White Lightning

My family never had much money when I was growing up and couldn’t afford to buy me expensive toys and games like the other kids had. To make up for this paucity of plastic playthings, I developed a truly amazing imagination and came to inhabit a world that was authentic in every detail.

 

My favourite escapist game was daydreaming about being a cowboy. Not any old cowboy, but the greatest gunslinger around. I was a good guy with a hard edge and baddies feared me and my blazing law-bringer because they knew I was super fast, deadly accurate and remorseless in my battle against the forces of evil.

 

Like any decent lawman, I rode a fantasy steed called White Lightning – an equine friend more fleet of foot and more loyal than any other horse in the west. Wore an imaginary Stetson to shade the hot sun from my eyes (even when there was a bit of a light drizzle outside). Had a pretend Winchester thrust through a loop on my fanciful, hand-tooled, Mexican saddle and toted a made up colt 45, complete with non-existent mother-of-pearl handle, carried in a fictional many-notched holster slung low on my hip.

 

In my time as a fake US marshal, I cleaned up several lawless towns, tracked and gunned down many a murdering bank robber and rogue comanchero, butchered the entire Indian nation (in my day, pre PC, the injuns were always the bad guys), created the legend of the mysterious hero on the thundering white stallion and kissed two girls from my school, Sharon and Tracey, whom I liked to visualise as pretty and obliging inhabitants of my tough western utopia – though in reality they were the pillows off of my bed.

 

A large, tatty, soft toy monkey I owned came in handy during my cowboy games and we had regular fist fights, in which I would punch him from one side of the room to the other and back again. We would roll around the floor, Mickey trying to strangle me and then I would gain the upper hand and throw him against the wall like a Vietnamese guy killing a guinea pig.

 

Mickey’s face (Mickey the Monkey) was made of rubber and squashed under my knuckles in a most satisfying manner. Usually, outlaw Mickey was called Roger Cooper, named after a little shit from my school who used to twist my ear or give me dead legs and I would beat him mercilessly. If voodoo worked, Roger would have been black, blue and dead.

 

Anyway, one day, I was galloping along on White Lightning in hot pursuit of a particularly vile bunch of outlaws who had just robbed and murdered a stagecoach full of young women (including that bitch Sharon, who I’d gone off after she spat on my school blazer when I was standing in front of her in the dinner queue), when an unfortunate accident occurred.

 

Just as I drew my shiny peacemaker to bring down the first of the leering, unshaven desperadoes, a mentally constructed diamond-back rattle snake slithered into my path, thus spooking my pretend steed, causing him to rear up and throw me violently to the ground. I hit the mythical desert floor hard and the jarring impact made my dreamt up six-gun go off – the imaginary wayward bullet entering my head via my nose, blowing out my heroic brains and allowing the villains to escape.

 

I was never the same after that.

 

These days, I just drink a lot of White Lightning, rock back and forth a lot and dribble down my chin. I still miss my super powers, though. Particularly the x-ray vision and my bat cape. Wibble.

 

 

　

Pedal Off!

I hate ruddy cyclists. There, the cat’s out of the bag. Face it, push-bikers contribute nothing, don’t pay any road tax and if one ever runs into you or your car you will discover, to your cost, that they don’t have any insurance either. I don’t drive and never have, so I’m hating cyclists purely from the perspective of a pavement basher, but one who still sees the essential unfairness of one bunch of road users freeloading off another bunch.

 

Bikers ride on the pavements even when no single car is in sight. They weave through pedestrian precincts and dodge down the wrong side of the road as if they were invulnerable to harm. They sail through traffic lights, road junctions and crossings, ignoring common sense and all the rules of the highway, terrifying innocent shoppers and mums with prams and toddlers, intimidating people on foot with their near silent approaches, with no slightest sign of remorse or sense of wrongdoing.

 

They ride like brainless idiots, scooting in and out of traffic, going from road to footpath and back again, without signalling their intentions or giving a moment’s thought to the motorists who have to slam on their brakes or swerve dangerously in order to avoid them. They don’t give a rocket-propelled shit about anyone but themselves, yet still have the cheek to feel they are hard done by, constantly whining about the lack of cycle lanes (which they rarely use anyway, even though they are provided gratis, courtesy of tax-paying car drivers), forever bleating about how inconsiderate other road users are to them, for crying out loud. The traffic lights do apply to you as well you know, dickheads.

 

And what is their excuse for acting like crazed mobile yobs and expecting the rest of us sinners to dodge out of their saintly leg-powered ways? That they are using an environmentally friendly mode of transport, that’s what. Well, you dangerously bloody arrogant cycling terrorists ain’t too friendly to my environment. No sir. May I also point out, here, that the bicycle was not designed for lazy chavs to walk their lead-less muzzle-less pet pit-bull Sampson, nor are they meant to be used as mobile telephone kiosks. In other words:

 

WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING CLOWN!

 

And I hope the dope on the racing bike who jumped the red light and almost knocked me down recently, broke his sweaty weather-beaten neck about ten yards further up the road. If I see that whelk again, I’m going to tip him over and watch him wriggling like an upended beetle, struggling to get his feet out of the stirrups before a huge tanker lorry comes roaring past and squishes him into paste like the turd-burrowing insect he is.

 

Personally, I would like to see a total holocaust among this breathtakingly selfish fraternity of bi-wheeled ignoramuses. Then, once we’d wiped out the sticky-Lycra wearing buggers, we could have all their mountain bikes melted down and turned into electric trams and statues of famous walkers like Scot of the Antarctic, Ian Botham and various American astronauts. The latter didn’t walk very far, I know, but it was on the moon, so hey, that’s still gotta count.

 

Anyway, cyclists, I hate you because you are a menace to the public, a pain in the bum with your bitching about car drivers when you are to blame in almost every accident and near miss and because you think it’s OK to dump your bike wherever you like – on the floor outside shop doorways, for example, because you’re only concerned with what you want to buy and not if anyone else can actually get into the place thanks to your thoughtlessly erected barricade.

 

Mind you, at least cycling with criminal stupidity means the mortality rate on the roads for bikers must be considerably higher than for other users and with each one that gets themselves wiped out, I guess that makes the rest of us that little bit safer.

 

Tossers, the lot of you. Use a bit of common sense and common decency and who knows, I might stop hating you. Except for Boris the bike Johnson, the fat blond philanderer, with his stupid rent a bike scheme, wasting untold millions putting gaudy bright blue cycle lanes all over the bloody place that will likely get used about as often as the moon turns the same colour as the lanes.

 

There’s one bike lane near me at the end of a quiet, rarely used road, and it’s about five feet long with a little bollard separating it from the road proper. Why? What for? How much did it cost and which over paid wazzock decided it was a good idea? These people are so dumb, it’s enough to make you spit red-hot rivets. That money could have gone to the kid’s hospital or a hospice, instead it’s wasted on an unused bit of green tat on the road that probably took about six council workers to lay.

 

And just to add insult to injury, that wally, Ken Livingstone, when incumbent as mayor of London, decided it would be a good idea to also put cycle lanes on the pavements at Vauxhall where I live (one of the heaviest used road junctions anywhere). So now, as a pedestrian, you can avoid getting knocked down by traffic, think you’ve made it to safety and still risk getting killed crossing the cycle lane to the pavement proper after foolishly dropping your guard. No pelican crossing for those and if you’re blind or can’t move too quickly, then God help you.

 

Then we get rid of that fool Livingstone and Boris the bike spends millions putting in blue cycle lanes all over the place (no doubt blue to differentiate his madness from the green madness that came before) which I have NEVER seen one cyclist using. Not one. Not ever. What he should have done is had written right down the middle of them in huge yard-high letters “DO NOT CYCLE HERE, IT IS STUPID AND DANGEROUS AND MAY RESULT IN DEATH OR INJURY TO INNOCENT PEOPLE” and then the cycling morons would have been all over them like ants.

 

And quit the wheelies, already. If that’s the only lame trick you can do it just makes you look like a sap. Unless you intend falling off and seriously injuring yourself, in which case, please continue. I like a good belly laugh and seeing any of you pig ignorant cycling maniacs bleeding on the pavement is one of life’s simple pleasures…

 

Did I mention that I hate ruddy cyclists, by the way?

 

 

 

 

Jolly Wheeze

A good practical joke to pull on a friend while walking in the countryside, if visiting an exotic continent where he isn’t familiar with the local fauna, at least, is to tie a six-foot length of string to a large twig and secretly attach it to his belt. Once that’s done, you should tap him on the shoulder and warn him he is being stalked by a “deadly branch snake”, one of the three most venomous and aggressive reptiles in the world. Keep a straight face while telling him this and try to look as worried and fearful as possible so that he is fully convinced.

 

Naturally, as your buddy begins to move away from the area, the twig will follow right behind him, wriggling “menacingly” through the grass and with any luck, he will panic and break into a run.

 

To frighten him even more, by this time you should be screaming for help and waving your arms frantically above your head, while warning him, in a loud, shrill voice, that the snake is almost upon him and that no anti-venom for this particular viper exists. Make it very clear that a single bite and he will be as dead as the proverbial doornail in ten agonising minutes, shortly after his face has turned black and his tongue has swollen to the size of a half-inflated rugby ball. Which fate, no amount of desperate poison-sucking-out, or tourniquets will save him from.

 

Driven to a dribbling frenzy, your mucker will take to his heels and run and run, crying, pooping his pants and gabbling madly, until you finally lose sight of him completely. Of course, with no possible way he can outdistance the branch snake, short of ripping off his strides and hurling them into a bush, he will eventually drop to the floor exhausted, freeze in the foetal position from sheer terror and very likely black out entirely.

 

At this point, when you stumble across his unconscious body, you can wake him up by urinating on his face and then explain that the whole thing had simply been a jolly wheeze on your part. He is likely to be a bit peeved at first, but then will see the funny side and congratulate you on your convincing gag. That’s if some big hairy thing with fangs hasn’t got to him first and killed and eaten him.

 

Should that be the case, you will likely only discover an odd tuft of your pal’s scalp, a few scattered teeth and one or two gnawed bones. This will mean that your amusing scam has backfired somewhat and that it might be best if you kept quiet about the whole affair.

 

Alternatively, if your easily fooled friend has been badly mauled, but is still breathing, finish him off with the put-them-out-of-their-misery attachment on your Swiss army knife. Be sure to keep the wounds irregular and in keeping with him having been savaged by one or more large critters. Don't want some interfering jungle Miss Marple catching you out, after all. Then you can fly home and driven insane by guilt and remorse, hack your family into bloody kebabs with a garden hoe, or other sharp-edged tool, before being shot dead through your kitchen window by a trigger-happy police marksman.

 

Dear oh dear, and all because your gullible chum was stupid enough to run away from a harmless bit of stick in the first place. Let’s face it, daft sod deserved to die.

 

And your nagging wife and her parasite children.

 

I also know a practical joke about a fatal untreatable disease, but that involves drugging them first so you can put the required green and yellow marks all over their bodies with felt tip pens. Trouble with that one is, sometimes you are a tad too heavy-handed with the drugging part of the exercise and they never wake up. Where’s the fun in that? I found it a complete waste of effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

R.I.P Gemma

R.I.P. Gemma

 

When I was at junior school, a seven-year-old girl called Gemma choked on a fish bone in the dinner hall and died. It was a rather inexplicable thing to happen, given that she actually had shepherd’s pie for lunch, but perhaps the previous day’s washing up hadn’t been as carefully done as it should have been.

 

The ambulance crew tried desperately to revive her for almost an hour, but sadly, all to no avail. Even several whacking great, skin-crisping jolts from the mains supply failed to spark her up again and an expert doctor later told the coroner’s court that even if they had managed to restart her tiny heart, she would have probably been left with all the brain power of a broccoli floret, but minus all the iron and vitamins.

 

Gemma’s surprise death left all of her teachers, fellow students and the headmaster utterly distraught at her passing and her parents were inconsolable, particularly given that Gemma was an only child and her mum had recently had her womb and ovaries mistakenly removed while in A & E with a suspected broken ankle.

On the upside, the break later turned out to be no more than a simple sprain, but that didn’t cut much ice with the now barren woman negligent doctors had accidentally turned her into. Probably been doing drugs at a wild party the night before and being a bit bleary eye’d, they’d mixed up her name with a cancer sufferer who’d had her leg strapped up and been sent home with her tumour intact, mistakenly believing she was going to live. Or so I suspect.

 

After Gemma’s cremation (which smelled slightly of kippers, exacerbating the general grief), her parents never really got on too well and eventually, after lots of bitter public rows and acrimony – and after the compensation money had been spunked on foreign holidays, bingo and rent boys – her dad left her mum for a younger, prettier woman and had four very bright and athletic children by her. And he gave her a clump in the mouth before he buggered off for good with his fully functioning younger model. Hit her three times, in fact. Said he had to because she didn’t go down after the first two and he couldn’t get his leg high enough to kick her in the back otherwise.

 

On top of the horrendous guilt she had to bear for not having given Gemma her usual packed lunch on that fateful day, everything else became too much for her depressed and alcoholic mother to cope with. Liver shrunk to the size of a butter bean, the poor woman went downhill fast, making five desperate attempts at suicide, before finally succeeding with an overdose of weedkiller, washing up liquid and liver salts – her fresh-smelling, pathetic corpse, later found under a large cloud of fizzy green bubbles.

 

Still, let’s face facts, if Gemma had lived, I expect she would have only grown ridiculously old and then died anyway. Probably would have been ill loads of times as well and she had a pug face on top of a stick-thin body, so I doubt she would have ever got a man. Lesbian, most likely. They’re none too picky, apparently. Don’t really know what all the fuss was about.

 

And yet they still keep telling us fish is good for us. Can’t believe a word they say, the conning swines. I’d stick with burgers, if I were you. At least all the bones, beaks and bumholes in that McCrap are minced up small enough to swallow without choking. Not until your clinically obese neck has filled up like a balloon full of cheese straws, anyway.

 

Will that be diet coke with your three thousand calories of cholesterol and sugar? …Well, you greedy git? I’m waiting. Go on, make a decision, who knows, it might just burn a few grease cells out of your fat-addled brain.

 

 

 

 

 

Stop That Pigeon!

I was looking out of my window the other day, watching the world go by, when I saw a particularly tatty pigeon flying past. These disease-ridden rats of the sky are foul unhealthy things, so without hesitation, I snatched up a glass ashtray and threw it at the feathered flapper. Unfortunately, aim a tad poor, I missed the avian beastie by several feet, the ashtray consequently hitting the garden wall below and shattering into about a thousand pieces.

Well, one of the largest shards of razor-edged glass then shot into the street and struck a passing woman on the side of her face. Shocked and dazed, cheek gashed open to the bone, white polyester blouse and crimplene slacks rapidly becoming soaked with blood, the female pedestrian fashion-victim dropped her Quicksave carrier and unwisely staggered off the pavement and into the road, slap bang in front of a speeding motorcycle.

Luckily for the canny shopper, the leather-clad rider was on the ball and swerved in the nick of time, thereby missing the witless woman by mere inches. The helmeted chap’s manoeuvre proved ill-advised, however, cruel fate sending man, pillion passenger and machine into the path of a giant tanker lorry racing from the opposite direction. Unable to break in time, or otherwise avoid a collision, the lorry smashed into the motorcycle and crushed it flat, thereby propelling the luckless biker into the air, whereupon he crashed through the windscreen of the tanker’s cab and butted the driver in the face, knocking him unconscious.

Out of control and unguided, the lorry jack-knifed, hurled the dead bike rider into a nearby tree - where he landed on a branch adjacent to the one his unconscious pillion passenger was draped over - mounted the pavement and careened at high-speed through the gates of the junior school opposite my house.

The wayward wagon then ploughed a deep furrow across the playground and demolished several classrooms, before coming to rest in the assembly hall. In the process, it not only wrecked year three’s papier mache nativity scene, but also killed forty-one ethnically diverse children in the middle of singing “all things bright and beautiful”, their geography teacher, “no-nonsense” Mr Frith and Gertrude, a passing West Indian dinner lady, who had unwisely chosen the wrong moment to leave her post at the turkey twizzler tray to go for a sneaky fag, poor woman ending up tangled around the lorry’s back axle with the butt of the unfinished ciggy jammed up her nose.

Filled with thousands of gallons of highly flammable petroleum, the tanker finally exploded in a ball of flames, creating a conflagration that spread rapidly through the building, causing five million pound’s worth of damage and barbecuing another one hundred and seventy-three school kids, the deputy head, Mrs Narendra Patel, six other assorted piss-poor teachers, Bill the caretaker and Violet, a blue-haired school cleaner, who was due to retire the following Monday after thirty years of faithful service on minimum wage.

To cap it all, the blaze miraculously leapt the school wall and raced across a forty-foot lawn, before consuming the old folk’s home next door, leaving no survivors among the aged residents and putting the kibosh on two Irish nurses and four Ghanaian care workers who sadly choked on a mixture of noxious fumes emanating from burning dentures and colostomy bags while desperately trying to drag some of the charcoaled oldsters from the cinders.

The only bright spot in this terrible tragedy – apart from the bricks in the school wall which continued to glow for several hours after the fire was finally extinguished – the motor bike passenger’s miraculous escape from serious injury - apart from his broken legs, nose, ribs and collar bone - became somewhat tarnished several weeks later when he hung himself from his adoptive family‘s banisters out of pansy-arse survivor guilt syndrome.

Luckily for his step-parents, taking a leaf out of Madonna and Jolie’s book, they had recently bought/adopted a little foreign baby, so didn’t really miss the soft twat. They may have seen things a little differently, however, if they had known at the time, while not bothering to attend his funeral, that they had actually wasted their money on a little cutey that was already infected with the ebola virus that was set to eat its eyes and internal organs within a matter of days.

That pigeon was a blasted menace. Filthy bird!

And I missed Eastenders, what with being distracted from my TV guide by all the people outside running about in flames, screaming, and the sirens of the emergency vehicles that turned up just too late to be of any help. Anyone get murdered this week?