My Life
Last night, after my nightly medicinal opium sedative, I had an idea which could totally revolutionise our society and end the curse of poverty. I just wish I could remember what it was. Ah well. That’s just the sort of unlucky break that often befalls me.
I had a lucky break once. I was strolling across the street to buy an exquisite gateau from the cake shop, when a carriage went out of control and ran me down. As I lay in the road with my right leg squashed and pointing curiously towards the blacksmiths, I remember thinking how lucky I was. Why, had it hit me on my return, the gateau would have been ruined.
I think this way because I am an optimist. Some may say a glass is half full, others that it is half empty. I say just be thankful you have a glass.
I don’t have a glass you see. Not after my fancy woman left me for that Welsh imbecile who owns the Gas company. She took everything. Not just glasses, everything., the Cutlery, furniture, the carpets, floorboards, even the windows. But was I downhearted? No. Being an optimist I just enjoyed the thought of the hardship the two of them will endure once I disconnect the gas and they no longer receive the income from my usual 30 shilling bill.
Ah! I remember that revolutionary medical thought that I had last night. Ah no. It’s gone.
It’s an amazing thing memory isn’t it? Well no, mine isn’t. Mine’s dreadful. I had a plan once to stop my memory being bad. No longer would I lose information through my forgetfulness. What I do now is I carry with me at all times a pen and a notepad. And now, the instant that I forget something, I write it down in the notepad. I currently have nothing at all written in the notepad which goes to show how well the plan works. I have plans quite a lot. I had a plan last week to sail around the globe on the back of an otter. I was a good plan because if I got bored travelling round and decided to stop off on some exotic island, and then got hungry, I could eat the otter. I would quite like to go to an exotic island somewhere. As long as it was somewhere exotic.
You can’t have exotic palm fringed islands just anywhere you know. It’s not allowed. My uncle, who was a sailor, told me that. He said that exotic islands tend to be protected by mermaids who, in an effort to stop European explorers from stealing their exotic islands and taking them back to the Norfolk coast, sit on the coastlines and beckon the sailors onto the rocks to smash up their ships. I can’t say I blame them.
Oh what it would be to live on an exotic island. Imagine an exotic and unspoiled island teeming with new, wonderful and never-seen before wildlife. What a great day’s shooting that would make.
The only drawback would be the women. I’ve been told that the women on these islands only wear skirts made from long grass. Sounds terrible to me. I can only imagine it being like a sort of wicker basket. It would look right out of place with the rest of her clothes. Well that’s mermaids for you. Or is it barmaids? I always get the two confused. Only last week I was in The Olde Tavern and spent the whole evening averting my gaze from the serving wenches lest their devilish lure caused me to trip and fall to my death upon jagged rocks hidden in the lounge bar.
Some people just laughed at my warnings and others claimed I was crazy – Dr. Kroekfelt for one. What does he know? Yes, he may be an expert in modern medicine – his axiom of “a leech in the gills prevents most ills” became widely accepted in the medical profession, even after it came to light several years later that he’d been misquoted. He’d actually been discussing killing and gutting fish and had said “a reach into the gills kills most eels”. Good wine years are another thing he knows about. Bad wine years are my forte. I’m very particular about it. At one dinner engagement as the butler served the wine I stood up, my veins bulging apoplectically, and said to the host “Chateaux le Chablis 1873? Why don’t you just break into my house in the middle of the night and ravish my wife and daughter before killing them and feeding their bodies to the hounds?”
Such was the host’s shame at his faux pas that he has been too embarrassed to invite me back in the twelve years since. I don’t understand how people can be so insensitive. You’d have thought the man would’ve been big enough to apologise to his own son-in-law by now. On reflection insisting that “Marjoree and I are leaving now and we’ll never come back” was a bit harsh. I remember my wife Joan being particularly upset. I wonder what happened to her.
I tried to find her once. I went to the theatre to look for her but I got thrown out for talking. It’s hardly fair. There were other people talking as well. The actors themselves talked all the way through the play. I had to shout quite loudly to make myself heard.
Joan wasn’t even in there. Or if she was she was hiding. Maybe she was being hidden by the actors. Actors must have something to hide. That’s why they wear all that make-up. A hundred years ago the gentry used to wear make-up to disguise the facial blemishes caused by unspeakable diseases.
If the actors are all diseased then I’m quite glad I didn’t spend too much time in there. It’s just not healthy. Not like a good smoke. All that early morning coughing that cleanses the lungs is just one of the healthy benefits of a good cigar. My friend Arthur told me that, and he should know - he is my tobacconist.
He’s a real funny character is Arthur, always cracking jokes and making people laugh – although strangely it’s normally to the other customers just as I leave his shop. He did say something to me once. It wasn’t funny, he was just making conversation. I admit, as anecdotes go that’s not a particularly good one. I just don’t lead a very anecdoteworthy life.
It reminds me of something Oscar Wilde once said to me. Now that was funny. Perhaps next month I’ll tell you what it was. Until then keep your chin up and keep the oiks down.
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