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Friday 30 December 2016

Pub Games

The wooden blocks crashed to the floor again.
Some of the drinkers jumped in surprise, but the regulars didn't bat an eyelid between them.
The landlord smiled to himself as he stood at the end of the bar, putting more pressure on his creaking belt with a packet of pork scratchings. He'd spent a lot of money on the larger-than-life games for punters to amuse themselves with and his pub was fairly packed considering it was a Tuesday afternoon.
The Jumbo Jenga was the most popular and the most noisy. He didn't mind as long as it put money in his till.
“Oh my God! Help! Call an ambulance!” a woman shouted from the opposite side of the pub.
Her friend was sprawled on the floor with what looked like a javelin sticking out of her head pointing straight towards the ceiling.
The landlord sighed and knew that Kolossal Kerplunk would have to go.



Thursday 29 December 2016

Dutch Courage

She had rehearsed the speech a hundred times. She knew it inside out.
But now the time had come to deliver it she was a bag of nerves and she had convinced herself she couldn't remember any of it.
The flashcards might help, but the half pint of gin she had foolishly consumed for Dutch courage might not.
Why is it called Dutch courage? she wondered as she was led towards the stage.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she slurred ever so slightly.
The audience sat and waited for her to deliver the kind of profound stuff they'd seen in her newspaper column.
“Do any of you know why it's called Dutch courage?” She sounded a little tipsy.
There was silence.
“That wasn't a rhetorical question. I really want to know.” She sounded very drunk.
Mumbling came from the audience. This wasn't what they had paid good money for.

Wednesday 28 December 2016

When Tragedy Befalls the Writer

The children crept into the abandoned house.
The floorboards creaked as they crept across the hallway. There was another noise too. It came from behind one of the doors. A squelching noise.
I don't feel so good. Pain in my chest. I think it's my heart. I d


Tuesday 27 December 2016

Ill-prepared

He wasn't ready.
It wasn't like it was unexpected - he'd known about it for ages. It was just a combination of laziness and forgetfulness that had led to him now standing there, not ready in the least.
He couldn't admit this so he did the only thing he could do under the circumstances. He took a deep breath and winged it.



Monday 26 December 2016

Overindulgence

The empty packaging that had belonged to an assortment of chocolate products, biscuits and cakes laid scattered across the living room carpet.
The man who was now almost completely spherical was in the middle of it all, groaning lightly. Food debris was smeared over his face and clothes.
He let out a gigantic, near-deafening fart and became ever so slightly less rotund.
He was a good 100 kilos above his fighting weight and he accepted that those days were long behind him now.
He slipped out another which squelched between his buttocks as he reached for the mince pies.


Sunday 25 December 2016

Hero

He could save the world if he wanted to, but he couldn't be arsed.
So instead it all went to hell while he sat and ate biscuits.

Saturday 24 December 2016

Holidays

He'd looked forward to the time off for weeks. At least he wouldn't have to deal with his boss' constant demands and he could relax.
An attempt at a lie-in on day one was ruined by the kids making noise at 6am. The noise would continue all day until bedtime.
Day two was much the same.
By day three he longed to be back at work.

Friday 23 December 2016

Party

She felt quite stupid, standing there in her lobster outfit.
It was nigh on impossible to hold a plate of snacks and a glass of wine with the claws and there had been spillages galore already.
At least her reddening face matched the rest of the costume.
The others all wore expensive dresses and nice suits.
She had no idea that the term fancy dress could be so misconstrued.



Switch On

The crowd had gathered in front of the tree in the market place.
Some local radio DJ was playing chart music and belting out fake enthusiam to whip people into a frenzy ahead of the grand turning on of the lights.
Why does the flicking of a switch draw such a crowd?
It was ten minutes until the non-event of an event should occur. Someone with a tenuous link to the area who had once appeared in the background of an episode of Hollyoaks was going to do the honours.
The DJ counted down: "10, 9, 8..."
The clock on the bomb hidden inside the tree matched his countdown.

Thursday 22 December 2016

Bottles

He didn't know why he was doing it, but he knew that he had to do it.
He had taken the empty milk bottles from outside every house on his street and stacked them in a precarious-looking pyramid shape outside the shop.
It wasn't enough. He needed to get more.
He collected the bottles from the streets either side of his.
There were now almost 200 bottles in his structure.
His job was done.
He weaved home with his recently-acquired traffic cone.

Tuesday 20 December 2016

Illness

The queue outside the doctors' surgery began to assemble every morning, around half an hour before they opened.
Four of the people in the queue were there for the same reason.
There was nothing wrong with any of them, but they were all hoping to trick their doctor into believing they had that elusive illness that could see them signed off work with full pay forever.

Monday 19 December 2016

Vikings

The longboat crashed through the waves and on to the beach.
The warriors clambered out and ran inland.
They saw the town and stopped.
"There's nothing for us here," said one.
They turned and headed back to the ship.

Sunday 18 December 2016

147

All he had to do was pot the black.
He'd done it a million times before.
It was sitting right over the pocket and he would never get an easier shot at winning a tournament than this. And with a maximum break too.
He lined up the shot.
A man in the audience coughed.
He sliced the cue forward and tore the baize on the table, only lightly touching the cue ball. It rolled forward and touched the black ball.
The ball teetered over the edge of the pocket, but didn't sink.

Saturday 17 December 2016

Up and Atom

The chemist leaped out of his bed, lab coat already on.
He was a morning person, make no mistake.
He thought about molecules and particles as he drank his coffee.
He left the house with a real spring in his step, heading to the laboratory to use more of the grant money on stuff that was actually quite pointless but which he would be able to write a magnificent thesis about.

Distracted

The family were sitting by the river eating a picnic.
It was the perfect day for it and passers by were quite jealous of the spread that was laid out on the red tablecloth - if it's still a tablecloth when there's no table.
A nearby nest of wasps were quite interested in what was going on and several hundred of them went to investigate.
Two of the family were allergic to wasps and things were about to get even more...well, look at that, it's not every day you see five magpies together. How unusual.


Thursday 15 December 2016

Envelope

"It's pronounced 'en' at the start."
"No, it's pronounced 'on'. It's French."
"Potato, potato."
"What?"
"Potato, potato."
"You just said 'potato' twice."
"Only an idiot would say 'potahto'."
She wondered why in that case, he didn't say 'potahto'.


Job

It was only five minutes since she'd fallen asleep, wasn't it?
How was the alarm going off now?
It wasn't wrong though. It was time. Time to get up and spend 8 hours which felt like 12 doing something she hated.


Tuesday 13 December 2016

Dare

"I dare you."
"OK."
He jumped off the bridge and into the river an easy hundred feet below.
His friend looked down, waiting for him to surface, but couldn't see anything. In a panic he fled and went home.
A body was found beneath another bridge fifteen miles downstream a week later.


Monday 12 December 2016

Truth

"Have you ever stolen anything?"
"Only one thing, but it was a real humdinger."
"How so?"
"I was 15 and I was camping with some friends. It was cold in the tent and I wanted to go home in the middle of the night. I didn't want to cycle 20 miles and there were no buses so I needed an alternative form of transport."
"You stole a car?"
"No, I stole a combine harvester. Remember that time one was found abandoned in the rec?"


Sunday 11 December 2016

Saturday 10 December 2016

Filing

She had been moved to a windowless office that was full of piles and piles of documents.
"File them all," her bastard of a boss had said.
The papers were in no particular order and dated back several decades. Surely nobody knew what was there and what wasn't?
She started sneaking piles of them out with her and ditching them. She felt like a prisoner who was digging a tunnel and went into the exercise yard to get rid of handfuls of dirt from their pockets. Except she was mostly just chucking everything in the bin outside Tesco.
Every cigarette break, coffee break, lunch break, trip to the post office and quick run down to her car because she "had forgotten something", a new pile of documents was binned.
The filing took two weeks.


Friday 9 December 2016

Cap

The man in the cap was watching them from the other side of the park.
They thought he was one of those paedos that their father had warned them about. They continued playing, but kept an eye on the man. He continued to look straight at them. He gave what sounded like a wolf whistle.
Creepy.
They decided to call the police. Clearly the man was a pervert and should be locked up.
The police arrived quickly, taking this kind of thing very seriously.
The man was shocked as he didn't see them coming. He was just standing and waiting for his guide dog to come back.


Thursday 8 December 2016

Germany

"I'm not going."
"Why not?"
"Because of the war."
"Which war? The one that ended over 70 years ago?"
When put like that it sounded a bit ridiculous.
"Ok then. Because of the football."
"That's just stupid. If you wouldn't go somewhere because you were beaten at football then there isn't a town in England we could go to."
"Alright then. What about all that carry on with the deckchairs?"
"You're crazy."
"I might be crazy, but I'm not going."



Wednesday 7 December 2016

End

The sun rose for the last time.
The day nobody thought would come had come.
It was all over quickly for most and it only took five minutes to undo millions of years.

Tuesday 6 December 2016

Labels

"What's in this tin?"
She looked over.
"It's either stewing steak or peach slices."
"How can you be certain?"
"I recognise the shape of the tin."
But didn't all tins have the same shape? She seemed confident about the contents of the label-less tins regardless.
"Open it. If it's meat we'll make a pie, if it's fruit we'll make a pie."
The tin was opened.
"I guess it's pie then."
"Meat or fruit?"
"Meat."
"Excellent."
45 minutes later they sat ready to tuck into a fresh pie that happened to contain dog food.


Monday 5 December 2016

Où est-ce que je devrais mettre le fauteuil?

The removal men were busy. In and out of the building a million times.
They were mumbling away in a foreign language and were smoking in the hallway which wasn't allowed. Nobody wanted to confront them though.
At lunch time they produced bread and wine from their lunchboxes and sat on the grass, drinking and eating and of course smoking.
They sat for over an hour.
"Hey, I'm not paying you to sit around enjoying your bloody selves," the man shouted from the top floor window.
The three removal men just shrugged back at him.
"Je ne comprends pas, monsieur," one of them shouted back to him.
The man slammed the window shut.
"How long can we keep this up?" asked one of the removal men with a perfect Birmingham accent.



Hammer

Derek looked through the toolbox, but couldn't find the hammer.
Where was it?
He remembered using it the day before, but he was sure he'd put it back in its rightful place when he was finished.
Apparently not.
He sensed someone behind him in the garage.
It was too late to react as they brought the hammer down on his skull.



Sunday 4 December 2016

"No."
"No?"
"No."
He sighed. Maybe next time.


Saturday 3 December 2016

Surfing

The remote control was on its last legs. Or maybe it just needed new batteries. Again.
Either way it wasn't working properly any more. The button needed to be practically hammered to achieve the result that the lightest of touches once did.
He pressed and pressed, but nothing happened.
He glanced at the remote. The channel up button was worn out. Completely destroyed. It was the only one he used with any frequency.
That's it, he thought.
He threw the remote in the bin, put on his coat and shoes and left the house for the first time in three months.


Thursday 1 December 2016

Payday

He felt like a king, his pocket bulging with banknotes.
He stopped and paid a couple of bills and went to the supermarket. He would eat well tonight - no toast or ready meals.
When he got home his landlord was waiting for him.
"Rent's due."
He took the money from his pocket and peeled out what was due to the landlord.
When he got inside he opened his post. There were a couple more bills he needed to pay.
Quick arithmetic told him he now had just 73p to last the next 28 days.