Chapter 13

It was at times like this that Dail realised that the loss of one sense really does enhance the ones that remain. He hadn’t actually lost any senses, strictly speaking. He couldn’t see what had happened; he had only heard it. However, this made his imagination have to work to fill in the gaps. The sound in question had just casually strolled into his ear canal, kicked off its shoes and plonked itself into it’s favourite armchair and was now waiting for someone…no, anyone to come in and keep him company. But, alas, it was not to be. Everyone was shunning his company since he’d reversed over Django, the neighbour’s cat who was loved by the entire street (so named because it had lost three of its toes, not because it was any kind of French gypsy guitar virtuoso). How was he to know the bloody thing was “trying to read his number plate”, no matter how many times he pleaded with everyone to “please, just understand that cats can’t actually read” and that this was all a horrible, horrible accident and was not intended in any way…even if he had complained about Django repeatedly bringing him ‘gifts’ of half digested newspapers. Curiously, the Sudoku on some of them had already been completed, and the birdwatching section remained suspiciously legible…

To backtrack slightly more considerably than Napoleon did in 1812, Dail had just heard something (but, crucially, not seen something) that had set off his funny gland. To set the scene: he had been walking along a quiet corridor having just been to visit the friend from Chapters 4 and 9, when from behind a closed door he heard the words “Oh god, it’s everywhere.” Already, to Dail, this was amusing. But the sheer level of panic and unremitting terror in the voice that said them, pushed him into a long forgotten realm of funny in which very little laughing occurs, despite the utter hilarity of whatever has just happened.

This had completely ruined his day. He had planned on going home, making a inexcusably large pot of tea, loading up a plate of biscuits, setting up base camp in his room and not leaving again until something that could pass as the start of a book had been written. But how could he now? Knowing that everywhere, behind closed doors, things were being said. Unseen and untouched words that were being heard by unseen and untasted ears. Limitless possibilities and combinations. For every action there is a noise but for every noise there could be so…so many actions. Someone needs to write them down. ‘From Behind Closed Doors: a study in comic situational extrapolation.’ Someone...

“Someone…like-“

“Me?”

Dail hadn’t noticed that by now he was at a bus stop, his mind too busy churning over recent events, and therefore also hadn’t noticed that he was keeping an elderly woman company. She may have been talking to/at him for quite some time now…and was grinning at him in a manner that portrayed both enthusiasm and expectancy. Clearly she wanted to be the kind of person that Dail had in mind, so he said “Yes” back at her, with as friendly a smile as anyone can muster at a bus stop.

The change in her facial expression could not have been more profound if neon lights and a marching band had been involved. Now she look scared and handbag quiveringly nervous. What kind of person does she now think she is?! Please tell me she hadn’t been talking about victims of random murders that occur at bus stops… This must be the dark underbelly of having no idea what’s been going on. The propensity for inadvertently exacting terror on unsuspecting pensioners at public transport pick-up points. As if public transport wasn’t already traumatic enough without strangers possibly informing you in an amiable manner that they intend to send you on a one way bus ride down the banks of the River Styx (via Hampstead).

By the time Dail had arrived home (thankfully, his bus had arrived fairly punctually, whilst the biddy’s hadn’t; that or she was too frozen to the spot with either fear or a very sudden, bizarre and localised weather event, that had welded her feet to the floor, to get on the bus that had turned up) his day was already taking, even by his standards, an interesting turn. On the ride home, a mother had scolded her child for licking the window, her argument being “Don’t lick the bus; you don’t know where it’s been.” The child’s response to this was one of the greatest quick fire scones of logic Dail had and would ever have the privilege of being privy to, and was simply “Yes I do, it says on the front.” Impeccable. Clinical. Borderline Nobel Prize worthy. Loaded with tasty sultanas. Mmmmm. Scones. No! No more bakeries, for at least a week.

To further pass the time on the way home, he had sat on a park bench for a while, watching the guy pigeons puff themselves up to impress the ladies, which caused him endless delight; reassuring him that it wasn’t just humans that were always doomed to failure in romance, as every single pigeon got rejected almost instantly. Maybe I should put on loads of weight and start dancing and cooing at women, Dail had surmised. But that could start attracting lady pigeons, though that seems unlikely given recent evidence, but still. Better not to risk it.

He left very soon after spotting a sultry glint in the eye of a nearby pigeon, though it is entirely possible that could have been mildly related to the bread he was flinging everywhere.

 So, intelligent children and failed romantic, airborne vermin. Still, could be worse. There could have been clowns. Clowns with deckchairs. The list of things more intestine-spasmingly worse than a clown in repose is a very short one, indeed. This list was on the verge of being written once he got home, but Dail managed to give himself a paper cut and had subsequently given it up as a lost cause, deciding that either lists were mocking him today or everything he wrote on the list would happen to him, as paper cuts were indeed going to be top of his list. To avoid further injury, he took an early bath and then an even earlier bedtime, but lost sleep over the confusion that this led to.