SWIMMERS

 

Betty Boothby, the hotpot beer pourer at Lance a Duck, has only gone and got the swimming bug. Not the tummy trot, thicko, she’s doing widths and lengths like a duck in a summer pond. And she’s good! The girl’s got stamina. So she’s going to lard up and swim over and plant her arse on some Normandy rock or other. Her swimming mate, her personal trainer, gets under her shit and is a nasty sort called Paddle Foot Steve. Says the North Atlantic whalers are on the way every time she gets into the channel. And he guzzles her Lucozade sport drink and eats her wotsits when she’s not looking: what a fucker! Anyway, funny thing is, just as she spies the Tricolour on some French nonce’s beachside garden, she’s harpooned by a Jap whaler. Don’t make him right or nothing, he’s a fucker after all, but it is funny: funny in sad way that makes you think. Poor bloody Betty, didn’t deserve that, did she?

HUNTING BUTTERFLIES

 

HUNTING BUTTERFLIES

Typical Polar Bear Pete, Eskimo Sid, Marjorie or Marj (depending who’s asking) and Nancy Palmer are a bunch of sour grapes: always arguing and chewing at the wrong end of things. Now they’re hunting butterflies and Nancy Palmer has gone and got a pearl-bordered flittirally stuck on the back of his hand.

‘That’s rare, that is,’ says Marj.

‘Might be worth something,’ adds Typical.

‘I’ll jar it and anaesthetise it for good,’ says Eskimo Sid.

‘You don’t kill it if it’s rare,’ says Marj.

‘No, Marj, it’s worth something dead or alive,’ replies Typical.

‘They’re insects, ’ says Eskimo Sid. ‘And I don’t like insects.’

‘Sush,’ says Nancy Palmer. ‘This butterfly might be rare but she’s stuck on my hand and I don’t like things stuck on my hand.’

‘No-one does,’ says Marj.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ asks Nancy Palmer.

‘Kill it,’ says Eskimo Sid.

‘I thought that would be your answer,’ says Nancy Palmer.

‘Peel it off and mount it with a pin onto a piece of paper,’ suggests Marj.

‘Now we’re talking sense,’ says Nancy Palmer.

‘But we don’t have a pin or piece of paper,’ says Typical. ‘And a pin would kill it.’

‘Good,’ says Eskimo Sid.

‘I’ll place my hand into my mouth and lick it off,’ says Nancy Palmer.

 As Nancy opens his mouth, the butterfly flies in.

‘Anyone got a net?’ asks Marj.

‘I’ve got one at home,’ says Typical.

‘Fat good that is, I’ve eaten it now,’ says Nancy Palmer.

‘Don’t worry, they don’t live long, it would have been dead in a week anyway,’ says Marj.

‘Good,’ says Eskimo Sid.

Lost in Spain

 

El Burro chants and coughs up globules,

Breathes like a juggernaut decompressing,

Steam exits through his nostrils. It’s a sign!

Monty and Victor are apart from their bicycles

and apart from themselves. The earth splits

and the cacti crackle. Another sign!

‘How does it go: “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain?”’

‘That’s it, Victor, you’ve got it,’ says Monty.

The buzzard clouds shift and groan. The final sign!

The two friends don’t hear the calling.

they walk and sing the song,

don’t see the falling. No sigh. No sign!

SHIT HAPPENS AND SOMETIMES IT HAPPENS TWICE

A small life documentary as if told by Werner Herzog

In a small Bavarian field approximately one hundred kilometres south of Munich airport, Hans Utrich, a retired sheet metal welder from Nassau, was taking a break from a long drive. He was on his way to visit his woman friend, Ute Braun, who he had met through a lonely-hearts advertisement two years before. Hans was deep in thought for he was considering how he might ask Ute to be his wife. In the event that she accepted his proposal, she would become Mrs Utrich the second, his first wife having mysteriously died under the wheels of a Lufthansa jet at Munich airport only three years before. Perhaps the aeroplane flying overhead stirred a memory of his deceased wife; but whatever the reason, Hans happened to look up as a giant iced manure ball, mistakenly ejected from the passing plane, speeded towards its fateful landing.

The atmospheric ice that held the toilet material together had melted by the time a farmer found Hans. The farmer first presumed that he’d been fatally shat on by a herd of his prizewinning Bavarian cows. It was only when he found in Hans’s hand, and later gave to the authorities, a stub of a three year old aeroplane ticket made out in the name of Mrs Eva Utrich, that a coherent and interrelated theory was put forward to explain the deaths of both Hans Utrich, and his wife. It appears there had been a recurrent problem on this same Lufthansa jet, with a critical gap resulting along its undercarriage between the timing of the landing wheels descending and the flushing of the toilet as it reached its full capacity. The problem had occurred fatally and spectacularly for poor Mrs Utrich. She had lost her footing at an inopportune moment and had been sucked through the trapdoor of the toilet and onto the wheel arch of the plane. When the plane landed she slipped under the wheels and was squashed. No record of her having been on the plane was found as there had been a national computer crash that day and all data had been irretrievably lost. Her ticket had most likely been lodged inside the toilet in the intervening period and was not dislodged until the moment before her husband held it at his death three years later.

Hans had never understood how she had died on the landing runway of Munich airport. He would not have been pleased to realise that she had been en route to a secret assignation with her lover, a certain Ute Braun. As for Ute Braun, never to be Ute Utrich, and all those involved with her in this sorry tale, it is surely a universal truth that ‘shit happens and sometimes it happens twice’.    

THE NEIGHBOURS

 

‘You must meet Matilda my dear’ said Norman. ‘But first things first: still wine or fizz; which kind of girl are you?’

‘A champagne girl of course’.

‘Of course you are,’ cooed Norman. ‘Of course you are’.

‘Hi de hi campers,’ sung Matilda, flexing a leg on her arrival by the mantelpiece. ‘And please excuse my sweat; I’m training for a half-marathon’.

‘Don’t mind a little girl sweat do we?’ asked Norman

‘I’m running for the dwarf horse hostel by the canal,’ said Matilda removing her shorts.

‘Matilda is the local animals’ Joan de Arc. Cats and dogs and even foxes, she’s quite a girl I can tell you,’ said Norman

‘What’s your name?’ asked Simon, the chap without pants lying on the lawn.

‘Mary, my name is Mary.’

‘Not at all contrary: it’s a very beautiful name my dear and it suits you very well,’ said Norman.

‘It certainly does,’ added Simon. ‘Like a soft leather slipper on a warm clammy day.’

Suddenly Norman’s wife, Brenda, entered sans brazier. ‘Do you respect the tit, Mary?’ she asked

‘Well, I’m not sure . . .’

‘Put it away Brenda, Mary’s a shy girl; not quite ready for the tit,’ cautioned Norman.

In the garden Matilda was naked and bouncing on top of Simon.

‘Oh yes, quite a girl our Matilda,’ said Norman with a wink.

‘I think I’d better be going,’ said Mary.

Brenda’s giant bosom blocked the doorway into the street. ‘Do you respect the tit, Mary?’ she repeated.

‘Not really,’ said Mary squeezing past Brenda’s bosom and out into the cold.

Half way home Mary remembered she’d left her pants on their sofa and realised she’d have to go back to get them.

BUNNYGIRL SIDEBOARDMAN

 

Is there anything else as sad

as a lonely man wearing

sideboards above his head

like a bunnygirl wears her ears?

He walks in raised steps

like a game of pick-up-sticks,

his hands firmly in pockets,

feeling stones for comfort.

An old three-piece-suite

dumped on the side of the street,

as forlorn as a left-behind smile,

whispers for him to come and sit down.

“Rest your weary legs and bum,

you sad little man,” says the three-piece-suite

with a sofa for a head,

and two easy-ear-chairs on either side.

The bunnygirl sideboardman checks no one is looking

and falls into the sofa,

letting its arms wrap around him

like upholstery muffs on a cold lounge day.

He sits there with the sofa and chairs,

watching the infinite snow space unravel infront of him,

and remembers a blood-sun day when he

and his love cuddled together to watch tv.

No longer alone, memories a kind of comfort cushion,

he smiles and falls into a long warming sleep:

the three-piece-suite and he leave the world of snow,

no footsteps or marks left in the deep below.

Fame

It was just the kind of party to be seen at and Nigel Ferranti was extremely keen to be seen. His hush puppy soles gripped the expensive Swedish decking, a well-sourced surface he intended to praise to the hosts later on, whilst his tight bottom clenched and his tiny mouth pursed and puckered ready to meet and greet anyone making it his way. For an hour, his risqué Sex on the floor cocktail in hand, Nigel Ferranti waited but no partygoer strayed near.

            Nigel Ferranti re-checked his fly, straightened his tie, and secreted a hot mint freshener under his tongue. He smiled as best he could with such a tiny mouth but he was aware his attempt at friendly frivolity, whilst sipping from under a pink umbrella, could in such a dim party light look like the obscene tears of a grimacing bottom hole. So instead he closed his mouth tight to affect a sullen look, and to hopefully appear a little mysterious. But still no soul ventured near, and another hour passed.

            Nigel Ferranti shifted position to show his better side, re-checked his fly, straightened his tie, and secreted a glycerine suppository capsule into his rear end. The effect was startling and immediate, and the bottom of his trouser shook and cavorted as if there was a private party going on inside his pants. The beautiful hostess of the party came over to see what was happening.

            ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

            ‘Hello, I’m Nigel Ferranti. I like you. Do you like me?’

            As Nigel Ferranti offered her his hand, his bottom and mouth belched and farted in unison. The beautiful hostess let go an ugly scream, and the rest of the partygoers drew near to see what was happening. They all looked at Nigel Ferranti and his bulging party pants. Though a little sheepish about the attention he was receiving, his bottom grinned, and his mouth managed a small, shy public smile.

            ‘Fame at last,’ he exclaimed. ‘How sweet it is!’