Another story from the collection Blind Man's Buffet featuring the perils of peeing while blind.
Puddles,
Piddles and Poodles
The
Macintosh Institute is a mediocre grade of old mansion house that has
long since been dragged out feet first from it’s historical heyday,
mainly to keep in line with the more modern mediocrity of selling
gas-injected beer. It’s complexion is teardrop grey and it’s
expression is that of the resigned old warrior, captured and
stoically awaiting the ignoble judgement of the massing lowly hoards.
And yet, a fair old supply of ticklish humour might well be found
hidden within the dusty wrinkles of it’s craggy frown.
Inside,
the hands on the softly murmuring hall clock may well seem to idly
report the same old times and the same old patterns over and over
again. But clocks are deceivers all! The old Macintosh is proof
enough of the bargaining powers of old Father Time. He hardly ever
loses a deal in his inveterate negotiations with Mother Nature. It
is because of him and his celebrated tricks of imperceptible erosion
that dear old Mother Nature has become the universally unparalleled
artist she is. She can renew perpetually. But, alas, she can only
restore to a finite end.
The
Macintosh buildings have not however had any real restoration
treatment, neither through the affections of Mother Nature, nor by
the attentions of any worldly ministers. The mansion house has been
nobly neglected, insomuch as it is still able to peep up from it’s
own perimeter grounds and can thus, at a stretch of it’s stubby
neck, overlook the invading ranks and files of terraced houses
nosing in closer and closer on it’s past triumphs and glories.
These past triumphs and glories are nowadays bounded in by webs and
webs of malevolently spun chain-link fencing. The fencing skywardly
extends the shoulder height of the outer stone wall because a
substantial proportion of last century’s lawns have been petrified
into flat, black tarmac for the purposes of providing tennis for all
seasons.
However,
all is not gloomy progress. There is a sector of smiling lawns at
the sunny rear of the house which has been preserved as bowling
greens. The narrow squat veranda tries it’s levelish best to
respectably spectate on the summery proceedings, but the plundered
pastiche of antiquated wooden benching and daft collection of plastic
crinkled and bow-legged garden chairs around some of the lowest
tables on earth, rather distorts the scenic effect like a view
through a badly cut lens. Any seated gathering of discerning
spectators quietly discussing the merits of the latest backhand
cannon would be hard pushed to pass their opinions on to any innocent
bystanders, for their sanity might be questioned as, between trying
to reach down to their toes for sips of ale and to target the
congested ash trays, these people would be trying frantically to hold
the legs of their chairs from doing the splits and dumping them into
the game below, or else they would be picking out splinters from
their bottoms and backs. Ouch. Somehow, respectable folk don’t
seem quite so respectable when their limbs and body language might
seem more meaningful to a curious gathering of grinning chimpanzees
than to a crowd of glistening fingernails and cucumber sandwiches.
It was
during one such sultry setting summer evening as the proud solstice
sun tried in vain to blink out a piece of rooftop from his eye, that
the bowlers and spectators packed in for the night, and Eric and Ron,
and Sean and me remained to slouch lazily on the veranda. A cooling
breeze carried the fragrance of the street into our colonial environs
and tickled the weather worn canopy above us. Yet again, I tried
unsuccessfully to settle the flattened and gaunt cushion under my
bottom into a position where it might provide some comfort.
Sean
had his feet wrapped around the quivering front legs of the moulded
chair he was heroically trying to sit on to prevent his sudden
trap-door exit from stage level. Ron, who unlike Sean tried using
the whole of the perforated seat to sit on instead of more prudently
balancing on the front edge, jumped up for the umpteenth time as the
back legs of his wobbly chair again gave out slip-slidey signs of
collapsing and tossing him backwards into the gloom. He
spontaneously turned and stared like an irate jack-in-the-box, at the
chair which had instantly righted itself into an upright stance and
acted wholly unaware of any problems whatsoever, let alone any
deficiencies in the leg department. Chairs do seem to have that
ability to convey the imperturbable demeanour of something stuffed
full of a trustworthy nature and unquestionable reliability, that is,
when there is no sweaty, sprawling bottom pressing down their
dignity. However, despite it’s irreproachable stand to attention,
Ron again decided to swap his chair for one even further afield, all
the while keeping his Winston Churchill glare fixed on the irrational
4 footed beast as if it might jump 7 feet into the air at any moment.
Dusk
fizzled all around us. The others had no visual impairment, but I
could well recollect the sepia time of the late evening, when the
world peered back at you through a cloud of gravy dust, drained of
it’s colour and silently calling you to your glowing fireside
supper. I was finding the exercise routine of stretching down to
find my beer on the ankle high table too wearing on my back, and so I
decided to fix the pint glass permanently in my hand while I reclined
my upper person in my comparatively sturdy bench and thereby hoped to
ease the strain on my spine. It was at this point that I discovered
a hard metallic object pressing into the back of my neck like a gun.
I knew that the outer wall was behind me, and so I could be more or
less certain that no gangster had suddenly crept up behind me to
offer me my money or my life. ‘What’s that?’ I inquired with a
little surprise, ‘Whatever it is, it’s a bloody hazardous thing
to have at head height above a bloody bench.’ I tend to use a lot
of gratuitous adjectives while I’m supping ale. ‘Bloody stupid!’
I muttered as I turned the offending object to some advantage by
scratching the back of my neck and head on it’s cold &
uncompromising projection.
Eric,
who was sitting next to me on the bench moved his hand up to discover
what the thing was. After only two or three seconds, he seemed to
recognise the object. ‘Oh, it’s only a…’
Before
he could say what it was, I could feel a sensation permeating my
entire back, a sensation which was very familiar, and yet one which I
could not identify on the instant. There was an accompanying hissing
sound, which again, I could relate with this sensation spreading all
ways beneath the nape of my neck. Firstly, my back began to feel
cool, which I found quite pleasant, but then this sparkling freshness
quickly turned into a piercing chill and was not comfortable at all.
My shirt began to feel heavier and burdensome, and clung to my back.
Yes, yes, yes! The sensation was definitely familiar and beginning
to register in the more uninebriated parts of my brain.
‘It’s
only a tap.’ Eric uttered as his fidgeting hand tried in vain to
turn the bloody thing off again before my back became totally soaked.
Too late. My whole back and posterior had become well and truly
drowned, drenched, saturated and utterly soaked!
‘I
only realised what it was when I turned it on.’ he chuntered
unconvincingly while Sean dropped off the front of his bucking chair
and picked up a noisy 5.7 from the baying judges, and Ron fell
backwards into an instant dentist seat decline as the back legs of
his chair split part way and tilted him into a cradle position with
his head dangling loosely and his legs kicking wildly in the air.
Serves them right for laughing at me so bloody vigorously.
‘It
must be there for watering the bowling lawns.’ Eric surmised as he
tried to suppress a couple of Kenny Ball cheeks full of wind that
sporadically burst into trumpets of laughter. I sighed deeply. What
else could I do? I sighed with that exasperation that is akin to
being presented with rice pudding for dessert after having just
enjoyed a tasty dinner. The night was still young and there to be
helped into old age, irrespective if one was wet or dry.
Fear
not for me, dear reader, I can feel a wave of love and sympathy from
you warming my chilly back like a well wiggled hair dryer, but there
is no pressing need for such mental contortions on your part. I do
love you back and thank you for your concern, but I rectified the
situation myself as I glugged and glugged yet more and more liquid
refreshment into my interior on the premise that the wetter my
insides, the relatively drier must my outside feel. One nail to
drive out another, so to speak.
In
fact, I got so well nailed that, one by one, I sacked all my sighted
guides for gross incompetence on the walk homewards. This was indeed
a foolish thing to do because I never bother to fetch along my white
cane when I am out ‘on the pop’ with friends.
So…
in other words… I had just gone and bloody stranded myself!
As they
walked on away from me still laughing about the evenings aquatic
entertainment, I clung to a beautifully beaming lamppost and tried to
climb to it’s source of localised enlightenment. I was certain
that the glowing component of this outpost was humming to me in
amber, and would whisper it’s secrets to me if only I could get my
ear close enough to it’s lips.
Ha ha.
And ha ha again.
My
vertically inclined expedition had the desired effect on the
deserters. Eric came back for me. ‘You’re pissed!’ he said.
‘I have never hever been drunk-ed, my good man!’ I replied
coolly, ‘but one day I should like to try it just to see what it
feels like’.
‘You’re
pissed’ he repeated. I grabbed his arm and he led me towards the
others who were all heading for his home, being the closest of all
our homes to the dear old Macintosh. My shoulder brushed a drain
pipe as he increased his speed. ‘Hoy, watch where I’m going!’
I said.
‘Walk
straight then!’ he said. ‘Huh to you’ I said.
‘We’re
all going to my house’ he reported. ‘Remember! Your missus is
picking you up there.’ I think that I just laughed. I think that
he was just trying to frighten me. I think that I couldn’t think
very well any more.
But as
we all entered his residence in Cyfarthfa Street, my wife was indeed
there. Eric’s wife, Paula was sitting there too, presiding over
the tea and chatter, and there were lots of other characters present
too. But, like an inexperienced chess player who can only tap into
the potential of just a few of his pieces and merely uses the
remainder to make up pretty patterns of defence, I could not
definably separate the tangled attack of voices.
Eventually,
however, I began to catch up with the tempo of the chit chat, and
found it much easier from then on to focus on individual voices.
This socialising lark, I must admit without boasting in any way,
shape or form, can come pretty naturally to a top socialite like me.
‘Sit
down, Spee!’ Paula said affably enough. I think my wife laughed
and also said something of a similar sort. Then they all gossiped
about me for a while, because I heard my name mentioned severally in
the coded conversation that ensued. Females are very clever at
coding conversations in front of their beer affected menfolk. It is
a truly remarkable talent, you have to agree. It’s like being in a
foreign country when the locals are smiling and talking and looking
at you, fully giving you the impression that they are saying nice
things about you and making you a happy and contended traveller
through their land.
However,
on this occasion I was not a happy traveller. ‘I don’t want to
sit down, I want to go to the toilet’ I said with social ease.
Eric
and Paula’s home is of the conventional terraced design. However,
Eric, a master builder of sorts, has united much of the ground floor
living space into one big, long room by removing dividing walls and
passage walls, and tucking away the stairwell between the two chimney
breasts. However, to get to the solitary toilet in the burgundy
bathroom, you have to trek through the kitchen and rear ante chamber,
or should that be the ante chamber-pot.
‘They’ve
all gone to the toilet’ Teresa said.
‘’They’re
all out there.’ Paula confirmed. ‘Eric and Ron and Shaun.
They’ve all had the same idea as you.’
‘Sit
down and wait for a few minutes’ Teresa advised.
‘I
can’t!’ I said, starting to shift my weight from one foot to the
other. ‘It amazes me’ said Paula, ‘why they all keep it in
until they get home’.
Teresa,
or was it Deonne, or then again, was it Jill, who agreed with this
statement, and added, ‘Beats me why they don’t go while they’re
still in the pub’.
‘Cos
they’ve made the toilets in the pub as stinking as themselves!’
piped up Teresa, or someone else.
As they
all laughed away at something or other, it was very fortunate that I
knew the house intimately enough to make my own way to the flipping
toilet, where I might do my Richard the Third act and bully my way
into becoming the next in line to the throne. To my amazement,
however, on my locating the end of the queue, the rebellious hoards
were having none of it. My noble countenance could by no means
countenance such ignoble ignorance to the pleas of a desperate man.
‘Get to the back of the bloody queue!’ was probably one of the
politest comments I remember. The rest were unfit for living room
consumption. Luckily these jibes were out of earshot of the
womenfolk within the living room.
‘I’m
bursting!’ I pleaded, ‘I can’t hold it any more!’
‘You’ve
only just managed to get your shirt dry,’ said Ron with glee, ‘It
would be a terrible shame to get your pants wet an’ all!’
They
all laughed at this, including Eric whose sounds gushed through the
open bathroom door as he grunted and piddled away. ‘We’ll have
to get him a wet suit!’ he blurted, making himself merry with
chunky chortles and rapturous crudities.
‘I
don’t need a bloody wet suit, I’m bloody soaking already!’ I
snapped back. ‘Bloody hurry up!’
Eric
laughed all the louder with the result that he inhibited all his
piddling muscles and therefore dilly-dallied all the longer over the
subdued bowl.
‘Patience,
my boy’ said Ron sagely, ‘You don’t drink a pint all at once;
so you shouldn’t be in such a rush to get rid of it all at once.’
‘Stuff
this for a laugh!’ I resorted to my phrase of no return. I fumbled
my way to the back door which opened onto the garden and let myself
through into the night. ‘I’ll go in the bloody drain!’
‘How
are you going to find the drain?’ Ron bellowed at my receding
heels.
‘I’ll
feel the drain pipe’ I bellowed back. And within a couple of paces
from the back door, I felt the down pipe extending from the eaves
guttering, and directing me to it’s outlet above the welcoming
gully.
Phew!
I
followed suit and also extended my outlet above the drain. However,
unlike the roof’s unpredictable outlet which goes into semi
hibernation during the summer, my own primordial outlet was bursting
to deliver a positive deluge of re-processed lager into the aptly
named P-trap gully.
Forgive
me, dear reader for having to be so course in my conveyance of these
details, but it must, I imagine, be true that all of us have had to
inconveniently convenience ourselves during some awkward dealing of
the fates which have made even the most noble and dignified amongst
us outrageously desperate to just dig a hole through embarrassment
and simply ‘go go go’, no matter what colour the traffic light of
etiquette!
I
gasped with bodily pleasure, and then sighed with all of Mick
Jagger’s lost satisfaction.
While
my hour of relief was still in it’s incipient stages, I could swear
that I could hear a kind of whining coming from the drain below. I
put it down to a trick of sound at night. The sudden torrent of hot
fluid must have re-awoken the cold, shrinking chambers of the
unsuspecting gully. It was a silly sound. It was a small sound. It
was an intermittent sound. I heard it. And then I didn’t hear it.
And then I heard it again. I even changed the angle of my emission
to see if this made any difference to the tone or volume of the
sound. I couldn’t detect any perceptible change, but then again, I
could not be sure. And then I didn’t know if I had heard a sound
at all. The prattling voices that had assaulted me in the living
room might well have started a ringing in my ears.
But
then, in the next moment, I was sure that I heard a sound again.
But it did not sound like an echoing drain or a gurgling gully. At
least, I didn’t think gullies made such noises when being employed
in this manner, and I can surely say that I have had cause to listen
to the water music of many a gully in the past.
‘Hoy!’
said Eric, who had at long last spent more than his fair share of
pennies, and had come to poke his head out of the back doorway to see
if I was okay, ’What are you doing? You’re piddling on U-Bee!’
‘You-what!?’
I asked vacantly. Part of my brain was being drained into the
whimpering gully, and so, my thought processing equipment was not up
to much.
‘U-Bee!’
repeated Eric, stepping down into the garden and drawing up alongside
me.
I began
to feel my brain had all gone into the drain and I could no longer
understand the English language. ‘U-Bee!?’ I repeated after him,
‘What’s a U-Bee?’
‘That’s
U-Bee!’ he said yet again, ‘It’s U-Bee! You know U-Bee!
Ubee!’ His voice gradually picked up a strange and shrill elastic
in it’s wavelength as it twanged out of him and stretched out in
front of me.
‘What
the hell’s a U-Bee!?’ I yelled with unsociable intent. I
couldn’t figure out, and I couldn’t care less that I couldn’t
figure out what a U-Bee was or how it came or manifested itself from
the stinking depths of the Cardiff’s sewers. I couldn’t care
less if Eric had become acquainted with all the ghostly goblins and
dark demons of the midnight vapours, and invoked their spirits
nightly for ballroom dancing. I couldn’t care less what I piddled
on just as long as I was piddling. ‘What are you bloody talking
about? What the flipping hell’s a U-Bee!?’
I must
confess, dear reader, that contrary to my usual easy going manner and
impeccable personality, that I became progressively peccable as Eric
began to find the situation hysterical. I’m sure that he
practically half suffocated himself when his gulps of airy intake
were repeatedly forced back out of his lungs by squeals of laughter.
He squealed, I tell you. He squealed like several swine trotting a
marathon.
I
completed my depressurisation with a wiggle and a shake, and made
myself decent once more. ‘you’ve gone crazy, man!’ I declared
to the foolish fellow near me, now bent double with weakness and
holding onto the window cill for support.
‘U-bee’
he squealed. I did tell you that he was squealing, didn’t I?
‘Jill’s… It’s Jill’s…’
‘What’s
Jill’s?’ I asked, attempting to get around the blubbering heap
and take myself indoors.
‘It’s
Jill’s, my next door neighbour’ Eric whined out like a genie
escaping in slow motion.
‘You
piddled on U-Bee!’ he blasted all at once.
‘Good’
I said coldly. However, now that the deed was done, I was getting
ever so slightly curious about the mysterious thing that I had just
piddled on, ‘So, what the hell’s a U-Bee? Are you going to tell
me what the flipping hell a U-Bee is, or are you just going to sit
there and explode?!’
‘It’s
Jill and Gary’s…’ he answered, making a slight recovery in his
respiration, ‘It’s Jill and Gary’s miniature poodle. it’s
Jill’s dog.’
‘Oh,
well,’ I thought to myself in stages, ‘When it came down to a
soaking of the back, I had to consider myself the lucky one tonight!’
I left
Eric squealing at ground level and went indoors to socialise some
more.
