Monday, September 22, 2008

It Brings On Many Changes

I shot myself in the head and missed. Sort of. It, the bullet, cut a groove right up my forehead, parted my hair and lodged itself into the bathroom wall behind me. Tiles, and crumbs of tiles, everywhere. I wasn’t dead but it hurt. And I looked a right state too, a right idiot.

The day I hanged myself was the day my wife decided to come home from work early. Me hanging there all red-faced and gasping and she, initially, rolling her eyes. Another of my practical jokes, right? Ten seconds later and she’s grabbing my legs, pushing me up, screaming and shouting, putting the window through with her foot, alerting a neighbour, cutting me down.

I’d swallowed enough pills, the doctor said, to kill a dinosaur. A dinosaur? Yes, something big, bigger than you at any rate. An elephant? Certainly an elephant. A gorilla? A gorilla, yes. A grizzly bear? Is a grizzly bear smaller than a dinosaur? What? A grizzly bear is bigger than a dinosaur, yes? Yes. So if all those pills you took could kill a dinosaur, I’m sure they’d have no trouble killing a grizzly or an elephant or a gorilla. I see. Yes. What about a blue whale?

Like an idiot, flapping about on the side of the bus, slamming my face against the window, some of the passengers screaming, some of the passengers laughing, my trousers somehow caught on the roof of the bus, the bus I’d meant to jump in front of, not on top of. Idiot.

A thin metal rod rammed into the plug socket, my wet hand on the other end. Result: Darkness. And the video clock having to be re-set.

I threw myself from the Ditherington Flax Mill Tower. I landed in a vat of flour.

Etc.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Enhance Your Outdoor Space

Western blocks are there, look, just on the brow of the hill, smoke rising from the chimneys which must be the sign for breakfast. Coming?

For breakfast? With him? Coming?

I checked my watch, fiddled with my hat, muttered something about wanting to do a piss. And then walked away. Walked right away.

The spatter of bacon leaves. Fat, I mean. The spatter of sausage juice, its spray from fork holes even though I expressly told the girl, that girl there, not to prick them. What did I tell you about the fucking sausages? Eh?

I only meant to turn the sausages. They kept slipping. So I gently stabbed them, that’s all, just so I could get a grip. Under my breath: moaning fat cunt.

As it turned out, I did, in fact, need a piss. Which was lucky as I saw him looking out at me from the window, from the Western block. So I showed him. Turned and pissed on the grass, just for him to see. Steam too, that was good. Piss spatter. He waved his sausage at me.

Rows of tables, benches running just beneath. Knees tight together and bare, in shorts. Metal plates, forks and knives, plastic cups. Sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs, tea and toast. And boiled tomatoes. Mushrooms. Black pudding. Marvellous.

After breakfast we decamped (decamped, I ask you) to the borders. Where we waited. The usual thing. We waited, we watched, we listened. Nothing. A slight rustle maybe. The wind. One of those birds from the nearby aviary. We should have shot it down.

And so, later, the smoke rising from the chimneys in the Western block - a good indication of dinner. Look, he said, there’s smoke rising from the chimneys of the Western block. It must be time for dinner. Coming?