Mincing fancies

I had another nightmare last night.

I was sitting on a crowded tube train wearing a cream coloured woolly jumper with my own face knitted into it in purple wool.

As I sat there, the face in the jumper came alive and began screaming out all my inner most secrets to the rest of the passengers.

The driver’s voice came over the intercom warning passengers to keep away from me. I was a human bomb set to explode, he said. An alarm was sounded.

I came round to discover the alarm was my mobile ringing.

'Twas Zosia.

We hadn't spoken since she stormed out on Wednesday night. After letting it ring for ages, I took the call. The conversation at first was frosty.

“Hello,” Zosia said flatly.

“Hey, what’s up?” I rubbed my peepholes, woozy brain finding first gear.

“Not much. Hung over.”

"Ahh..."

“I’m out walking dog."

"Oh."

"Guess what?”

"Um..."

“Give up?” Zosia asked.

“Not yet.” I made a play of thinking about it for a long time.

“It's my dog. He done shit longer than my shoe.”

Meek balloons

Apparently, in Germany there’s a saying: 'Everything has an end, apart from a sausage, which has two'. What about sticks and pipes, and baguettes and cucumbers? They all have two ends, as does a severed penis. It's a senseless saying...

Did I tell you I’ve got an older brother, Joel?

No?

Well, I’ve got an older brother, Joel.

He’s the sensible one out of the two of us; the one who did well at school, passed all his exams, went to university and got a good job. He’s married to Amber, or “The Witch” as I fondly refer to her.

She’s the first and the only girl Joel ever went out with. All wholesome but ultimately bland prettiness, high morals and ruthless efficiency.

Currently, The Witch has banned me from visiting their house, all to do with the episode last summer when she left me in charge of Harry, my 7 year-old nephew, while Joel and she buggered off for a three day shagfest in Venice.

Harry suffers from attention deficiency syndrome and hyperactivity, like a little monkey on speed.

Those 3 days I looked after him were hot, hot, hot, summer having descended on our part of the world suddenly, bringing with it an overnight ten degree leap in temperature and sweaty arse fever.

By late afternoon on the first day, Harry and I were out in garden enjoying the sun.
He let me in on little secret. He was a government agent working under cover tracking down suspect toy gun dealers. He told me to always wear false beard whenever I called his Fisher-Price phone, because I could never be sure who would be listening.

His spymaster was an imaginary friend by name of Ogir who had a cheeky sidekick Marmoset call Ragannin.

Harry produced a picture he’d drawn the day before at school of Joel, The Witch and me.

The Witch’s image was drawn with incredible attention to detail; a long flowing ruby coloured gown, yellow shoes a hovering half a foot off the ground, crazy ginger hair, full red lips half-way up her right cheek.

Joel wore what appeared to be blue dungarees, with massive pink feet sticking out at the bottom, again levitating tantalisingly above the ground. He had one blue eye, strangely and two vertical shafts of green hair.

But me?

I was nought but a stick man with a round circle head containing no features at all.
Harry has seen me so infrequently in his short sweet life, he didn't even know what I looked like.

As I pondered that, he asked me to get his inflatable boat out.

I blew it up for him too. It was a big boat. Took lots of puff. Nearly gave me an aneurysm.

A while later he was playing happily by himself, so I smoked a joint. Fierce Moroccan hash.

The next thing I know, Harry’s filled the boat up with water, mixed in some earth, dead flower heads, a bit of sand, some plastic paints then, before I could react, he’d emptied the lot all over The Witches’ new sunbeds.

Try as I might, I just couldn't get the stains out, so I placed them out of sight, round the back of the garage hoping The Witch wouldn't notice until I was long gone.

The next morning, Harry and I nipped out for a long walk, across the fields at the back of the house past a huge bush. I walked on and didn’t realise Harry wasn’t following.

Then I heard him cry out, “Uncle Zacarias, look!”

I hurried back and found him inside the bush standing by a wooden trestle table, on top of which was a grinning ceramic duck. In front of the duck was a pornograhic magazine open at a page featuring several colour photographs of a buxom lady showing the inner mechanics of her sexual apparatus.

Harry thought it most interesting and wanted to take the porn and the duck home to show his mum when she returned, but I persuade him not to and hurled the mag further into the undergrowth.

I let him bring the duck back though.

He smashed it enthusiastically against the wall of the house upon our return. (Well, that's the sort of shit you do when you're a 7 year-old boy, isn't?)

Anyway, when they got back, Joel and The Witch were greeted with a frenziest of welcomes from Harry. He was so excited to see them again, I thought he would burst.

Having been spoiled rotten with a smothering of cuddles and kisses, he pelted upstairs and came down brandishing the porn mag.

"Look what Uncle Zacarias found!"

You can imagine, The Witch flew into an apoplectic rage. How could I expose her baby to such filth?

"Moi...?" My mouth agape, 'twas futile trying to explain. Besides I couldn't get a word in.

The Witch let loose her entire arsenal of anti-me sentiments, the ferocity of which knocked me off my stride.

Apparently, she loathed me. Always had done.

It'd been Joel’s idea to leave me in charge of Harry. Against her better judgement. He'd thought, because I hadn't really ever had the time (or let's face it, the inclination) to got to know my nephew, a few days together might help us bond.

Oh, but what a big fucking mistake that had been. To think I could be trusted? I was an irresponsible, selfish, immature arsehole with a minimal grasp of reality.

I had to admit it was a fairly accurate character appraisal.

Joel stepped in, suggesting she go outside for some air to calm down. Of course, she saw the sunbeds immediately and came charging back in, screaming.

There seemed to be so much pressure building up inside her head I feared it might explode.

I just asked her pause for moment, think about how anger her towards me could affect Harry psychologically in future and you know, whether she could recall ever see any jockeys with fat faces.

Goliath time

Women, eh? Can't live with them, can't leave 'em by the side of the road when yer finished with 'em.

Zosia went home in a huff last night. I wanted to watch Spurs play Arsenal in the semi-final of the Carling Cup.

Zosia would rather stick her tits in a blending machine than watch football. She wanted to watch some DVD she brought back from Poland, but I stuck to my guns.

And that was that, she gathered her shit angrily together and stormed out with a hefty slam of my front door, the words "We is fucking over, man!!" ringing in my ear.

Yeah, yeah, yeah...

It was a good game. 1-1, although Spurs should have won it easily.

Anyway, over my morning tea this morning, I discovered to my chagrin that I had no weed left. The solution could only be found in a visit to Goliath, a colossal guy, black as a Model T, who lives a few streets away.

In my humble opinion, Goliath is my local area's leading purveyor of fine herbal remedies. Potent hydroponically grown skunk weed has always been his specialty, and my weapon of choice.

I showered, dressed and wandered the streets to Goliath’s to purchase fifty pounds worth.

I rang Goliath’s doorbell and waited, resting my weary bones against the wall by the doorstep. It was a long wait. Nothing unusual. Goliath exists in Goliath Time, in which it can take up to twenty minutes to answer the fucking door.

Eventually his deep voice crackled over the intercom. “Yo?”

“Goliath?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Zacarias.”

After a lengthy pause, during which I swear I could hear the mental cogs and wheels of recognition grinding slowly in the man’s brain, the door buzzed open.

I wandered down a long hallway and found Goliath in the front room, crouched low over a child’s piano naked from the waist up, spliff dangling from the corner of his mouth.

Without bothering to look up, Goliath grunted, removed the spliff from his mouth and distractedly waved it in the direction of the sofa upon which a blonde girl lay stretched out, hands behind her head, eyes closed wearing nought but a giant grey t-shirts. One of Goliath’s, I imagined.

“You know Sylvia.”

Actually, I’d never seen her before.

Sylvia opened her eyes blearily, raising her head slightly to see who I was. She was pretty, very pretty. She smiled vacantly and rippled a silent hello with her fingers before laying back and closing her eyes again.

She was clearly off her tits on something, presumably having worshipped at Goliath’s High Altar of the Sacramental Herb.

Either that or she was basking in the warm afterglow of a magnificent seeing to courtesy of Goliath.

I wished the both of them a happy new year, to no obvious response.

A few moments passed, me standing like a melon in the middle of the room listening to Goliath attempting the same tune over and over on the tiny piano. He made mistake after mistake, starting again from the top each time.

I stole a few glances at the Sylvia girl, quickly looking away each time in case she opened her eyes. There was something quite Scarlett Johansen-y about her.

“Shiiiiiit,” drawled Goliath in his rich baritone, breaking my reverie.

He took a huge drag on his spliff and reached out to pass it my way without looking up, but then thought better of it and popped it back between his lips.

A baby cried out somewhere in another room.

The Sylvia girl sighed wearily, got unsteadily to her feet, stepped around Goliath and padded out of the room, smiling wanly and brushing my arm with her fingers as she passed.

Goliath stared down at the piano.

I took advantage and turned to observe Sylvia’s shapely harris disappearing out of the room.

Goliath began picking out the same fucking tune he’d been attempting before.

“Listen, Goliath. Hate to piss on your fire, but, um, got any that killer Skunk?”

“Yeah man, but it ain’t the same shit as you ‘ad before.” Goliath chuckled to himself. “It’s a hybrid. Not for the feint hearted, if you know what I’m sayin’? It’s got magical powers. Blow your fuckin’ socks clean off, man. Back to the last century.”

He left the piano, stood up and took a single giant step towards the sofa and bending down, picked up a brown leather satchel from the floor.

He produced a plastic money-bag of weed, dangled it in front of his own face and grinned.

“Wanna try before you buy?”

Ah, now Goliath has asked me the same question many times before. Usually I say yeah, Goliath brings out his bong, we smoke some of the weed I’ve just bought. I get enormously stoned and then feel unable to walk home.

Goliath’s friends and other customers drop by and sample some too and eventually I leave hours later with just a fraction of the stuff I’ve bought.

This time I decided not to make the same mistake. I said I was running late for a meeting.

Goliath handed me the bag of weed.

“Well okay but treat this shit with respect, my friend, ‘cos it gonna creep up on you and bam! Rip your fuckin’ head right off.”

Goliath snapped his fingers to emphasise his point then changed the subject completely.

“Hey, yous a writer, yeah?”

“A musician, really.”

“Well whatever...I got dis great idea for a film script, man. It’s about this midget bloke, yeah, who does da voices on da telly and shit, like on these programs for kiddies and shit on da BBC, yeah?”

“Okay.”

“And he’s really really bitter and dat at havin’ failed as a proper actor cos everyone says he’s too small. They only wanna give him parts in kiddie shows and dat which he finks is beneath him ‘cos he’s a trained actor and he don’t wanna do nuffink like that."

"Right."

"Well, he gets so frustrated, yeah, and so mad, right, he goes on a killing spree murderin’ loads a these telly people and stuff one by one. All the ones wot turned him down when he was tryin’ to be a proper actor, plus some actors who he don’t like anyways...”

As he explained this, Goliath made vague stabbing motions with his right fist.

“…But, like, the police, dey can’t solve the mystery of who dunnit ‘cos no one suspects a midget telly voice bloke and the footprints wot he leaves at the murder scenes is done wiv shoes that he wears on purpose wot is too big for him."

He drifted off in thought for a moment. "I was finking to call it ‘Midget Madness’…”

Thankfully, the pretty Sylvia girl came back into the room holding a crying, coffee coloured baby and settled herself down on the sofa to give it a bottle, sparing me further details of Goliath’s awful film script pitch.

It took it as the perfect cue to make my getaway.

“Well, I'd better be off,” I said.

With one hand scratching his arse, the other holding the joint and his mind clearly still reeling with the cinematic possibilities of a midget-based slasher movie, Goliath shrugged his shoulders dismissively.

“Das fifty.”

I paid the man, said nice to meet you to the pretty Sylvia girl, who’d closed her eyes again, baby suckling at the bottle. She managed a tired, weak smile. I made his way out as Goliath crouched back down to fiddle with the child’s piano once more.

Poet lorry ate

I finally wrote some lyrics today...unfortunately, not for any of the songs I'm currently writing.

Actually, they're not really lyrics at all. More like a limerick.

Perhaps you'd like to read wot I dun anyway?

The fondling minstrel

The fondling minstrel away he did wander, singing like nobody's beez
A song about Christmas, some hedgehogs and bean sprouts, cabbage water and cheese.

This fondling minstrel, then entered a restaurant, sung what he wanted to eat
And shoved his bare hand down the waitress’s bra whilst smiling at the dwarf Maitre’d.

"I'm wanting a fish, a boar and a carrot, these teeth are making me itch"
He wailed at the chef who wasn't that deaf but whose bottom was just out of reach.

"Get out of my eaterie you fondling fool," was the repost from the Chinese-y chef
"I'm no Charlie Chan, but please take your hand off that dirty great girl's heaving chest."

"And what if I don't?" sang the minstrel in G, "What if I fondle her pussy?"
"Then outside the place for a kick in the face" said the tiny Kung-foo type Chinee.

"Strong words from a man who's but four feet tall," sang the minstrel without a worry
I’m leaving this restaurant for the Indian next door and there I shall order a curry.

Bold and clustery

I had a cat once. He worked as an artist's mews.

Today was so damn cold, wet and blustery that Zosia and I decided to hibernate, only venturing forth from my bed to fetch food and liquid refreshment from the kitchen, and the occasional trip to the loo.

Around mid-afternoon, she woke up and told me a tale about her friend Elena back home.

Elena used to work as a psychiatric nurse in a mental hospital but left when she got beaten up by one of the patients.

Apparently, she confronted this bloke with a long history of aggressive behaviour. Powerfully built fucker he was. Anyway, the powerfully built fucker escaped from his room one night, beat up a couple of nurses and came down stairs in the nude to the reception area where Elena was working alone.

The patient politely asked her if he could be let out to go down the local bar for a swift drink.

Elena surreptitiously pressed the emergency button under her desk and played for time, waiting for back up from her colleagues whilst gently trying to persuade the powerfully built fucker that perhaps it wouldn’t be such a good idea to go to the bar.

It was late, she said. The bar had probably closed already and besides, she didn’t think they served naked customers.

The powerfully built fucker was having none of it, though.

He turned and walked calmly over to a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall, ripped it clean off its bracket and used it to batter his way through the hospital’s front doors.

Elena, shaken and slightly stirred, called to alert the police. The officer who took the call asked for a general description of the patient.

“Should be fairly easy to spot,” she said. “He’s heading into town down the main road without clothes on.”

Tripping shop

I had a fierce nightmare last night. I'd been struck down by a mystery illness that rendered me only capable of speaking backwards in rhyme.

Zosia came back from Poland today. Woke me up, banging on the front door, hollering through the letterbox. "What happened to pick me up from airport, bastard!??!"

Oops.

I dragged my still mildly spaced bones out of bed and let her in, apologising profusely for my non-show at Gatwick. She was not amused, especially when I laid the blame squarely on the 'shrooms I'd consumed yesterday. They'd clearly derailed my good intentions, I explained, plus of course any chance of making it to the airport on this, or indeed any other day.

She stood hand on hip, a silent raging inferno, those gorgeously pouty lips of hers making me think of wrestling her as soon as possible.

It took a while for her to calmdown, after which she insisted I take her out to buy her a big expensive Christmas present to make up for it, something I'd neglected to do pre-Christmas itself. (Well, she went home to Krakow for ten days, what was I supposed to do? I thought she’d forget about it by the time she got back).

Before that, though, she required numbing to the cirumstances of her journey and my apparent uncaring idiocy. I fetched my bong from the front room, stuffed it full of weed and handed it over with a smile and a box of matches.

She struck a light and drew heavily on the bong, holding her breath, savouring the herb, nodding her appreciation and blew a huge blue cloud out which hovered up in the still warm air under the ceiling in the shape of a crocodile.

She took another monstrous hit and slid the bong over to me. I tentatively asked her about her trip.

“Oh..." she began vaguely, mind slipping away from reality. "I saw picture in magazine..."

"...Of?"

“Of Japanese performance artist who like to strap bread on head. Baguettes over ears, whole loaf over face. Buns in between, just forehead and hair out. He then go out, invite conflict…”

Zosia suggested we smoke another bong for good measure before heading out, and the doorbell rang. I trundled down the hall and opened up to see Weird Bob swaying about on my doorstep again, a set of heavily lidded eyes betraying yet another wasted day in the midst of a drug fug.

"Hey, Bob."

"Hey."

Zosia appeared behind me, resting her stoned head on my shoulders. "Hello Weird Bob," she said. I cringed. Weird Bob is my secret nickname for him, not meant for his ears.

I asked Bob what I could do for him.

Weird Bob said he'd found a clip on YouTube of a camel making a brilliant "Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" sound. Did we fancy coming up to watch it?

I apologised, said we'd love to but Zosia and I were about to head out on a very important shopping trip.

"I love to see it," Zosia enthused, pushing past me.

Weird Bob led her upstairs, throwing an uncertain glance back at me as he went. I showered and changed.

The weather outside was totally freezing. Crisp clear skies, bucketfuls of sunshine.

Immediately after leaving the sanctuary of my flat, Zosia and I found ourselves cast adrift in a cruel, cruel sea of marijuana-induced confusion. Absurdly high, nothing made sense at all. (Glory be!)

Zosia couldn’t face catching the bus to the shops. I admitted the idea of us hanging about at the bus stop feeling strange and paranoid, waiting for one to turn up, squeezing in, standing shoulder to shoulder with everyone else, packed liked sardines, sweating, breathing other people’s foul body odour and bad breath mixed with diesel fumes, worried about laughing uncontrollably in a confined public environment filled me with reservations too.

Zosia suggested we make our way on foot. It was a long way, but my brain was adrift of its moorings, rendering me incapable of mounting any serious vocal opposition to the plan.

And so on foot we did journey.

The streets were throbbing, the sun stealing dazzling reflections from the highest windows, the traffic at a complete standstill in both directions. Impatient drivers were fuming, concrete and metal everywhere, the noise of the cars and lorries all but drowned out by the roar of a passenger jet turning low overhead.

A one-legged man in an electric wheel chair overtook us.

Further on, a homeless bloke with madness hair and filthy clothes sat propped against a wall on cardboard sheets, a mangy mongrel and a can of Special Brew at his feet. I dug about in my pocket and stooped low to drop a handful of loose change in a black hat he’d left on the ground.

The homeless fella and his mutt both looked up with equally cancelled eyes. He aimed some semi-coherent nonsense my way.

“Poor man,” Zosia said. “There but for Dog of Grace.”

“It's the Grace of God and anyway, since when have you had any compassion for the downtrodden?”

“There’s much of me you know not. I have hidden deeps.”

Zosia grinned inanely back at me, like some impossibly beautiful wide-eyed simpleton. We trudged forth.

A bit further on, I stepped out to cross the road without looking and nearly got run over by a cycle courier, who stopped at the curb a little way ahead and snarled back that I was a wanker and that I should watch where I was fucking going.

I shrugged my shoulders and gestured a humble apology, which was met by a simple one-word reply: 'Cunt!'

Charming.

The cyclist remounted and rode off.

In a smart residential street I spied a handsome, smartly dressed blonde woman getting out of a Porsche Cayenne parked up ahead. She must have been fifty if she was a day, but she had a fabulous figure and looked damn tasty from behind. She was with a much younger, yet similarly sexy teenage girl. (Her daughter?)

I watched as they both slinked up the road ahead of us.

I have to say, as I get older, the mature bird holds more and more appeal. I honestly didn’t know which of them I’d rather do, the older one or the younger one. It was too close to call.

“How about both?” my inner demon suggested.

An interesting yet ludicrous notion, but as Socrates said, having a male libido sometimes feels like being chained to a madman.

The smart woman and the girl ducked into a house and I found myself having salacious thoughts about them coming back out, inviting me inside with come hither fingers while Zosia walked on oblivious; of them taking me to the house’s master bedroom, undressing and letting me look at them both naked, whilst I rubbed the back of my knees with a wet candle and mewed.

Sweet Jesus, it was all I could do not to growl out loud.

At the shops, I bought Zosia a black furry coat and got myself a Sly and the Family Stone CD. It took over two hours to achieve.

We bumped into Tom, a musican mate of mine out and about with his new Columbian girlfriend Luz. Together, in a bunch, like a group, we stopped off at an Internet café and got ourselves some hot chocolate.

Zosia and Luz sat opposite each other at one end of the table, Tom and I facing one another at the other end. Tom started banging on about something, a conversation which after a minute or two I zoned out of. Zosia had got into some serious moaning about me. She was clearly still smarting about my airport no show. I'm a totally undependable, useless boyfriend, apparently.

Yawn...

My mind tuned out of the hullabaloo and went walkabout, imagining a new TV show called “Rude Songs for Europe” in which contestants were asked to sing rude versions of pop favourites in keys too low for them.

I leant over and explained the concept to Tom who ran with the idea, converting it into a Eurovision Thong Contest, in which several girls from Eastern European Union countries should be made to parade about in a thong singing rude songs in deep manly voices.

After saying our goodbyes, Zosia and I walked back to mine. We smoked some more bongs and watched Gladiator on the box, followed by several wrestling bouts of marked athleticism.

Discordant fragments

When I were a lad I read somewhere that King Henry VI of England died of consumption. I found it hard to believe royal security could be so lax that someone could just wander in and eat the king.

My girlfriend Zosia is due back from her trip home to Poland tomorrow.

She called me last night to give me details of her flight. She wants me to meet her at the airport. During the call she also took the opportunity to announce her primary goal this year, which apparently is to marry me and get me wandering around our local supermarket with her on Saturday afternoons wearing brightly coloured jerseys she’ll have made for me with my own face knitted into them.

The jersey thing might be a possibility, but marriage?

I don't think so.

The problem is, I’m not in love with Zosia. She's fun and great company, but I just see her as a stop-gap, an interesting distraction until I find a more suitable girlfriend. By suitable, I mean someone who isn’t quite so mad.

I often tell her as much.

In response, she just recites the same verse, something she claims is a well-known poem in her home land.

One day in spring
Today in spring
Three day in spring
Yoghurt pot
Yoghurt pot.

It’s true that physically, Zosia does it for me, though I don’t know where she gets her good looks from. Judging by the photo she keeps by her bedside, her dear old mum resembles the leathery back end of a Buffalo; it often makes me stop and think, wow.

Then again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. (Who is this beholder bloke and how come he has so much beauty in his eye?).

I must admit, when it comes to entertainment, she provides plenty. But then, I am but a simple man of very little brain. I get my biggest thrills (with my togs on and sans a female member of the opposite girl sex) listening to music, playing guitar, stimulating my mind with chemicals and watching football.

So how hard can it be to keep me amused?

So this afternoon, my last day of freedom before Zosia returns (and all hell breaks loose), I decided to treat myself having discovered a foil wrap of magic mushrooms my chum Robert brought round in late November, harvested from the fields around his converted hop house in Kent. He lives near a village called Frant. Sounds more like the sound a bare bottom makes getting up from a plastic chair than a place name.

Anyway, I'd forgotten all about the 'shrooms, lodged as they were all alone at the back of the fridge by the jar of moldy paté. I wasn't at all sure they'd still be any good, but opted to try them nevertheless, washed down with several beers and a couple of bongs for good, trippy measure.

I slumped infront of the TV and watched Arsenal versus Burnley in the 3rd round of the FA Cup live on TV with the sound muted, the lonesome pining blues of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ Shotgun Blues weeping gently from my stereo as I twanged along on my acoustic guitar.

The game kicked off roughly about the same time as the 'shrooms kicked in, which made for an intriguing match.

Twas a bit of a stand off at first, ‘cos Burnley built a trench across the entire width of the pitch and hid in the Cacti until about ten minutes into the game when Arsenal’s center midfielder crossed the halfway line, at which point he was brought down in a hail of fierce ankle biting.

Burnley then went into hiding and waited for an Arsenal search party.

At this point, all Burnley weapons were trained on the trench and the minute one of the Arsenal lads heads popped up, it was immediately ridiculed with caustic northern humour.

Paranoid and unable to stand the pressure of such intense ribbing, the Arsenal goalie panicked, thought they were only laughing at him, picked up the ball and ran crying through the Burnley ranks before scoring a fabulous drop goal from point blank range.

The shot was so powerful; the Burnley keeper was treated for shell shock and minor shrapnel injuries.

One nil.

Second half saw much of the same, except all but one of the Burnley players were substituted for exact look-a-likes, who weren’t footballers.

Cesc Fabregas, being the only one of the Arsenal players to spot this, immediately organised a picnic in the centre circle. After filling his belly with ham sandwiches and Fanta, he gently drifted off to sleep, only to be woken by the sound of rushing wind.

He looked up to see Clichy breaking free of his marker down the left wing with the ball. Clichy went on to chip the advancing (and by now bandaged) Burnley keeper from the edge of the box.

Then against all the odds, the Arsenal manager decided to counter the Burnley look-a-like ploy by gradually replace all his outfield players with midgets, starting in attack, so that by the end of the game the only normal sized Arsenal player left was the keeper.

With ten minutes left on the clock, the Arsenal manager changed tactics. All his outfield midgets were replaced by the real players again, but the keeper was instructed to stay on his knees.

After that, things became a bit hazy.

I remember Weird Bob knocking upon my door at some point. I let him in. He informed me he’d just watched a documentary on DVD about life at the bottom of the sea.

“Apparently,” he said. “There are these huge undersea lakes where these weird fish live that feed on dead whales.”

“Undersea lakes?” I asked, my mind reeling with befuddlement.

“Yeah, they’re created by these different currents of water and shit.”

“With fish that eat dead whales?”

“Yeah, when whales die they fall to the bottom of the sea and these weird fish eat their carcasses.”

Fuck. This sounded serious. “What kind of fish?”

Weird Bob shrugged. “Underwater ones.”