with a real woman. Maybe she’ll sit next to me and we’ll start talking. She’s probably thinking exactly the same things even though she’s pretending to read. Of course she’s thinking the same things: “I wonder who that fascinating man reading Mojo is? He seems kind the way he smiled as he handed back the feather. I wonder if he’s married. Perhaps if I sit next to him he’ll start talking.”

She sat next to Jim. (To be continued… Maybe!)