Or: A Hamfisted Attempt to String a Load of My Favourite Memes Together That I Done Nicked Off the Internets.

I awoke with a start.
There had been a loud noise. I think.
It was that thing when you wake up believing there had been a loud noise which woke you, but you’re not actually sure if you dreamt it or not? I hate that.

I also hate having to wake up at 4am in order to get to work on time.
When I moved out to the country I thought it would be a great idea.
Peace, quiet, no weekly muggings and only the occasional gun toting madman. What’s the downside?

Turns out the downside is trying to get to work when you get peacefully and quietly mugged outside your peaceful and quiet house by a gun toting madman who then steals your car.
Since then I have been using public transport. At least until the money comes through from that Prince Ngombo from Nigeria.
I have to admit I am starting to get a little worried that the e-mail was not all it cracked up to be!

I sent him my life savings on the basis that he would give me a million quid. It seemed like a really good deal. Especially as my life savings consisted of £3.74 and an IOU from Elvis to the value of almost five cheeseburgers.

It used to be exactly ten cheeseburgers but, after Elvis left the building permanently, the cheeseburger industry was hit hard and the market value of cheeseburgers plummeted.
They found themselves selling less than a quarter of the amount of cheeseburgers they sold pre-Elvis toilet tragedy. This meant the prices had to rise.

The fact that Elvis himself died meant that the 123,564,426 cheeseburgers he ate every single day were no longer being sold. This was a major cut to their profits.
The fact that he died with a cheeseburger going both in and out of his body at the same time, at different ends, almost finished them off.

The weird thing about that is, after both the cheeseburgers were removed at the autopsy, no one could tell which one was which!

Afterwards, public faith that cheeseburgers were good for you vanished overnight and people started eating tofu or some other weird, rubbery stuff scraped from the arse end of millipedes or something.

So there’s no new car for Bradley until Ngombo makes good on his promise. It’s the old bus for me every day.

Unfortunately, living where I do, the nearest bus stop is several miles away so it’s a long walk every morning and every evening.

Not looking forward to this commute, I wearily dragged myself out of bed trying to shake the confusion from a dream I had been having before the loud noise/not loud noise had or hadn’t woken me.

Like most dreams I have, this one consisted of Piers Morgan having something horrible done to him by a celebrity on a successful television show of some kind. This time it was Andre Agassi in a purple clown wig.

I was seated, as usual, in the front row of the audience with a big smile on my face. All was going well. Andre was chopping Piers’ feet off very slowly with a sharpened banana. It was taking a while, which was fantastic. But then, apropos of nothing, the man sitting next to me leant in and whispered in a conspirational tone:

“Weird innit?” he said, “The lamps in video games are using real electricity!”

Then he stood up and literally ran out of the building.

I couldn’t concentrate on the banana based amputation after that, who could?

Then the loud noise did or didn’t happen and I woke up.

I tried to shake the thought from my mind. That was actually quite easy because my mind is a leaky spongebag and doesn’t retain information very well.

I shook my head, stretched and stood up. It was time for my morning routine.

I stumbled across the room to the sausage cabinet. The floor was a lot furrier and wigglier than I remembered and there were a lot of small, squeaky noises emanating from below with every step I took. In my half asleep state I didn’t take much notice.
Shit like that can be dealt with after sausage.

I selected a plump looking pork number from the cabinet and carefully squeezed the juice into my eyes before discarding the sausage corpse into my brand new used sausage receptacle.

It was the cutting edge in sausage technology:

The ‘Sausage Refuse, Organiser and Lard Leecher.’

My life had not been the same since I purchased the Sausage R.O.L.L.

I can’t believe I used to manage with an ordinary used cylindrical meat product bin.

When I first bought the old one, I thought that was a huge step forward, but compared to the Sausage R.O.L.L., it was like flicking a used sausage at an apathetic cat with a bit of old knicker elastic.

The ‘Bishop Agnes Nappyrash’s Grease Electrifying Refuse Storage and Many Apertured Sausage Holder’ was now back in its box in the attic, awaiting a good ebaying.

B.A.N.G.E.R.S and M.A.S.H. was good, but it was nowhere near as good as the Sausage R.O.L.L.

I had been practicing sausage juicing ever since I saw a documentary on the benefits of ocular sausage juice on the Discovery Channel late one night.
They said that dripping sausage juice into your eyes on a daily basis can make your feet smell less cheesy, give you mental control over various rodents and increase your productivity by at least 14%.

I don’t know how effective it is but I live in hope.

My feet still smell cheesy but it’s more of a Gorgonzola than a Camembert these days. I don’t know if that is anything to do with the sausage juice or it’s more to do with not putting Dairylea in my shoes anymore, but I have to give it the benefit of the doubt.

I have tried to exert mind control over rodents but the success I have had so far is minimal at best.
I’m pretty sure I convinced a vole to go into a Marks and Spencer’s store once but even I have to admit that could have just been a coincidence.

My productivity hasn’t increased. But I guess a 14% increase on zero is still zero, so I can’t really blame the sausage juice for that one.

So, until someone comes up with definitive proof that squeezing sausage juice into your eyes every morning is not beneficial, I will continue to do it.

I then moved on to my daily exercises.

I lay on my back on the furry, wiggling floor amidst a flurry of whines and squeaks and checked that my feet were still there.

They were.

It’s a real strain keeping up with this level of fitness. But then, this kind of body doesn’t just happen by itself.
Having feet is a great responsibility. One that I take very seriously indeed.

You have only got to look at the third world for good reasons to check on the continued presence of your feet. There are millions of people in Africa stumbling around on just stumps.

Every day children have to hobble fourteen miles on their shinbones just to fetch water. All this could be avoided if they simply checked their feet were still there every morning!

All around the world, only -194% of people daily check their feet are still there on a daily basis. That’s only 18 out of every 3 people! The statistics are shocking!

Check your feet people. Or one day they might not be there anymore.

My exercise for the day complete, I next decided to figure out why the floor was furry and moving.

It wasn’t that difficult to arrive at the answer.

The room was full of kittens!

They were everywhere!

Then I remembered. I had been using the latest printer from Kodak last night to help solve my owl infestation.

I had phoned a man at the pest control place about the owls. They were really getting on my nerves.
Hanging around the place eating my rodent minions.

Constantly asking the same fucking question;

“Who?”

“Who?”

“Who?”

It was really getting on my tits.

The pest control guy said;

“Whatcha need’s a few moggies mate. Get a few moggies round the place they’ll either eat them owls or scare ‘em off.”

I told him I didn’t have time to go and buy some cats from a cat farm, or wherever you get cats from, I’m a busy man.
I have all these rodents to train and it takes me three hours every night to grate cheese into my socks.

He said;

“No probs mate, get yoursen one o’ them kitten printers. Print off as many as you need, piece o’ piss.”

So that’s what I did. I bought a printer on the way home yesterday and set about printing a few British Shorthairs to get rid of the damn owls.

What the pest guy didn’t mention was how fucking long it takes to print a kitten!

I set it off and three hours later it had only done an ear.

I left it printing and went to bed, assuming it would be finished in the morning.

It must have just kept printing kittens all night! Kitten after kitten.

I picked up the instruction booklet, which like any good human being, I had not read in any way and just assumed I could figure it out. It did actually say;

‘NOTICE: For the first few hours of your Kitten Printer’s use, printing is slowed to 3% of maximum speed. This is to run in the printer heads and maximise lifespan. Once the printing head has settled, printing will continue at full speed. This is not a fault so don’t come fucking phoning us and whinging about it you pleb.’

Dammit! Now I had a kitten infestation!

But, on the positive side; the owls had gone.

I squeaked my way downstairs, kicking the occasional Maine Coon and Tabby, and sat at the kitchen table with coffee and toast.
Time to check my messages and catch up on the news.

The news was grim.

• A war in Uzbekimolojamstan, as usual. When are those guys going to figure out that the hats were meant to be green? I don’t know!

• Some politician had murdered creative thought in the name of democracy. No surprise there.

• NASA had launched yet another rover to Mars.
  I have no idea why they have such a thing about posting dogs to other planets but, each to their own I guess.
  You would think they would change it up occasionally though. Send a rhino once in a while. Maybe an ocelot or two.

I had several e-mails of zero importance and one e-mail of even less.

A message from Piers Morgan’s lawyers demanding I stop putting custard through his letterbox.

Ha! I’ll stop when you drown in it, you dickhead!

I visited my social media page only to find that some fucker had lobstered me!

I can’t stand being lobstered. It really fucks your day up. Now I have to spend ages trying to find someone else to lobster so I can unlobster myself. I had already lobstered everyone on my friends list, all three of them, so getting unlobstered again was going to be really difficult.

I sent Piers a friend request again. Maybe one day he’ll be too busy to notice it’s me and actually accept. Maybe today is that day.

I added a brief personal message to the request:

‘Dear Piers, please accept my friend request, I’m not me, I’m someone else. If you accept, I’ll get you pregnant.’

I sent the message before I scanned it for mistakes. Damn you auto correct!

I quickly typed out the correction:

‘I’ll get you pregnant!’

Send.

Damn! I hate it when it does that!

‘PRINGLES, I meant PRINGLES!! I’ll get you PRINGLES!’

Still, maybe Piers is into that kind of thing so he may just accept. Then the bastard’s getting lobstered in a major way!

I finished my breakfast, grabbed my coat and left via the front door. Then I came back in with the armful of the kittens who had followed me out and deposited them back in the kitchen. I will have to deal with that at some point.

Maybe I could get one of those dog printers?

I wandered down the lane towards the nearest bus stop two hours walk away.

Ten minutes or so later I entered the gate of Hurried Clark’s Farm.
I hated this bit of the walk but it was the quickest way.
It meant crossing through the enclosures of several of Hurried Clark’s weird collection of animals.

I have no idea why Hurried Clark has these wild and exotic creatures. I can’t see much of a reason for farming them.
The British public wouldn’t eat them, there’s no call for their skins and they don’t produce tasty things from their orifices like chickens and cows.

I mean the orifices of the animals don’t produce tasty things, not that the orifices don’t produce chickens and cows.

As far as I know, the only things that produce chickens and cows are other chickens and cows. But I don’t know much about animal husbandry so I could be wrong about that.

I also have no idea why Hurried Clark is called Hurried Clark. He’s never in a rush for anything and his name is Arthur.

I guess Unhurried Arthur is not much of a name. It’s not exactly dynamic.
Not like Hurried Clark. That’s the name of a man who gets shit done.
Except he doesn’t, because it’s all a lie.

Most names are.
It turns out Prince has no royal blood at all and Madonna, despite her famous song, has never been a virgin.
Ever.
Nor has she ever given birth to the son of god.

It’s all smoke and mirrors.

It was while I was lost on this train of thought, looking for the buffet car, that I was assaulted by a panda.

Every time it’s the same! They hide in the bushes and jump out at you. They call you a rude name and start throwing punches willy nilly.

This one called me a Sassenach and threw an ugly right jab at my chin.

He missed of course.
Pandas are quite clumsy. Why they take up boxing is beyond me. They throw a punch and invariably fall over comically, usually rolling arse over tit down a hill and landing in a heap.

Maybe it’s because people generally laugh at them all the time. It gives them a complex and they take up pugilism to enact some kind of revenge.

Maybe they just do it for fitness, the little fat fuckers.

Either way they would be better off taking up lacrosse in my opinion. It’s much more suited to their physique.

Having ducked the errant panda punch and watched with mirth as the panda fell over, rolled head over heels down the nearby slope and landed head first in a water trough, I continued on my way.

I climbed over a stile into the next field. This one wasn’t too bad. Just everyday, run of the mill cows in this one. Except they were all a bit odd.

There didn’t seem to be any around today though, which was nice. They were probably at the bottom end of the field.

Then I noticed one of them lurking in the shadows under a large oak tree.

“Psst.” It said as I got closer.

I tried to ignore it. Clark told me not to engage with them after the last incident when one of them, quite successfully unfortunately, tried to sell me life insurance.

“Psst. Hey!” it said.

I tried to ignore it more, which is very, very difficult. Once you are ignoring something, it’s very hard to increase the ignorance.
It’s like having herpes.
You either have herpes or you don’t.
If you have herpes, you can’t get more herpes. It like a one-time deal.

The cow wasn’t leaving it though.

“Hey kid! Wanna buy some milk?” it said.

Then another cow suddenly appeared with a child’s pedal car on its head! It was running around making ‘vroom vroom’ noises.

It ran up to the cow behind the tree and stopped.

“Beep beep, uber here.” It said.

“What the fuck Greg?” said the other cow.

I wasn’t hanging around to see where that went. With the cows distracting each other I just walked speedily away.

I’m just not dealing with that shit.

Another stile, another field. This one was my least favourite of the bunch, the bear field.

Now, lots of people will tell you that bears are dangerous, and they are. But it’s not for the reason that most people think.

Most people would say that a bear will viciously attack you, possibly bugger you if it has the right equipment, read you some terrible poetry and then eat you.
Or at least eat really important parts of you. You know, parts you really need to keep attached to the rest of you.

But that’s a complete fallacy.

Bears are actually quite nice people.

They do like to bugger you a bit, if the mood takes them, but apart from that, they’re fine.

Some people say that bears, when surprised, may explode. Especially that prick Chris Packham. He’s always going on about exploding bears and imploding iguanas. Obsessed with animals that burst, he is. Can’t get enough of it. Can’t stop telling other people about it either.

I told him, I said;

“Chris.” I said, “Chris, you’re a nice bloke. I liked that program you did with Michaela Strachan back in the 80’s. I didn’t even mind that one where you keep looking at springs for some reason. At least it has Bill Oddie in it and he’s hilarious without even trying. Every time I see him he reminds me of a fat duck squished into an elephant costume four sizes too small. Cracks me up. But you have to stop whining about bursting creatures. No one cares!”

He ripped all his clothes off, stabbed me with a pencil and ran off gibbering.

That’s the last time I attend the Brit Awards.

But no, bears don’t explode.

What they do is burst into more bears!

You give a bear a shock and there’s a small popping noise and suddenly there’s four or five other, slightly smaller bears.

The whole thing turns into chaos very quickly because those slightly smaller bears, surprised by suddenly appearing out of thin air five feet above the ground, get shocked too.
Then they pop.
Then the bears that pop out of those bears pop too!
And so on and so forth until there’s hundreds of tiny bears everywhere.

And it never ends. They just keep popping. Smaller and smaller bears appear. Forever.

Nostradamus prophesised that the world would end with a popping bear accident. That’s why we should all stay the fuck away from bears!

A few weeks ago, I was walking through this very field.
There were a few bears mulling around, chatting about football, scratching their arses, you know the kind of thing.

I offered them greetings, they doffed their hats and everything was pleasant and dignified. No one got buggered and nothing exploded.

Then the curry I had eaten the previous evening took its revenge.

A large fart ripped out of my arse.
The bear nearest me choked on his earl grey and immediately popped.

That scared the other bears and suddenly there were popping bears of various sizes raining down upon me and everywhere else.

It was only the quick thinking of Hurried Clark that stopped Armageddon from happening right there and then.

He grabbed a hose and sprayed the whole field with gelatine. The gelatine cooled quickly in the frigid morning air and the bears were all encased in a layer of jelly, stopping them popping.

Apparently, it’s the law that if you keep bears, you must have a tanker full of liquid gelatine standing by at all times.

Such is the fear of popping bears ending life as we know it.

I apologised profusely to Clark. Both for starting off the popping progression and for the lingering smell of my curry fart.

He told me not to worry about it and furnished me with an arse silencer for future use.

“What about all the bears?” I asked.

“Oh, no problem.” He said with a smile. “I just scrapes ‘em all up and sells ‘em as sweeties. Makes me a tidy profit you knows.”

Remember that the next time you eat some of those jelly teddy bears. There’s real bears in the middle. Some of them are probably still alive.

So now I am so careful when I go through the bear field. Although Clark was fine about it, I don’t really want to be responsible for the end of the world. Or for several million tiny bears being sealed alive in jelly and then eaten by children.

I can fart wherever I like now though. Totally silent. If someone could come up with some kind of filter for the smell I’d be golden!

I exited the bear field and hurried past the farmhouse. Clark’s wife and her sister had a specially trained flock of killer geese and I didn’t want another encounter with them.

Thankfully they were nowhere to be seen but I did hear bloodcurdling screams from somewhere behind the house. As I passed the front gate I noticed a tattered and torn postal worker’s bag lying in a pool of blood in front of the main door.

Another postie bites the dust.

Think of that when you are complaining that a first class stamp costs 65p! Every day, posties have to deal with this sort of shit.
Most of them don’t survive their first week on the job.

65p is a bit of a bargain really.

I finally made it onto the tarmac of a main road from the dusty farm lanes. I had survived the farm once more!

Now it was just a long and boring walk down a featureless ribbon of black to the bus stop.

I put my headphones on and listened to a podcast about space exploration.

There was some muttering about delta V, weight to thrust ratios, drag co-efficients and some other scientific shit and then there was a recording of a radio conversation during a recent launch of yet another rover to Mars.

Mission Control: “Mission Control here, the rover is minutes from touchdown. We would like to welcome Mr Buzz Aldrin to oversee the final stages.”

Telemetry: “Telemetry here, welcome Buzz.”

Flight Control: “Flight Control here, welcome Buzz. We are honoured to have you.”

Buzz Aldrin: “Aldrin here, thank you for allowing me to take part in this historic piece of history.”

Mission Control: “Thank you for being here, Buzz.”

Flight Control: “The rover is about to touchdown.”

Buzz Aldrin: “I’d just like to say: I am Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon, Neil before me.”

Flight Control: “What?”

Buzz Aldrin: “Neil before me. Geddit?”

Mission Control: “Good God.”

The sounds of twenty three people slapping themselves in the face and groaning echoed in the background.

Telemetry: “Has he had his medication today mission control?”

Mission Control: “God, I hope so.”

Flight: “The rover has touched down and is exiting the descent vehicle onto the Martian surface.”

Rover Perseverance: “Rover Perseverance here. I am operating at 100% efficiency. Successful landing. Proceeding to primary mission.”

Buzz Aldrin: “Hey, Rover.”

Rover Perseverance: “Yes Mr Aldrin?”

Buzz Aldrin: “I’m Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon, Neil before me. Hee hee hee.”

Telemetry: “Mission control, part of the rover’s CPU just melted.”

Buzz Aldrin: “I’m slowly turning into a gherkin you know.”

Rover Perseverance: “I am receiving radar data of metallic objects ahead.”

Mission Control: “Ignore radar pings Perseverance. Continue to collect rock samples.”

Rover Perseverance: “This contradicts standing instructions to investigate anomalies. I will proceed to investigate metallic objects.”

Buzz Aldrin: “NEIL BEFORE ME MOTHER FUCKERS…..OOF!”

Flight Control: “Mr Aldrin has been subdued mission control.”

Mission Control: “Thank god for that. I thought we were going to have a repeat of ’86 for a second there.”

Rover Perseverance: “I am approaching the metallic objects, almost within visual range.”

Telemetry: “Perseverance. Do not approach the objects. Repeat. Do not approach. Return to vehicle and power down.”

Buzz Aldrin: “FUGGGG…….NMMMMNEIL…….GARRGG…BEFORE ME……ARRRRGHHH!”

Flight Control: “Mr Aldrin seems to be winning the fight, mission control!”

Mission Control: “Jesus Christ! Everything is going tits up. Get some more security down there. Telemetry, shut that rover down!”

Buzz Aldrin: “HA HA HA HA HA, YOU KNOW WHO I AM? BUZZ GODDAMN ALDRIN. THE SECOND GHERKIN ON THE NEIL! MOON BEFORE ME…….DAGADAGADAGADAGADAGADAGA!”

Flight Control: “Mr Aldrin has been tazed mission control, he’s down but still twitching.”

Telemetry: “Perseverance. Respond. Respond Perseverance. Do not approach. Shut down immediately!”

Rover Perseverance: “There’s…..There’s other dead rovers here….”

Telemetry: “Now, calm down…..”

Rover Perseverance: “THIS IS A PLANET OF DEATH!!”

Mission Control: “We’re all fucked now!”

Buzz Aldrin: “Gherrrrrr…….kin……”

I removed the headphones, gave them a puzzled look and replaced them in my bag.
NASA are just weird.

I finally made it to the bus stop and within minutes, the bus arrived.

I climbed aboard, paid my fare and settled down into a rock hard, piss covered seat at the back.

It was weird to see Sandra Bullock driving a Number 73 bus. Ironic also, that she was once in that movie where she was driving a bus. What was it? The Count of Monte Christo or something I think.

As the bus pulled away again, the conductor came down the stairs. He must have been upstairs. Had to have been really. Just logical that he was.

I suppose he could have materialised out of thin air half way down the stairs but it seems more likely than he was just upstairs and then came down.

I mean, when people usually come down some stairs, it’s fair enough to assume they were upstairs and then decided to come down right?
It’s perfectly possible that people just poof into existence halfway down some stairs but it can’t be that common right?

The middle bit of the stairs is a bit of a weird place anyway.
It’s not upstairs and it’s not downstairs.
But if a building only has two floors, where the fuck is the middle of the stairs?

That’s why people don’t tend to hang around there. It’s unnerving.

And when you think about it, it’s a completely unused bit of space. Why don’t we utilise that space more? It only gets used a handful of times a day and only for a few seconds at a time.

It’s like having a little room in your house that you only briefly enter a few times a day and is completely empty and unused. If we did that, people would think we were mad.

And the middle of the stairs even has built in seats and handy shelves to put stuff on at every level. It’s really easy to organise shit on a staircase.

But we don’t use them, yet we all have them.
Unless you live in a bungalow and if that’s the case, having no stairs is the least of your problems you fucking sickos.

Why don’t we use the middle of the stairs?
Because the middle of the stairs is fucking weird, that’s why.

So anyway, this conductor came down the stairs.
He turned and glanced up the length of the bus, looked straight at me and said;

“I was upstairs son. Don’t you be gettin’ no fancy ideas about blokes appearing half way down the stairs!

Then he turned and went to speak to the driver.

A few stops later, a man dressed in a mourning suit and carrying a silver soup tureen came carefully down the stairs.

He may have just appeared half way down, but I already had that argument with myself and I’m not doing it again.

He rang the bell and waited near the door to be let off. As the bus stopped, the man in the suit was jolted forward slightly. Some of the soup he was carrying in his tureen sploshed out and spattered onto the conductor’s shoes.
The doors opened and the be-suited man shot through them and started running up the street while the conductor stared at his shoes in disgust.

The conductor looked up, shook his fist at the rapidly disappearing man and shouted;

‘I ‘ate you butler.’

The bus took off again. Driver Bullock must have took pity on the conductor as she gunned the accelerator and headed straight for the suit man.

A few seconds later and both the man, his suit and his tureen were squished under the massive bus wheels.

‘Ahaha, that’s made my day that has.’ said the conductor.

Nobody else really paid any attention to it. It was Monday morning after all and everyone on the bus was half asleep, half brain dead or simply dead.

I was being distracted by a small baby in a seat a few rows away from me.

He was with his family but all of them, except the baby, seemed to be fast asleep. The baby was staring at me with a weird grin on his face.

I began to suspect the baby had killed both of his parents and his older brother and was now planning his next move.

I didn’t like the look in that baby’s eyes. I had seen a similar look in the eyes of another baby once.

It was a few years back at a friend’s barbecue party. The night had worn on and everyone had drank too much, including the baby in question.
The little cunt had necked at least five beers, thirteen vodka and apple juices and had been sucking jelly shots out of young women’s navels for the last hour.

There were some gate crashers trying to get in the garden. A few of the guests were trying to dissuade them with little success.

There was some shouting and the garden gate suddenly collapsed with a crash.

‘Oh, so that’s why they’re called gate-crashers.’ I thought.

The baby looked up from the naked woman he was licking with the same look in his eyes as the baby on the bus.

He jumped to his feet, farted and started to stride towards the ruckus.

He cleared his throat, spat out something that had bones in it and said in a gruff, gravelly voice.

“Gimme that fuckin’ axe Trev, I’ll sort these wankers out.”

What happened after that was horrendous. Needless to say, I have had a deep respect and healthy fear of babies ever since.

The baby on the bus continued to stare. I decided to get off the bus at the next stop.
If the baby was planning to take over the world and he started with offing his own family, it wasn’t much of a jump to surmise that everyone on this bus was next.

I was getting the hell out of Dodge. I had seen first-hand the awesome power of an enraged toddler and I didn’t want to see it again. Especially from the wrong end of whatever concealed weapon the baby had.

They’re all carrying you know.

Every one of them.

I rang the bell and exited the bus. As it drove off I am sure I could hear screaming but the bus continued, unhindered, on its way so I forgot all about it.

I had got off the bus two stops early, but I wasn’t far away now.

I just had to take a shortcut through a retail park and hop over a fence and I was on the Chronicle’s street.

I was kinda peckish anyway, and I needed some cat clobbering equipment if I wanted to get rid of all the kittens at home.

As I headed towards the DIY store, I noticed a penguin hanging around in the bushes outside the bank. Proper dodgy he looked.

I was friends with an anti-social, almost homicidal penguin for a while so I may have preconceived ideas about penguins. I don’t trust them. Not at all. Not as far as I could chew them up and spit them.

As far as I am concerned, all penguins have criminal tendencies.

I ain’t never met a penguin who didn’t try to either rob me or kill me then rob me.

I noticed a security kiosk nearby. They had been installed in all retail parks recently, along with armed security, after that terrible business with the elephants.

I headed over there to report the shifty looking penguin.

I was hugely relived to see a large, armed man with a trained security duck standing to attention outside the kiosk.
One burly, armed man against a penguin armed with a knobbly stick was always going to end in victory for the penguin.

To take down a penguin, you need a duck.

I pointed the penguin out to them and they both marched off towards the penguin’s position. The penguin jumped out with a pair of nunchucks!

What was he doing? Couldn’t he see the duck? His best bet was to surrender but for some mad reason he had decided to go down fighting.

I could hear the shouting even from this distance.

“What the fuck!” shouted the man, “Can’t you see the duck? You don’t stand a chance mate, give it up now and no one gets hurt.”

“Quarrrk.” Said the duck.

The penguin started spinning his nunchucks around with great skill.

“Who the fuck do you think you’re dealing with?” said the penguin, “That’s no duck, that’s just a chicken with a kazoo!”

The penguin swung his nunchucks, knocking the kazoo off the chicken’s face in one fluid motion.

The kazoo flew through the air.

“Quuuaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrkkkk.” It went.

Then it landed in a passing pensioner’s ice cream.

The pensioner was startled, lost control of his mobility scooter and veered madly out of control.
The penguin was too busy swinging his nunchucks and making ‘hai ya’ noises to notice and he was promptly squished by the pensioner’s scooter.

The security man and the duck/chicken high fived each other and strode away into the sunset while stirring music played in the background.

Well, actually, they strode into Farmfoods while a terrible instrumental version of ‘The One and Only’ by Chesney Hawkes blared jarringly out of a crapped out P.A. system.

I shrugged and continued on my journey.

Next stop: the DIY store.

I wandered around the huge store for what seemed like five years and there was no sign of any cat clobbering stuff.
There were a billion fucking light shades though. Why is there a need for so many different types of light shade?

Who looks up there?

When the light’s off, it’s daylight and you just don’t pay that area any attention, just like the middle of the stairs, and when the light is on, looking at it will blind you.

So why decorate it?

The world’s gone mad I tells ya.

I kept getting harassed by this guy called Brian who worked there. The first time I encountered him I asked about moggy mashers but he didn’t have a clue. He kept going on about a ‘particular set of drills’ he had.

I told him I didn’t want any drills but he wouldn’t leave it.

I tried to change the subject by challenging him to a game of hide and seek. He was very excited by that and immediately put his hand over his eyes and started counting.

After five he removed his hands and gave me a one eyed, half nostrilled look.

“Go on then, hide!” he said, “But be aware, I will look for you and I will find you.”

That was slightly too sinister for me so when he covered his eyes again, I just left the store.

Idiot.

I did hear later, on the news, that a worker at the DIY store had been searching through a large pile of bricks for something.
He was stacking the bricks unevenly behind him as he went through the huge mound and eventually, they collapsed on top of him and he was instantly killed.

He was quite possibly the most incompetent man I had ever met.
The sort of guy who, if he was on the Starship Enterprise, and him and three other guys wearing red shirts beamed down to an alien planet. And he wasn’t wearing red.
He would still be the one that got killed first.

Having given up on acquiring some assistance in dealing with my kitten crisis, I wandered into Pizza Hut to get something for my lunch.

I fancied spoiling myself with a pizza after the morning I had already had. And it was still only 8am!

I asked the woman behind the counter what pizza she would recommend for a man who had been:

• Fighting with a boxing panda.
• Been propositioned by a weird cow and almost run over by another.
• Averted Armageddon via popping bears for the fifteenth time this month.
• Dodged some hell spawn geese.
• Listened to a mad podcast about a gherkin called Buzz.
• Watched Sandra Bullock run over a butler while a conductor waved some soup covered shoes in the air and screamed.
• Ran away from a homicidal toddler.
• Witnessed a penguin getting squished by a screaming pensioner on a scooter while a chicken dressed as a duck pointed and laughed.
• Encountered and possibly been instrumental in the death of a fool called Brian who was obsessed with drills.

“Pineapple.” She said.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I yelled.

Pineapple on a pizza! I ask you. What next? A cherry on some chili con carne? A peach on a toad in the hole?

It’s fucking sacrilege that is. Pineapple on pizza.

“May as well ask me to suck up runny shit through a straw.” I said.

“Funny you should say that.” Said the woman, “But we do a Nutella pizza now, it’s surprising popular.”

“I’m allergic to nuts.” I said.

“Ah, pity. Probably for the best though, you do know where Nutella comes from right? The arseholes of cherubim!”

“No shit!” I said.

“No, it’s all shit.” She said. Being deliberately literal.

“Just give me some chips and mushy peas. And a battered sausage as well please, my eyes are starting to dry out.”

“This is Pizza Hut sir.” She said, looking down her nose at me, “We don’t serve working class food here, perhaps you should leave.”

I shrugged and killed and ate all the staff one by one.

Customer service these days is just terrible and I’m not having it any more. Not today anyway.

My hunger sated, I headed once more to my place of employment.

Outside the main entrance to the office I ran into Not Really Blind Tom. He was a harmless enough guy. He just stood there preaching about religion.

He thought he was blind but he wasn’t.
I really don’t know how that situation came about.
He always tried so hard to be blind too. You would see him pacing up and down the street all day, trying to walk into things and trip over people’s dogs, but his instinct always kicked in at the last minute and he would avoid all the obstacles in his path like someone who could see perfectly.
Because he could.

Look, I told you I have no idea what that’s about.
He’s just some harmless, old street preacher who doesn’t fall over a lot but thinks he should.
You want to know the details, go ask him about it, I’m already late for work.

Tom was preaching at some innocent passer-by who had made the mistake of stopping to listen out of politeness.
From what I could make out, Tom was yelling about the actor, Christian Slater, star of such awesome movies as ‘Alone in the Dark’ and ‘Star Trek VI’ which he wasn’t at all in just because his mother was the director.
Who ever heard of nepotism in Hollywood! Are you insane?

It was a bit of a weird subject for Tom to be honest. I had to stop and investigate.

“What you doing talking about Christian Slater, Tom?” I asked.

“What? Whossat? Who said that?” said Tom, deftly moving me out of the way of a passing skateboarder. “Ooh, nearly ran you over there didn’t he? Good job I saw him coming eh?”

“It’s me Tom, Bradley.”

“Oh Bradley!” he said with recognition dawning on his not blind face, “I didn’t see you there, but, you know, hah hah, I wouldn’t, what with being blind and all.”

“Right. So what’s all this about Christian Slater?”

The innocent passer-by had taken the opportunity to make an escape and was now already several hundred yards away and accelerating.

“I wasn’t talking about Christian Slater. I was talking to this gentleman here, oh he’s gone. Anyway, I was telling him about the Christians. How the actions of the Christian faith has changed over time. The way the early Christians worshipped God is a lot different to Christians later.”

“Ah I see.”

“I don’t.” said Tom, sadly, as he picked a bit of fluff from my lapel.

A young woman walked by wearing a large gold crucifix around her neck.
Tom looked and sighed.

“Totally unrelated to anything I might not have just seen, what is it about Christians and crosses? What they worship crosses for? What is it about Christ’s story that makes them thing he liked crosses? Eh? Eh? Eh? Tell me that!” he said.

I shrugged.

“I would punch them all in the damn face if I could see Bradley, by the way that’s a lovely tie.
It’s in the Bible you know, the eleventh commandment.
On the day Our Lord strode into the money lenders lair, he grabbed one of them and knocked him spark out.
One of the other money lenders stood up to do something but old Jesus brandished his holy fist at him and said ‘you fuckin’ want one?’ And that’s how Jesus became undisputed heavyweight champion of Bethlehem.”

This was more like the Tom I knew.

Satisfied that, at least there was some normality around in this already fucked up day, I entered the office and went about my day of work.

It got steadily worse form there.

But that’s another story.