The Prodigal Son

Over the past few weeks I have often been approached by complete strangers whilst going about my daily business.  They have stopped me to enquire about my lack of blogging activity.  It is, I can tell you, quite embarrassing to have someone get down on their knees in the middle of Tesco and beg that you resume your writing with no further delay.  When this happened recently I pointed to the newspaper stand and suggested that the person concerned buy themselves a red top if they needed entertainment and then left the store as quickly as I could as a menacing looking crowd was beginning to gather and comments such as “come on, pull your finger out and get back to that keyboard” were being shouted.

 

This harassment has not been confined to supermarkets.  Why, only the other day as I strolled along the lanes with Hyperdog Moss, I was approached by a small child who was walking a little dog.  I did not recognise the boy.  Children all look the same to me nowadays, what with their designer trainers which they wear solely to cross their bedrooms to get between their I Pads and their smartphones, or at best to get downstairs to the biscuit tin or to steal cans of lager from their fathers.  However, I knew that the dog belonged to a neighbour and goes by the name of Maggot.  Well that’s what I call her as I was not listening when my neighbour first introduced her.  Maggot, incidentally, is very young and a complete floozy, and her behaviour towards poor innocent Moss is both outrageous and improper.

 

The child said a polite “how do you do sir?” and was about to speak when I had to interrupt.

‘How old are you, small boy?’, I asked.

He hesitated, so I explained to him that there were two ways to find out the age of a child. The first was to ask and receive an answer; the second was to chop a leg off and count the rings in the bones, each ring being equivalent to a year’s growth.  Well, all I can say is that the child told me pretty sharpish that he was seven and three-quarters.

The boy, rather too boldly in my opinion, then asked me whether I was “Mr Fellbound” and started to whimper and say how much he missed my blog.

‘Stop your blubbing,’ I replied. ‘I wasn’t put on this earth to entertain seven-and-three-quarter year old boys.  There are plenty of blogs out there to amuse you.  You should try those written by Messrs   Sloman, Evans and  Sanderson for a kick off.  Not the Pieman's , obviously, for that would turn you into a beer swilling Geordie, and then all you would be good for would be watching your team lose at football and hewing coal.’

 

‘Please sir,’ he said, ‘my father once caught me reading Mr Sloman’s blog.  He read a little of it himself and then shouted at me that I was polluting my young mind reading tales of Miss Whiplash, her gimps and sado-masochistic perversions, whatever that all means.  After he had written down the website address he gave me a smack*.  Then, when I read Mr Evans' blog I got into trouble for trying to “mod” the dining room with a sledge hammer to create an extra window.  And the Edale Mountain Rescue Team were most unhappy when they picked me up on Kinder Scout as I tried to emulate Johnboy by bunking off school at a tender age to walk the Pennine Way.  Apparently your blog is the only one written by someone with the intellect of a moderately sized child.’

Now to hear this was salutary.  The absence of my blog has clearly deprived small children and hypochondriacs everywhere of their champion.  I sent the small boy home with a clip round the ear for talking to a stranger and returned home in a reflective mood……

* I may have misheard this. Slapping children for misguidedly reading Mr Sloman's blog is unnecessary and barbaric and out of all proportion to the seriousness of the crime. As I live in a very nice area where the middle class parents do not give their children a smack I think he probably said 'he gave me some smack', which would be far more likely in this neck of the woods.

Disclaimer: This post has not been sponsored by Tesco, apple growers, maggots or Jackie Milburn