Jim Brown was in his new conservatory admiring the windows he had just
polished.His 82nd birthday was coming up in a few days
Marie,his stunningly attractive yet irritable,nasty and over educated
wife,a leading authority on Wittgenstein and most likely suffering from
Asperger’s syndrome into the bargain,….oh a cliche prone author too—!
had made a huge whole orange cake and planned a large gathering of friends
to celebrate his survival for so long whilst married to her,not easy she
knows.
He heard a sharp tapping on the door.
There lay Lucy their next door neighbour spying through the key hole.
“Are you on your own?” she queried tersely yet rudely.
“No, yet I’m suffering from chronic existential anxiety” Bill lied politely.
“Well,I just saw Martina on her second hand Raleigh bike going to the
market or the Charity Shop or possibly leaving home for ever….”
“Well,I still have the cat here”,he whispered loudly as if he were free
associating in a dream
“Let me in and make me some coffee” she asked courteously,
“She’s an odd one” the cat Emile thought naughtily.
“Where’s my Carnation cat milk?”
“Real or instant?” Simon answered suavely yet naturally.
“Won’t it wash off your brand new coral lipstick from Chanel of Paris?…
not to mention your factor 60 sunblock.”
“God’s whiskers” she murmured quaintly to herself.
“How does he know it’s Chanel?
Is he a spy or what?
Is he in M.I.5?”
John got some instant coffee and debated whether to put in a little LSD to
add some visions to their morning!No,a short breathing exercise would do
he concluded after 9 minutes of obsessive anxiety.
He sat down in his favorite old wooden Habitat chair having poured the
coffee into some old plastic mugs.
“Did you know Habitat is going b..b bankrupt?” she brightly stuttered
turning pink with happiness and the menopause which so far had lasted over
30 years.
Suddenly Lucy sat down on Bert’s lap and began to kiss his right eyelid
“Careful,my darling!” he muttered insensibly.
He was savouring the annoyingly uncommon pleasure when the chair fell to
pieces as it frequently did at such times, throwing the elderly but
versatile and experienced couple down onto the new Mary Quant patterned
pure New Zealand lambs wool carpet.Suddenly they heard the peal of Mary’s
bicycle bell.Shortly she walked into the room carrying 78 bags of
groceries for the birthday party.
“What’s going on here ?”she murmured seductively in a piercing shriek.
“I’m so sorry,Jenny,please accept my apologies,he has this thing about
chairs.It’s a fetish,I believe,according to Sinald Floyd.””
“Have you got your mobile?” shrieked Tom agonisedly in a whisper.
”I can’t get up.” he screamed softly.”Am I dead?”
“What cannot stand up must forever remain lying down” As my old philosophy
tutor at Cambridge used to say,muttered Marty.
“Why,that’s bit extreme,” said Jane uneasily yet gallantly.
.”MY tutor said “Who cannot speak must forever remain silent.”
“Oh,who was your tutor?”
“Elizabeth Ansconbe!” Amy admitted furtively.”She knew Wittgetensin well.”
“Mine was Iris Murdoch!” called out Alf.
Later they heard a silent siren.It was the emergency ambulance.
Dick,the paramedic bounded into the room.
“It’s this chair” said Marie urbanely.
“Can you mend it for me? My husband can’t manage without it!”
“Anything else,madam?” Rick queried anxiously.
“Any coal to fetch in,tins to open,blocked toilets?”
“Later maybe.”
Danny looked at Joan.
“Your eyes look like two deep pools in the Caspian sea.”
he whispered into her left ear.
“Are you on another creative writing course?”she quipped urbanely.
“Yes, we’re on eyes at the moment;what colour is that eyeshadow you have
on.”
“This is called winter teal” She admitted uneasily yet seductively.
“Did you know I’m a transvestite?” he admitted happily her.
“Yes”,she replied dishonestly.Kitty like to give an impression of
omniscience owing to her ontological insecurity and her ignorance of
theology and also her narrowly trained mathematical mind.
Unfortunately that frequently gave men the wrong impression.
Mamie cried out to Al,
“Get on with it,my sweetie!” So he took out a big tube of glue from his
jeans’ pocket and set to work reconstructing the chair.
“Oh,dear,Stewart looks a bit odd”
“!No,he looks quite prime to me.”
“Is he an integer?!”
“No, he’s a transcendental real number”
“He’s a number all right.”
“Never mind,we’ve just got new wheelie bins so I’ll put him out with the
rubbish,”
Marty joked on hearing Amy’s remarks to Zach.
But Simon was not yet dead.He merely had fallen asleep.
He dreamed of his days at Oxgridge University studying illogic and unreason
with Rudolphina Catnap,the famous female philosopher.Oh,happy,happy days!
Danny made the ladies some Ceylon tea in the fabulous oak kitchen with its
pure linen curtains in raspberry beige. and its black enamel sink with
matching double oven and microwave.”Why no halogen?”Iris Murdoch might
have asked.
“What is a human life,”he pondered.He was studying logic as well as writing.
He began to tremble like a leaf in the wind to use a freshly recycled old
cliche.
“Help” he called,”I’m having a panic attack.Hurry I’m dying,I believe.I
need a priest“
“You can’t have a panic attack,” shouted Marianne
“Paramedics heal themselves.”
“Does God heal those who heal themselves he wondered as he lay under a pile
of broken china?”
“Where’s the tea?” called the ladies.
Ah,if only Wittgenstein were here,he would know,thought Emile.
But I disagree.Only God would know that and He won’t say usually as he
speaks another language known only to the few.Though sometimes one may
hear it on the wind deep in a thick forest.
That’s what I believe.
Here endeth the first lesson… so be off!
How my heart sings 