Lost At The Lady Garden (or: Accosted In Highbury By Fearsome Drugs Terrier)

Dear Octopus,


Sorry that it's been a while. I've been busy. We had a house party for Honksy's birthday, a while ago now. Incapable as she is of embarking upon let alone completing even the slightest domesticated endeavour, I was put in charge of cocktails, with Pongo in charge of food. We actually acquitted ourselves quite well; my martinis were so strong that everyone was horribly shitfaced come nine o'clock (check), and Pongo made so much hummus that we had to have the remainder incinerated after two weeks languishing fastidiously at the back of the fridge (double check). The party itself culminated in all of the habitual debauchery. At one point I found Honksy and her friend lying out in the middle of the street looking at the sky. I had to usher them back indoors like bewildered children, who knew they had misbehaved but didn't know why. Youth is wasted on the young. Well, it's wasted on them. Sebastian Vettel is younger than me. And he's German.


Since then, the House Of The Leaky Boiler has been quite quiet; save for lively recruit Dutch trooping home of an evening and chastising us in her thick Glaswegian drawl for wasting our lives debating this week's entries into The Players' Lounge and making ornaments from our tower of used rocket lolly sticks. She really is a character, and we're all glad for her chirpy if relentless enthusiasm, seemingly for everything.


Last week I went to go and see a friend's show (hideously funny: www.ladygardencomedy.co.uk, if you're interested.....which of course you will be, connoisseur of the arts as you are) and had an encounter of which I thought you might like to hear. I had gone to the theatre on my own, with a view to maybe catching my friend to say 'hello' after the performance, were I fortuitous enough to spot her amidst the clamouring din.


Standing at the bar (and trying to look like I wasn't there on my lonesome) I was approached by a man with a small dog. In the spirit of political correctness and liberal cultural standing for which these letters would be lauded (were they lauded); I'll say that on the scale of disease-carrying-mental-illness-ravaged-vagrant going up to virile-regal-Economist-reading-man-of-the-world.....this man was a two. He wasn't a tramp, but he really wasn't far off. At all. He gave me a knowing, highly-inebriated stare. The dog sniffed my shoe (presumably thinking it a tastier meal than whatever he'd been feeding it):


HIM: You know why he's sniffing your shoe?
ME: Because he's a dog?
HIM: No, it's because you have drugs in there.
ME: No, it isn't.
HIM: He's a police sniffer dog. And I'm a policeman.

ME: No, he isn't. And no, you're not.

HIM: I totally am.

ME: I'm not going to lie to you.....that seems kind of unlikely.

HIM: Because I'm not wearing the uniform? I'm plain clothes.

ME: Very plain clothes.

HIM: So....take your shoe off.

ME: What?

HIM: Take your shoe off, now.

ME: I'm not taking my shoe off.

HIM: You have drugs in there. He can smell them.

ME: The only thing both he and I - and in fact everyone within probably eight feet of here - can smell is YOU.

HIM: Don't talk to a police officer that way.

ME: You're not a police officer. And he's not a police officer.

HIM: He is a police officer.

ME: Look at him! He has mange. And why is he licking my shoe?

HIM: He likes you.

ME: I thought you said he smelled drugs?

HIM: He likes drugs.

ME: Right, get the fuck away from me pal, or I'll....

HIM: ....or you'll what? Call the Old Bill? I am the Old Bill. So there.

[At this point I knew I had only one thing for it. I'd seen a friend use the following line at university, but it's high risk and can land you in extremely hot water if used in anything but the perfect context. No guts, no glory...]

ME: Look, I have to tell you, I'm actually an undercover police officer. That's how I know. You're not a copper, that dog is not a fucking copper, so I suggest you fuck off absolutely immediately or you and I are going to have to go down to Charing Cross and have a little fucking chat.

HIM: Really? You're a copper?

ME: Do you want to see my badge? [Panicking now]

HIM: Nah nah, no worries pal, I was only winding you up...

ME: ....well be more careful who you wind up next time sir. The Chief Constable is not as humorous a man as I am on the subject of impersonating a police sniffer dog....

The only down-side to this was that when my friend did arrive I had to look terribly severe and unforgiving, and a little bit like she was under my surveillance. I'm not sure there's a career in it for me, frankly. After all: I almost crumbled under interrogation from a drunk tramp. If I met some actually villains I'd probably just curl up in a ball on the floor and hope they'd go away.


Still, he who dares Rodders....


Your loving friend,


Action Squid

The Star & The Sun

Said the star to the sun, 'to me you're the one,
who brightens these skies through the day.
My love for you could split me in two,
it is dark when you are away.'


The sun blushed as it set and said, 'I really regret,
that I know that your love is not true.
For if it was so, I think that you'd know,
that I brightened the night-time too.'


The star said 'agreed, I'm not going to plead,
And I think that we did this too soon.
I'm sick of your lies and your happy goodbyes,
And I've fallen in love with the moon.'


The sun started screaming, 'you must have been dreaming,
if you thought that I'd beg you "don't go."'
But her tears were the rain on the long desert plain,
And her sorrow the city-bound snow.


(She said): 'Go back to to your mother the morning.
Run along to your home in the sea.
Waste all your best smiles on feminine wiles,
But don't waste your last words on me.'


The star quickly objected, 'it was me you rejected:
my "words" were too sparse or too few.
I've wasted long hours on thank you's and flowers,
but I won't waste my last tears on you.'


(He said): 'It's cold outside in the evening.
And the night now looks sad forlorn.
But although I'll forget that the sun has now set,
Perhaps you'll remember the dawn.'

Lord Knows, It Would Be The First Time

Dear Octopus,


The year is halfway through, apparently, so I thought this calm and tranquil Sunday afternoon might be an adequate juncture to look back over the trivial litany of incidents and occurrences that have littered the highway of 2011, and see what I might have learned. Every day is a school day (or so the teachers said before they went on strike).


As follows:

• There are very few places in the world that have real value. However they are only places. So to lose one is not to be taken too lightly, or too greatly
• I cannot - indeed must not - be allowed to; send offensive emails from colleagues' computers, hide their telephones in fridges, glue their spare change to their desks, or draw vastly disproportionate male genitalia in their notebooks. Office-karma is a cruel and exactly mistress, and always gets her way
• The top floor of our house is now so subservient to external weather conditions that excess heat or cold could actually kill me at any time
• My standard of cooking this year has somehow got worse. A lot worse. This urgently needs to be rectified
• Gin creates more problems than it solves
• Pongo is a vicious and cunning deviant, for whom I have the utmost personal and professional admiration
• Prior to moving out, Inky Squid had sex in every area of every room of my parents' house, including the attic
• Blackpool.....you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy
• Migraines getting considerably worse (total sight loss now within twenty minutes of haze)
• Honksy really can come up with both a new choice of house pet and a new list of preferred children's names EVERY SINGLE DAY
• If I keep cracking my knuckles at every possible opportunity I am going to get arthritis
• No-one is ever going to call me 'the steel-handed stingray' unless I somehow acquire an Abu Hamza-style hook (which may realistically happen if I keep cracking my knuckles, see previous point)
• Sometimes, to get what you want, you just have to put in your best shift, and know that the result will definitely be worth the work, and the wait

I think that's okay. Plenty to be getting on with, at least.


Your loving friend,


Action Squid