Puddles, Piddles and Poodles

Another story from the collection Blind Man's Buffet featuring the perils of peeing while blind.

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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.