And so I found myself at the machine where you buy tickets for the parking. It was the one at the hospital. I wasn't planning on going in to the hospital, because there was absolutely nothing wrong with me, but surely the machine can't have known that when it started spitting my money back at me instead of giving me a ticket. By the fourth time it did this, and having given it two stern verbal warnings, I launched myself at it repeatedly with flying kicks until both I and it were rather the worse for wear.
As I stood there, bent over with my hands on my knees gasping for breath, waiting for renewed energy to continue my assault on the machine, I felt a finger prod on my shoulder. I straightened myself up to be greeted by a scruffy man who smiled at me subserviently, showing all three of his teeth and a wall of gum. He was wearing a dirty, formerly smart jumper, black tracksuit bottoms with a pink stripe down the side of each leg and a pair of grey trainers with their fronts cut off to reveal his toes, in the flip-flop fashion.
'Excuse me my friend,' he began, 'I don't suppose you'd be able to help me would you?'
I gave him my very best crazy stare to try and scare him away, but he was completely undeterred. He scratched his spiky, greasy, grey hair, sniffed his fingers and continued.
'I'll tell you what it is mate, I've come out here today right and I've had a terrible day and now I'm stuck. See I've got my wife and eight children in the car round the corner there and I've run out of petrol, and to get here today has taken a really long time because I've come from a place that's really far away, you know?'
'Where have you come from?' I mumbled.
'Where have I come from? I'll tell you where I've come from. I've come from fucking miles away mate, if you'll pardon my French. I haven't come from France though, no. I've come from somewhere much further than that, I'll tell you that much for nothing. You really want to know? I'll tell you where I've come from. Up there,' and he pointed up at the clear blue sky.
'I mean, you can't see it now obviously; you can't see it in the daytime. It's only there in the night isn't it? I just forget that because I live up there, you know? I mean you've probably guessed it now like, but I've come from the moon I have. D'you know it? You know that black cratery bit you can see on the moon there in the night? We live just near there, me and the wife and the kiddies. It's a bit of a shithole like, but we don't mind it too much. It's quiet, you know? But we have to come down here see, to do the big shop.'
'So yeah, that's it,' he went on, 'we came down to do the big shop we did, and I don't know if you know this, but petrol's quite cheap on the moon so it's alright to get down here like. But if we run out down here, we're fucked! Because petrol's pretty expensive down here isn't it mate? It's the government it is. They pump it up their arses don't they? It gives them the energy to do all the stuff that they have to do, so because of that, because they use so much of it, it's more expensive for the rest of us isn't it? The greedy bastards.'
Sensing my indifference to petrol matters and my increasing impatience, he came quickly to his monologue's inevitable conclusion. 'So anyway, I don't like to ask you this, and I'm not a beggar or nothing like that, but if you could spare me say four or five hundred quid, that'd really set me on my way, you know?'
Now I'd like to stop here for a moment to assume that you'll be having serious doubts as to the validity of this man's story, and you may even be getting angry with him for telling these terrible lies and asking for such a large amount of money. But there'd be little point, because he doesn't exist. I made him up.
What really happened was that the police showed up and carted me off to the station for vandalizing the parking ticket machine. I ended up in court and, after pleading guilty, got a four hundred pound fine for damaging private property.
And I suppose you'll be thinking to yourself now, 'Well I guess the real story was quite boring and I can perhaps forgive him for making up the man from the moon bit, just to liven things up.'
But there'd be no point doing that either, because I made the parking machine bit and the police bit up as well. On the day all of these things didn't happen, I didn't even get out of bed.
So here's the real story: One day, I didn't get out of bed. I just stayed in bed all day.
