I awake with a
start at four o'clock in the morning and
instantly know that something is wrong. Is there a fire? Is an axe murderer
watching me from the shadows, preparing to pounce? It’s only when I stick my
hand below the duvet for a quick readjustment of the old balls that I realise
what is going on: My pants are missing. I'm pretty sure I was wearing them when
I crawled drunkenly to bed last night, so where the hell have they gone?
I’m naked from the
waist down. Have I become another unfortunate victim of pant thievery? It’s a
phenomenon that is rife right now – I read about it on the internet. People are
waking up to discover their pants have been harvested, and in the majority of
cases it’s too late to do anything about it. By the time they’ve come to their
senses their pants are half way around the globe, and some Chinese billionaire
is strutting down the street in them, showing them off to his rich friends.
God damn it. Where
the hell are my pants?
Four in the
morning is no hour to be awake - too late to be considered early and too early
to be considered late. It's kind of like a no man's land, sandwiched between
the night and the dawn; the revellers have quietened and the milkmen’s alarms
have yet to go off. It's certainly not the ideal time to be crashing around a
narrowboat, hung over and pantless, turning the place upside down in search of
missing underwear. I check every nook and cranny, but there's no sign of them.
It's becoming increasingly clear my pants have been abducted.
I could call the
police, but frankly I think they'd laugh me out of town. They’re too busy
busting motorists for doing thirty-five in a thirty limit to go after the real
criminals. So I do what I always do in times of crisis - I improvise an opera
about the situation. It's a coping strategy I learned back in 'Nam .
People think it's
hard to be an opera singer and you need years of intense training, but that's
an urban myth. All you need to do is sing as loud as fuck in Italian. It
doesn't even have to be real Italian - so long as it sounds Italian then you’re in business.
I leap onto the
fore deck and burst into song; a lament for my pants. I have included here a
rough translation, but as I was singing in a language I don’t speak, it may not
be a hundred percent accurate.
Where's my pants?
I've only had them on two days,
I could get another week out of them yet.
They're a pretty decent pair,
No holes and the elastic still works.
Where's my pants?
I think they're blue, or maybe grey.
They're definitely not the stripy ones,
As I only wear those on special
occasions.
Where's my pants?
If one of those ducks has nicked them,
I'll kill the fucker.
As I'm mid way
through the overture, the lady from two boats down appears and starts shouting
something - I don't catch her exact words as my opera is far too loud. She's
clearly hugely impressed, not only by the passion of my aria, but also by the sight
of my dangling penis, which in the chilly night air has shrunken to roughly the
size of an acorn.
"Bravo,"
she screams as she clouts me across the earhole with a length of four by two. I
tumble backwards into the canal and begin a new song, this time about the
coldness of the still, black water.
Dawn finally
breaks, and the manager arrives to insist I leave the marina right now or else
he’ll have me arrested. But his harsh words cannot dampen my good mood; I found
my pants - they were screwed up in the leg hole of my trousers the whole
time.
