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.

Chapter 12

Ah, 11o'clock; the perfect time to wake up. Only an hour to wait until lunch. ExceptDail noticed that this 11 o'clock had happened on a Wednesday. Wednesday... Itwas ringing a bell for some reason. However, it was entirely possible that thisbell was just a decoy; set up by another part of Dail's Brain to distract himwhilst it thought about something that it wasn't really meant to be thinkingabout. Like the custard in the fridge. What it should have been focusing allit's attention on was this book. Not even a book; a short story would do. Ashtory. No, that would just be a normal story read by Sean Connery. Get out ofbed. It is being silly.

Breakfast…whatto have, what to have. The toaster had been somewhat grumpy as of late, and,"anyway, you've given up bread because you think you might be allergic toyeast." Maybe an egg. “Yes, an egg." But what kind?"Fried". Has to be, that's the only kind of egg you can eat whenmeeting Gigi at 12 o'clock that's why Wednesday rang a bell crap crap crap crap.

Forty-twouneventful minutes later (unless you count putting your jeans on backwards aseventful, which, unfortunately, Dail did), he was sat in a coffee shop, beingsubjected to some god-awful song, the chorus of which was along the lines of"You can do it, put yo' back into it/You can do it, put yo' ass intoit". Dail could only deduce that this must be a motivational song forpeople who experienced great difficulty in getting dressed, and was just aboutto briefly outline this theorem to the lady at the table next to him, when Gigistrolled in; late as per custom.

"Andwhat time do you call this?"

"Quarter-pastwhen we were meeting?"

"Andtoday's excuse is..."

"Iwas arrested by a policeman on my way over here for being too on time."

After amoments hesitation, Dail murmured something about that actually being prettygood and 'well done.'

"Ifyou ever have kids-"

"Punctualityisn't genetic, Dail."

“Yes,well…you have cheese on your elbow.”

She did.

“Where doyou want to go?” probed Gigi, as they sauntered down the casually populatedstreet.

“Whereverit is, it will probably require money. Of which I have none. At the moment. Noton me, anyway. So, to summarise, I need to find a cash-point.”

When themood took him, these harmless money dispensers had an unerring ability to worryDail; as did many other entirely inanimate objects. For example, when theyinevitably asked if he would like to check his balance, Dail frequently bracedhimself for the two mechanical arms that would, one day, slowly but surely edgeout of the machine and attempt to push him over, before giving him a score outof ten. Every time this didn’t happen (which was every time), Dail felt that hehad won another battle in some silent war against banks everywhere. Andgravity. When they chose to strike, he’d damn well be ready for them. 

Gigi'ssomewhat impulsive nature had led them to a bakery, where she was spending theamount of time usually reserved for intense philosophical debate on picking acake.

"Gigi,I feel like we've been in here for a year. No-one should spend a year in abakery unless they're being held prisoner by Mr Kipling. Just pick acake."

"Thereare two that I can't make my mind up between."

"Whichones?". Dail felt that if he could help her pick one and get out of here,life would start looking good again. As long as it was a cake that he liked, ofcourse.

"Wellthere's that pie over there-"

"Pie'saren't cakes."

"...There'sthat pie over there, or this chocolate thing that has so much sugar in it thatI'll most probably go into a coma."

"Sowhy would you get the chocolate thing? You'll just get half way through it,start feeling sick and then wish you had the pie. Just get the pie." Dailliked pie, and therefore liked it when Gigi had pie.

"Nono" Gigi countered. "I want to do this right."

"Fantastic.Well I'm leaving." This was because Dail was getting that feeling in thepit of his stomach that meant anger was stirring. It hadn't opened its eyes yetbecause they were still welded shut with sleep dust, but it was becoming dimlyaware of its surroundings; the chirping of the birds outside, people usingtheir cars or feet to go about their daily business, the noisy house-mateupstairs stomping around because they, for some inexplicable reason, chose to wear their stupid red boots indoors...

It was onlywhen Dail got home that he realised he should have just bought a pie forhimself, and wondered if Gigi was still there. Probably. That mad woman.

Chapter 11

Dail felt like he was in a rut; mentally and creatively. Not necessarily physically, though he was surrounded by steep sides which would require a not inconsiderable amount of effort to navigate his way out of. The water wasn't exactly warm and his clothes were dirty. And then there was the duck. It had been staring at him for some time now, bobbing its head up and down slowly drifting around. It was the way that it didn't seem to blink that disconcerted Dail the most. Most things with eyes blinked; he was fairly sure of this and blinked a few times himself just to check. But every time his eyes opened and closed, the duck was still there. It was on his leg now, and the laws of laziness forbade him to pick it up and move it, but a vague shake of the leg dislodged the awkward poultry in question, and it drifted away with the kind of languidity (a word that, by all accounts, should exist, though Dail was fairly sure it didn't) that only a duck that doesn't blink can satisfactorily achieve.

A repeating wooden knocking sound snapped him uncomfortably back to reality, as did someone shouting, "Are you done in there yet?". The voice was familiar... 'Ah yes, Dad', he deduced. Dail must have been in the bath for at least and hour and a half now, and his dad only liked using the toilet that was in the bathroom, for some undisclosed reason that had always slightly unnerved the family.

"Be out in a minute." Dail hollered back. The bathroom doesn't reverberate as much since his mum and dad had redecorated; and Dail could have sworn they didn't have a rubber duck last time he was there.

"Dad, is that your duck in there?" he asked once he'd dried and clothed himself and Dad had made use of the facilities.

"Of course it is. Do you think its your mothers?"

"Good point. Is it to replace your desire to walk a penguin down the street whilst wearing a top-hat and tails?"

"Shut up. Food's getting cold."

"'Tis good to be back" Dail grinned to himself as he plodded down the familiarly creaky stairs, skipping the last few and pulling on the banister to spin him round 180 degrees and into the kitchen, as per tradition.

"I think I'm turning into a potato. I've just eaten so many of them today."

Dail, his brother Tad, sister Shim and Dad were en route to Heathrow to pick up their respective mother and wife as she returned from visiting family in Israel. Tad had just unwittingly just unleashed a surreal yet worryingly serious conversation on the occupants of the car.

"Well, it would be a good move. Just think of the potential you'd have. So much more than you have at the moment."

"So do you think I should be a potato?"

"Of course. You could be so much more. As a human, you're only ever going to be a human. But as a potato...you could be anything! Chips, crisps..."

"You could be mashed up and put on a Sheppard's pie, cut up and roasted, baked and covered in tuna and beans..."

"I still think I'd have more potential as a human."

"Nonsense! You could wreak havoc in Ireland just by not being there!"

"But that's loads of potatoes. I'd only be one."

"Well you're still only one human."

"What's going on?"

"We're convincing Tad to become a potato."

"Oh. Carry on." Dail's Dad would usually have partaken in this kind of debate, but a particularly tricky roundabout was looming.

"Hula Hoops! They're a potato based snack. You could be a Hula Hoop. Think how much joy you could bring."

"Potato waffles."

"I could be a wedge! And I'd never be short of work. It's impossible to get a job as a human at the moment, but there are potatoes in everything."

"Like onions. You could be an onion!"

"No, onions make people cry."

"Can't you make electricity from a potato?"

"You could kill a man."

"What?"

"Get a sack of potatoes and beat a man to death with it."

"That would be a human doing most of the work."

"No more wondering what your purpose in life is. You'd be a potato. Plain and simple. Infinite potential."

"But then again...I'd be a potato. Can potatoes appreciate how amazing they are? At least as a human I can see that I don't have as much potential and maybe try and do something about it, but as a potato I can't do anything myself."

"Oh well if you're going to get all philosophical on us then maybe you should leave."

"We're on a motorway." (This from Dail's Dad).

"That's it, I'm going to be a potato. I'll book the operation when we get back. I'm going private though. If I went NHS I'd probably wake up as a parsnip or something."

"That would be embarrassing."

"Are we there yet?" It is one of those wonderful traits of humans (that Tad would probably miss once he'd become a potato), that no matter how old the children were, if their parents were driving them somewhere, the words 'are we there yet' would inevitably be thrust upon the driver at some point.

Chapter 10

Think! There are thousands of unwritten books out there. All you have to do is pick one. Any one! It could be the one for kids, about the ponderous goat who finds a questionably shaped carrot, but decides to befriend it anyway because that would teach the children to be accepting of  others (and the grown ups could laugh at the pictures). Or it could be the dark and intense thriller - the blind spy known only as ‘The Mole’, trapped in a cult-like covenant behind enemy lines. Two lovers meeting on a zeppelin ride before the whole affair is cut tragically short by some ill-fated technical fault and their story is lost to the annals of history. Just pick one!

Or…you could make a sandwich. Yes. Definitely the best remedy for a mental block. Sandwiches are relaxing. Almost musical. The warm, mellow tones of the peanut butter; the zangy brass stabs of the pickles; the short, satisfying poppy percussion hits of the sweetcorn; the overpowering and dissonant string crescendo of some properly mature cheddar and, holding it all together like culinary and musical glue, the mayonnaise bass line. All on a stage made of bread. Ah yes…sandwich jazz. Mmmm.

(Approximately twenty hours later, Dail was at the house of a slightly eccentric friend, when the jazz sandwich made a casual reappearance. This, however, required the use of the see-through/glittery toilet seat which, in Dail's honest opinion, was completely lacking in taste and not conducive to sitting on and having a pleasurable, private moment. Or movement. Or both.)

 A sandwich for my thoughts. Ok, how's about this one, bread gods: a book on how to do nothing. Become something of an expert in that. Wait...no. The reviewers would be all over it like wasps on bbq chicken.

"What Mr Dail has done here in his book "7 Steps To Doing Nothing", rather than usefully inform you how to do nothing, is to merely suggest (over the course of 634 pages) several different and debatably interesting ways in which to sleep, sit, prepare rudimentary snacks and wander about aimlessly, with only occasional references to self scratching. In order to truly do nothing one would have to be dead (depending entirely upon your views of the afterlife and its relative existence). Is Mr Dail then encouraging suicide and possibly even murder amongst his readers, whilst at the same time trying to incite some kind of religious or philosophical war? How dare he. This critic for one won't stand for it (or sit, as he so vilely suggests). I say we find out where this man lives and exert some vigilante justice in retaliation for this heinous attempt at disturbing the peace. The swine." ** - The Times Literary Supplement.

Swine? Swine?! Bastards. I'll have the last laugh because I'm not even going to write that book. Ha! Try poking holes in something that doesn't even exist. Except it's possible to do that with some things...like school toilet paper. That pretty much doesn't exist, even when it does.

Dail didn't hadn't noticed he was sitting on the stairs whilst eating his sandwich until he tried to get up and walk away; realising the amount of available floor space he had on either side of him that wasn't either lower or higher than the bit he was currently on was much less than he had anticipated. Another sneak attack by the stairs. First his toe, now his brain. Whilst he would easily admit that they had their uses, he was also often prone to loathing them; because they were often pulling mischievous, bastard-like stunts like this. Luckily, he had been sitting fairly close to the bottom of the stairs and felt that he could comfortably jump down to the floor, which he subsequently endeavoured to achieve. Unluckily, he forgot that his ex-sandwich had been on a plate, which was balancing on his hand waiter-style. At this junction, he was surrounded by nothing but air and moving briskly towards the ground floor - to cut out all the boring details, Dail lost a plate but found an old sock that he'd been looking for for a long time; such a long time that he'd thrown its partner away. 

Chatper 9

“So what, you just left it on its side?”

“Yeah. In the box and everything.”

“Hasn’t it started to smell?”

“Probably. It was on top of a radiator.”

“Huh. Well as long as she wasn’t too attached to those socks you should be ok. So does this mean you started work on your book again?”

“Sort of.”

“And by ‘sort of’, I presume you mean…”

“No.”

Chapter 8

 Several months had passed, during which many, many interesting things had happened. The kind of things that Dail felt someone might consider interesting and worthy of mention should they be writing a book about him. But this, of course, was preposterous. Outrageously absurd. Nobody was documenting the everyday happenings of Dail’s life; the ins and outs. Hopefully not the ins as they were too boring and personal. And the outs were only exciting when juxtaposed by the ins. Many people probably went to South America to do some travelling; trying to recreate the fun of a long past journey. Most people learnt how to just about juggle, spent days painting, bought a hamster, lost a hamster, learnt that hamsters aren’t the kind of animals that you should take for walks in the park (the tiny wheel was evidently in the cage for a reason). Any thoughts about the book had taken a temporary hiatus, but they would be back soon; ready to pounce unexpectedly, like a child hiding in a cupboard.

It was now June and the weather had taken a turn for the better, so Dail had been sitting in his garden, noodling around on his guitar until two bees had briefly distracted him by circling around his head; the different pitch of each buzz momentarily harmonising the other at roughly a major third. This set off a chain of thoughts that led to the pondering of how well evolution had set up the bee for suicide. Should things get far too depressing for the bee and it wished to take its own life, it could potentially sting itself with a lethal dose. But then again, bees are probably impervious to their own particular brand of venom. Snakes must bite their tongues all the time and don’t die (the ability of creatures to bite themselves was one of the things that cemented Dail’s belief that there was no god). So, should this fail to work, it has a back up plan - an ace in the hole. When a bee uses its sting, it dies. Brilliant. The animal equivalent of a cyanide capsule. Right, tangent over. Get a drink. From the…sink. I think. Dinosaurs are extinc…t. Nachos.

The niceness of the day then led Dail to cycle to Yosh’s house, whereupon they set about banishing boredom to the nether-regions of sanity, leading to the kind of discussion that would give a psychiatrist a stroke if they were to stumble drunkenly into the room in half-way through.

“We need more Babybel’s…”

“That’s your answer to everything!” 

Yosh, to an extent, is right. Recently, ‘We need more Babybel’s has indeed been my answer to the past three situations. Yes, we put one in Yosh’s microwave whilst it was still in its waxy cocoon just to see what would happen (an odd shaped, gloopy mess that looks like a fried egg gone wrong, as it turns out). Yes we then made Babybel and Nutella cakes (essentially, Nutella spread on a Babybel) with the last two and, thus, the tiny cheese purveyors of madness ran out. So the idea of a red, stop-motion Pac Man video never quite came to fruition, but how we managed to get from there to trying to throw a small bouncy ball into a glass cup on a worktop from opposite sides of the room, I’m not sure I want to know.

“So” throw…miss, “book still on hold then?”

“Yup.” New approach, bounce it off the floor. Miss.

“How come?”. Same technique. Worse miss.

“Still don’t have any ideas. Bugger!”. Almost broke the glass.

A few minutes of uninterrupted ball throwing (unless you count the Ooh’s and Aah’s and Eee’s as the ball came perilously close to either entering the cup or destroying it) and conversation had turned to other psychiatrist slaying topics.

“Dail…”

“Yes…?”

“If you tried to clone cheese…could…could you end up with…a cow?”

“Yosh?”

“Ye-e-e-es?”

“I have no idea. Your throw.”

      

 Later that day, Dail had gotten quite introspective, as quite often happened when he had consumed an odd number of Babybel’s. He had never been a religious person and saw god more as an adjective than a basis for a belief system. On paper he was Jewish, but on the ground and in planes and on chairs and everywhere else he was an atheist. True he’d had a bar-mitzvah, but in all honestly this was more because the prospect of a large injection of cash (which, he repeatedly insisted, probably made him more Jewish than anyone who might have done it for reasons aspiring to being religious) would have been tempting to any thirteen year old. But for the most part, something about religion had never quite sat well with Dail. He remembered doodling in a bible at school and subsequently being reprimanded by the teacher. But then he also remembered thinking that if god was so concerned about a doodle in a book whilst all the other evil in the world was going on, Dail wouldn’t want to spend an eternity in his ‘glorious presence’ anyway. It’s the equivalent of discovering that your house is on fire and, when the fire brigade does finally turn up, rather than putting out the fire they just berate you on why exactly you chose that colour for the walls. Bastards.

Maybe it was the way that the god that people had suggested existed appeared to be a bit of a needy and pathetic creature. Nobody likes it when someone passes something off as being theirs and then demands to be praised and thanked for all the hard work they put into it. Yes, we get it, you think you made some stuff. Now take these pills, they’ll help calm you down and then someone will show you back to your room. Tha-a-at’s it. Feeling better? Good.

Ultimately, though, it was that Dail was made to wake up every Sunday morning to attend religious classes, instead of laying in bed and dreaming of custard and sheep (not together). Dail loved his sleep, and he’d be damned if any supposed cosmic entity would come between him and an extra two hours of the stuff.

Chapter 7

There they were. Ten tiny little faces, all staring at Dail out of the foamy whiteness whilst he lay there, naked as the day he was born, nodding at him. Wiggling side to side, back and forth like some vile and twisted Mexican Wave.  This was a bad idea, surmised Dail; a grotesque, mind warping pantomime. Drawing faces on your toenails before you get in the bath is definitely not for the weak minded or catastrophically tired. So going for a swim didn’t generate any new ideas, nor did wandering round the house all day. Maybe there is some merit to Gigi’s idea…I could call it “‘Doodles and Brain Burps’ - a collection of musings and scribblin’s about everyday life from an everyday person.” Or I could not…because that is a silly idea. Quite mad. Speaking of quite mad…

Dail realised that he had been holding his hand flat and making it vertically break the surface of the water every now and then whilst moving along at a gentle speed…whilst humming the theme from Jaws. A Great White Shark couldn’t fit in The Bath, he reassured himself. At least, not whilst I’m still in there. Or could it? No. It couldn’t. They’re quite big. But what if someone has engineered pygmy Great Whites and let them loose in the water systems of London? What then?

Evacuate. Leave the premises in a calm and orderly fashion, taking care to mind the bundle of clothes on the floor just next to The Bath.

He veritably leapt out of The Bath, landed on the pile of guilty garments, fell over, and decided that that particular spot on the floor was a nice one to have a bit of a lie down. Dry off naturally. Towels, after all, are a crime against nature. Probably…according to some people…that live in…trees…and eat…twigs…or…

The rest of the day saw Dail maintaining similar levels of productivity. He stubbed his toe on the stairs, swore at the offending step, felt hurt by the fact that it didn’t even dignify him with a response (the silence cut deeper than any comeback possibly could), and shunned the stairs for the remainder of the day. This made him feel slightly better, despite the obvious drawback of confining him to the ground floor; it was a sacrifice he was willing to make. He had stared out of the window for a while, watching a cat creep along a fence and mused that cats were very much like Germany circa 1938. They left the house each morning with the sole purpose of commandeering as much land as possible, then, upon their return, wondering why everyone was annoyed about the dead bird on the living room carpet. Ok so the second part wasn’t like Germany…but the first was. Sneaky cats. He noticed how animals were always a good source of comedy. Gigi and Dail had once stood on a beach in Bournemouth, watching a seagull try to pick up a stone. “Silly Bird”, Dail had commented, and this throw-away statement had kept them laughing and giggling for the remainder of the outing, like five year olds who were overly tired, so the parents had given them an abundance of sugary snacks to keep them going, with catastrophic and altogether unwanted side effects.

About an hour was spent just lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling (staring at the floor would have been tricky as his bed wasn’t transparent enough). Dail did love his bed, especially after three years on university mattresses. Falling asleep on a student accommodation bed was definitely an acquired skill; having only springs for company…springs that got overly intimate in the night...springs that touched him in inappropriate places....springs made him wake up every morning feeling as if he'd been violated. On the other hand, it did mean that the feeling of having a metal coil lodged squarely in his genitals was no longer an unwelcome shock, which was, Dail had to concede, a comforting thought (as ironic as a comforting thought was, given the situation in question).

Feeling reflective, he looked back upon how he had gotten into this whole book writing venture in the first place. I’ve kinda fallen into writing in much the same way a person of slightly ‘larger’ proportions might fall into an open man-hole. It’s sudden, unanticipated, and no-one quite expects it to fit. But, well, wadya know, it does. Just about. Or does it? I mean, I haven’t actually written anything yet. Notes on paper plates don’t really count and, in terms of actual ideas for the book, I’m about as close to something solid as that old flatmate of mine after I mischievously and quite covertly crushed eight laxatives into his drink. I wonder how Chester’s doing nowadays anyway. Probably wrapped himself and his bike around a lamppost at high speeds or got sucked into the engine of a 747. Mad adrenaline junkie. What? Oh yeah, book. Book, book, book, book, book. BOOK! No. Who? Oh. Bugger… What?

Many of Dail’s inner monologues (if you could call them that) seemed to end like this when he was tired. Sleep was usually the best remedy; though he had also found that, for some inexplicable and wholly bizarre reason, carrots also worked. Maybe Bugs Bunny was onto something. No, never trust a cartoon character. Not after last time anyway, he remembered, visibly wincing. The clock on the wall said “02.35 AM”, but at this stage Dail was too tired to worry about talking household objects. Maybe he’d imagined it anyway, because when he looked at the clock in question, he could quite clearly see the numbers “10:14” followed by a glowing red “PM” (the letters “PM”, that was; not a luminescent Prime Minister).   

“Bugger this”, he grumbled and, low and behold, two and a half hours later was fast asleep. Well, as fast asleep as one can be when still fully conscious. Another two and a half hours later, Dail was asleep. Fast asleep. He opened one eye and sceptically surveyed his sleeping form. “Yup”. Definitely asleep.