"Cars or bras?" my most annoying friend would ask me. He was always doing this, asking me to choose between things that rhymed. "Trees or cheese?" he would ask, on long car journeys. It was an embarrassing affront to my status as the most respected patron of our community.
At the service station at Shepton Mallet, he got out for a wee. I slammed the door and on the accelerator; I'd had enough of his childish behaviour, you see. "Tweed or speed?" he enquired, angering me so much that I slammed on the brakes in an effort to terrify him.
"Screech or preach?" he asked, laughing so much that I punched him really hard on the nose. "Blows or nose?" he said.
"I thought I'd left you at Shepton Mallet?" I yelled.
"Mallets or palettes?" he replied.
Suddenly a thought occurred to me. "Mallets", I said.
In the end, I built, or rather I got someone else to build, a huge cast iron gate to keep him out of my house. It cost me a fortune, so I was astonished, one day later, to find him at my front door.
"Gate or mate?" he asked.
I wavered. "Gate?" I ventured, desperately. At last, he got the message.
In the long years that followed, I felt a little guilty. Regularly, I would see him out at social functions that I had been invited to, because I am such a well respected, well loved member of the community, and I would say "Hi or bye?", and watch as he turned his head, at best grunting.
I have a new friend now. On the way to work today, I asked him "Hats or cats?"
0 comments:
Post a Comment