L'Una (The One)

I once fell in love

With a green T-shirt.

Or rather its wearer.

I had already fallen in love

With her words.

She was standing there

Focused, ready,

Gazing into the middle distance.

Her phone half-forgotten in her hand.

She was perfect.

Lavatorial enlightenment

While cleaning my bathroom today, I made an astounding discovery.

I don't mean anything as mundane as noticing we're almost out of loo paper, that all the towels smell of wet dog or that someone - whether human or feline - has peed in the corner underneath the sink. Again.

I'm talking about something mind-blowing. Visionary. Life-changing, even. The kind of near-mystical revelation that stops you in your tracks, makes you put down your beer, ponder the complexity of our lives and our place in the Grand Scheme of Things and maybe consider the existence of an all-controlling higher being (though not necessarily in that order). The type of lightening-bolt insight that makes you wonder how you have ever managed to get by thus far without such fundamental knowledge.

But rather than tell you outright, let me ask you this: what do you think is the dirtiest part of the toilet?

Was it something I said?

My first girlfriend was a boy.

I don’t mean literally, of course. In the parlance of the day, she was a “tomboy,” even though she met neither of the criteria of this appellation, neither possessing the requisite bodily accoutrements nor having been christened Tom. In fact, her name was Katie.

Hilarious Halloween decoration (not)

A number of people in the town of Greeneville, Tennessee called the police last week to report what appeared to be a man crushed by his own garage door. It turned out to be a harmless Halloween decoration.

My neighbour is a prostitute – or an elderly gentleman

I recently moved flat.

The apartment to the left of mine is occupied by a nice Franco-Vietnamese couple who apologised profusely to me about all the noise their kids must make, even though I hadn’t heard a peep out of them since I had moved in. I therefore suspect they keep their offspring in an airtight box.

The man is friendly enough, though the woman only ever peers sideways around the door with an embarrassed look on her face, shielding herself behind the front door as if expecting the person outside to attack her. Despite the fact that she lives on the second floor of a building protected by a sturdy locked gate followed by a locked main entrance – and the person at the door is only her husband.

The apartment to my right is more mysterious.

My kids forgot Father's Day - again

I have always abhorred so-called “Hallmark” holidays, the sole purpose of which is to prompt needless consumption and boost the profits of card-makers, florists and chocolatiers. 

My wife and I always deliberately boycotted Valentine’s Day. I have never drunk a green-dyed drink or dressed in emerald colours on St. Patrick’s Day. Nor, when I lived in the US, did I ever eat tacos or drink tequila on Cinco de Mayo, which even most Americans erroneously think is the Mexican independence day (it actually marks a victory over the French). 

By the same token, I haven’t even considered doing anything on the ridiculously contrived Grandparents’ Day or the frankly preposterous Siblings’ Day, although I had the former and continue to have one of the latter. 

But Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are different. 

From Agas and Acres To Having Less Is More . . . WTF!!!

Whilst out walking I began to ponder on the progression of the human through the ages. Obviously, I was not around for many of these ages and neither was pen or paper or, in some cases neither was accuracy even when pen and paper were the done thing; thanks, biblical text writers, you wheeze master generals you, you had us going there for a bit. This aside I got to mulling over how things have spun upon their heads over the years. 

Let us put on our mental hiking boots point our odometers to backwards and wander down the ages isle at our mental supermarket. We are not going that far, no packed lunches required. Off we pop, just to a time when being poor meant working your own field, growing your own vegetables, milking your own cow, collecting eggs from your chickens and putting wood into your oven in your small thatched cottage to make a simple meal of stew and bread.