All the people in the world wonder why I put a clothespeg on my nose when I even THINK about Woking.

Well I had to go there to get my retinas photoed or scanned or whatever. I had no choice.
Woking. Cack hack cack etc. Oh Pooooooooo, I can smell Woking.

Look at that picture. Hey! It’s an Offy AND it sells fireworks!

What a Combo!

Do you know, if you are ever feeling down or droopy then go to Woking. When you have stopped heaving then make your way to Wetherspoons. It’s down the street that is full of kebab and chicken shops.

When you get there, have a look about you. Vodka Mick is barred out of there. The remnants are like something from a Hogarth engraving. I might do a painting myself. I should call it ‘The End of the World’ or ‘Where the Devil opened his Anus’.

But the people at the hospital were nice.

My comfort zone (that is, where I actually go) gets smaller by the day. BUT I did see a really lovely girl with a bicycle the other day. That’s the trouble with noticing everything and having your brain going at 3k miles an hour. When my appointment with the psychiatrist comes up I have decided to upset him. Well, not UPSET him exactly, but put him off guard. For example; there will be a chair. I shall move it. I shall move it so that I can watch them rather than be a specimen slide for them.

Rant rant rant. I’m writing a story that is loosely based on when I hitched round France when I was 15.

Oh Pooooooo, Woking. Oh the stench!

Today, I am pleased to announce that I finished the Marathon and broke my own personal best record.

About three-quarters of the way through I felt as though I had hit ‘the wall’ and couldn’t get any further. The cheers of the crowd brought me round and I shook my head, took a deep breath and carried on.

Buoyed-up by my supporters and fans I carried on to smash my previous record and finished the Marathon in 28 seconds.

What do you mean ‘they’re called Snickers now’?

They’ve still got peanuts in and I should know.

From the conservatory windows, lashed with rain, Lara looked out across the lawn. Terry would have to be here more frequently through the season just to get the mowing done. She would tell Maddie to tell him that an extra day in the week would be required until October but that would have to wait; Maddie was driving to the newsagent for the papers.

At first the papers had been delivered, or, more properly, ‘mashed’ into the letterbox at the gates by a boy who rode a BMX bicycle. Lara preferred a newspaper that could be read rather than deciphered and so now the housekeeper had to go and fetch them.

The dogs were out and Lara watched them chase each other across the wet grass of the lawn and through the longer, wilder meadow patch. A Doberman and a Patterdale terrier constantly vying for supremacy although it was quite clear to everyone, apart from the participants, who was top dog. Lara lifted her hand and touched the glass. She was quite alone in the silent old house and felt warmly insulated from everything and everyone outside. She thought of the title of a track by Pink Floyd, ‘Comfortably Numb’.

She took her hand away from the glass and realised that she had left a fingermark so she breathed a ‘Haah’ onto it and, pulling her sleeve over the ball of her thumb, wiped it away.

The kettle at the side of the Aga was simmering as she opened the door into the long, low kitchen. Her breakfast cup was a wide and deep French affair and she always used it even though she felt a sense of desecration as the dried coffee granules and semi-skimmed went in. She poured on the hot water, stirred it well and then added a slug of Famous Grouse from one of the bottles in the cupboard. Just as she sat at the table the dogs raced past the window and the buzzer that indicated the opening of the gates sounded.

Gates and glass and dogs and buzzers and bells and booze and returning housekeepers. All layers to keep her away from prying eyes now that the press interest had finally waned. She often thought that she may as well be living in an igloo made from bricks and wads of money. Bundles of notes all packed together and cemented with molten gold.

They say that money can’t buy you love, although plenty had tried to convince her otherwise AFTER she had won the lottery and the media had got hold of her. They say that money can’t buy you happiness although Lara felt very happy in her golden-barred gaol. This was all of her own making. This was her world and she really needed nothing else.

Maddie came in through the side door into the kitchen followed by two wet dogs. She had an armful of newspapers and a bag of dog biscuits. “Morning!” she said, “Sorry I was so long but we were nearly out of these!”. She held the bag of biscuits aloft and then placed them on the side. She put the newspapers down in front of Lara. She never called her mistress by name although, in extremis, she would refer to her as ‘Miss Clark’.

“Morning, Maddie. Isn’t the weather filthy? Did you get soaked? Oh, and thanks for these. Sit down and I’ll make you a coffee”.

Lara got up to fill a mug and Monty, the Patterdale, pawed at her baggy and fading jeans.

“Geddoff you foul beast; you’re all wet”.

She supplied Maddie with coffee and then took the breakfast tray and plonked the papers and her own cup onto it.

“Maddie, I’ll be in the office for a while. See you later.”

Maddie didn’t need to be told this because the routine was the same nearly every morning. As the door closed behind Miss Clark she looked about her and sighed. She was lucky, she supposed, because she had her own rooms in a beautiful old house and a lovely wage that she used to support her parents in Norfolk. But what would she do if and when the strings were cut? Her life was constricted and she felt like an army that had but one soldier, herself, and one general. She wasn’t getting any younger. She was living inside Miss Clark’s life, inside her peculiar rules, inside her prison. She finished her coffee and put the mug in the sink and then she opened the bag of dog biscuits.

In her office, Lara switched on the Bose radio in time to catch the news. As she finished her coffee she dismantled the papers and discarded everything that she thought irrelevant. Everything was hammering into her, the wireless news and all the sorrows of the world from the papers. She soaked it all up, like a sponge. She used the scissors from the top desk drawer to clip the pieces she was interested in and she used the bottle of Grouse from the lower drawer to refresh her breakfast cup. The rest of the papers went into the recycling bin.

She fired up the word processor and the printer and copied off another ten of the letterhead to her solicitors that fitted so neatly into the window envelopes.

And so, to Keffold and Moorhouse, she started yet another letter using her fountain pen. To Dear Mister Keffold, instructing him to advance various sums from an anonymous well-wisher. Today there was a fourteen year old boy who had been blinded by muggers, an elderly lady who lived in a house on an eroding cliff top and a ballet-dancing schoolchild who had been bullied to the point of no return. She added the sums and wrote a composite cheque to the client account. When it was all blotted and dry she filled the envelope and stamped it. Her cup was empty but her bank account wasn’t.

She took a shower and changed her clothes for some cleaner ones. She always wore exactly what she wanted to because she had nobody to please but herself. As she made her way through to the laundry room she asked Maddie, as always, if Steve had been yet. He hadn’t. As always.

Steve was the postman and the dogs knew him. He would ring at the gate and be allowed in and given a cup of tea with two sugars and he smelled of cigarettes. He used to deliver the incoming mail and, in return for the tea and a sit-down, would take the outgoing with him.

Lara ran back upstairs to fetch her letter for Keffold and Moorhouse. She left the letter on the kitchen table and then slipped on her wellingtons. The rain had stopped but everything was still wet. She whistled for the dogs and took a tennis ball from the shelf. These tennis balls only ever lasted one outing. At the pond the Koi came up to the surface waiting to be fed. They had felt the vibrations and seen the dark shadows through the silver surface. Lara threw the ball as hard as she could and it bounced across the lower lawn and into the woodland with the dogs after it like bullets from a gun.

She watched the carp as she could hear Monty kill the tennis ball and then Charn appeared with what was left of it at her side. As she took it from his mouth the dogs heard the gate go and tore off towards Steve and his postal delivery bag.

The meadow area was looking rather bedraggled. Some poppies would look nice in there and some cornflowers and some field scabious.

Steve thought that the two of them were lesbians but they were nice enough. He had really only glimpsed Miss Clark a few times and only spoken with her twice in four years. He swapped the letters, one for one, and went on his way to smoke a fag.

Lara played with the dogs until the ball was destroyed and then she returned to the house.

“Any post?” she asked, looking at the letter from Keffold and Moorhouse that was on the table.

Maddie was washing mugs and spoons at the sink.

“Only that one” she said, “I’m still waiting for my Valentine cards to turn up”.

“Oh, Maddie, you do make me laugh. Sorry, that sounded horrible. I meant it to be kind. I’m sorry.”

Lara took the envelope to her office and opened the flap with a paper-knife. Inside there was a letter from Mister Keffold explaining the enclosure. There was a small white envelope addressed to ‘To Whom It May Concern’ and within this was a little card with a picture of a fishing village in watercolour and the words ‘Thank you’ printed on it.

Inside were words, blue biro, hand rather shaky and feeble. ‘The solicitor could not say but please accept…
The car and the wheelchair…
Stronger now…
The difference…’

It finished ‘With thanks, gratitude and love, George and Esther Ditton. P.S. We hope you are feeling well.’

Lara was feeling well.

She put the card on the mantlepiece.

It said ‘love’.

The briefing was dull, lifeless and boring. The conclusion was that they were to look for something, anything, but they weren’t sure what.

Anthony had been through this so many times and he mildly resented having to get up so early. He always did things the same way, no matter what was said, because he was very good at what he did and got results and that was why he got called upon.

The phone would ring and he would answer and then he would appear at the crack of…

“Let’s be careful and good luck”.

Having to pile into the back of an unmarked vehicle with beery morons who farted was not Anthony’s ideal way to start the day but he had been doing this for a long, long time and he was used to it. He looked from the steamed window out into the quiet streets as the dawn tried to make its way up.

Anthony was very good at this, the job that he did, and if this was the way that his employers wanted him to earn money then so be it. He was the best that they had and he knew it and they knew it. He didn’t speak to anyone and no one spoke to him. He was quiet and had developed his method that was proven by success.

Around the corner, they waited for the door and the dogs to go in.

“Bathroom, Tony?”

Anthony nodded. He didn’t much care for being called Tony but he knew why they did it. They thought that he was their mate. Anthony always, when possible, took the bathroom. Searching was in his bloodstream and that was always the first place that he would start. Burglars in holiday resorts always went straight to the cooker because that’s where everyone hid their money. In his job, the bathroom was the place that popped results.

Everyone was allotted to their locations and then Anthony was asked whether he would like ‘Pay’ or ‘Time’. Looking back from the window he asked, as always, for ‘Time’. At time and a half these raids whacked up his holiday and that was what he wanted.

He was trying to read the Russians. In his bag was always a book and this time it was Gorky. He hefted the toolbag onto his lap but before he could get to the book the radio crackled and they were sent in.

On the doorstep Anthony made a show of pulling pristine paper overalls and shoe covers from his bag of tools. He opened the thin plastic bags and left them on the garden path. Clad in white, he made his way indoors and up the stairs. Why they never wanted him to put a little white bag over his toolbag he never knew but he didn’t really care anyway. The door had been smashed and the occupants dragged away. The firearms could be left to whoever was doing the bedrooms. There was blood splashed on the wallpaper in the upper hallway.

He always worked clockwise and alone. He would never have anyone in a room that he was searching. The door was open and he marked this, mentally. Next he looked at the difference between the outer and inner walls. The ceiling looked intact and grubby, the light fitting hid nothing. The carpet covered floor didn’t seem to have been touched of late but still his nose twitched.

The first wall seemed intact. The second wall presented a lavatory, cistern and wash hand basin with light fittings. Anthony opened his toolbag and took out his mirror and torch and the latex-free gloves.

“Are you alright, Tony?”

“Oh, yes, I’m getting along… fine. I’ll let you know.”

There was nothing in the cistern and Anthony used his mirror to peek behind the pedestal and behind the basin and its fittings. The mirror was two inches in diameter and screwed onto a long flexible stem. The stem was fixed into a torch-sized knurled handle made from aluminium. The stem could be bent and Anthony had smaller mirrors that could be swapped over. With the light from his torch he could see just about anywhere.

The airing cupboard had a few towels and sheets inside. Anthony took them all out and shook them and then refolded them. There was nothing behind the tank and nothing above the cupboard door. Having replaced the linen, Anthony concentrated on the third wall. Next came the bath.

Running his torch along the line of screws that held the bath panel he noticed something. On two of the flatheads were scratches that seemed to be too bright. Anthony’s nose was screaming now. He reached for his bag and pulled out some tools.

First he took photographs and then set to work with the electric screwdriver. The bath panel came away easily and he stood it against the fourth wall. Underneath the bath there was nothing except a very old copy of the Daily Mirror, a stick air-freshener and some marks in the dust. The bathroom now stank of pine.

“Alright, Tone?”

“Yeah, getting there. Nothing yet”

When he was alone, Anthony lay on his stomach and used the torch and mirror to check the far side of the bath. He saw three packages stuck out of normal view with duct tape. The first two he could work out but the small one interested him. Lying on his back he could reach it. Having pulled it away from the side of the bath he took a look. The bag was full of morphine tablets.

The base of the mirror, the handle, could be unscrewed but the thread was reversed so that unless anyone knew the secret all they would do would be to tighten it up. Anthony packed the bag and tape into the handle so that it wouldn’t rattle and replaced the lid. Then he shouted for help.

When everyone came running they used the mirror and the torch to see what was there. The first and biggest package was a handgun and ammunition and the second was cannabis resin, probably a kilo or so. Anthony had already kept a gun and he didn’t want the hashish. In his job drug tests could be made sporadically and cannabis takes a long time to clear the system. Opiates clear in a couple of days.

The finds were photographed, in situ, and Anthony finished his search of the bathroom and replaced the side of the bath.

Back at the main room, the squad were drinking whisky.
“Well done, Tone!”, and his hair got ruffled.

He went to the office and asked to take the next two weeks off.

“Where are you off to this time, Tony?”

“Oooh, I dunno. Cornwall, down near the Lizard. I like it there.”

Anthony couldn’t stand Cornwall and caught his usual train towards Wales. At the station there was only one cab waiting. Anthony knew Derek.

“The Horseshoes is it, sir?”

“Yes, thank you. You always remember. I’ve had a lot of work on recently.”

Outside the pub, Anthony reached into his bag and found the plastic bottle of glucosamine tablets that were now morphine tablets. He put three of them into his mouth and washed them down with a mouthful of supermarket vodka. Then, when Derek had gone, he started walking.

He let himself in at the retirement home and said hello to the desk staff. They asked after his parents, which he no longer had, and he said that all was well and that he was just checking, again, as usual, and to please not bother him.

Three days later Anthony was sat by the river and watching the water as it fell over the stones. He saw it build and fall like a heartbeat; the push and the gush. The simplicity of the river was like a childbirth to him.

He was paid to look for things but what he was searching for he couldn’t tell.

Tim had parked outside the house. The map-book made things crystal clear. All he had to do was remember the junctions. He hadn’t been there for a long time.

The bang on the offside rear door startled him. He whipped his head around in time to see the four little fat fingers leaving trails on the glass.

He reached for the button to pop the boot, turned down the music and then opened the door.

“Hello, Hannah”.

“I’ve got a cake”.

“So I see”.

This was typical of Philanderer. Get the children really wired on sugar so that they didn’t even know what they were doing. There was half a cupcake left and the lemon icing was sticky.

“Give me that and you can finish it for your pudding”.

In the boot were some wipes and a plastic bag for the cake. Tim wiped her fingers and the glass of the car door.

“Where’s Hoppy?”

“Mum”.

“Where’s all your stuff?”

“Mum”.

And then the door opened and Tim saw Hoppy and his ex on the path. They were talking into each others ears.

“Hannah, you can’t get in yet because Hoppy has to get in from the safe side, not the road side”

Hoppy had a backpack that looked like a dog. She went straight to the car and jumped in. Hannah followed.

Tim was talking to Philippa.

“Hoppy is going to a party tomorrow so they have to be back here by two o’clock at the very latest.”
“I could bring Hoppy back and then…”

There wasn’t any point; the stare brought him down. Both the girls had to be back by two and that was that.

“Have you got the things?”

Phillipa handed over a small case and slammed the door. Tim threw the dirty wipe onto the doorstep and went back to the car. The case went into the boot and he made sure that Hannah was strapped into her seat.

“Hoppy, you’ve got to take that backpack off”

“Where are we going?”

“Just take it off and put the seatbelt on properly”.

It didn’t take long for the children to cotton on.

“This isn’t your house”.

“No. We’re going to the seaside”.

Tim knew what he had in mind. He would show Hoppy where she had come from and why she was called Hoppy. He would show her, without telling her, where it all began.

“I don’t like being called Hoppy.”

“I’d better call you Ella then.”

“I want to be called Valerie.”

Valerie? The miles rolled by and Tim put the music back on.

“It’s a song”

And then they were there, back in the village.

Above the village, high above the dunes, was a hotel. Years before there had been a conference and people from branches all over had been made to attend. That was where Tim had met Phillipa. They had walked together over the quiet dunes and then, as if by magic, they had held hands.

The kiss was electric. Tim had touched her face. He had taken hold of her jaw. He took her face up to his and then he kissed her. On the sand, in the marram of the dunes they made love and it was a real love. And that was where Ella had been conceived.

Out there, where the lizards and the adders play, there are rabbits. The collections of droppings are a dried proof.

And that is why Hoppy is called Hoppy. This is where she came from although she would never be told.

Tim could probably work out exactly where he had made Phillipa’s eyes stare so wide and the blood rush to her face. Made her gasp. In the dunes where the defences lurked. Up at the hotel there was still a gun battery and in the dunes were pillboxes ready to take invaders off at the knees.

Those years ago, as old as Hoppy, Tim had found metal worms screwed into the ground. The barbed wire was long gone but the metalwork was still there.

In the village, the chip shop was open for lunch.

“You can have fish or sausage or pie.”

He held each girl up to the counter so that they could choose. One double chips and two haddock and a saveloy they were back in the car.

Driving to the beach he noticed that the door had been ripped off the old observation post. Just down from the Norman church it had been white the last time he had seen it. Now it was wrecked and sprayed.

Tim was trying to eat mushy peas with a wooden fork when Hannah observed “This isn’t the seaside”.

The sea was about forty foot away. They were sitting on a beach.

Ella said, “I’m going for a walk”.

“Watch out for adders”, said Tim.

“So how come it’s not the seaside?”

“Because there aren’t any shops”.

“Well, I can see your point. This is certainly a shop-free zone.”

About two minutes later, Ella came back.

“Dad! Look what I found!”

Ella had a metal box on her right shoulder. Right up next to her ear. About the size of a small, circular biscuit tin. The metal was rusted and Tim could see that the three-quarters of it were stained dark where she had dug it from the wet sand.

He knew what it was.

“Hoppy, don’t move – don’t move – I’ve just got to look after Hannah”

Hannah weighed next to nothing so he could pick her up quite easily. He took her round to the other side of the dune.

“Put your hands over your ears and don’t move and I’m not joking. If you hear a bang you must go up to that hotel over there. I’ll be back in a minute. I’ve got to look after Hoppy.”

When Tim got back around to the beach he started to walk a lot more slowly.

She was looking out to sea.

She still had the landmine up on her shoulder and her mouth was open. She was staring.

Tim looked over to his left.

Up in the sky was a face made of sparkling lights. Hundreds of feet tall and hovering over the sea.

This was all my fault. I had got too close. I wanted to see what they were doing and I had got too close. Hoppy saw me first, her creator, and then Tim.

Tim stood on the sand and he could hear a singing noise in his head. Ella, his lovely Hoppy, named for the rabbits out there on the dunes was just to his right. Over the sea he could see the face that had stopped his eldest daughter moving. Sparkling and glittering. The face of his creator.

In his left hand, Tim felt some small, sandy fingers. Hannah.

Hoppy hasn’t got to the party yet. None of them has been home again by two.

On a beach there are a man and two children staring up into the pale blue sky.

While I composed my blog for Twizzle’s birthday I noticed something strange.

YouTube offers you some near-misses and this is the one I should have gone for. Same song…

George Harrison was the best Beatle anyway but when I was watching the video I looked at the other guitarist who was on stage with him.

It was Pete Ham, a man with whom I am obsessed. I have pictures of him on my wall and a copy of his death certificate and a photograph of his house where he hanged himself on the 24th of April, 1975. I might go and stand outside there on the 24th; I can walk it from here quite easily.

Here comes the sun.

When I woke up I had this song on my mind.
Don’t ask me why or how.

I hope you have a brilliant day.

You are the best daughter that I ever, ever had.

On the 22nd I want everyone to jump out of bed, salute, and say ‘Happy Birthday, Melissa’ because the old bat will be 35.

Love you,

Dad. xxx

Just to calm you, I would like to share a snap of my shelf of rubbish.

It is my job to poke about in hedges and nip behind trees. This is how I find things out.

You will see that the lost toy is no longer lost. I keep loads of stuff that, according to me, needs keeping.

So, I do what I do and other people do what they want to do. When I was walking down the road today someone thought the best thing that they could do was shout at me me from a scum-mobile.

You know them little cars that are full of doped-up scummers all puffing on a bit of skunk?

‘BALDY!’ - How very observant. My hair is thinning; true fact. As the scum-mobile passed by a little piece of plop stuck his head out of the sunroof to see what I was going to do about it.

Now this is the reason that I should have a machine-gun or an AK47 or a grenade launcher.

Happily for me the rate of death for scummers in cars is quite high. I pray that they will die in an agonising crash up a tree. I will be very happy to take photographs of their severed and impacted heads.

What they don’t know is that I have the index number. When I find out where it is I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a load of dog shit got rubbed into all the door handles.

And the windscreen. And the boot. And the bonnet.

By the way, Dorrie, if you click on the piccie it enbiggifies it.

Anybody that knows me well will know that I am stubborn to the point of muleness.
They will also know that I have been without hot water for quite a while. Doesn’t bother me greatly although I have actually resorted to buying spoons to eat my tea instead of trying to do the washing up.

You know, people wash far too much and often. If you had a dog you wouldn’t shampoo it 3 times a day, would you? But, oh no, the kind of people who have tattoos and want to smell of David Beckham’s latest pong, well, you can never get them out of the shower.

That’s why they smell. Stink. Aromatise the area. Because they kill all the useful flora that should be living on them and that’s why they have to cover themselves with flyspray.

It’s a bit like people who won’t use public lavs and won’t let anyone use their home one. Weirdos, the lot of them.

Anyway. I tried the hot water the other day but it came out cold. I tried the cold water tap to see if there had been a mix-up but it came out cold. Cold and cold running water.

Well, I was ill so I wasn’t exactly bothered, I took to my bed and suffered the plague.

After a few weeks and the antibiotics kicking in I offered the boiler a fight in the carpark to see who was the hardest. Then I started meddling.

Now I’m not a CORGI registered gas and electrics bloke and I have no NVQs or anything so no wonder the bloody thing wouldn’t work. It’s probably against the law to mend things any more.

So I phoned the landlord and (having, doubtless, caused him deep depression) he has arranged for a proper plumber to come ‘early next week’. The last time, when the pump went, I saved him 3k because I knew that the pump had gone. How did I know this? Well, because of narrowboats, really. When you are in the middle of nowhere and something has gone wrong then you have to fix it or WATCH AND LEARN while somebody else does it for you. In general, boaters, collectively, can fix anything. They could probably make Champagne out of a candle and a watch.

Having been very depressed of late (I stopped taking diazepam all by myself) the reluctance of my hot water system to obey my harshly barked commands cheesed me. I felt a failure because I had failed. A boatman without a boat. A man who had failed to master, for the umpteenth time, his own hot water system. Every time I win. I ALWAYS beat it into submission.

Bastard thing.

This evening I was watching ‘The Bone Collector’ and then I put it on pause. Hand me, please, my flat-blade screwdriver and them pliers what I magged up out the canal.

Start from the beginning. Basic fault-finding.

Like I say, I’m not qualified, but the satisfying ‘boof’ of ignition was a proud moment. Praise be to the Charley for teaching me that you don’t have to pay someone a million pounds an hour to do something that you can do yourself even if it is illegal.

I now have a water tank that you could cook a toasted sandwich on.

Today is the first day that I have got out of bed since last Thursday.

Having consumed a lovely pie made from plague rats and germ sauce I was laid up and I thought, last Thursday, that I was going to wake up dead.

Fucking Easter.

I managed to stagger, like Frankenstein’s monster to the pharmacist, and croaked (I can hardly speak) my request for industrial strength health stuff.

I certainly lost several pounds.

The only things I have been out of bed for are ‘wellness formula’ tablets and ‘Robitussin’ and co-codamol. These things I have to pay for.

Meantime I am bombarded with crap from the council saying how much I have to give them and then, two days later, I get another one which is about as thick as a James Bond book telling me it’s all different except I can’t even speak.

I’ve been up there and they have cunted me off. They won’t see me. I don’t even have a clue what all this shit is that they are sending me.

HENRY GETS CROSS:

As Abbot declares it’s just like ‘The Who’. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss:
Good one, fly someone 860 miles to cook you a pizza.

Sorry but I no longer believe. Even Bliar when he was lying his warmongering head off passed me by for a bit but flying someone (I presume) 1720 miles to cook you a pizza means that you are an even bigger prick than Daddy’s boy that came before.

I was also entertained with the Death Rattle in my throat.

The council are thieves, my landlord won’t even put a decent lock on the door, my best friend has deliquesced, my daughter won’t speak to me but, hey, I’m not feeling sorry for myself!

I was hobbling along the Basingstoke the other day when I saw that tufted duck again.

By the time I had got my camera out to capture the dirty action he had flapped off.

They come over here, swim about, and they all look the same but I knew it was the same one.

He just had one thing on his filthy duck mind and that was to impregnate a lady mallard with his blue-beaked sperms right up her cloaca.

Mallards are all rapists anyway but this taking things a bit too far. I mean, they come over here blah, blah blah, etc.

Squashed tomatoes and stew, etc.

Today is the day that my best brother has reached the age of 48.

Yes, that’s right, Jacqwueline, he’s not 29 - he’s 48. Having consulted some MATHemeticians (Geddit? See what I did there?) I am assured that he is nearly as old as I am.

Matt. I am so proud of you, of all that you have achieved, your constancy, your blistering work ethic and I wish to publicly thank you for all the support you gave to me when times were hard.

I am very sorry that I kicked one of your teeth in and that I shot you with an air-rifle.

If anyone wishes to send cash presents to my address I will forward them on to Matt (minus administration fees).

Matt, have a really great day. No one could ask for a better brother than you. You are the funniest person I have ever met and you pulled up your bootstraps like climbing Everest.

So, you take care, love to all at home and in the Club.

You are my best friend and, best of all, my brother.

I thank the Higher Power for that.

With love,

D.