Cruelty to Animals

A woman at the back end of middle age, with wiry, flicked hair, in a pink vinyl mac, and gingham pedal pushers came through from Thorpeness Meare, leaving her jack russell off the lead as she continued past the pond. Three pairs of nesting swans and the egyptian geese were grazing there. The woman turned as people remonstrated with her, then stood in a beveled pose, like the central figure in The Three Graces statue, and indicated that she was happy for her jack russell to run to and fro barking by the water's edge. The goose nosed the tiny gosling into the pond and jumped in after it followed by the gander. The swans stood absolutely still, feathers up all around, in front of their cygnets.
The woman stayed in her pose, smirking indulgently at the jack russell, until a man picked the dog up by the collar, walked over to her and thrust it into her arms.
'Take this back to wherever it is you're from!' he told her.
After a stunned moment, the woman loped off across the grass, drawling back over her shoulder, 'Crouch End!'

Where else?

Comments

My Mate Jamie-Ray Hartshorne

I've been noticing that alongside photos of Jamie-Ray being a lead in Altar Boys , creating Change My Body UK TM , working the door at Freedom - and clearly asking people passing by wherever that rockpool may be to snap a double-bicep - this sort of thing is cropping up on his social media: We're in The Diner, Jamestown Road, Camden. He's between tour dates of The Bodyguard, and meetings to discuss sportswear and creatine endorsements. The latter, he says, being all about making his product better. Between sips of his peanut butter milkshake (he's allowing himself dairy today in my honour - I don't quite know how to take that) he says in his soft Brum, 'I've signed up for a major Muay Thai event in Thailand next February. I'm going up against one of the Thai fighters. That's the only real way to gain any respect in the fighting world. That's why you've been noticing the combat photos. I...

Me Featuring in The Sunday Times, Nicely...

This happened. The editor thinks it's a book of dog sitter stories waiting to happen. I am scribbling away at same... I first house-sat by accident. I was originally at Haven House, Lembton, as a live-in safety net for Lady Olive Simmonds, a seventy-nine year-old Bostonian with a lilac afro, a Temazepam habit and leg ulcers. Haven House was by the sea. Eighteenth century, elegant, comfortable. But there was Olive... Always in pain; either drunk, hungover or both; barely educated. She had married a man who was knighted, and believed this gave her a licence to be a twat. According to Olive, her fellow Lembtonians were all dull academics - this group having reading ages older than hers, which was thirteen - or failed schizophrenics. She had serious monophobia, with staff working (unnecessarily) every day apart from weekends. At weekends, first thing, anxious, she would ring round the Lembtonians that were still speaking to her - six in number - inviting them for coffee, ...

The Marine Says I Must Re-queer...

Being camp in Camp Basra... Stacks, ex-Royal Marines Commando, recently watched my Tutu Went AWOL! show on Zoom. He had notes. I was shifting from foot to foot, he said, and gesturing too much. 'And you must put back the stuff about the Brigadier and your fellow comedian being homophobic...' The Brigadier had been sneering about my act, saying it would be more suited to Butlins. But, more importantly, he believed I was an 'inappropriate influence on 42 Commando'. Stacks, deadpan, commented, 'Sir, before Iestyn started hanging out with us, sir, it had never occurred to him to play Tiddlywinks with anything other than his thumb, sir.' My fellow comedian, who I'll call Mark, because that's his name, asked Reg, Garrison Sergeant Major, in front of ...

Iestyn Edwards is...what?

Search This Blog