Stan was outside polishing both his balding his head and the brass doorstep.”My,these microfiber cloths are wonderful” he thought joyfully.Mary was out taking a large bag of unneeded clothes to the Oxfam Charity Shop.Thank God!,thought Stan…that wardrobe is going to burst one day and spray her clothes all over the room like …what? Not cannon balls,maybe like the ghosts of dead giant sized bats!
Suddenly he heard a loud cry and then he felt a pair of hands fondling the top of his bald head.
“Eeh,no rest for the wicked,even at 81,” he screamed.He staggered to his feet and rubbed his knees.
“Just give me a hand” ,he said,”I’ll have to stretch my hamstrings.They tighten up so.”
“I’ll stretch them for you!” Annie whispered roguishly.Stan leant forward to touch his toes and she could not resist the temptation to give his bottom a tender slap.
“For Pete‘s sake,Annie” he shouted turbulently.
“Someone might see that.”
“Don’t worry,there’s no-one around at this time of the day” she tittered.
“I can’t help it anyway.I just love your ass.That’s what women like.”
“Do you normally slap the things you love?” Stan enquired politely yet firmly….what next?
“And furthermore “ass” is an American expression.
“Well,I’ve always been fond of Americans,”she whispered naughtily.
Stan recalled that her son had borne a strong resemblance to Bill Clinton but refrained from mentioning this.Anway Annie had never been to Oxford,as far as he knew and Clinton was only there for a year…though a man could father many children in a year as the terms at Oxford were only eight weeks long… leaving 28 weeks vacation.
“What do you think of my ass?” she murmered humorously.
“I’d rather have a donkey.” he said childishly.
“I could ride on it into the town.”
“You are so horrible,Stan.You never pass any jocular yet charming remarks about my body.”
“I never knew you lacked confidence in that department,” he said peevishly.
“Besides,you know I prefer to show my feelings non verbally!
With that he pretended to kick Annie on the butt with his Hotter laced up shoes.
“Now then,what’s going on here.You seem like a couple of teenagers!”
It was Dave,the paramedic.
He had been lying behind the wheelie bins,all three bins standing plaintively in the tiny front garden, where once fragrant red roses had bloomed in summer and scratched people with their thorns all the rest of the year.
“I’m an MI5 spy,and I’ve been reading your blog,Mr Brown.”
“I’m not called Brown”,said Stan proudly.
“Refuses to accept reality,”Dave wrote in his little notepad with some blood he had taken from himself earlier,
“Jesus Christ!”,said Stan.
“Now,now” said Dave,”that’s not your name,
“No my name is Tan,not Brown,you’ve been reading the wrong blog!”
“Stan Tan!”
Dave appeared crestfallen,
“Any chairs need mending today?”
“My what beautiful ears you have,sweetheart,”he said to Annie,
“They look like sea shells,”
“Your eyes are like shallow pools in Lake Windermere during a thunderstorm.”Annie replied womanfully.
“Are you still a transvestite?” she followed on incoherently.
“And how about my ass?”
“I never knew you had an ass.Is it in the back garden?
I had a mystical experience and now I’m a Zen Bhuddist”
“How did that happen?” demanded Stan querulously.
“Well,I was knitting myself a Shetland lace sweater in pale blue mohair,and I suddenly had the feeling that everything was interwoven.
Going forward or backwards,sideways or straight ahead,it is all part of the warp and weft of life.”
“Mistakes don’t matter” he continued wildly his eyes gleaming like the preacher’s at Hyde Park Corner
“Oh,yes,they do,”Annie said pouting her full lips,cherry pink by courtesy of L’Oreal of Paris and New York
“As I was saying..,”
“Dingle,dongle,dingle,dongle”…
Emile the cat ran out expectantly,knowing the sound of a human imitating a bicycle bell.He was already salivating expectantly.
Dave dived back behind the wheelie bins.
Stan polished the brass step and Annie disappeared in a puff of smoke.
It was Mary’s famous imitation of a bicycle bell that had alerted them all to her imminent return from the Oxfam shop,fortunately.
In fact Mary knew everything but didn’t want them to know she knew,for if she knew and they knew she knew,she knew it would make life too complex.she just knew it,for sure.I know she knew,though she doesn’t know that I knew.
“Don’t they make bike bells any more?” Dave boringly wondered as he carried on reading the new life of the poet Emily Dickinson named
“A loaded gun.”
He had thought it was an army training manual,but,hey,mistakes don’t matter!
Or do they?
Read the next instalment yesterday at your local newsagent,free at the point of service just like the NHS and watch your ass as you never know who else is watching it.Though as you will never know,this fact will never impinge on you.Though you may feel a kind of tingling sometimes…
You know it makes sense!Sometimes,at least.
I have had to imitate a bicycle bell all my life till now….I have real bell on my bike..how cool is that?
How my heart sings 