Friday 24 April 2015

Where's My Pants?

 

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. 

Saturday 18 April 2015

Prozac Dreams #1

The dreams I've been having while taking Prozac have ranged from weird to full on disturbing, but last night's effort was so entertaining I've decided to start writing up the more interesting ones as short stories. Welcome inside my fucked up imagination . . . 



Prozac Dreams #1

Some old school friends and I on are a yacht; we’re sailing across an azure ocean, the sun beating down on us. We come to a tropical island paradise – all golden sand and palm trees – and decide to drop anchor. This looks like a cool place to hang out.

It’s not long before our presence attracts attention. A bunch of people start coming aboard our boat, wanting to join the party. There are lots of women, all of them beautiful and glamorous, scantily clad in teeny tiny bikinis. Unfortunately for me they are all accompanied by possessive boyfriends - bearded men in polo neck jumpers who chatter away in French. Our yacht rapidly fills. No one speaks a word of English. I dash back and forth between our guests, offering them cups of coffee and ogling the women, hoping they won’t notice me peeping at their incredible bodies out the corner of my eye.

The party is in full swing. I’m having a great time. But then I notice a huge, black bank of roiling thunderclouds heading straight toward us. “There’s a storm coming,” I yell. The boat rapidly empties as our guests flee, and I jump down onto the sand to undo the moorings. We have to make sail and get away before we become engulfed by the tempest. I scramble back up onto the deck and see there are four dead men tied to the boom.

“Those damn Frenchies are trying to set us up,” shouts one of my friends. The four men appear to have been beaten to death – their faces are battered and bruised beyond recognition. Searching for some kind of identification we go through their pockets, and find they are stuffed full of German gold.

“If we dump the bodies, we can keep the Deutschmarks,” I venture. “As long as no one sees us, we’ll be in the clear.” That’s when we are plunged into shadow, and I look up and see there’s a vast Russian naval vessel coming past, and what must be a hundred pasty faced Russian soldiers in grey uniforms are leaning over the side, staring at me. I try to put myself between the dead bodies and the soldiers. I hold my arms out, attempting to block their view. “There’s nothing to see here,” I cheerfully shout.

The soldiers cock their machine guns and take aim at me. And that’s when I wake up.