One Of Those

Let me explain. I’d been sitting there doing nothing for months and then, out of the blue, my right ear dropped off and landed on the table. I ended up just tidying it away when I was tidying away some other things. It was no bother.

I don’t really know what happened. It’s possible that I heard something I didn’t want to hear, but it was probably just one of those.

Gamechanger

A man came out of his house and said something. He seemed agitated but calm. Unfortunately, there was nobody there to hear it.

Nothing Seems to Come From Something

One day toward the end of summer, while wandering around town lost in pointless thought, I found myself approaching the tall grey wall of the prison. The sunshine was warm enough, but as I entered the shadow cast by the prison wall the temperature dropped suddenly and I felt obliged to hold myself, as if my blanket had been abruptly snatched from me during the night.

I followed the curve of the pavement around the prison and saw that the shade came to an end as the wall curved away to the right some fifty yards in the distance. My step quickened as I anticipated regaining the warmth of the sun’s glow.

I was on the verge of reaching my goal when the light thrown on the pavement began to recede and merge with the shade I was walking in. I glanced up at the sky and saw an enormous grey cloud rolling across the sun, completely obscuring it. I looked back at the pavement and found that the small pleasure that I’d been eager to recapture had been taken from me. Both the sunshine and the shade were gone, leaving nothing but the monotone paving stones.

The Meaning of Life

I wake up every day at eight o'clock in the morning. I don't want to wake up at all, but that's just how it is. Sometimes, it's better not to question why things happen and accept that that's just the way they are, whether they please you or not.

When I've recovered a little from the grief of having woken up, I wipe my tears away with the sleeve of my pyjama top, take my watch from the bedside table and wind it forward five hours so that it's one o'clock in the afternoon. As the old saying goes, 'morning is the most dreadful time of day.' I suppose they say that because it's so far away from night-time, which is the best time of day, as you can see less of the horror that surrounds us. Unless, of course, you have some kind of electronic lighting system, which are admittedly rather prevalent in this day and age.

As it is now one o'clock in the afternoon, it is time for lunch. I eat a variety of things for lunch, because 'variety is the spice of life', but it is always accompanied with a tumbler of schnapps, because schnapps puts me at ease and makes my breath deliciously sweet.

Lunch usually takes me to about twenty past one, still an awfully long way away from night-time. I then go and sit on the sofa in the lounge, clutching my hair very tightly in my hands and displaying a pained expression on my face, just in case somebody is staring at me through the window and is unsure of my present state of mind.

When I've had enough of doing that, I look desperately around the room for something to do. Today for example, I saw the hoover and thought to myself, 'I'll hoover the entire house! That will pass the time and tire me out so that I can sleep soundly tonight!' But then I immediately remembered that hoovering is the most boring and unnecessary of all human pursuits and, in a fit of rage, I carefully took the hoover apart and laid it on the carpet in hundreds of tiny little pieces. Then I went next door and posted every single one of the tiny little pieces through my neighbour's letter box, before running back home and closing the door quietly behind me.

Within a few minutes, there was a noise at my own letter box. It was my neighbour posting all the tiny little pieces of hoover back to me before running back to his house. So I in turn picked up all the tiny little pieces and took them back to post through my neighbour's letter box.

This continued back and forth for an hour or so until he eventually stopped bringing the pieces back. We are both very shy men, and would never dream of talking to anybody or anything like that, but when it comes to not wanting to be in possession of a disassembled hoover, we are both very stubborn. But I am the most stubborn, or the stubbornest.

Being more stubborn than my next door neighbour gives me no satisfaction. It might surprise some of you to read this, but being more stubborn than your next door neighbour is completely pointless. And besides, having had time to think about things, I believe I may have been a little hasty. When I've plucked up the courage I shall go and ask my neighbour to give me my hoover back. I don't doubt for a second that he'll return it to me at once, because he's a very compliant man.

So today, what with all the toing and froing with the hoover, I managed to pass time a little more successfully, although it was still only a little after three by the time everything had quietened down again.

After sitting for a while to think about hopelessness, despair and the possibility of cancelling my subscription to a magazine which I no longer read thoroughly enough to justify the financial outlay, I'd had enough of the day, so I wound my watch forward until it showed one o'clock in the morning, which is my bedtime.

It's about five minutes past one now, and I'm lying in bed about to finish writing the last part of an account of my usual daily routine, in which I have referenced some particular things that happened today. It's still very light outside considering it's after one o'clock in the morning.

But I must go to sleep, because tomorrow I will be celebrating yet another birthday. I will be two hundred and seventy two years old.

The Far-reaching Effect a Simple Encounter Can Have on Other People's Lives

Sometime between three and seven years ago, Symes and Kelly were walking down the high street in opposite directions when they were suddenly near enough to one another to hold a conversation.

'What's that you're holding?' asked Symes.

'A dead fish,' replied Kelly.

'For heaven's sake man, throw it away!' said Symes in a whispery panic.

Kelly threw the dead fish all the way down the high street, almost as far as the traffic lights, fatally injuring himself in the process.

To this day, nobody has ever thrown a dead fish as far down the high street as Kelly did sometime between three and seven years ago, a fact which has blighted the lives of the town's dead fish throwers with unyielding frustration.

There's No Time Like The Present

'There's no time like the present!' announced a man confidently.

'Well, that's one opinion on the matter!' replied a second man. 'In my eyes, the past has several advantages over the present. I believe that everything in the past was slightly better than now, and even things that seemed terrible in the past don't appear so bad with hindsight.'

'Although I respect both of your views on this subject, gentlemen,' piped up a third man, 'I myself am a firm advocate of the future. I look forward with a great deal of anticipation to the advent of flying motor vehicles, day trips to outer space and an endless procession of new gadgets, each one ever so slightly better than its predecessor.'

With that, the first man lured the other two men to a nearby walk-in freezer through the false promise of a delicious gateau. When he had the men where he wanted them, the first man dashed quickly out of the freezer and locked the door securely behind him, leaving his former companions to get on with the business of dying.

He then strolled off calmly, hands in his pockets, whistling a tune that was very popular at the time.

'No, there's no time like the present!' he said to himself happily, before proceeding to enjoy each and every moment of the rest of his life.

A Happy Ending (James Crackhead's Final Adventure)

James Crackhead was relaxing on the toilet one sunny morning, when a passenger jet bound for Fuerteventura came crashing through his bathroom window and then his face. It goes without saying that most people would be perfectly happy to leave this life in such spectacular fashion, but not James. He was rather a peculiar young man, and being caught in an embarrassing situation was a plight he feared above all others. Fortunately for him, the aeroplane exploded on impact and the ensuing fire burned James's body to a cinder, saving him the indignity of being discovered with his trousers round his ankles.

Those who had the slightest understanding of James Crackhead's personality would later assure those who didn't that this fortunate conclusion to the incident would have made him a very happy man.

The Writer

'I'm a writer now!' yelled Douglas Patrickson, jumping excitedly out of bed one morning. But before he'd had a chance to knock out so much as a word or two, he developed a case of writer's block so severe that it killed him there and then. So that was the end of that.