Would I like a Cup of Tea?
Ask me anywhere
In the bath, bog or bed.
If I dont answer yes
Please check if I’m dead.
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Ask me anywhere
In the bath, bog or bed.
If I dont answer yes
Please check if I’m dead.
I tell my doctor my eyes hurt
In a deep central section,
Particularly if I move them
In a certain direction.
He asks me which direction
Makes my eyes go ow!
And I say it’s mostly
The direction of Slough.
He asks if she
Would wear his ring.
She says that’s fine
If that’s his thing.
I only had three beers last night
But still I’ve woken sore.
If I’d known I’d feel this way on three,
I’d have drunk another four.
In the morning, a wife hands her husband a cup of tension. The tension is black and steaming.
But the husband is distracted. He drinks the tension without notice. He does not swill. He does not decode the tension with his taste buds.
The wife hands her husband a bowl of anger. The anger is thick and bitter.
But the husband is thinking about work. He eats the anger without notice. He does not parse the anger with his tongue. He swallows without chewing.
The wife hands the husband a plate of rage. The two slices of rage are hard and sharp.
The husband bites into the rage. The rage scrapes his gums and cuts his tongue, but he still doesn’t notice. He grinds the rage into shards of spite and passes them down to his throat.
The wife gives up and retires to the bedroom to think of past lovers and alternate universes.
The husband goes to work.
Hours later, the tension, anger and rage cause the husband intense indigestion. He has to retire to his work toilets to burp and heave for an hour.
Eventually, the pain recedes and he returns to his desk. He googles the symptoms. Google lists two possible causes.
The first cause is listed as unresolved problems at work.
The husband nods at this. He has been thinking exclusively about work since he woke this morning, so this cause would make sense.
The second cause is listed as a failing marriage, but he doesn’t read that far.
Between conversations with the emperor about galactic dominance and breaks to throttle the odd base commander, Darth Vader raises a fault with Technical Support.
“Please supply your employee number,” says Technical Support.
Technical Support is a small middle aged man from the planet Madeupname. Technical Support is his real name, providing excellent evidence of nominative determinism.
“I don’t have an employee number,” says Darth Vader. “I am a Sith Lord.”
“Does this problem affect only you?” asks Tech Support from an approved script he knows more intimately than his wife.
“Yes,” says Darth Vader. “But it’s so annoying, I tend to throttle more high-ranking base commanders to death than necessary, so in a way, it does affect others.
Tech Support records “Only one person affected”.
“Can you describe the nature of the fault?” asks Tech Support.
“Yes,” says Darth Vader. “My mask is too noisy.”
“In what way?” asks Tech Support.
“It makes a noise when I breath in and when I breath out,” says Darth.”It is… offputting.”
“And when did this start?” asks Tech Support.
“When they first gave it to me,” says Darth. “just after my old master chopped my bits off.”
Tech Support types this information into his computer, wondering why he has to do this at all when there are robots everywhere who understand english perfectly.
“It makes me sound menacing,” says Darth Vader. “I mean, that’s OK for when I’m on the job, that’s kind of expected, but it really gets in the way of my social life, you know? I asked for a cheese sandwich in the canteen the other day and the lady serving it wet herself. And I can’t do barbershop quartet anymore. I like barbershop quartet.”
“OK then,” says Tech Support, finishing his notes. “That’s logged. We should have that looked at within the week.”
“I mean,” says Darth, “we have the technology to create robots that speak perfectly. We have interstellar travelling at mind-blowing speeds. We’re currently working on a death-dealing space station the size of a sodding moon, and my mask makes a noise when I breathe? That doesn’t make any sense!”
“I totally understand,” says Tech Support. “Tell you what, I’ll make this more of a priority. You should have it back in a few days.”
Darth Vader grumpily thanks him and the call is ended.
A few days later, Darth is sent his new mask. He is not happy with the fix.
“I am not happy with the fix!” he tells Tech Support.
“Can you describe the nature of the problem?” asks Tech Support.
“When I breathe in,” says Darth Vader, “it sounds like my mask is now whispering the word ‘poop’. And when I breathe out, it sounds like my mask is whispering the word ‘face’.”
“So…” says Tech Support, typing quickly, “when you breathe in and out, it sounds like you’re whispering ‘poop face’ every time?”
“Yes,” says Darth Vader. “Listen.”
Vader breathes in and out a number of times.
“Poop face. Poop face,” says the mask.
“Yes,” says Tech Support, “I see.”
“Do you have any idea how inconvenient this is, poop face?” says Vader.
“I can imagine,” says Tech Support.
“I’m supposed to be a figure of authority and menace, poop face!” says Vader. “I can’t do my job if I whisper poop face at the end of a sentence, poop face! I’m a master of the dark side of the force, poop face! I am a Sith Lord, poop face!”
“I’ll mark this as a priority 1 incident,” says Tech Support. “We should have it sorted today.”
“Thank the dark side of the force for that, poop face!” says Vader.
A day later, Vader calls Tech Support again.
“It no longer says poop face every time I breathe,” he says, “but it’s still very noisy and menacing. And, I swear, occasionally, when I breathe in, it whispers the word sperm.”
“Sperm?” says Tech Support.
“Yes,” says Vader. “Sperm. It happened recently after a particularly commanding statement of mine. I don’t think anybody heard it, but I flipping well did! It was really embarrassing!”
“Well, we can bring it in for more repairs, if you’d like,” says Tech Support.
“You know what,” says Darth Vader. “Forget it! I haven’t got time for this nonsense! I’m feeling a strange presence, a familiar shift in the force, and I haven’t got time to be messing about with this stupid device!”
Darth Vader hangs up the call. Just before he does so, there is a noticeable whisper of “sperm”.
Tech Support sighs and closes the incident ticket. He checks his watch and notes it is time to clock off.
He wanders back to his tiny living quarters to call his wife.
“How was your day?” asks Mrs Tech Support, from their home on Madeupname.
“Same old stuff,” says Tech Support. “A problem with a custom mask for some posh nob in management. Nothing else of note.”
Mrs Tech Support writes this down to the letter. She passes a decryption scanner over it.
The decrypted message reads, “Operation Distract Vader With Noisy Mask is complete.”
She sends this message via an untraceable channel to rebel command, where the news is received well.
Mrs Tech Support then says, “Sounds like a tough day. You should take a break. Maybe have a walk.”
Tech Support nods. Those last three sentences are a coded message meaning “Commence Operation Itchy Vader Cod Piece.”
“Will do,” says Tech Support. “Love you, fluffy cheeks.”
“Love you, too, snuggle puss!”
Tech Support ends the call. He sits for a moment, considering his next move, then stands up and rubs his hands eagerly.
Operation Noisy Mask was fun, but Operation Itchy Vader Cod Piece sounds positively heroic.
A man steps out of his house for a walk in the sun. Unfortunately, he turns the wrong way at the end of his street and goes for a walk on his neighbour’s wife.
After an hour of trudging up her belly, the man realises something is wrong. Normally by now he would be close to the old gas works but instead he seems to be standing in a belly button.
The man phones his wife for advice.
“Is the belly button an outy or inny?” asks the wife.
“Inny,” says the husband, “With a small path of dark hair heading south.”
“Hmm,” says the wife. “I think you might be walking on a neighbour again. What colour is the belly button fluff?”
“Mostly purple with a few patches of white,” says the man. “It smells like olives and there’s a general air of mildew.”
“Oh God!” screams the wife, “That’s Cynthia! Purple fluff, olives and mildew! You’ve strayed onto Cynthia!”
The husband’s face becomes paper-white. This is the worst news!
“So which way do I go?” says the husband with dread. The sun is starting to go down and he is now terrified he might be stranded on Cynthia overnight.
“You must not go south,” says the wife. “You must go anywhere but south. Do not, whatever you do, take the the hairy path.”
The wife says that he should go anywhere but south because that way lies a terrible land occupied by a most awful creature made of slime and hunger.
In the wife’s opinion, most neighbour’s wives harbour a hungry slime monster down south, but Cynthia’s slime monster is reputed to be the largest and hungriest in the country.
If the husband strays there, he may never come out. And if he did emerge, he would never be the same again. There is an entire ward in the hospital devoted to treating the PTSD of men who have strayed into Cynthia’s southern parts.
Panicking, the husband turns and hurries north.
Eventually, he finds himself in a steep valley between two huge breasts. Here, deep in Cynthia’s cleavage, the sun does not reach him and there is no wind. Instead, there is an unholy silence and a sense of threat.
The man shivers. He is overwhelmed by the maddening urge to flee, but he fears any sudden movement will cause those huge glands to shift and fall upon him, trapping him, crushing him to a yeasty paste. Cynthia breasts are notorious for yeasty paste.
Darting worried glances around him, the husband tiptoes for seemingly hours through that terrible valley and emerges finally at Cynthia’s sun-wrinkled neck, exhausted and near madness.
He phones his wife.
“I can’t go on,” he rasps, “There is no hope.”
“You went north?” says the wife incredulously.
The wife is shocked that her husband considered that route but she is also immensely proud.
It takes a strong man to navigate Cynthia’s cleavage and still have the power of speech afterwards. Sir Ranolph Fiennes has been permanently mute since he attempted Cynthia’s cleavage. They say he wakes up screaming in the night, and he won’t eat anything resembling a dumpling.
The wife decides she must call in helicopter rescue. She had hoped to avoid this because the other neighbours will be jealous and ask why their wife isn’t good enough to hike up, but the situation is now dangerous.
If her husband lost his way again, there was a chance he would stray into the corrupted urban sprawl of Cynthia’s face. In his weakened state, it was highly unlikely he would survive the near-apocalyptic landscape of Cynthia’s moustache.
At first, helicopter rescue balk at the request.
“We don’t get paid enough to land in that terrain, ma’am,” says the navigator over the phone, “and we’ve all got families to think of.”
Desperate, knowing her husband is huddled down in the cold wattle of Cynthia’s neck, the wife offers to pay helicopter rescue with her legendary rock cakes.
The rescue crew agree to the mission eagerly. There are temptations that mortal man can resist, but her rock cakes aren’t one of them.
Finally, after a risky rescue exercise in the cold shadow of Cynthia’s chin, the husband is rescued and he is taken to hospital for observation and a hefty course of antibiotics. He eventually returns home to his wife’s warm embrace and a mound of fresh baked rock cakes.
From that moment on, he refuses to walk in the the sun and has neurotic reactions to olives and the colour purple.
A year later, despite warnings to the contrary, a smug international team of expert explorers attempt an expedition across Cynthia’s buttocks, and none of them are seen again.
They say, if you listen closely on a windy night, you can still hear their screams.
A son brings his mother a card saying, “Happy I Need My Favourite Trousers Day”.
The card has a cartoon of a man in his underpants looking outraged.
The mother gives the son a card saying, “Happy They’re In The Wash Day”.
The card has an amusing picture of a washing machine spinning and bouncing across the kitchen floor.
The son hands her a card saying “Happy This Is Unacceptable Day”.
The card has a picture of a mother lounging around eating grapes while a hundred babies wail around her.
The son stomps off to his bedroom to play loud music and occasionally yell something at the wall.
The father hands the mother a card saying, “Happy Can I Have A Cup Of Tea Day” and another card that says “Happy A Biscuit Would Go Well With That Day”.
Both cards have a starving cartoon man crawling through the desert.
The mother hands the father a card saying, “Happy I’m Not Your Bloody Slave, Get It Yourself Day”.
The card has a picture of Emmeline Pankhurst on it.
The father wanders off to sit on the toilet and occasionally mutter something at the wall.
The daughter hands the mother a card saying, “Happy I Hate You And I Wish I’d Never Been Born Day”.
The card has a picture of a vagina with a cork in it.
The mother hands the daughter a card saying, “Happy What The Hell Have I Done Now Day”.
The card has a cartoon of an angel doing the ironing.
The daughter hands the mother a card saying, “Happy Aaaaaaaaaaargh! Day”.
The card has a cartoon of the mother throwing babies into a skip.
The daughter stomps off to her bedroom to play loud music and occasionally yell something at the wall.
The mother hands herself a card saying, “Happy Fuck The World Day” card.
The card has a picture of a bed and a glass of red wine.
The mother goes to bed with a glass of red wine.
In the morning, the world sends the mother a card saying, “Happy I Love You Day”.
The card has a picture of three labrador puppies in a wicker basket.
The world is a sucker for puppies in a basket.
A wife wakes so early, she finds the morning is still under construction.
Outside her window, a busy musical director is passing sheet music to all of the birds.
“I want a good show this morning!” yells the director. “And stick to the script please! No rapping! Yes, I’m looking at you sparrows!”
The birds shuffle their scores and prepare their voices.
“Hak hak hak!” cough the magpies, between drags on their cigarettes.
“Doh ray me fah so lah te doh!” sing the blackbirds, smugly.
“Tweet bloody tweet,” mutter the sparrows, unhappy because they’ve been up all night pointlessly preparing a cool rap about nests and bitches.
Down the street, some council workers are polishing the local sun with Brasso and spit.
One of the workers drops the sun on a co-worker’s toe, prompting a comprehensive stream of swear words.
The wife turns to her husband and finds he is still under construction, too.
A number of blue-tabarded engineers are clustered around him working through a checklist.
If the husband had cheese and port last night and didn’t clean his teeth, should that be foul breath number seven or foul breath number nine?
If the husband tossed and turned clockwise more often than anticlockwise, should he have hair that sticks up or points forward?
Given his browser activity last night, is this an erection morning?
The wife watches this with interest for a while then she realises she is being watched by another group of pink-tabarded engineers.
She is not made for the morning yet, either!
The engineers are waiting to install a crust in the corner of her left eye, give her foul breath number twenty four (red wine and chocolate) and pump her bladder to full capacity.
One engineer is holding a large enema syringe filled with a mild sense of panic about a forthcoming performance appraisal.
The engineers are tapping their feet. The wife’s unscheduled consciousness is messing up their implementation plan. They are muttering about dropping the vague-panic enema in order to make the deadline.
Feeling guilty, the wife lies back and pretends to be asleep. She is very good at pretending to be asleep, after years of living with her husband and his unreasonable libido.
The engineers are not fooled, but they get to work anyway.
Five minutes later, the process is complete. Her eye is crusty, her mouth is disgusting and her bladder is full enough to make a dash to the toilet a top priority.
Thankfully, there is no time for the vague-panic enema.
The bedroom engineers exit, grumbling about insomniacs and union grievances.
Outside, the music director coughs and points at the birds.
“Go!” he yells, as he ducks into a taxi.
The birds sing the dawn chorus as the well-polished but slightly dented sun is hoisted in the east, just behind number five’s bins.
“Tweet warble trill!” sing the blackbirds, smugly.
“Tweet bloody tweet!” sing the disappointed sparrows.
Next to the wife, the husband stirs. There is a pause, then he gently presses his morning erection against her buttocks.
The wife snores with dramatic conviction and stays very, very still.
A husband wakes in the middle of the night, disturbed by a dream about an angry pig in a Disney store.
Unable to return to sleep for fear of trotters and oinks, he turns on his phone to read a book. But instead of reading, he sees a text from an unknown number.
The text says, “Oink!”
The husband throws his phone away from him and lies in the dark, staring upwards with his arms across his chest like an Egyptian pharaoh.
A soft yellow light comes through the window, uneven on the artex ceiling. After a minute, the husband realises the uneven light spells the word “Oink!”
The husband knows it is best that he now rises and makes an early morning tea, which is like a normal tea but has an extra pill of hope stirred in.
But the husband doesn’t rise for fear of waking his snoring wife. By the look on her face, she is dreaming about sheep in John Lewis, and that is too pleasant a dream to disturb.
Instead, the husband turns a brass dial set in his scalp. The dial sends him back in time to his school days where he hopes to be in art class fondling warm clay.
Unfortunately, he returns to the incident with the pig at lunch break.
“Oink!” says the pig.
The husband reaches for the time-travel dial but instead turns the wobbly-loop dial, which loops him through that same lunchtime with the pig a million times.
In each loop, he allows himself to hope the pig is not there, but that is a stupid hope. Once they arrive, pigs never leave, unlike sheep who often wander off to chew different grass.
After the millionth loop, the husband is so weary his bones turn to lead and arsenic. The weight of his bones drag him to the ground.
He falls asleep again and wakes an hour later back in his bed to find no pig or messages of “Oink!”
His wife is now snoring and dreaming about annoying conversations with her GP, so he does not worry about disturbing her. He rises to make hopeful tea.
As he clicks the cylindrical hope dispenser and watches each little pill of hope sink into his scalding tea, he hears a small “Oink” from the fridge behind him.
He doesn’t turn around.
That would just encourage it.
A husband decides he must be horizontal from this day forward.
“But you must make angles to the earth!” says the wife. “Obtuse and acute!”
“Obtuse angles feel like a chronic lack of progression,” says the husband, “and acute angles feel like the increase of debt, neither of which I enjoy.”
The wife cannot understand this. To her, obtuse angles feel like the peace of a Sunday afternoon. Acute angles feel like the hot rush of a shower. Why would anyone choose to feel differently?
“What about perpendicular?” she asks.
The wife loves making perpendicular angles. It feels like she is reaching into space and touching stars.
“The worst of them all,” says the husband. “Perpendicular angles are distance and detachment. When you are perpendicular, you are the furthest you can be from the earth.”
The wife stares open-mouthed at her husband.
“I have also decided to stop holding my parts together,” says the husband.
The wife staggers.
“You must keep your parts together!” she yells. “Deliberately separating your parts is a terrible sin!”
The wife remembers her mother telling her to keep her parts together at all times. Women who let their parts separate are degraded, no better than animals. A man who lets his parts separate is weak. Humans are the sum of their parts, not the distribution.
The wife pulls all of her parts together so tight they make a grinding noise. Her angles are so acute the air is cut to bleeding.
The husband loves his wife immensely. Seeing her in such distress, the husband relents and promises to continue making angles and holding his parts together.
For the next week, he forces his face parts to stay together and form the angles of a reassuring smile. This reassures his beloved wife.
Eventually though, while his wife is out making angles in shops, the man finds a field and stops making angles, stops holding his parts together.
On her way back from Debenhams, his wife finds him in the field.
“Pull yourself together!” she whispers. “Get up to perpendicular before anybody sees!”
The husband doesn’t respond. Responding would involve the pulling together of parts and the forming of angles, and he’s done with all that malarkey now.
“This is so selfish!” yells the wife. “You never think about me!”
The wife leaves her husband in the field and buys a divorce from her Tesco Metro that afternoon.
If her husband is going to decide to dislike angles and simply lie down in a field in separate parts, then so be it! That’s his choice!
Besides, she has booked a 14 night holiday cruising in the Mediterranean, and nothing’s going to stop her making angles and showing off her parts on that trip!
No siree!
While telling fairy stories to his children, a father accidentally becomes a fairy.
Unlike the delicate, tiny, feminine fairies in his story, he looks exactly the same, but has the urge to dance around the living room on tiptoe and sing in a high-pitched voice.
“Tra-la-la!” he sings, pirouetting over the beech-effect laminate. “I’m Fairy Steven! My belly’s big, my thighs are broad, I have a mild fungal infection in my armpit, but I am, I am, I am a pukka fairy!”
The children scream with delight. They copy him, spinning and spinning.
“He is Fairy Steven!” they sing. “His feet are flat, his bum is fat, he lacks some upper body stength because he spends too much time in front of a computer, but he is, he is, he is a pukka fairy!”
The father’s wife looks up from her Simply Crochet magazine, sighs, and returns to an article about a summer shawl made from alpaca eyelashes.
Last week, while reading Harry Potter to the children, her husband became Hermione Granger for a day. He was bossy, corrected her pronunciation of Pot Pourri and repeatedly attempted spells to creosote the back garden fence.
In the wife’s book, a fairy is an improvement.
The father goes to work in his IT Consultancy. He pirouettes in each meeting, twirling his arms and singing about server resilience and his status as a beautiful creature borne on mystical breezes.
His colleagues say nothing.
Some of his colleagues say nothing because they fully embrace an alternative lifestyle and are wholly supportive.
Some of his older colleagues say nothing because they don’t know if the word fairy is being used in reference to being homosexual. They remember that word being used in a derogatory sense and it confuses them. They have been on diversity training course and are fully supportive of the LGBT community, but they don’t have a clue what’s happening today with Steven, the server infrastructure expert who just last week was waving his hands and angrily casting a spell to make a dry wipeboard marker work again.
The rest of his colleagues say nothing because it’s close to lunchtime and they are thinking about getting a larger than usual portion of chips.
Fairy Steven eventually returns home exhausted. His toes hurt and he’s strained something in his crotch.
That night, he avoids reading fairy stories to the children and instead reads them his Windows Hosting Services course notes. He is transformed back into a human being. Or close enough.
This disappoints the children, but they don’t mind much because they love their daddy and they’ve also learnt a lot about the security configuration options on Windows 2012.
In the morning, Steven wakes to find he is Darth Steven, apprentice to Darth Sidious.
He uses his mastery of the force to make marmite toast for breakfast. He demonstrates his evil powers by remotely throttling a satsuma. The children are delighted.
His wife packs her knitting bags and goes to stay with her mother for a few days.
Witches and fairies is not great, but science fiction movie villains making marmite toast and remotely throttling small citrus fruits in her kitchen is the bloody limit.
A husband discovers his wife cloned herself ten years ago. He has been making love to a genetically identical but legally different woman to the one he married!
“I wondered why we were doing it twice with each changing of the season!” he yells at original wife and clone wife. “And why we had to watch each box set twice or in further multiples of two!”
Original wife and clone wife shrug four shoulders, not caring twice.
“I’ve been having an affair!” continues the husband, “Without all the fun!”
The husband paces the living room for a few minutes then declares, “This must be corrected! Clone wife must be destroyed utterly.”
He is pleased with the use of the word ‘utterly’. It is not often that he gets to use it, and it feels pleasant inside his gullet.
“Utterly, utterly, utterly!” he repeats indulgently, increasing the word count of this story quite unnecessarily.
The clone wife refuses to destroy herself utterly. She has nearly completed a watercolour of the canal locks in Devizes. It would be a shame to stop now and seek oblivion, especially now she’s got that heron down pat.
Denied his satisfaction, the husband exacts revenge by creating his own clone.
Unfortunately, he lacks the genetic prowess of his original wife and creates a version of himself that looks exactly like a cucumber.
“I like bricks!” says husband cucumber. “Pass me the wallpaper!”
“Oh, he’s delightful!”, scream the wives, clapping their hands together the way that delighted people don’t.
The husband becomes depressed and retreats to his shed for a year.
Over the following year, the cucumber husband proves to be great company for both wives. He is always happy to see them, gives excellent health advice and proves to be a wonderful lover.
At the dinner table:
“Femurs!” he yells.
Giving health advice:
“Smear natural yoghurt on it. It’ll clear up in days!”
In the boudoir:
“You like that in there, don’t you?”
Eventually, the original husband returns. He has been on a spiritual voyage next to a half-bag of compost.
Unfortunately, he has been so far on his spiritual journey, he has misplaced the luggage of his soul. Now he is a body filled with boring spiritual journey anecdotes, much like any middle-class, gap year returnee.
“I remember,” he says in a plumby public school voice, “this one time, me and Jezza thought it would be fun to jump off a spiritual roof in spiritual Thailand and Jezza broke his spiritual ankle and I laughed so much that spiritual beer came out of my spiritual nose. It was so spiritually funny! And then, one time, me and Jezza decided to give a spiritual ladyboy one up the spiritual…”
The wives and cucumber husband tolerate this for one week, then they agree the spiritual husband has to go.
Although murder and disposal using an industrial woodchipper seems the most morally correct thing to do, it is also a hassle to bring a industrial murder-appropriate woodchipper back from Lidl. So the wives and cucumber husband decide to genetically improve spiritual husband by splicing in DNA from Michael Praed from the cult ITV series Robin of Sherwood.
Unfortunately, the only thing that improves is spiritual husband’s hair, which is now long, lustrous and dreamy.
“And then Jezza spiritually farted in her spiritual face…” continues the husband, tossing his hair the way that eighties ginger-haired Maid Marion liked it.
The wives and cucumber try every eighties hunk gene splicing they can think of to improve the husband, but to no avail.
Eventually, after months of arduous gene splicing and anecdotes about spiritual Jezza, they concede that a trip to Lidl is a necessity, a hassle though the five minute drive will be.
Lidl’s prices for industrial, murder-appropriate woodchippers are surprisingly reasonable and the chipping quality is not as bad as they expect. After a quick bonk on the head with a pickaxe, the original husband is chipped completely and flushed down the toilet with a squirt of Toilet Duck.
His dreamy Michael Praed hair is not destroyed, because it is magical and dreamy.
Yay for Lidl!
Removed of the original husband and his anecdotes about the spiritually repulsize Jezza, the two wives, the cucumber husband and the dreamy hair of Michael Praed live happily ever after.
[Apology from the author: Due to a local shortage of caffeine and creativity, there is no moral to this story. If you need a moral to get through the soulless and ultimately pointless monotony of your day, why not insert your own moral here? When seeking a moral, I try basing it on an ill-informed and poorly-challenged bias I might be harbouring. Religion or politics are perfect for this. Good luck!]
A scientist accidentally discovered a green energy source that was the size and shape of a small Buddha statue.
Unfortunately, to tap that energy source, the energy source had to be accidentally discovered each time.
“It’s about quantum mechanics,” said the scientist to the press reporters, “and the source is called Wilson’s Stone, named after my dear departed father.”
“It’s about quantum malarkey,” reported the reporters to the general public, “and its called Wobbly Steve.”
“Its not called Wobbly Steve!” complained the scientist.
(Nobody listened to him because he looked weird and there’s only so much weird-looking-scientist one can take in a year.)
Of course, the big question was how to constantly accidentally discover the Wobbly Steves on an industrial scale.
Soon, government agencies had large buildings filled with people hiding the Wobbly Steves and having other people tripping over them in a corridor or sitting on them on a sofa.
This worked for a short while, but eventually the discoverers became paranoid and stopped moving for fear of a stubbed toe or a Wobbly Steve up their jacksy.
Private companies had greater success by employing people with subnormal intelligence, like marketing executives or motivational speakers.
Unfortunately again, even those tiny brains would eventually twig to each possible accident laid before them and would stop moving, too.
This dismayed the company executives and also the other employees, who greatly enjoyed watching marketing executives and motivational speakers fall arse over tit.
Finally, another scientist cracked the problem.
Using the DNA of a extinct marketing executive retrieved from a block of prehistoric consumer vomit and a detached verucca he’d saved to show his girlfriend, this scientist grew creatures that were genetically accident prone. Put near a Wobbly Steve, the guinea-pig-sized creatures would constantly trip over the energy source and would not learn to avoid that same accident in the future.
The scientist named the creatures ‘Extraordinaris Louiseus’ after his much-loved mother.
The press named them Itchy Lisas.
(The scientist protested about the name, but nobody was listening, because he had obvious canines and nobody has time for geneticists with obvious canines.)
Of course, the energy companies attempted to monopolise the Wobbly Steves and the Itchy Lisas, but Wobbly Steves were widely available in nature and Itchy Lisas were randy and stupidly fertile. Soon, every household had at least one Itchy Lisa bumping into their Wobbly Steve or accidentally ramming a Wobbly Steve up its jacksy.
And now the world’s energy problems were finally solved, which was considered a good thing by everybody.
Except of course by some animal rights protestors, who complained about the misuse of Itchy Lisas.
(Nobody paid them any attention. They had pointy elbows and nobody has time for protestors with pointy elbows.)
After weeks of performance issues with its website, the CEO of the company hires a consultant homeopathist at a rate of £5,000 a day.
The homeopathy consultant gives the support engineers a USB stick containing absolutely nothing.
“This USB stick once stored a website that had similar performance issues,” says the consultant. “It has been watered down, but the memory of the website remains. Install this and your website performance will improve.”
The support engineers stare open-mouthed at the consultant then run to the CEO.
“This is madness,” say the engineers to the CEO. “He’s given us the memory of a website to install.”
“I have it on good authority it will work,” says the CEO.
“Whose authority?” ask the engineers.
“My wife’s,” says the CEO. “She’s had excellent results with homeopathy.”
“With a complex website deployed across three data centres and a huge load-balanced server farm?” ask the engineers.
“No,” says the CEO. “With her piles.”
“But that’s comparing Information Technology to an uncomfortable anal condition!” yell the engineers. “It’s not the same thing!”
“It is to me,” says the CEO. “Besides this is my wife’s opinion, which easily trumps your opinion. You only have professional qualifications, decades of experience and a wealth of knowledge behind your opinion. She strokes my winky.”
“Aargh!” yell the engineers, throwing up their hands.
In the corner of the room, an HR representative uncurls and notes the exasperated ‘aargh!’ and marks the engineers behaviour as “part met due to emitted aargh”.
At the end of the year, the engineers will now receive a smaller packet of biscuits as a bonus.
The HR representative curls back into a ball like a woodlouse.
“Just get on with it,” says the CEO, returning to his ten piece jigsaw.
The engineers insert the USB stick into each of the website servers and pretend to install the memory of a website.
Within minutes, the performance of the company’s website improves tremendously.
“Well, bugger me,” say the engineers.
Encouraged by this coincidence, the CEO makes all of the engineers redundant, replacing them with an offshore company of acupuncturists.
The offshore acupuncturists are so low-skilled, they stab themselves more often than the servers.
The IT costs to the company spiral out of control, mainly from perforated staff and really bent needle wastage.
The CEO attempts to re-hire his old engineers, but the engineers are no longer available. They have all converted to contract shamanism and are fully occupied waving old bones at servers in The City for astronomical fees and huge biscuit bonuses.
Eventually, the CEO replaces the offshore acupuncturists with his wife’s opinions.
His wife’s opinions run the servers for the next fifty years, until she breaks down and claims she’s a pebble.
A boy invites YouTube to his house for a play date without asking his parents first. YouTube appears at the front door, clutching its favourite cuddly duck.
The mother lets YouTube in then draws her son to one side.
“You can’t just invite YouTube over for crisps and cake without asking!” whispers the mother. “I haven’t hoovered for a week!”
The father greets YouTube and asks him for a tutorial on pentatonic guitar licks. YouTube gladly complies then asks if it can use the toilet.
“I like that kid,” says the father. “We should have him around more often.”
The mother makes a strangled noise and hurriedly clears the messy kitchen table of unsorted bills, junk mail and school newsletters.
There’s another knock at the door. The mother opens it to find Epic Battle Simulator 2 standing on the doorstep sucking its thumb.
She lets him in then draws her son to the side again.
“I thought I told you Epic Battle Simulator 2 wasn’t allowed around here since the incident with the joists,” she whispers. “Besides, I haven’t dusted the surfaces in a week!”
YouTube emerges from the toilet without flushing or washing its hands. The father asks for the latest Guardians of the Galaxy trailer.
YouTube shows the father the trailer then joins the son and Epic Battle Simulator 2 for a game of ‘who can yell the loudest while damaging an item of furniture’.
“Great kid,” says the father.
There is another knock on the door. The mother opens the door to find PornHub sucking provocatively on a lollipop.
“Hello,” purrs PornHub. “I’ve been very naughty.”
“I haven’t cleaned the bathroom!” yells the mother, slamming the door in PornHub’s face.
“Who was that?” asks the father
“Nobody we know,” says the mother, eyeing him carefully.
She turns to find BuzzFeed staring up at her, a line of snot dripping from its nose.
“Can I have a Pepsi please?” says BuzzFeed.
“Where did you come from?” asks the mother.
BuzzFeed stares back at her. The line of snot reaches BuzzFeed’s lower lip, seemingly unnoticed.
The mother takes a deep breath, smiles tightly at BuzzFeed and retreats to the kitchen to retrieve a pepsi and wipe the surfaces.
Hours later, the husband finds the wife hiding in a corner of the garden, eating chocolate and reading a book about attractive vampires.
“They’ve gone,” he says, “with only minimal damage to the foundations.”
The mother returns to the house.
The houseguests have indeed left, but the plaster on the walls is falling away and the floorboards are up. Someone has tried to dig a tunnel to China.
The son has retired to his room to sleep and recharge for another day of yelling and damaging.
The mother retreats to the kitchen for an hour of thinking about passports, flights to Cuba and the process of clearing out the joint account.
The husband disappears to wherever husbands disappear to.
Finally, there is another knock at the door. The mother answers to find PornHub grinning coquettishly again.
The mother looks back into house, listens for a moment, then looks at PornHub.
“Ten minutes,” whispers the mother, inviting PornHub in. “I’ll get the wine.”
A man wakes to find he is subtitled. Every time he speaks, words appear above his ankles.
Unfortunately, many of the words are inaccurate, as if the person creating the subtitles were drunk or an idiot.
“I have subtitles!” the man complains to his wife.
Above his ankles the subtitles say [I love subtitles!]
His wife has never listened to anything he says but she loves to read.
“I love subtitles, too!” she says.
“No,” says the husband. “I don’t love subtitles. I have subtitles! ”
[Lo!] says his subtitle, [I don’t love subtle ties. I hate subtle ties!]
“There’s nothing better than a garish tie!” agrees the wife.
Exasperated, the husband books an appointment with his doctor.
“It’s rare for a man to get subtitles,” says the doctor, after an hour of miscommunication about submarines and winkles. “Traditionally, it’s women who aren’t listened to.”
“Is it curable?” asks the man.
[Are pips durable?]
“Very,” says the doctor.
“Great!” says the man, relieved.
[Geese!]
“Pips are very durable,” says the doctor. “They’re designed to resist hard weather conditions so that they can seed and grow new plants or trees.”
“What?” says the man.
[Wattage?]
“Oh dear,” says the doctor, “I was reading your subtitles again. Hang on, there’s a special technique for handling this. I was taught it in medical school for three terms.”
The doctor closes his eyes.
“There you go,” he says. “You were saying?”
“Is this curable? ” asks the man again, feeling like he might cry.
[Are drips mutable?]
“I’m afraid not,” says the doctor. “In most cases it is permanent. And in a few cases it is progressive.”
“Progressive?” asks the man. “How?”
[Snow lives? Wow!]
“In very rare cases,” continues the doctor, “in addition to subtitles, you might become afflicted with Audio Description. Everything you do is described out loud by a well spoken lady in a clear voice.”
“That sounds awful,” says the man, frowning.
[Cats pound lawful]
“The man frowns,” says a loud well-spoken woman from nowhere.
“Oh dear,” says the doctor. “Well, it looks like you’re screwed.”
The doctor gives the man a leaflet about regular prostate inspections and calls in the next patient.
The man goes home to live with his condition.
After months of fruitlessly trawling forums and paying strange homeopathy people lots of money for really tiny pills made out of sugar and absolutely nothing else, the man comes to terms with his condition.
He controls the subtitles by saying nothing.
In doing so, everyone assumes he is wise.
He controls the audio description by moving as little as possible and hardly ever showing an emotion.
In doing so, everyone assumes he is from a private school.
The only time the man moves is to make love to his wife.
“The man incompetently grabs a nipple,” says the well-spoken lady.
“The man mistakenly attempts to enter the wrong hole,” says the well-spoken lady.
“The man makes an unattractive face and collapses on top of his disinterested wife,” says the well-spoken lady.
Although the audio description is somewhat offputting, the wife only makes love to the man once a year, which they both find tolerable.
Years later, the man dies from an unrelated condition related to bowel movements and braille.
As he is cremated, the last thing said by the well-spoken lady is:
“The man sizzles.”
A man buys his children concrete easter eggs.
The children squeal with delight as they prise the wrappers of corrugated iron away from their heavy gifts.
At last! Something to grind their diamond teeth into! Something to crush between their pneumatic industrial molars!
They grind their teeth into the eggs with huge mineral smiles, and loud crunching compressions. The noise is immense. Their lips are coated with clumps of concrete dust and machine oil.
The man and his wife watch with looks of adoration and ear defenders.
The concrete eggs are demolished in minutes.
The huge rolling drums of the children’s stomachs rumble and grind and break the eggs into hardcore ballast. The ballast passes down the groaning conveyor belt of their alimentary canals.
“Ooh,” moan the children. “I feel sick.”
The man tells the children he has hidden a thousand Cadbury Granite Eggs around the house.
“Hunt!” he shouts.
Despite their roiling belly drums, the children race around the house finding eggs using the surveying tools of their eyes and drilling tips of their fingers.
“Nine hundred and ninety nine. One thousand!” they shout eventually, clutching the granite eggs in their steel palm hoppers.
“Can we eat them now?” say the children.
“Why not?” say the man and his wife.
Again, the children’s diamond teeth grind and their belly drums rumble. The granite eggs are gone in five minutes.
“Ooh,” they moan, “I feel sick.”
Both children lie on the floor groaning, rumbling and churning for hours.
The conveyor belts of the children’s alimentary canals slowly pass the grit into the storage depots of the children’s bowels.
Eventually, the children rush to the toilet and dump tonnes of concrete and granite slag into the toilet bowls.
The smell is chemical and acidic. The slag heaps are huge.
They have to flush the toilets a million times and employ forty labourers to shovel it all away.
The children fall into bed that night exhausted and in need of a good service. The dad tucks them in under their tarpaulins and kisses them on their industrial plastic cheeks.
“I love you,” he whispers as they slip into their hardcore comas. “And don’t forget, this is all about Jesus.”
A boy falls asleep on his mobile phone and wakes to find he has installed YouTube in his nose.
Now, when he wants to watch people with below average intelligence comitting cruel and unwitty practical jokes, he simply has to cross his eyes, purse his lips and hum the theme song to any Barbara Streisand movie filmed between 1976 and 1984.
There is an infinite number of below-average-intelligence practical jokers on YouTube, so the boys eyes become crossed infinitely, which makes him look constipated.
His mother becomes concerned. She consults Netmums and is told that crossing your eyes, pursing your lips and humming Barbara Streisand theme songs is a common symptom of inguinal hernia, caused by close proximity of female nipples.
The wife unscrews her nipples and puts them in long term storage, along with some old walking boots and a girlhood dream of living alone in a flat with a pug.
This does not fix her son, but the removal of her nipples does improve her chronically throbbing perineum, so she leaves the nipples in storage.
The boy stops crossing his eyes, pursing his lips and humming Barabara Streisand songs after nine hours and four minutes.
Mathematically, an infinite number of cruel and unwitty practical jokes on YouTube can be watched in eight hours and three minutes, because all further watching is simply repeating the same set of cruel and unwitty practical jokes.
The boy takes longer than the mathematically-proven eight hours and three minutes because mathematicians never account for wee breaks and delays watching the first five seconds of advertisements made by people with below average morals.
To pass the time between meals, the boy starts playing Overwatch while humming Barry Manilow songs.
The contributors to Netmums inform the mother that playing Overwatch and humming Barry Manilow songs are perfectly normal behaviours for a herniated boy of his age, so the mother relaxes and returns to knitting GCSE exam papers for the local school.
Across town, a small pug sits in the middle of an empty flat feeling unfulfilled.
To tackle her frizzy hair, a wife tries a new shampoo consisting entirely of apathy.
It quells the frizzyness of her hair, but leaves her hair lank and dull.
When brushed, the wife’s hair slumps against her scalp with an exhausted sigh.
When she tries to get out of bed each morning, it takes an hour to get her hair off the pillow. Her hair moans and accuses her of badgering.
To tackle the apathy, the wife adds conditioner consisting entirely of aggression.
The apathy is mitigated somewhat, but her hair now has a tendency to lash out at passers-by, shouting, “What are you looking at? Come on then! I’ll have ya! I’ll frigging have ya!”
In bed with her husband, her hair jabs him in the earhole and yells, “Why haven’t you mowed the lawn, you fat sod? Why haven’t you fixed that broken roof tile, you great lump? My mother warned me about you, you feckless turd curl!”
The husband responds by washing his hair in concentrated shed. Now, for most of the time, the husband is nowhere to be found.
In order to save her marriage, the woman sprays her apathy and aggression with a light mist of delight.
Now her hair has bounce and shine and yells, “Lovely day!” at strangers or, “I like your jacket! Very you!”
This satisfies the wife. Insanely positive hair is a big improvement on frizzy, apathetic or violently psychopathic hair.
She also likes the way it encourages her life choices with statements like, “You go, girl!” and “No time like the present!”
No longer under hairy attacks in the earhole, the husband returns to the marriage bed.
He continues to wear his concentrated shed.
He finds it complements his deodorant of duty, his aftershave of boredom and his E45 of long-term monogamy.
Attempting to locate the source of a bad smell, a wife sniffs her husband.
She sniffs so hard he is sucked into her left nostril.
The husband likes his new environment so much, he changes his address to his wife’s left nostril.
His address with his bank now reads: “Wife’s Left Nostril, Acacia Avenue, Swindon, Wiltshire, SN1 1NS.”
Initially, the wife doesn’t mind his nasal occupation. He no longer steals the duvet at night and he is useful making repairs to her unreliable sinuses.
Eventually, however, she becomes weary of the postman shoving junk mail up her nose whenever she is standing in the front garden. She is annoyed by Jehovahs witnesses standing on her top lip waving copies of the Watchtower.
She serves her husband an eviction notice, stating that he must leave her nostril by the end of the week.
The husband refuses. His wife’s left nostril is the best place he’s ever lived. It is warm, soft and receives excellent broadband.
The wife attempts to remove him forcibly using a tiny mentholated bailiff but the husband doesn’t budge. The husband wraps his legs around her uvula and sings 60s protest songs.
The wife attempts bribery, waving chocolate hobnobs under her nose, which are the husband’s favourite biscuit. The husband is tempted, but he still resists.
Finally, the wife moves a Finnish death metal band into her right nostril. The Finnish death metal band play Finnish death metal constantly until the husband can take it no longer.
“Enough!” he yells, and falls out of her nose to settle on the sofa and eat chocolate hobnobs.
The Finnish death metal band remains in her nose for the rest of her life.
They do not bother her.
Finnish death metal bands seldom receive junk mail or Jehovahs witnesses, and are surprisingly good at sinus repair.
A woman orders her Portugal holiday through Amazon.
The holiday arrives the next day on Prime. The packaging is as long as her, as wide as her and as deep as her, but when she opens it, the holiday is the size and shape of a chicken nugget.
The rest of the packaging is filler made of squeaky old spa weekends. It smells like sauna steam and herbal hot tubs.
The woman’s husband picks up the chicken nugget holiday.
“This is an excellent holiday”, he says. He eats the holiday. It takes one bite, five chews and a medium-sized swallow.
The holiday is for fourteen nights in Portugal and the husband feels the benefit.
“That was my holiday!” screams the woman.
She eats her husband. It takes two bites, fourteen chews and seventy two swallows. The wife has always found her husband difficult to swallow.
The husband tastes of nine nights in Portugal. The husband has already digested five nights. The wife feels the benefit, but is annoyed at leaving earlier than expected.
Later that night, the wife excretes the husband. It takes three pushes, one strain and a grunt.
He cuddles his wife and they talk about Portugal, how warm the nights were, how friendly the people.
Downstairs, the cat eats the filler and experiences a pleasant spa weekend in a five star Cotswold hotel.
It feels the benefit, but the herbal hot tub gives it wind.
A boy runs to his father.
“Daddy, there’s a human at the door!”
The father dives to the laminated living room floor. Why would a human come to the door? Normally only charity bags and restaurant leaflets come visiting, and they don’t talk for long.
The father commando-crawls across his laminated living room floor and peers through his kitchen window.
A human is at the door. It has a human head-thing, with other human things attached.
Some other non-human things are attached to the human, including an identity badge, socks, and a sense of invasion.
“What should we do, Daddy?” asks the boy from the hallway.
The boy is too loud. He was born with a stage amplifier for a mouth and the father has not found the volume knob to turn the boy down.
“Lie down on the floor,” whispers the father. “Be as quiet as a sandwich.”
The boy lies down on the hall floor and does an excellent impression of a ham sandwich.
The father peers back out the window.
The human is staring straight at him.
The father doesn’t move. Humans can only see movement and alcohol. The father does not move and stays completely sober.
Eventually the human slides away, taking its socks and sense of invasion with it.
The father relaxes. He commando-crawls to the living room to continue staring at charity bags with a vague sense of guilt.
The boy remains in the hall. The wind has changed and he is stuck as a sandwich.
He doesn’t mind this much; the hall is peaceful, the laminate floor is cool and he has always wanted to be a bread-based lunch.
The boy’s school reports an infestation of management in year 4.
“Please check for managers in your child’s hair”, says a crumpled leaflet in the bottom of his book bag.
That night his father scrapes a managercomb through the boy’s curly brown hair. The managercomb’s tines are designed to catch managers because a manager’s head is too fat to pass between them.
The boy is infested with managers. They wriggle in the tines of the comb, their tiny claws grabbing and grasping. When the father listens closely, the managers are whispering ‘synergy, synergy, synergy!’
The managers have laid hundreds of tiny meetings in the roots of the curly brown hair. If the meetings are not removed, they will hatch into hundreds of new managers each laying new meetings.
If this isn’t stopped, the boy’s head will eventually form a multinational management consultancy, which can’t be eradicated with a comb. Only flamethrowers remove multinational management consultancies, and flamethrowers are only available on prescription.
The father spends an hour removing every last manager and meeting, wiping them off the comb on toilet tissue and flushing them down the toilet. As the toilet water rushes and swirls, the tiny managers shout ‘teamwork, teamwork teamwork! ‘ before they drown.
Finally, the boy’s head has no managers or meetings. The hairs are free. Productivity increases. Hair satisfaction soars.
In the following months, not one hair is signed off for stress or considers resignation.
A man takes his genitals for a walk twice a day.
They gambol through the long grass in his local fields, sniffing other genitals, rolling in dead hedgehogs. When they return home, they slump on the sofa next to guitar magazines and pessimism.
The man’s wife never takes her genitals for a walk. Hers are house genitals. Her genitals sit on the windowsill and watch the bin men empty orange recycling boxes. Her genitals stretch in the sun, next to crochet magazines and pessimism.
They have boys, whose genitals hug the boys tightly. Boy genitals cannot gambol in the fields yet, but instead get exercise by bouncing on their beds, next to Beano comics and optimism.
When told about the birds and the bees, the boys cup their genitals with their hands and say, “Uuggh, pessimism! I’ll never do that!”
The man and his wife smile knowingly.
With each seasonal change, the man’s genitals will sniff the lady’s genitals and the lady’s genitals will sniff the man’s genitals. They will do this next to a Radio Times magazine and a budget of optimism.
The sniffing is familiar, the budget is meager, and it doesn’t last long.
To celebrate our enduring love, we would grow apples in our bedroom wall. They would bulge from the plaster in perfect rows and columns.
“They are violent green”, I would say, “Like our enduring love.”
“They are bloody red,” she would say, “Like our enduring love.”
“They are tart!” I would yell, “Like Tuesday morning!”
“They are sweet!” she would yell. “Like an accelerator pedal!”
“Large!” I would shout, “Like the apes in my back!”
“Small!” she would shout, “Like the girders in my chest!”
We would destroy the apples. We would punch them, attack them with hammers and flamethrowers until the carpet was sticky with punches and flames.
“We must never tell of this,” I would whisper. “For the children.”
“Never,” she would say. “For the children.”
But we do tell, and always on Tuesday morning.
I wanna be in your gang, in your gang.
You’re the coolest gang in school.
I wanna be in your gang , in your gang.
I think that your gang rules.
But I dont think it’s feasible
That you would ever take me.
I’m a sci-fi geek, a computer nerd
With academic tendencies…
I have no clue with fashion.
I look like my gran dresses me…
I demonstate a strong streak
of anti-group mentaility…
and also…
I’m forty three.
Apparently, I grew my hips
a little out of whack,
a little too far to the side,
a little too far back.
So if you see me totter
or lurch or swerve or veer,
I swear it’s from my screwy hips
and not those pints of beer.
I wish I didn’t have to work.
I’d laze the whole day through.
But when I think about my bills
I’m very glad I do.
Imagine if
I had two cocks
I’d do impressions
of a clock.
You’d know that I
was randy when
my cocks were showing
ten past ten.
And if I’m feeling
less than fine
half past six
would be the time.
Even better
wait and see
where you’d wind me
with the key.
Feeling blue on Monday morning?
Your working day a curse?
Punch a large and angry man.
You’ll find it could be worse.
My boy presents me with the corpse of a fairy he found by the wheelie bin.
I take time to show him the glass wings and the three-toed feet, explain how fairies are born in the heat of the noonday sun and don’t last long.
He asks me to make it alive again and I say sorry, no, dead is dead. Instead I tell him to listen at night for another fairy’s ancient song.
But I don’t tell him that fairies sing the same celtic folk songs from TV aerials in the middle of the night, every night.
The same chord progression again and again. The same melody in the sickly major key of D. The same stupid lyrics of love lost and love gained and love sustained.
My boy buries his fairy in an Old Spice box in the border where the local cats shit.
He brings his palms together in prayer, and I let him have it. Give him time.
One year, one night, after one of those weeks, he’ll coax a singing fairy to his bedroom window, then smash it with his palm.
He’ll toss it from his bedroom window towards the bins and return to his hard-earned sleep.
And in the morning, when his son brings him the corpse, he’ll take time to tell of the noonday heat, the wings of glass and the three-toed feet.
I took my hipster for a walk
and on that walk he tried to talk
and I said “Stop lad! Don’t you know?
A hipster’s only there for show.
We bred your brain out years ago!”
But my pet hipster tried in vain
tried and tried and tried again
to form a row of syllables
in sentences original
with flair and spice and fire and all.
And all he said was, “See my hat!
It’s black and round and slightly flat!
You’re special if you wear a hat!
Black and round and slightly flat!
Look at me, I have a hat!”
He saw some hipsters after that
and started barking,”Hat! Hat! Hat!”
and all those hipsters barked it back
“Black hat! Black hat! Black hat flat!
Hat! Hat! Hat! Hat! Hat! Hat! Hat!”
After that I took him home
to calm down with his squeaky bone
then curl up cosy in his bed
his hat securely on his head
(flat and black, not domed or red).
Last night I dreamt of Mary Berry
naked but for glace cherries
carved in little stars and hearts
and sprinkled on her private parts.
And Mary said, “Will you be mine?”
and I said, “Yes. That would be fine.
Let me at your stars and hearts
and I will be your bakewell tart.”
So Mary threw me to the floor
and showed me what dried fruit is for
and I screamed, “This is jolly good!
Thank God there’s no Paul Hollywood”
But then, of course, there was Paul
clothed in nothing much at all
apart from homemade damson jelly
smeared across his hairy belly.
And Paul said “Come and lick me clean!
up the sides and in between
and after that we’ll both make merry
chewing on dear Mary’s cherries.”
It’s at this point that I awoke
wet with sweat, the sheets were soaked
and cried, “Thank God it was a dream!
That’s the worst there’s ever been.”
Then I held my lover tight
on that strange, disturbing night
and all was peace, and all was good
snuggling with Paul Hollywood.
An african elephant is standing at the till in the Sainsbury’s café buying a jam doughnut and a cafe latte, having a chat with Julie about the Rosemary Conley diet as Julie fights with her arthritis and the coffee machine
In the queue behind the african elephant, a freshwater crocodile holds a belgian bun on a small plate clamped between its teeth. The Cure blares through his Beats headphones and his long knobbly snout bobs rhythmically to the beat.
I look at all the other customers. Have they not noticed how odd this is?
I mean, when did African elephants start drinking lattes? That’s an indian elephant drink.
And when did freshwater crocodiles listen to alternative music? Saltwater, yes, but freshwater?
I put down my cup of tea and concentrate on the other customers.
Yes, there’s more oddness.
For instance, there’s a black Ridley Scott alien sat crosslegged in the corner reading The Guardian.
But aliens with acid for blood and shiny black exoskeletons are always right-wing!
In a booth near the cutlery, a black hole is eating chicken and ham pie with a side of petit pois and carrots
But black holes are vegetarians!
Carefully, with my heart banging away, I rise from my seat and stroll towards the exit.
Just as I reach the exit a huge wasp steps in front of me. It’s the same height as me and is wearing a security guard uniform made out of dead aphids.
But the tie is not a clip-on!
“Excuse me, sir,” says the wasp, “but could you tell me the time?”
“Uh, yes,” I say, raising my wrist and preparing to duck around the wasp. “It’s half past thirteen.”
The wasp shakes its head.
“That’s not the time, sir,” says the wasp.
“Oh,” I say. “What is the time?”
“Well, sir,” yells the wasp, “it’s time to party!”
Suddenly, Daft Punk blares from the café tannoy and the wasp starts to dance. Around us all the customers jump up and dance with him – the latte-drinking african elephant, the eighties-alternative-music-loving freshwater crocodile, the left wing Ridley Scott alien – leaping about with remarkable skill and coordination. Even Julie, who often complains of bunions and a dodgy hip, is on the counter shaking her sacroiliac!
Finally, the song stops and the dancers walk away as if nothing has happened.
I relax. It was just a flash mob.
As I leave the café to buy five coconuts and a small military coup, the smile on my face suddenly drops.
Since when did a flashmob in Sainbury’s ever dance to Daft Punk?
That’s an ASDA thing!
Because I like poetry
my barber thinks I’m gay
as if sexual orientation
depends on the way
we line up words.
I asked him if he was bisexual
because he maintains hair.
We both agreed to drop
the conversation there.
I went to my bed
for a very long time
because something in my head
went offline.
My laden bed
eventually said
“For goodness sake.
I need a break.”
So we went on holiday
to a place south of Luton
where my lovely bed
got off with a futon.
I’m happy when it’s dry and sunny,
sadder when it’s wet and runny.
When it’s icy cold and snowy
I am the same as when it’s blowy.
I’m ambivalent to fog and mist
except when slightly pissed.
When very drunk I almost never
notice any type of weather.
Returning home early, a husband finds a hipster wedged between his wife’s thighs.
“Why is there a hipster wedged between your thighs?” asks the husband.
“I’m using him for underpants,” says the wife. “Hipsters make robust gussets.”
“What if he enjoys the proximity of your lady parts?” asks the husband.
“Don’t be silly,” says the wife, “They are essentially vegetable.”
The husband looks into the eyes of the hipster.
The hipster stares back dumbly, the way hipsters do.
“What if he takes root and makes hipster babies?” asks the husband. “Like a spider plant.”
“More underpants for me!” says the wife.
The hipster did indeed make hipster babies like a spider plant, and the wife never went wanting for a robust gusset.
After investing unwisely in emos for underpants, Marks and Spencers went bust.
After weeks of Shall I? Shan’t I?
I impulsively resign.
Shock? Horror? Disbelief?
No, they just say ‘fine’.
They move on to other business
without breaking their flow
as I sit and sip my fizzy drink
and clutch my punctured ego.
I’m out now. I’m free
but too smoothly released.
No anguished desperate pleas.
No gnashing of teeth.
I drag my flacid ego
for a late night Burger King
fat and carbohydrates
and a sachet of self pitying
and later write these words
to ‘deal’ as some would say
with my exit from the fold
in such an easy way
but I only have myself to blame
I’m sure they’d all agree
no one’s indispensable
including fools like me.
There’ll always be a sod above
no matter who or what you are.
You may climb and strive and shove
there’ll always be a sod above.
There’ll always be a king or boss
who sees you as a clockwork part
and clockwork doesn’t warrant love.
There’ll always be a sod above.
There’ll always be some callous god
who poisons children’s bones or hearts
with all the gentleness of doves.
There’ll always be a sod above.
No matter what you’ve got or not
or who or why or what you are
remember that you have my love
no matter all the sods above.
Inspired by his holiday experience in Tuscany
the poet attempts to write his poem
but the poem jumps away from his pen
shouting, “Boring tripe! Boring tripe!”
Determined to recount his Tuscany experience
the poet pursues the poem around the house.
“I refuse to be another vacation reportage!”
yells the poem, ducking behind the ottoman.
The poet leaps over the ottoman and stabs
downwards with his treasured fountain pen.
He misses the poem by a millimetre
as the poem skitters around him and up the stairs.
“I want to be fictional!” yells the poem,
“a child of wild imagination not reflection!”
The poet corners the errant poem in the bathroom.
He skewers the poem, filling it with fine writing
about balmy evenings and crisp white wine,
and the poem whimpers briefly as it dies.
The dog on the park bench is muttering,
“I am not a Disney personification.
I am not a Disney personification.”
People avoid his gaze, look away
stare at a passing cumulonimbus
or an intriguing blade of grass.
but they can’t help but notice
how familiar is the dog’s voice
Morgan Freeman? or very close.
and they can’t help but see
how the dog on the bench is limned
with a thin black line
how the colour of his coat is uniform
how his bright red collar
is curiously flattened.
“I am a real dog!” yells the dog
“I shit and I lick my arse
and I’m not constrained by narrative!
In the sky, miles away, a black mark
resolves into a woman’s shape
under a full black umbrella.
The dog stops yelling at passers by
stares at the shadow woman in the sky
then yells, “I’m not afraid of you!”
Closer comes the woman in the sky
closer and closer until we can see
she is a young Julie Andrews.
Julie Andrews lands gently before the dog
furls her umbrella and smiles
perfectly at the dog like a saint.
“Fuck you,” says the dog.
“Fuck you and your fucking bluebirds.
Fuck your cheerful song and dance.”
The smiling young Julie Andrews
plunges her black umbrella
into the centre of the dog’s chest
and sings a song of harmony
of neatness and good Christian values
as the dog withers and moans
until there is nothing left of the dog
but a curiously flattened collar
and an all too symmetric bone.
The train seats have ears,
on the aisles, on their right,
great purple jugs, and here
they listen motionless
for the company of our bums,
your grace and my mass.
I pick along the aisle, aware
the seats are listening
with huge puce ears.
I sit and spread too wide.
They cheer my ample rear
and curse the void beside.
You’re leaving us for pastures plump:
a better car, a bigger buck.
We all support your latest jump
off a cliff, with any luck.
A husband flies around his living room by flapping his buttocks.
“Stop flying around by flapping your buttocks!” yells the wife. “I’m trying to watch Strictly Come Dancing!”
“I don’t like Strictly Come Dancing!” yells the husband as he turns a corner with a skillful tightening of his left buttock. “I’m having a bumflight instead!”
“My mother warned me about you and your bumflights!” yells the wife. “But I didn’t listen! Now look at us!”
“It could be worse!” yells the husband, skillfully spinning using a coordinated counter-buttock flap he’d learned from YouTube that morning. “You could have married a penis helicopterer!”
“Oh I wish I’d married a penis helicopterer!” yells the wife. “Consider the length and strength of it!”
“Size isn’t everything!” yells the husband. “It’s how you roll, yaw and pitch with it that counts!”
The husband hovers briefly by flapping his buttocks like a hummingbird’s wings. The buttock makes a whining hum like a vacuum cleaner on full power.
“I can’t hear Strictly Come Dancing!” yells the wife. “This is intolerable!”
The wife jumps up and opens the living room windows. The husband is caught by a sudden change in the room’s fluid dynamics. He is sucked outside and up into the stratosphere, his buttocks flapping impotently.
“Good riddance!” yells the wife. She slams the windows shut and returns to Strictly Come Dancing.
On the television program, a new dance is showcased. The professionals are all flying around the dance floor by flapping their buttocks.
The wife suddenly realises how beautiful her husband’s bumflights were.
The wife rushes outside.
“Come back!” she yells. “I understand now! The almost parental guidance I take from shallow z-list celebrity competitions has revealed how wonderful your bumflights are!”
But the husband does not return. He has joined a flock of other husbands who fly with their buttocks in a great V shape to Africa, where the flight of buttocks has always been appreciated.
After a day sweating and yelling and a veiny-necked hour in stirrups, a wife gives birth to a satsuma.
The midwife wraps the satsuma and hands it to the husband. “Congratulations,” says the midwife, “it’s a tangerine!” The husband ignores the midwife’s mistake and cradles the newborn satsuma carefully on his thick forearm, expecting a rush of delight and affection.
But the husband feels nothing. It’s just a fruit.
The husband smiles lovingly at this tiny meaningless satsuma and pretends to be overwhelmed for the benefit of the glowing wife.
When the wife and fruit are taken back to the ward to sleep, the husband returns home to do the same. But he cannot sleep. There is something wrong with me! he frets. It’s just a satsuma! I feel nothing for that satsuma!
In desperation he checks internet forums of fathers who feel nothing for fruit. “I don’t love my tangerine!” “I look at my new clementine and it’s just an easy-peel orange!” “It looks like any other citrus fruit sometimes found in Christmas stockings!”
The husband is depressed. But then the husband reads a post by an experienced father of fruit saying “It takes time to love your oranges. This is normal. Don’t punish yourself.”
His concern alleviated, the husband relaxes and collapses into a deep restful sleep.
Indeed, in the following months, the husband does develop an enduring love for his satsuma. Often he stares at his small orange asleep in its Mamas and Papas fruitbowl and he can feel his heart unpeel.
Two years later, when his wife delivers a tiny green grape by planned cesarean, the husband is surprised to find his love for that watery sweet fruit is powerful and immediate. Apparently, that happens with grapes.
It’s decades since Madonna’s boobs
were put out for display.
Now I see they’re out again.
Well done. Congrats. Hooray.
I find it begs the question though…
What does the future hold?
What will her assets look like
when they’re seven decades old?
Will she keep them in the basque
or will she get much bolder?
Perhaps she’ll have them out again
drooped across a shoulder.
Or tucked behind her armpits?
Or draped across a knee?
Where will Madonna’s boobies go?
We’ll have to wait and see.
I think I have forgotten how
to write a decent poem.
I’ve heard there’s ways to sort this out
but sadly I don’t know ’em.
Last night I dreamt of Mary Berry
naked but for glacé cherries
carved in tiny stars and hearts
scattered on her private parts.
There was I, her paramour,
prostrate on the kitchen floor,
nipples soft with coffee cream
and Paul was nowhere to be seen.
I ate every single cherry
from the private parts of Mary Berry
and in the morning lay awake
with the aftertaste of cherry cake.
Miles Deacon's Ramblings 