Daddy, whose hopes of buying a house in Italy were at one point as high as the midday sun, has watched them describe a descending arc across the sky before setting behind a korma-coloured mountain of soggy nappies. As a result, most of his days are now spent moping around the place. Disturbingly, I have often caught him eyeing me with that intrigued look a creative and adventurous cook would cast upon a previously unconsidered ingredient. Luckily, there is Mummy, who is the one bright light in this otherwise gloomy harbour, though not without blame either as evidenced by a particularly perplexing dance she frequently performs to Boney M’s Brown Girl in the Ring which she has on a loop.

Come to think of it, there is a good deal about these two that is very unsettling. I have now been observing them for the best part of nine weeks and I have to say their parenting skills – not least their ability to provide me with any acceptable form of entertainment – leaves plenty to be desired. For instance, is it absolutely necessary to hover above my Moses basket first thing in the morning with their mouths hanging open like Count Dracula and his dishevelled lady-friend in what I can only hope is a dreadfully misguided attempt to elicit a smile from me? Far from encouraging me to smile back, it makes me want to shriek with fear. A horror show, is what it is.

Then there is the unending stream of visitors who seem to congregate around the place these days. Overnight, the flat has become the stamping ground for a gaggle of women of a certain age and ample breastage who, without exception, wear tops cut much lower than it would have been seemly for someone half their age. (It is my contention that just as a horse’s age can be determined from a quick glance at its knashers, so too can a woman’s age be revealed – or at least educatedly guessed at – by the expansion of her décolletage.) The acreage of exposed leathery skin is then liberally doused with the sickliest perfumes that can be bought at Superdrug without a prescription, on the off-chance that they might one day bump into George Clooney. Of course, if that day ever comes, Georgey boy is in for the motorboating session of his life; in the meantime, however, the dubious privilege of smelling like potpourri remains all mine.

As you can probably imagine, all this has taken its toll on someone so young. I’m not ashamed to confess occasionally daydreaming about the possibility of a terrible mix-up at the maternity ward, and that in time someone will realise their monstrous error and reunite me with my real parents. But even I can see that the odds are stacked against it, as I apparently bear more than a passing resemblance to Daddy. My only hope now comes from the occasional mention of a Nigerian toilet attendant at Spearmint Rhino, though I suspect this to be one of Daddy’s ‘jokes’. I am employing the quotes here because although he makes a lot of these jokes, I am yet to see anyone laugh at any of them, and this particular one tends to cause Mummy to purse her lips further than usual.

And in case you’re wondering, yes, I have written to the Jeremy Kyle show about this matter as I believe all possible avenues should be explored. In the end, it may well be that Peter Cushing and his wild-haired girlfriend here really are my parents and that I’m stuck with them for the duration.

Outside, the world looks an exciting place where people can enter TV talent contests or play online bingo; in here th… ah, there goes the doorbell again. The scent of patchouli oil from the previous visitor still clings to my skin like the tentacles of an octopus with separation issues, but one ploughs on with already characteristic stoicism. Daddy is probably right: heroism does indeed come in many guises.

An admirable idea, I’m sure you’ll agree. But that was yesterday and since I missed the deadline for sending the t-shirt, I decided to write this post instead because I just couldn’t pass this opportunity to express my feelings of gratitude.

It must be a source of great distress to our brave boys and girls that the latte-swigging, Guardian-reading lefties scoff and roll their eyes whenever an idea as noble as this is suggested. What our soldiers would like is for a bit of appreciation from the British public; you know, perhaps nothing quite as OTT as what the American soldiers get back home; the red carpet treatment would suffice. They do, after all, lay their lives on the line for us, and as Demi Moore once famously said: “They stand on that wall and say ‘nothing will happen to you, not on my watch’” (assuming there are no friendly fire incidents). Stirring stuff indeed. Mr Kipling, as well as making exceedingly good cakes, wrote a bit of kaki-nosed poetry in his spare time too. He called this phenomenon “mocking those who guard you while you sleep”.

Oh and how they mock. What those tree-hugging, sandal-wearing beardy-weirdies don’t realise is that when those impressionable young people joined up, it had nothing to do with the recruitment ads on TV which implied that joining the army is a lot of fun really; all that climbing up and skiing down mountains, “playing” with a lot of hi-tech kit, or even learning to drive through an unlit wooded area instead of joy-riding around the backstreets of Southshields. Nor, as they point out between gulps of fruit tea and mouthfuls of muesli, did they join because of later ads which suggested that being in the army would make them a lot more attractive to the opposite sex. You know the sort of thing: in them, female officers could expect leering men in bars to become completely incapacitated, and sometimes even soil themselves, in anticipation of the kinky sex that lay ahead, after introducing themselves as Captain Dimwit and Lieutenant Spongebrains. Equally, male officers could expect women to become so up-for-it once they listened to the two bragging pilots discussing who was better at landing helicopters in a storm, that a simple tap on the shoulder would automatically cause their knickers to fall down around their ankles.

Nope. They are too bright and perceptive to fall for that kind of trickery. They joined because they wanted to make a difference. Like the gallant Great War soldier, guided by the romantic image of charging at an enemy machinegun turret armed only with a single-shot rifle and bayonet, they wanted to combat the forces of evil. They are also intelligent enough to understand that their superiors know best, and it is not up to them to question orders, however amoral or irrational they may appear. They comprehend at once that their commanding officers are acting on behalf of Queen and Country, and Her Majesty is, after all, the Head of the Church and as such instinctively knows God’s will.

It’s all about courage, you see – a concept which the vegetable protein-munching, raspberry frappuccino-guzzling liberals cannot grasp. It takes courage to press that red button knowing that innocent people are going to die, just like it takes balls the size of watermelons to invade a country to depose a tyrannical regime which we helped implement and supported in the first place. All that, and their faces still manage to retain their usual pallor.

It is about time that we recognised that sort of bravery in this country. For my part, I would like to say a huge thank you to those brave boys and girls out there doing their bit. Thank you for making our country richer with the extra oil. For me personally it has been a huge bonus. Being a curvaceous 25-stone person, I can now afford to fill my two-ton 4×4 with petrol and drive to McDonald’s for my daily extra large big mac, instead of having to walk the twenty-minute round trip. And for all that, I shall be eternally grateful.

Now, since I missed the chance to send the t-shirt that I designed, I thought I might post what I came up with here. I hope you like it:

A ‘V’ for Victory, of course.

Oh and I do hope that you will forgive the placard-carrying, pink champagne-sipping socialists for their unpatriotic dissent. Forgive them for they know not what they say. It says so in the Bible. You understand, I’m sure, that the main reason for wreaking such havoc around the world is so that we can all express our opinions freely without fear of persecution.

Now praise the lord and go kill them all. And remember, it’s not rape if they’re dead.

I go out for a walk in town. I descend the first floor steps, out into the courtyard and under the archway which supports the working clock tower complete with signature weathervane. Apparently it was built by a man named Samson Fox – an ancestor, it turns out, of James and Edward Fox, for those of you who only believe in the value of something if it has a celebrity connection – as a stable block for Grove House with the intention of not only lodging the future King Edward VII’s horses on his visits to Yorkshire, but also to provide them with that modern essential, the equine Turkish bath.

As I step out onto the street pavement I instinctively look over to my left towards the house which a few months ago was the focus of intense concentration by the police. They were there for a good three days, a car parked adjacent to the house with two police officers standing behind it staring intently towards the house. The rest of the street was cordoned off and the residents were told ‘not to go out’. It transpired that a man inside the house was armed and refusing to come out. The residents became prisoners in their own homes for those two days or so. Today everything seems to be back to normal, apart from a mixed group of teenagers perched on the bench drinking what looks suspiciously like lager. Over the years they went from pesky children shouting abuse at passers-by to much more threatening near-adults.

In town I visit the only two bookshops, if you count WHSmith. They seem of late to have been invaded by books with emotive covers featuring angelic looking children and bearing titles which are variations on “Please Daddy No”. In the pedestrianised Cambridge Street, Rudy, the local ‘character’, walks around shouting into a karaoke machine what sounds like a rock version of Bright Eyes, stopping occasionally to chat to teenagers. On my walk, he is the only person to look me directly in the eyes and say hello. He calls me ‘brother’, which I haven’t been able to ascertain whether it is because of the connection between our skin tones or whether this is how he addresses everyone. On sunny days, he tends to sit in the middle of the walkway cross-legged and staring into the sun.

Harrogate seems to possess that dangerous combination of sheltered provinciality and a past associated with nobility and royalty. Indeed, one often has the impression that everything in Harrogate has a royal connection: streets, pubs, hotels, squares. Perhaps for this reason, it has always struck me as a town with ideas above its station; something acquired, no doubt, through hundreds of years of royal schmoozing. In the days when its foul-tasting sulphur and iron rich water was seen as a blanket cure for any illness beyond the grasp of medicine’s rather petite hands, it became a haven for medical lost causes, not least the members of whichever royal household happened to be reigning at the time. They still come now, though no longer to drink the water. Prince Charles visits every year, apparently, on Valentine’s Day. I’ve seen him in one such occasion, coming out of Betty’s tearooms to plant a tree in the Cenotaph square under the adoring gaze of a crowd of royal groupies frantically waving their miniature Union Jacks.

Nowadays Harrogate has little more to boast about than the International Conference Centre and the Great Yorkshire Show, which plays havoc with the already heavy traffic system. But its previous history has left its citizens with a disproportional level of hubris and quaint old-fashioned values. In the cafes, demure old ladies daintily eat their sponge cakes and sip their tea, while no doubt discussing the latest royal visit and speculating on the next one. For me, Harrogate’s a rather neat metaphor for life: you shuffle between banks and shops, ignoring the significance of the war memorial, until eventually, overcome with tiredness, you end up down in the Valley Gardens for a long rest.

When I return home, I notice the teenagers have dispersed. As I reach the archway entrance, I see a girl crouched down, her back against the wall. She looks like she is in trouble and I prepare to ask if she needs help. But as I approach, I notice a stream filling in the gaps between the smooth cobbles, the source of which appears to be somewhere under her skirt. Steam rises from it like fog hovering over a river. She looks up and sees me, and although she reacts in a suitably sheepish manner, manages simply to say:

“As if…”

“Through there”, she says pointing to the tree. I make my way in gingerly, pushing the branches aside with one hand and holding the spade with the other. The earth here is dry, unaffected it would seem by the recent diluvial weather. I examine the body: in surprisingly good condition considering it has probably been here for a week, when he was first reported missing. 

I half-heartedly begin to dig but this is not the kind of work that accommodates half-heartedness, and the arid ground refuses to yield. Why now, I think aggrieved by recent events. His stubbornness and refusal to respond to reason is quite exasperating. For someone who spent his entire life regularly exercising and eating healthily, why would he give up so easily? 

“I am my own doctor”, he had said, clearly irritated by our concerned badgering. People in their sixties, even their seventies, are not considered old anymore, and yet at the first sign of trouble he expects the worst. Confronted with the headlights of a potential death sentence delivered by a doctor decades his junior, he becomes paralysed by fear. 

“Doctors are young and would have no interest in treating someone my age. If I went into hospital, I probably wouldn’t come out alive”, he had said looking emaciated like a prisoner of war. His distrust of doctors seems to stem from his belief that they are directly responsible for his wife’s death nearly fourteen years ago, when she had slipped into a hepatic coma. The doctors, having given up on her, withheld food and water, which, although counterintuitive since the liver is an organ capable of regeneration, is apparently standard practice in England. 

I look up at her through the leaves. She is standing on the concrete path that surrounds the house, arms anxiously folded across her chest. I didn’t know her when her mother died. Despite her unflagging cheerfulness, I have often noticed a well concealed sadness in her eyes and an almost imperceptible quiver of the lips, disguised by a solemn look of remembrance, particularly whilst relating a recurring dream: in it her mother is still alive, having made a full recovery from her coma, and life has once again returned to normal. But her narrative ends there. She doesn’t speak of the pain that each time she awakes to realise it was only a dream must cause her. Now expecting her first child, our first child, this. I stab at the soil with renewed vigour, bitten again by the untimeliness of events. 

The hole looks deep enough (how deep is deep enough?) and I gently scoop the animal up. He is lying on his side in a languid stretch and disconcertingly has his eyes open, staring unseeingly ahead. It must have been one of those cases often told in cat-lore in which the poor animal, sensing his time was up, decided to make his way to a secluded spot to accept his fate. Apparently he was around fifteen years old. Had he shown signs of illness, I wonder? Even if he had, it is unlikely his owner would have taken him to a vet, no doubt worried that they might put the animal to sleep. 

My job here is done and I walk back across the long grass to where she is standing. In the distance the accusing whirr of a lawnmower is cranked into life as we leave the garden in a silent embrace.

Full of tricks, this old girl. Even before you arrive, you are already bound by her demands and caprices. They shall only reach me by boat, she determined, evidently understanding the romantic appeal conveyed by this simple trick. She also insists that you approach her from a certain angle, the light catching her just so during what is a vulnerable moment in the traveller’s suggestible heart. There she sits, devastatingly beautiful, in a pose that is at once demure and provocative, the cityscape equivalent of the Mona Lisa.

She is dressed in the finery designed for her with the natural rhythms of daily life; style and colour coordination cunningly interwoven for maximum visual effect. As well as the long liquid emerald necklace carelessly draped over her body, she is adorned with the treasures created by her many artistic sons. And thus she bloomed like a flower ready for the bees, and after surveying her reflection on the green waters of the Venetian Lagoon and approving of what she saw, she declared: Let them come. And come they did in their droves.

Throughout the centuries, she has ensured that she mingled with the right sort of people: traders and noblemen, powerful families and the clergy. All those years spent in the company of illustrious patrons have given her a charismatic air of intrigue. But all that was a long time ago, in the days when the delicate flower of youth still coloured her soft cheeks. In more recent years, she has had to make do with a different brand of visitor, in unsightly shorts and baseball caps bearing sports logos charging through her streets in a manner which closely resembles a stampede of bulls, digital cameras dangling from their lanyards. But it doesn’t matter to this once high class lady of the night; perhaps not realising that, if anything, her appeal has only increased with age, she decided not to be too picky about the sort of people she receives into her arms – as long as they are capable of keeping her in the manner to which she is accustomed.

And I, who despite being able to see through her array of searing stares and studied gestures of seduction, am no less susceptible to her charms than any other punter. Of course, I fall for the old girl – we all do. I readily surrender my heart and my wallet, throwing money at her with the abandon of a sailor docking at some port after months at sea. But beware: in the morning, still heady with her scent and dishevelled from the previous night’s excesses, and with the insides of your pockets turned out, do not expect her to return your amorous advances – this flighty girl, having hollowed her pound of flesh out of your chest, will have moved on to her next conquest.

Exhausted from all the exertions and expense of getting to know this grand old lady better, I stop on the Rialto Bridge for a contemplative cigarette. I stare out over her liquid emerald necklace, at the tourists trundling back and forth and the bustling industriousness of the Canal, and the pathos of this beautiful old tart hits me. Yesterday I was ready to surrender all my worldly goods and move in with her without a thought for where my next meal would come from. Today I am just another washed-out shipwreck, thinking of a way to avoid the boat that is poised to whisk me away.

I peer behind me at a down-and-out who is sitting on the steps of the bridge. He sits with downcast eyes, smoothing his hair with the last bit of pride that is left in him. Propped up against him is a sign with a message in Italian: no home, no family. please help. Clearly another soul loved and rejected by this fickle lady, hollow-chested and unable to let go. The city is littered with them, and I am suddenly seized by a rush of empathy for the poor bastard. I know how you feel, old chap, I know how you feel…

SH: Mr President, I have some good news and some bad news.

GWB: Okay, give me the good news first.

SH: Sir, our analysts have looked at the situation in Iraq and concluded that if things continue as they are, the people will end up eating shit.

GWB: I asked for the good news first, Steve. Gee!

SH: That is the good news, sir; the bad news is that some experts have already pointed out that there won’t be enough shit to go around.

GWB: No problem. We’ll send them some of our own shit, American shit, the best shit in the world. Hell, we could even have a Shit for Oil Programme, kill two terrorists with one shot, as it were… Anything else?

SH: Well, I have also been consulting members of the senate and the news is that the Republicans are revolting.

GWB: You’re telling me… I myself only joined because of daddy.

SH: I mean on Iraq. They want troops withdrawn as soon as possible.

GWB: I don’t get these people. Since this conflict began probably as many innocent people have died as would have under Sadam anyway, give or take a few hundred thousand.

SH: Give or take… No, sir, the main concern they cite is the possible loss of votes for the party.

GWB (exasperated): If only we could find a strong leader for Iraq, Steve, someone able to keep Sunnis and Shias alike in check.

SH: Someone like Sadam, perhaps?

GWB: Yeah! Where’s Sadam when you need him?

SH: We executed him, sir.

GWB: Couldn’t one of our scientists bring him back to life? What sort of decomposition state would he be in now?

SH: Uh, I don’t think our science is that advanced yet, sir.

GWB: What about re-animation through some kind of electric shock therapy? Worked with Yeltsin.

SH: I think one of the requirements is that the ‘patient’ is at least breathing for it to work, sir. And anyhow, the public wouldn’t buy it. Witnesses filmed his execution with their cellular phones, remember?

GWB: Maybe we could say we executed one of his stooges by mistake. Things get confused in war, Steve.

SH (incredulous): Yes, Mr President.

GWB (wistful): I miss the good ol’ days when Daddy was president… Back then we could do anything we liked and no one cared. Hell, we even carpet-bombed Panama without too much hassle from the media. Now you can’t break wind without the New York Times sniffing the air.

SH: Technology has shrunk the planet, sir. Everyone agrees it’s a good thing.

GWB (not listening): Tell you the truth, Steve, I never was very fond of those Iraqis.

Steve gets up to leave.

GWB: You’re a smart man, Steve. You have all these degrees and you even know when to insert an apostrophe in ‘its’. Can you answer me this one question?

SH: Sir?

GWB: Just how did our oil end up under Iraqi soil?

SH: …

“Good day?” I ask. 

She gives me a cheerful “Uhu” before embarking on her habitual meticulous description of it, who said what to whom, jokes told, problems remedied – including, sadly, dull technical detail. I have become an expert at filtering out the unnecessary bits, switching off then on again at appropriate moments, responding accordingly.  

Engrossed with the tennis, I make polite listening noises while keeping my eyes on the television. Roger Federer is in imperious form, the epitome of elegance, dishing out a master class to his wretched opponent. Sometimes he gives the impression of superhuman invulnerability, a messiah with a tennis racquet in his hand. One can’t help but feel that if Jesus himself had opted for a career on the ATP tour instead of saving the ungrateful bastards, he would play exactly like Federer. 

“… but you know I didn’t think anything of it…”, she is saying. 

“Yeah.” 

“Well, I thought I’d run a check, just in case…” 

Federer now makes an impossible cross-court shot look like the most natural thing in the world. He appears to be operating in a different space-time continuum from us mere mortals, finding time to ensure his shots are not only perfectly timed and placed, but that they are executed with casual elegance. 

“… It was actually the first time I used the kit…”, she is saying. 

It’s the change-over break, and the camera hovers, then settles on a shot of Virginia Wade in the crowd prodding a top molar with her little finger then eating whatever she managed to dig out. 

“Ughh”, I groan. 

She stops talking mid-sentence, then says coldly, “You don’t seem interested in what I’m telling you”. 

“I am! Please continue”, I say, without looking away from the TV, then back at her when no further sound is emitted. Clearly sulking now. But it will have to wait, Federer is in the middle of a fantastic rally, this time seemingly incapable of finding a clean winner or forcing an error from his opponent, who looks like a man rescued from a drowning accident, his hair plastered to his face with sweat. Federer’s headband, on the other hand, looks obsolete, an affectation. 

Still silence. I glance back at her. An accusatory stare now. 

“What’s wrong?”, I ask. 

“Nothing, I hope. I just thought you’d be a little more thrilled at the prospect of becoming a father for the first time”, she says in a husky monotone. 

I look back at the TV slack-jawed, now barely able to take in what I’m looking at: the rally has finally come to an end, and the big champion, the man seemingly able to predict where his opponent’s shots are going to land before they are even played, looks stunned too as a clean winner fizzes past his nose.

The trouble with standing at a street corner in a small northern town for more than, say, two consecutive hours, is that it quickly sends the local residents into panic mode. Granted, being endowed with the appearance of a Colombian drug cartel member may bump up their anxiety levels ever so slightly, maybe even send one or two neighbourhood watchers to the casualty department to be treated for hyperventilation, though I suspect anyone who hasn’t been drinking in the local pub for at least five years would be gazed at with similar distrust.

“Counting queue lengths? I would much rather be taken prisoner by the Khmer Rouge”, I told my boss when he tentatively enquired about my availability for the job. “It’s just not going to happen.”

“Please,” he said cajolingly, “it’s only for one day. We can’t find anyone else to do it”.

“Tough”, I said unsympathetically, and determined not to cave in this time.

A substantial increase on my usual rate of pay later, and we came to the agreement that perhaps, after all, the prospect wasn’t as bad as it had seemed at first.

Clowne is as unremarkable a town as anyone could dream up. And I, the fool, stood on an equally unremarkable street corner, an alien from outer space, a mowgli, captured and displayed on the town’s autopsy table for the residents to gawk at, counting the number of vehicles queuing at the traffic lights each time they changed to green, while reflecting that spending time with Pol Pot would indeed have been far more preferable.

It is just as well that my parents are safely tucked away in Brazil, or they might demand I refund them the money they invested in my education.

A spider has been living in the top right corner of the windscreen for the good part of a year now. Self-satisfied and sadistic (it knows I don’t kill spiders), it grows fatter every day, quickly rushing out of its mysterious hiding place to expertly wrap yet another hapless victim in its sticky thread. I roll my eyes disapprovingly and grimace in disgust. The spider winks at me conspiratorially, in acknowledgement of our unspoken agreement of mutual interest, before disappearing again.

That’s what I’ve become: a bug cultivator and spider accomplice. I take care not to kill anything while setting up my cameras, delicately avoiding the orb-weavers, waiting for a passing ant before setting the equipment down on the ground, coaxing greenflies out of harm’s way. The other day, I was horrified to discover I accidentally trod on a butterfly, damaging its wings while its useless body twitched helplessly. Last week I was almost grief-stricken when I inadvertently squashed my van’s resident ladybird after winding the window shut.

But it wasn’t always so. As all boys worth their salt, and reassuringly displaying the cruelty that uniquely characterises our species, my brother and I took great pride in the sophistication and inventiveness of our methods for killing insects. A favourite was to set fire to saúva ants (large black ants with a hard bulbous body and a very painful bite) using only a magnifying glass and the hot Brazilian midday sun. We marvelled at the spectacular way in which they burst into flames with a fizzing rasp, like the striking of a match. There may have been countless victims before we were spotted by our father, who wasn’t impressed.

“If you haven’t given it life, what gives you the right to take it away?”, he asked, quite reasonably but with fire in his eyes.The remark hit home, and from then on we resolved to make amends by providing crickets with helicopter rides: a maximum of two crickets (for extra leg room and comfort) would be placed in the see-through cockpit of the toy helicopter followed by a swift tug of the fishing line wrapped around the base on which the helicopter sat, rotating the propellers and sending it skyward. It’s the least we could do.

Last night, arriving home late, I noticed a dead bumblebee on the otherwise bare dining table. It lay on its back motionless with its satin black and Dayglo furriness and powerful short legs facing the ceiling. I tentatively give it a tap to ascertain it is dead. Nothing, completely stiff. Tired, I leave the room and forget about it.This morning I sit down to eat breakfast and as I place the cereal bowl on the table I notice with distaste the bumblebee is still there, now under a patch of sunlight. I resolve to deal with it after breakfast.I put some yoghurt on the cereal and then drizzle it with honey, and since it is impossible to transfer honey from its jar onto another utensil without dripping it, some of it ends up on the table, a good six inches away from the dead bumblebee. Right on cue, it begins to twitch. I flip it onto its legs but all it can do is raise them pathetically without going anywhere. I push it closer to the honey and it locks its sucker onto it. Its wings vibrate, suddenly kicked into life again, like Popeye after eating a can of spinach. Fascinated, I watch it for a few seconds, then go into the bedroom and fumble around the drawers. When I return brandishing a magnifying glass I am just in time to watch it fly out of the window.

I have been avoiding Trowell Services since a peculiar incident which took place there a couple of years ago. It was around 3 a.m. when I went in and the station was deserted, a grotesque Mary Celeste with inedible food and unpalatable prices. That day I could have served myself with the most expensive revolting food money can buy for free as the place looked literally abandoned. “No doubt asleep on the floor behind the counter”, I reasoned to myself as I made my way to the toilets.

Standing facing the urinals, there was a deathly silence broken by a sudden shuffling sound. I turned and looked towards the cubicles. All doors were open apart from the one furthest away. My gaze automatically dropped to the gap under the cubicles and there came that shuffling sound again followed by a mop of blond frizzy hair sliding under the partition into the neighbouring cubicle. I stood motionless for a second as the mop then, exorcist-like, slowly rotated to look me directly in the eyes. Had I not been weeing already, it is quite probable I would have done so at this point. Even so, as I ran from the toilets, I didn’t care whether or not I had quite finished what I had gone in to do.

Now facing the same urinal I did that night, I glance over my left shoulder at the cubicle once again, and it then becomes clear I must have imagined the whole scene: the partition gaps are not wide enough to fit a head through it. Could I really have been hallucinating?

Presently at the pump, I hold the trigger until it clicks to signify the tank is full. I thrash it about to clear any fuel left in the nozzle and as I draw it out a stream of diesel dribbles down my expensive Diesel jeans. I look up and notice I am being observed by a woman with blonde frizzy hair who is using the other side of my pump. She smiles half amused, half flirting.

“No matter how much you shake it, some always ends up down your trousers”, I say.

“Your flies are open”, she says.

bridge parapet
bungeeless jump
sodden love letter
slowly unclenched
unsent
afloat

It was with these guilty thoughts in mind that we agreed recently to cut out meat from our menu and try and replace it with soya protein meals. But I have to admit this arrangement hasn’t been going too well, and a couple of weeks into it, the prospect of eating another battered tofu escalope has weakened my resolve somewhat. I decided to say nothing on the subject, opting instead to suffer in silence.

I am thus lost in thought, quietly brooding on this matter when the phone rings.

‘Hello?’, I answer. A heavy pause follows, which suggests either a stalker or an assassin – possibly both. Then I hear the voice of a little girl.

‘Helloooo’, she coos sweetly, in a pitch nature has devised for melting the hearts of hard-boiled old grumps like me.

‘Helloooo’, I coo back. ‘Who’s this?’, I say, in an unusually pleasant tone to a caller who clearly didn’t intend to speak to me. She lets out a little delighted giggle, as if me claiming not to know who she is was a regular teasing game we play.

‘You know who it is… It’s me, Charlotte’, she says.

‘Oh hello, Charlotte, and who do you suspect me to be?’

Another giggle.

‘Stop it! You’re my uncle.’ 

A sudden life-flashing-before-my-eyes moment takes place in which I try to recall if any of my brothers have fathered a child named Charlotte. One of them does have an overactive gland, but it’s only a thyroid.

‘Charlotte, I think you’ve dialled th…’, but she interrupts me, ‘No, listen uncle, when you come for lunch later, if you come at eleven we’ll be taking the dog for a walk before lunch, and you can bring Amy too if you like. Mummy is cooking roast lamb.’

‘No, you see, I erm… Roast lamb, you say?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Mint sauce too?’ 

‘Yeah, lots.’  

‘Charlotte, sweetie, uncle’s memory is terrible lately. What’s the address again?’