Chapter 19

Dail was in a cinema. By himself. Whilst this was rare, he had taken a leaf out of his sisters New Year Resolution manuscript and thought he'd give it a go. It was unusually refreshing; not worrying about which side of you your friends are on and not having to share your popcorn. For his viewing delectation today was an overpriced action-cum-drama piece. The kind that gets released at least bi-annually to appease those who need to see things blown up on a bigger screen than the one attached to their Xbox at home, but want a break from the deep seated guilt of knowing you've just killed your three thousandth faceless mutant enemy.

One thing about films had been striking Dail more and more in recent times; besides the decreasing existence of original ideas and the inverse correlation this had on the price of viewing. And the increasing propensity of rom-coms to alter peoples perspective of what a relationship actually was. Anyway, to return to the original striking, Dail had been realising that it was incredibly lucky that the film crew had decided to turn up for that particular time in the lives of whoever was involved. Rarely, if ever, was there a film in which the protagonist went about his daily business due to some logistical error that saw the viewer turn up too early. No storyline, no expensive climax on an oil rig, no sudden turning of plot in which everything seems to be going against the protagonist, things seem hopeless; but what's this?! Everything has turned out fine via the steely resolve of the lead character and the return of their sidekicks (who previously turned against them because of some altercation). And the bad guy is dead! Well that's spiffing isn't it. And not just films! Everything! Books too. There weren't any fictional books (to Dail's knowledge, at least; (auto)biographies didn't count) that were just about the downtime in a person's life. Just a small segment of nothing happening. Understandable enough, though. Probably wouldn't shift too many tickets or hardback copies to just read about someone sitting at home, eating biscuits, pottering about, seeing their friends and going to the toilet (not at the same time. Well, he conceded, it would depend very much on the nature of the friendships involved).

By now the film had finished and, with a tenacious unavoidability, the obligatory small segment of film that squats at the end of the credits, hinting at the inevitable franchise forming sequel, was  looming. The tiny subplot that was to be continued into the next four instalments was to be hinted at by the one henchman who had somehow survived. Such a shame that killing the big boss at the end wasn't the end of it. Oh well, more money for all the film people. Fake explosions and blank bullets didn't come cheap, damnit.

Dail eventually excavated himself from beneath the mounds of popcorn that had successfully re-enacted The Great Escape and, to pass the rest of the afternoon, walked home (this was not as impressive as it sounds - the cinema was only 10 minutes away and was more financially motivated than any half baked attempt at being a flâneur). Then, he once again set about thinking about The Book. A book with absolutely no plot whatsoever actually quite appealed to Dail's backward sensibilities; the idea that any snippet of any person's life could be transcribed into print without them being any the wiser. The birth of the fly-on-the-wall novel was beginning to take shape. Any idea of choosing a real person went out the window like am archaic rock star's hotel TV set. Stalking was not entirely to Dail's forte; nor were restraining orders or court cases particularly to his taste. No, he decided. If this were to take flight, it would have to be a fictitious character. Maybe not overly fictitious, though. If left to its own devices, Dail's mind would run amok and make the resultant text nigh unreadable. His attempt at writing a blog was proof enough of that. It would need something to help keep it grounded,  but the only life he was overtly knowledgeable of was his own and he had previously decided that nobody would care much to read about it in print. Perhaps a warped, slightly surreal adaptation. Wait, no. Making a warped, surreal version of something real to make sure it doesn't flit away into the ether of sense and sensibility is stupid. Not even the most crooked of bank managers would approve a loan for that plan. So a fictitious character loosely based on himself. How hard can that be? Just do something interesting.

The kind of stage fright/writers block hybrid that is usually the result of someone having said "Say something funny"  suddenly washed over Dail like a wall of warm air in a shop entrance in December. The only way to get out of it is to move away and do something different. To this end, a large amaretto was poured out and some reusable ice cubes utilised (to hell with watering down your own drink). A nice drink and putting your feet up was what would make Dail happy now.

The only thing worthy of Dail's precious pieds within easy reach was a hardback chair. And, naturally, the logical place to put your feet was atop the back piece, the result of which contorted him into a bizarre and slightly tipsy Tetris piece, as his back slid further and further down the armchair onto the seat pad and his feet slid further and further into the air and therefore more perpendicular to the floor. 

"Bugger. Not entirely sure how to get out of this one." It was at times like this that Dail wished that he had a roommate. Not to help him out of his current predicament, but to hold up a score card rating the elaborate series of twists, falls, rolls and flails that saw him end up off the chair and with his foot wedged under a bookshelf. He was fairly certain a good, solid seven was on the cards at least. The Olympics, however, were looking to be a far distant ambition at present.

That evening, a lot more amaretto was drunk and some writing actually got done. But, on reflection the next morning, it wasn't the kind of thing that could get published. Chiefly because what did get written was a page full of the entry code for Dail's phone, the words "penguin + talcum powder"  in large red letters in his diary one month in the future and a shopping list consisting of, rather cryptically, "penguin + talcum powder."

No explanation of the plan for these items was ever unearthed.

Chapter 16

It was that time again. Not the kind that you view with suspicion; like when you haven’t checked your digital clock for ages and yet every evening when you do it somehow manages to be 22:22 and you point and shout “Look at the time! It’s doing it again!”, whilst everyone else rolls their eyes and dreams of a quieter time. A time of greater simplicity. A time when twenty-two minutes past ten was completely inauspicious. Just a seemingly random allocation of big and small hands that held little or no meaning at all beyond ‘It’s not quite twenty-five past yet’. No, it wasn’t one of those times. It was more like one of those times where you’re part of two, separate friendship trio’s that merges for a merry day of relaxing mirth. In this happy instance, it was the case that Dail and Robin (a man friend of Dail’s) sometimes hung out with Kara (a lady friend of Dail and Robin’s). At other times, they also hung out with Caroll (another lady friend of Dail and Robin’s). But on this day of days (a Saturday to be quite obsessive about it), they were all together, watching a movie at Kara’s house.

The movie wasn’t even out in cinemas yet, but Kara was doing some baby-sitting for some neighbours who happened to be directors and may have had some Bafta nomination DVD’s that they weren’t beyond lending out. Delirious amounts of tea had been sipped, many choice words had been uttered as tongues were burnt, movies had come and gone and eventually chatting had re-emerged from its movie-length snooze and started prancing around the room like a particularly theatrical deer.

As usual, questions of why Dail’s book still hadn’t stumbled out of its bedsit, yawning and blinking in the cold, harsh daylight, were trained at the would be author.

“I’ll have you know,” Dail proclaimed “that I have in fact written something.”

“Sweet monkey Christ!” announced Robin. “S’about time, isn’t it?”

“That it is. It’s a poem and it is titled ‘One Man And His Log’.”

Worried glances passed between Kara and Caroll, who sensed that some fairly childish verse was hyperactively bounding towards them; outstretched hands sticky from sweets whilst its mud covered face drooled like a frog-spawn on the edge of a chair.

“I actually wrote it on the way over here…” Dail admitted whilst pulling a weather beaten notebook out of his bag. After a fairly disgusting clearing of the throat, he began to read. Out loud of course, or the phlegm relocation scheme would have been entirely uncalled for:

A man did drive down the motorway

He had been gone 3 years and a day

When a sudden ache did grow inside

His mouth did drop, his eyes grew wide

He pulled over to the side of the road

Into a forest, he quickly stowed

In his bowels, anarchy

Soon to be, misery

Sprayed all over the nearby trees

A shaky feeling controlled his knees

Exhausted from this dramatic feat

The man did ponder, “What did I EAT?!”

He looked around for something with which to wipe

But in the confusion, in the hype

He grabbed the nearest thing to him

Onwards and upwards, and the finger therein

Suddenly, a burning sensation did grip his arse

And the thought then came to him at last

Shock, horror, disbelief…

He’d wiped with poison ivy leaf

Trousers round ankles through the woods he ran

A horrific sight, for he was a man

Reddened now, was his rump

With trousers round ankles, he could not jump

Over the tree root that lay in his path

He was feeling the poison ivy’s wrath

Down a hill, half naked he fell

All the time his buttocks did swell

He landed in a babbling brook

And opened his eyes just in time to look

At the many small children lined up on the bank

On a school trip they were, wrecked, to be frank

A lift back home, he caught on their bus

The boils on his arse started spouting puss

Homeward bound, did swiftly go

To a tube of cream, and some hot coco

The cream supplied a soothing sensation

Whilst on TV he watched a demonstration

On the steps to take if stung by ivy

Is anyone else here sensing the irony?

“Are you proud of that?” asked Caroll eventually, a look on her face like she’d just opened a fridge with something highly questionable at the back of it.

“Not particularly. Just needed to kill some time on the tube.”

“Well I think you’ve managed to kill it fairly successfully. I’m informing the police of it immediately. ”

“What happened to his car?”, this from Kara, with her degree in English.

“Kara, you have a degree in English. Surely there is more in that poem to offend you than a minor wormhole in the plot?” Dail knew that the poem he had written was rubbish; immature even. But he maintained that letting that side of you out in writing was much more harmless than, say, going into a crowded playground and forcing yourself onto the roundabout before realizing that you get severely bad motion sickness and ruining the seesaw for everyone.  

“I know but…did he, like, go back and pick it up afterwards?” Kara asked hopefully.

“Yes. He did. They all lived happily ever after. Apart from some arthritis when he got older. But hey, that’s life. You get older, things start falling to bits…you know how it is.”

“Sarcasm. Nice!” expulated (again, not a word but should be) Robin. What followed was the kind of high-five that can only ever occur between two fully-grown males that spend far too much time together. Once they’d returned from the kitchen with ice to numb the pain in their hands and more tea for everyone, they found Caroll deep in conversation with Kara about the intricacies of the poem that had essentially just poked them in the ears with a toy dinosaur whilst they themselves poked the weather beaten book at the heart of the debate. So, giving the empty sofa something to do, regaled past glories and tried to conjure up a means to create some new ones in the near future.

 “I still have a mark there, you know.” Dail said in a hushed, ashamed tone.

“Well you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Hardly. It was nothing but bravery. We won, didn’t we?”

They had gone paintballing some months previously, before anyone’s imagination starts working too hard.