Catastrophic Towel Approval

My computer exploded. Luckily I was wearing the full-face helmet I always use when internet shopping. I haven't been able to leak any words onto this page until now, on a borrowed Apple "Macintosh", a cold and bastard-shaped horror-box it's impossible to think with. But I should tell you there's a new book out that I wrote, that I mentioned a while ago:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/yet/14266100

If Poss

The Chemist, at the till, asked if I had everything I needed for Christmas.
Not really, er, are there some medicines on special offer? A selection box? Has something good become legal again?
She said tut tut, and stepped aside to reveal behind her some low shelves filled with mainly perfumes and hot water bottles. I said oh. She talked me through the range.
Maybe you have a girlfriend.
Who's cold, or stinks.
A hot water bottle can make a surprising gift.
And I could fill it with boiling perfume and really make a name for myself.
Just think about it, doesn't have to be today.
When she handed me my prescribed medicine, she said here's the prescription for [my full name], like that might not be me. She hasn't done that before. She just wanted to have fun in a hat and I was smugly walloping it away. I did want a gift, but not one from the seasonal shelf.
Maybe if there was a tiny tree, with benzodiazepines for baubles, and you could eat the whole thing like a shish kebab.
You'd need a prescription for that.
I'll be back in a month or so.

Additional Seating Upheaval

A funny conversation happened near me the other day, you should've been there, I've forgotten it now, it was a right laugh. When I got home I was chortling myself rabid and made everyone pause the HBO drama and listen, by the end of it they were grinning and snorting and I was foaming at the eyes but I couldn't manage to get the punchline out, they said I should relax but I couldn't, and they had to airlift me to hospital, all the ambulances were busy at the aquarium, and when I woke up I couldn't remember the punchline at all, or really what the story was about or why I found it funny, and everyone who I'd told it to, as soon as they'd heard my lungs had been replaced, ran round to re-tell it to me hoping that the re-telling would dislodge the punchline which surely must still be up there somewhere, and they re-told it and re-re-told it and did different voices and mixed up the order and changed the locations but nothing dropped into my head, and they began a campaign to find the people I'd overheard, but no one else was really interested.

The Shirt On Him

The box of flashing lights made a noise like a boiling zoo and its lights stopped flashing and everyone stared at it and stared at each other with their longest faces and stared at it again and someone switched it off at the wall. Speculation built. We had to get a man in. He arrived early and we posted him through the slot and he furtled about with the innards and dropped out through the bottom with a snort and a chime and dust on his arms and old money shards on his face. Should be right now, he said, and we gave him a bowl of soup and he went off over the bridge on his electric wagon.

Duck

The following week there was a riot re-enactment. People threw things again, the police charged through people again, at home the windows were open for the breeze and we couldn't hear Mad Men over the noise of the helicopter for four hours. Next morning the re-aftermath, the road still closed and people watching the police watching the people. Stories of wallopings and pummelment, summed up by a man slumped against a wall, head down, eyes closed, with a sign on his belly, red-on-white, that said: non-aggresive protest.

That's Nice Dear

A narcoleptic phone is barely any use. It won't be coming wih me to the land of the lunch break. I got back a week ago and go forward in two. I will be spending a lot of time in the cave and phones are inappropriate there. You can get right up to the bats while they sleep and they don't seem to mind but probably you shouldn't do this too often.
While I'm away there'll be a disastrous election. And the new government will not let me back in for being too foreign and I'll be forced back to the Calais roadside ditches trying to jump onto lorries bound for ferries like those people we saw when we went there. It looked slightly dangerous. It's a good thing I just learned first-aid in a day. Call me doctor. Get your finger off that 9, I can bandage your head wounds and leave you in a position ideal for both breathing and vomiting. If you're a bit dead I can cardio-wallop you until the electric pads arrive. Why they didn't drill this into us at school I do not know. They do in Seattle and now people go there just to have heart attacks.
I missed the deadline for the Bristol story prize, which is a shame because this year I was definately going to come first, second and third. I'd only written one thing though, about a man who thinks the newspaper is his life story, ish, and then I got called away to Phrance at very short notice, and writing in the outdoors is difficult, and where we were the outdoors featured heavily, so I didn't have a chance to write the one about the woman who can't control her own face or the one about the man with no genitals whatsoever.
I did have time to read the SAS handbook and Callgirl. Both were good.