Broken Boots, Creepy Clowns and Fecal Incontinence....

Date: 16/08/11
Author: Peter

My poor old boots are broken.

This happened about a week ago, as my strenuous moments of stage violence proved too much for their poor leather souls (see what I did there??), and they ripped themselves apart as I leapt around like a madman.

Today I discovered they were beyond repair.

I went to the Cobblers earlier, and asked the large moustached man behind the counter to repair them-

(In my nicest middle class English accent) ‘Hello fine sir, please can you fix these boots?’

‘No.’

I looked at his stern face and laughed nervously- ‘Really?’ I thought he was messing with the English kid, a favourite past time for so many of the locals here.

‘No.’

‘Seriously??’ I looked over to the man next in queue for some form of comforting smile. He looked away.

‘Cannae be done’. The old Scot’s eyes met mine. They seemed empty, sad. ‘Sometimes you’ve just got to let em go’.

I nodded, and promptly left.

Rather than listening to this sombre message I went over the road to Timpsons. This time the man was more friendly, and smiled as he told me the job wouldn’t be a problem. Until he looked at the rips along the back, and frowned as a piece of rabbit poo fell from the bottom of a boot onto his counter.

‘Well, Can you HEEL them?’ I said with a grin.

‘No. That’d better not be shite on ma counter.’

RIP expensive leather boots. You served me well.

Since this downbeat news, I’ve actually managed to keep my chin up and get some work done. And so, I’ll share with you a few brief snatches of my brilliance* (*incredibly average ramblings)

Here are three lines from ‘Soap’, the feature script I planned to finish last week (oops)....

JESS

(holding back giggles) Nope....

LOUIE

(confused) Winston Churchill....?

John drunkenly slaps the air-

JOHN

Jammy fucker!

What a work of sheer beauty.

I’ve recently managed to catch up and coming Spoken Word artist Harry Baker’s show (a young man who will no doubt be more likely to be performing at ‘Pleasance’ this time next year, with Beardyman as his warm up act), a new adaption of ‘Titus Andronicus’ (which my friend Jake hated, but I really enjoyed. A sex fuelled orgy of violence. YUM), and ‘Sheep Ahoy!’, which is the kids show normally on right before ours. As it was our day off, and he’d made the effort to watch us, I thought I’d stroll down to the Three Sisters to catch Phil’s one man extravaganza. It was brilliant. With an audience of around 60 parents and children, he captivated them entirely, and showed off a variety of skills, from illustration to comedy puppetry. AND, he has this impeccable and rare skill, of which very few can boast: The ability to be a children’s entertainer without being immensely creepy. Here’s an example of three of the more sinister variety-

1. Ronald McDonald

2. The Head 

3. This guy-

I’ll leave you with a very short extract from the short story-thing I’m trying, and failing, to write-

The inevitable knock-knock-knocking she’d told herself not to dread. Echoing up and down her spine. Don’t sweat, don’t burst into tears, don’t shit yourself, you look great. The last thing they’ll want to see is a wet faced little girl with the contents of her bowels running down her legs. Especially if THEY are a her. Obviously, it’d suck if THEY turned out to be a cute guy, but between young women turd-related bitchiness could be the wildfire of next week’s Fresher’s fair. Especially when the girl in question is, what the Year 13 yearbook described as, ‘fit’ (well, ‘2nd most fit girl’. Rosie Sutton got first. Supreme breasts). It’d be like that incident involving the light rouge puddle left on the floor of the assembly hall on the second day of the Easter term in Year 8 all over again. Bugger.

KNOCK-KNOCK (‘anyone in?’ it seemed to say. Obviously.)

She’d never known herself to lose control of important toiletry functions before, and now didn’t seem like the day she’d reach an early state of Parkinson’s based fecal incontinence. She was a mere 18, not 80.

With a scraped on smile and rapid bra-not-on-show clothing check the door swung open.

‘Alright?’

A broad grin, sparkling brown eyes, a Bieber-esq fringe. All in all, he was insanely, annoyingly, cute.

She very nearly shat herself.

So there you go. A bizarre bodily fluid related paragraph from a story you’ll probably never read. I should probably spend less time on that and more time on ‘Soap’ to be perfectly honest….

I’m off to buy some glue and gaffer tape. These boots shall live on I tell you. As God is my witness, I shall wear them again! Yeah.