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.

Chapter 15

It was turning into a slow kind of day. Rather than getting anything productive done, Dail had taken to wandering around the house, making pit stops at the fridge, staring at it blankly, mouth slightly agape, wondering why nothing new had appeared to take his interest since his last visit, staring blankly at the same websites over and over again, mouth slightly agape, wondering why nothing new had appeared to take his interest since his last visit…there was a formula for disappointment that was rarely deviated from on days like this.

Of course, the reason for this total lack of productivity was The Sun. It felt like it was nervously sidling up to The Earth on a sofa at a party, too scared to actually do anything except maybe ‘accidentally’ brush The Earth’s leg whilst reaching for its Bacardi Breezer. Of course, The Earth liked The Sun back, but neither could actually do anything for fear of rejection, which everyone would talk about in school the next day and it would all be rather uncomfortable and humiliating. All this closeness was doing was making The Earth very hot and bothered. So because of some stupid, metaphorical, teenage crush, Dail was feeling very listless, drained of energy and not much like he wanted to write anything, even though he’d set this entire weekend aside for solid writing (having discovered that nearly all his friends were in other cities, and the few who remained were the kind of friends who you liked perfectly well…but didn’t feel quite comfortable around enough to spend alone time with; the kind that requires your other friends to be there as a get out plan should it all go a bit arses-sideways). So far, he’d managed to conceptualise a vaguely bizarre graphic novel about a zombie Hitler who rode a cyborg velociraptor…during The Renaissance. This was later to be dismissed for fear of unsettling the more violent history buffs.

Dail knew the heat was draining him of his energy, and this annoyed him as there was very little he could realistically do about it; like hearing a burglar in your house whilst you’re in The Bath. All you can really do for the meantime is remain in The Bath and hope you still have some clothes left to change into later. Preferably some clean ones. The Sun wasn’t going to steal his pants…was it? It might do, but it would be a cruel and vindictive move should it happen, because Dail was fairly certain that, for a start, his pants wouldn’t fit The Sun, and anyway… The Sun is still hung up on The Earth, so it would be a move of heartless infidelity as well as cruel and vindictive.

Dail then pretended to be a spy for a short while. This, however, was a fairly short lived endeavour as he failed the entry exam. During the follow-up meeting, the exact reasons for his failure to become a world renowned spy (the point of which seemed like a bit of a contradiction to Dail; surely the point of a spy was being completely unknown…) were outlined in crystal clear Dolby surround.

“To be a spy you have to think outside the box.”

“But I tried!”

“You remember that form you had to fill out?”

“Yes.”

“The question that said ‘Do you want to be a spy?’”

“Yes.”

“Did you draw a tick in the ‘Yes’ box?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t. Tick outside the box.”

“Bugger.”

Having failed at international espionage, he made a desperate bid to escape the relentless heat of The Sun by having, after much careful deliberation, a cool Bath. Normally, this would have been an easy decision to make – fill Bath with cool water, read book for a while, feel refreshed. But lately, there had been ominous events going on around The Bath. Lately and, somewhat depressingly, Dail’s showerhead had become suicidal.

 

Now, Dail didn’t believe in souls, but he frequently personified objects and it was his earnest belief that his showerhead was either making a wanton attempt to end its career as deputy water dispenser to The Bath, or (and Dail believed this to be far more likely) it had a deep and severe loathing of books. With increasing regularity, when there was reading occurring in The Bath, the showerhead would somehow manage to dislodge itself and make the terrifying three foot leap into the water below; sending a monsoon of sudsy water towards whatever absorbent literature happened to be in its way. Looking at Dail’s book collection, you would be forgiven for thinking that he worked with ill-tempered dolphins and often brought his work home with him. Luckily, though, this was not the case as he had no way near the facilities required to facilitate dolphins in the home. He also didn’t work with dolphins and was therefore fairly certain that acquiring one would involve some sort of criminal aquarium based activity. Finally, Dail decided to leave the showerhead in The Bath. A bit of casual drowning wouldn’t ruin his reading the way a suicidal aqua-leap would.

An hour and a half later (a cold bath doesn’t go cold the way a hot one does) Dail had finished his book and the distinct feeling of ‘ahhhhhh-that’s-better’ had meandered its way through all the necessary veins, arteries, crannies and nooks. It was now 4 o’clock and time for food. Or rather, it would have been had there been any in the house; it almost as if a burglar had stolen all his food whilst he was in the bath… However, after a trip to the shops, all that had been bought was an ice-lolly and a new toothbrush. But this was no ordinary toothbrush. This was a fancy electric toothbrush that, by all accounts, should have been on sale in a dark windowed shop in Soho. It blurred vision and would make an entirely pleasurable gift for a female friend had the bristles been removed. Or not removed. Hygiene is very important and some people will go to great lengths to ensure it. Dail wasn’t here to judge people for improvising in a credit crunch. Just as long as they got their own toothbrush first… 

Chapter 14

‘Lions have never experienced Thursdays.’

Dail had no idea why this thought had suddenly occurred to him, here, whilst waiting for the train to work. He had equally little idea why the fact that a large African cat not being privy to such a nothing day of the week instilled such a sense of pity in him; especially one that could maul him to death with such relative ease. It’s fine, Dail thought. I can always hide in Thursdays. The lions will never think to look for me in there.

Assured of his safety, Dail reflected on one of the reasons he liked living at the end of the Northern Line: he was always guaranteed a seat on his morning commute. Apart from on Wednesdays. Because Dail didn’t work on Wednesdays, thanks to the day he stumbled across an unattended computer at work that was open on a certain file for editing. So now he had paid leave every Wednesday. An entire day to not travel during rush hour in. However, this is what he was doing now, not that it was that much a problem because, as we recently discovered, Dail was always guaranteed a seat on his morning commute.

Once he had commandeered his usual seat (at the end of the row up against the glass, for optimum leaning and minimum pushing past people to get to the door) and the train had pulled off, Dail began assessing the world via the free newspaper. Hottest summer in a long time, eh? Well thank you Mr Newspaper. The ridiculous heat outside was leading me to believe otherwise. I was on the verge of thinking that…what?! Who gets on the tube with timber?!

Someone had just gotten on the tube.

They had some timber.

As it turned out, builder/DIY types get on the tube with timber. Dail was not a builder/DIY type, hence his confusion. But his lack of construction finesse was most probably a good thing, as he held the belief that a ‘So’ should be a legitimate unit of measurement. His reasons, or so he claimed, were that if something can be ‘so’ big or if there can be ‘so’ many of something, that it must be one already. Because of this, the following kind of conversation had taken place on more than one occasion:

“How much do you want?”

“About 5 So’s please.”

“…what?”

*sigh* “Ok…hold out your hands as if you were saying something was ‘about so big’… Good. That is one So. Times it by 5 and that’s how much I want.”

Dail rarely got the right amount of whatever it was he needed, but at least it proved that the So worked in principle, and this made him happy inside.

Having abandoned any notion of reading the paper, Dail was now reading his fellow passengers instead. For the most part, this made for fairly dull reading, though there were, as always, a few notable exceptions. One of these was the most amiable, pleasant and huggably chubby man Dail had ever had the pleasure of slapping his ocular sensory organs upon. But he was trying desperately to not start beaming at this poor, unsuspecting man because, as any Londoner knows, smiling on any form of public transport (especially prior to at least 10.30am) was a faux pas of epic proportions. Dail had no understanding of what a faux pas was. He dimly remembered hearing it in a social setting once. However, it was quickly followed by laughter from the people he was with and he had decided that it was better to go along with it than steamroll their merriment for the gain of trivia which, he suspected, would have violated some hidden cultural rule and would have been highly frowned upon indeed. Then everyone got very drunk and that night Dail lost one of his shoes, but gained a flip flop with a small portion of the Underground Tube map printed on it. He generally tried not to dwell on the hellish kind of transaction that was very likely to have taken place that night.

To return to the chubby, cheery looking fellow (whom we shall refer to as Bob, despite him not really taking any further part in later events), Dail was now effectively fighting a war of two fronts within the confines of his own face,  between grinning like an idiot and not breaking Tube Law (it’s like Jude Law, but spelt differently. And not the same in any way). The resultant expression was akin to that of a man who has felt a sneeze coming for the past 30 minutes, but has just been told that there was a ham sandwich waiting for them, should they want it. The good kind of ham, too. The kind that’s really thick and juicy. Not the thin, dry stuff that looks like the product of an abandoned skin graft of an ostriches neck.  Dail was saved embarrassment by Bob reaching his destination and exiting in a jolly kind of way. Bob would later eat a disappointing ham sandwich, but would this break his sunny disposition? Actually, yes. It did. Bob wrote an angry letter about it, because, despite being chubby and cheery, Bob was British and no amount of ham sandwiches were going to stand between him and a letter in which he got to complain about something.

Two stops after Bob’s departure, something happened that would be classed as ‘bizarre’ even in Dail’s hypothetical ‘The Hell Was That?!” filing cabinet. The middle aged Chinese woman sat next to him (who, to Dail’s knowledge, had been fast asleep) suddenly flung both her arms straight up in the air, dropped them, and then had the audacity to act as nothing had happened. He could only assume he had just witness one of two things. Either, he had just seen one of the most extravagant Hypnic jerks (look it up) in commuting history, or a middle aged Chinese woman had just tried to instigate a Mexican wave…on the tube…during rush hour. He was so stunned by seeing a bit of mass sports fan activity taken so far out of context that it didn’t even occur to him that he was next in line. This Mexican wave had died an early death because of Dail and Dail alone. This had completely counteracted Bob. This wasn’t a tube ride anymore, he concluded. This was now a rollercoaster ride. An emotional rollercoaster. Haaaaaaaaa. Funny. I’m funny. Ooh bugger. Goodge Street. Work. Haaaaa. Goodge. Every time. Funny.

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.