Their names changed frequently

Art by Katherine [ from photo of my leg with a bleeding insect bite]

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 sheknows.

He heard a sharp tapping on the door.

There lay Lucy   their next door neighbour   spying through the keyhole.

“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 lambswool carpet.Suddenly they heard the peal of Mary’sbicycle 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  loud 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.

“Yes”,she replied dishonestly

.Kitty liked  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… no more today