I posted this last week and here is the background to the story. I used to do comic diaries like this, just meandering waffles and doodles that would take a lot of explaining. But this is a good one.

In the year of our lord 2000AD, my life was a mess. I was drinking way too much and generally just wasting my life with a vengeance, weekdays for were drinking and skanks and the weekends for bad hash and flarn.

One Monday I went up to Quinner’s where me,him and DC smoked our brains out. Quinn had just gotten 3 massive reptile tanks made, two of which where under his bed, raising it to the height of bunk beds. They were uninhabited. So we took turns sitting in the air tight tanks where we had to smoke a full joint to yourself and sing a song into a mic which was broadcast by speaker to the two sitting on the bed. Childish but funny times. I sung ‘ Should have known better’ by Jim Diamond. I love that crappy song.

I left around 1 and begun the 40 minute walk home. I was walking through Watergate park when I saw what looked like a bended tree going all wobbly, as I got closer I saw that it was alive and coming towards me, it revealed itself to be a Heron with it’s big bendy neck. I laughed out loud. Way up ahead I could see two bus inspectors coming towards me. I continued along staring at the ground and the Inspectors stopped me. They were Garda.

I had been stopped and searched once before but that was with other kids and it was during the day. I was alone in the dark with these two. I was wearing a bomber jacket thing and a hat which is meant to deter troublemakers from approaching but the other side of that coin is that you look like a troublemaker. They asked me a series of where what and whys? ‘What are you doing out this late’, ‘Do you have anything in your pockets that you shouldn’t have?’. I agreed to the search but then remembered the half smoked spliff in my pocket.

Thankfully I hate littering so my pockets were FULL of crap, dozens of bus tickets, an empty can of 7up, a video tape, an audio tape and two dead mice. I told them that I had two dead mice in my pocket and one of them looked ready to hit me. I produced them and explained that I was meant to give them to Quinner to feed to a snake. One snarled the other one laughed. I palmed the joint and they never saw it. I spoke as eloquently as possible to show that I was in fact a decent member of society. They handed me back all my stuff but the angry one had popped the lenses out of my glasses.

They let me go and told me that they don’t want to see me around the park ever again. I walked off and blazed up to calm my nerves, thinking what nazis they were, all I was doing was walking home. Why were they skulking around without their hi-viz jackets, why were they hassling me?

Then I realised why they were patrolling that area. *Somebody* committed an awful act of street art vandalism a few weeks before around there. And I still think it would have been the universe’s just revenge if they found the joint. But off I went, free as a heron.

Fuck the police.

Fuck it.

I’m sick of it. It’s over. Enough with wasting of zillions each year on a lame duck. I’m sure by now you have received your ‘Preparing for National Emergencies’ handbook in the post. I got mine and read it on the jacks,fancy graphics and great print job. It got me thinking about how much of a waste of tax payer’s money it is that the government don’t own a largescale dedicated printing house and bang out all these things themself and not put it out to public tender. Then I get to halfway through the booklet and it turns into Irish and it was good thing that I was sitting down. On a toilet. So I could crap with hate and puke in the sink.

I would love to be able to speak my native language. I wish everyone spoke it. But nobody speaks it. I don’t know why, we study it for what? 15 years in school? Jesus Christ. My secondary school, Saint Aidan’s in Tallaght was so fucked up that certain students were deprived of certain subjects. There were three tiers, The Brainy, The Okay and The Gicknoids. Only the top tier were taught French and Science, the others got makey-up ones like Technology. They were deprived of key subjects but of course they got to do Irish. We all did. Waste of time and resources. Especially for kids who could really do with a bettter education.

The government pushed for Irish to be to recognised as an EU language? It cost the EU 30 million Euros in 2007. All government literature and street signs have to be translated into Irish. For who? I couldn’t find it online but I remember hearing a lad on Marion Finnucan pushing for the removing of Irish from schools and he said that there are more deaf or blind people in Ireland than Irish speakers. That’s a killer. Nobody speaks or understands the stuff. Yeah I know there are thousands of people who speak it, but does it warrant spending all that money? There’s a county hall in Tallaght and it says
‘County Hall Block 6′ in massive raised letters on one side then it has the same in Irish on the other side. I know how much that shit costs. It’s criminal.

I understood a few words but have no idea what this ad is about. How much does all this crap cost the State?

I have friends who pursued learning Irish after leaving school, really embraced it and they will pay the cash to send their kid’s to an Irish school. Fair play to them. They’re footing the bill. So let’s remove Irish from normal national schools. If you want to learn it you can choose to. But it shouldn’t be compulsory. It has no practical worth. A fair percentage of school children are non nationals now so it’s pointless teaching them a useless language.

There’s a few good points about it all boards.ie. A recurring point is that in the 13-14 years of compulsory learning, very few become proficient but in 5 years of French or German you can nail the language.

So fuck Irish in the ear. It all comes down to pride I suppose but I have no major pride about being Irish. There I said it. The Potato Famine nearly wiped an island surrounded by fish. We have no culture, drinking doesn’t count as a national culture. Our world embassador Bono is a fucking gaylord. Irish children’s televison was woeful. People die in hospital waiting rooms but there’s enough cash to translate Power Rangers into Irish for TG4. So many things.

I’m reading Collapse by Jared Diamond, it’s about why societies collapse and it’s good stuff. I’m fascinated with the world ending. It’s a crazy subject.
There’s a chapter on Easter Island and he asks ‘What were the two guys who were chopping down the final tree saying to each other?’. I can’t stop thinking about that.

There are many reasons why societies choose to fail including the introduction foreign species of animals and plants, I’ve always loved the idea that one small insect can fuck up the entire food chain of an ecosystem. There’s a Groo story where he keeps introducing new animals to eat the vermin but they eat the native animals too so he introduces a bigger one to eat the other ones and so on. Ecosystems are delicate little things and can collapse rapidly. This brings me to a subject dear to my heart, Polish people eating all of our pike.

The massive influx of Polish and East Europeans has brought many changes to Ireland, stone washed jeans are everywhere, weird Polish food has crept into the shops, good looking girls work behind the counter in Spar and shout ‘CUT IN HALF??!!!’ when they make my roll but a serious effect has been the declining pike stocks.

My Dad lives for Pike. Heh, years ago when the internet was new we were putting in things like ‘looking for pike in Dublin’ into search engines not realising that this was paedophile lingo. All his post (Pike and fishing magazines) was opened and tampered with before coming through our letterbox. Funny but scary. And did he stop molesting kids? Of course he did.

Big into Pike. I’m a fair weather fisherman, even a little scared of putting the waders on and catching a big one. They are nasty bastards, they eat everything, they’re just a torpedo shaped mouth that sits happily on top of the food chain. A worthy opponent compared to all the other faggy fish in a lake

The whole idea is to catch them, weigh them, take their picture and then pat them on the bum as you release them back into the lake. But the East Europeans don’t return them. They eat them. Pike is a ‘delicacy’ to them. What? Is all the crap in ALDI not good enough for you, you hungry bastards? It’s wrong, the word on the lake is that numbers are really down over the past couple of years. So cause and effect. The introduction of a bigger predator has messed with the food chain. It’s sad really.

So is this the collapse of society? No, not yet. When the next generation of kids don’t know what a Smurf is, then it’s time to start worrying.

Hey Hey! So here’s the big announcement. This makes the Amperduke trailer look like shit; I’m getting a slot in 2000AD called:

The first story should be appearing either this month or next month and it’s a doozey. After that I have 2 more and then we’ll see what happens. I’m absolutely delighted with it. I was a huge 2000AD fan, even had a Judge Dredd T shirt at one stage. One of my first attempts at a comic was a Sam Slade story when I was 11 or 12. I loved it and was obsessed with it for ages.

It’s mad, I was over in the local net cafe and when I read the mail I let out a little squeal of joy like a ponce. Then when I was floating out, all dizzy and excited I saw my nemesis from school. She was always telling me how immature I was and used to tut everyday because I never had a pen . She used to rule her page like her life depended on it with a red pen, a double margin. Everyone said she’s go far, even the teachers.

And here she was all fucked up with kids and miserable looking and I wanted to say to her “Who’s immature now bitch? Fuck you and your double margins”

So give me the love and kudos I deserve. I’ll post a tiny preview of the impending story. It’s a story that I’ve had in me for around 10 years and it’s not bad at all.

Hey pals. Gack. Still living the dream/nightmare. Feel a lot better about the recent Unpleasantness, not entirely cured but I’m definitely over the worst of it. Zillions of mails in my inbox, prolly won’t get to them all but thank you sincerely to everyone who wrote with kind words.

Losing your girlfriend, house and job all at the same, weeks before Xmas is a terrible thing but I can sort of see the funny side and can laugh at most of it . It’s still like she died though. Since breaking the news to me I’ve seen her once for less than an hour. The only communication has been ‘when are you moving out’ and the practical shit like changing over the bills. Other than a badly composed letter of repeated clichés that were just copied from the desperate love letters that I sent her, I’m still none the wiser as to why it happened. She just walked out.

I was a wreck. Heh, I had two weeks left in my job when she told me and I think everyone there thought I was gutted about losing the job. That’s funny. I was crying in work and blaming it on a sinus infection. Jesus I was crying in public, on the bus, walking down the road, everywhere. One day I came home and just walked from room to room at a brisk pace for hours with my coat still on, wringing my hands and bawling. Making the most pathetic squealing noises. Completely gutted.

But I clung to the hope of resolving it before the 25th December. Like a sap.
I tried to get a small xmas tree but none suited my mood. I wanted a 12 inch one just to put on the mantelpiece but couldn’t find one. I always whinge about how corny Christmas is but it was impossible to escape the sentiment. I had offers to spend Xmas day with people but I declined. I had been dreaming about spending it with her for months, facing into 2007 where I’d take a few months off to work on comics, the last throw of the dice before getting another crummy job and starting a family. I bought myself 2 games and some weed and settled in waiting for her to call. I held the phone from the 23rd to the 26th, waiting for at least a ‘Happy Christmas’.

But she didn’t call or text me and I knew it was over. That was the new departure. And instead of crumbling I felt something constrict and freeze inside me and all the pain just went. In a flash I changed. Back to the angry bastard I used to be before I met her. And that was that. I thought I was over it.

I finished packing up my shit. Threw away tons of stuff to save on space. This is another killer, the house was more or less completely finished when she decided to kick me out. I bought a new desk, new office crap and was completely settled in. I had pictures hanging on the wall. I thought I’d be there for years.

She wanted me out by the 8th January. The only place I could I get short term was one of her friend’s house. So I took it. I was feeling good. New year, survived xmas and was determined to get over it. But the moving out day was without a doubt the hardest thing I ever I’ve ever done. Having to leave the house that we put so many hopes and dreams into. The two people that helped us move in moved me out. In the car over I was completely devastated again. Fuck, it was poxy.

I had been in the new house before. My main memory of it was last summer, me and Hayley and two other couples sat out in the garden, had a barbeque. I was toasted from being in the pub all day and then at the barbeque I smoked tons of grass. Everyone was happy, the sun was so bright and it was a rare social occasion out with her friends that I really had fun.

But the last time I had been there was the week before we moved into the other place. We had no bed yet and her friend was away for a week so we stayed there at night and painted the other place during the day. Amazing summer days. So giddy and full of hope and relief after the long legal wranglings. It’s like somebody else’s life when I think of it. It snowed the other day and I looked out the back for the first time since moving in. And there where the chairs, all grey and dingy. Gicky Tallaght snow in clumps around it. All so different.

But I’m a million times better about everything now. I’ve started a comic about the whole thing and it’s really helping. It’ll take me ages to put my brain back into ‘single mode’ though. But I’m ready to move on. Trying to shake the new cynicism about love will be hard, trying to accept that what we had and what I held so dear was obviously nothing special. It’s like being told the truth about Santa. How can you believe in stuff anymore?

So that’s the last of my gay feelings for a while. Thanks for listening. You fag.

I have no shame in admitting that I listen to self help mp3’s. Yeah, all that ‘7 habits of highly successful people’ stuff, I lap it up. 90% of is crap and tragically funny but there are a few good ones. Hey, they all come for free and I get sick of listening to Bette Midler

I also have a sizeable collection of ‘relaxation’ sounds ranging from gentle rainfall to terrifying jungle noises, different strokes for different folks there, I can handle sparrows and woodland birds twittering away but not scary parrots and monkeys making that horrible cackling sound. During my self help download bonanza I got into self hypnosis and guided meditation, some of them are great but most of them are shit with some dude just whispering with a reverb echo effect on. I’d listen to the first 20 seconds before deleting the shit ones. I found one that sounded really relaxing and ran for about 10 mins, just right for a bedtime listening.

I’m always in a bad mood going to bed. By the time I’ve finished dicking around drawing it’s 11pm and I only get an hour of fun before having to go to bed. The thoughts of a guided meditation at bedtime sounded good.

I got comfortable and let it play, struck by the male speaker’s strange comment that ‘he’s never done this before but here we go’. My qualms were soon lost as he described me being in a beautiful meadow. I should really draw a pic of me prancing merrily through flowers but I have no Wacom today. Everything was grand, got around 5 minutes of genuine relaxation and hit that state where you’re still listening but half asleep. He kept describing my surroundings and all but suddenly the speaker is in the meadow with me, I was too snoozy to do anything but accept this and let it flow. He then describes himself putting his arms around the back of me and massaging away my tension. Thought it was a tad fruity but my inner gay told me to go with the flow.

Next thing he’s kissing me and dropping the hand. Wham! I’m awake and panicked.

Raped in the ear in my own bed. I jumped out of bed and was ready to kill somebody at this stage and wished my neighbours were playing music so I could go in and slap one of them silly. I felt violated. Sounds funny now but I was really shook up.

It is funny now. I presume it was just a recording some bloke made for his girlfriend which made it’s way to torrent land. And a valuable lesson about trusting an illegal download, who‘s to stop me from doing the same? Put up a torrent where the first 5 minutes are legit with me guiding you through a serene forest then all of a sudden a hand bursts through the ground, grabs your ankle and its Resident Evil time. It’d be a good sting.

P.s. Not gay. NOT GAY.

I’ve been thinking alot about marbles this week. They are so easily forgotten from my massive list of childhood gems because they never had their own cartoon or song and were ultimately disposable. But unlike Thundercats and He-Man, marbles are the one toy that I played, my Da played and his Da played.

( that’s my Da playing marbles with Christy Brown and Phil Lynnot)

What makes them strange is this; everyone played them but EVERYONE played with them differently. The names given to each variation were never uniformly agreed and they changed from clique to clique. Everyone agreed on catseyes and steelies but after that it was a free for all. I used to get my 7-up’s and green frosties confused and always insisted that green frosties were worth more than 7-up’s, a friend pointed out to me that they were exactly the same.And they were.

This is the crux of the matter, perceived value. We’d only play for keeps and the rapid calculations of how many catseyes equalled a chalkie or whatever were done on the spot and confused the shit out of me. If two lads told me a whitey is only worth two gulliers I’d probably believe them. It was all a dizzying taste of economics and market trading. But there were so many holes. Firstly to enter the market you needed some float, a bag of easily obtainable catseyes would get you in, to move up the ladder and get some good marbles you either had to play constantly with shrewd bartering or do what lazy kids like me could do, buy or steal precious marbles.

And this shows more problems, besides the fact that you could basically accquire a fortune of marbles without ever playing them and just spending pocket money on them, the head of the marble foodchain was the Steelie and the T-rex of Steelies was called the King Steelie. But you couldn’t buy them and the market depended on scavaging and trading to get them. In my particular marble circle we all received pocket money which would replenish the catseyes and allow us to trade/play. There was one poor kid who never had any money and played like a shark, every game counted to him and he built up a fair collection through hard work. This was a grand set up until said poor kid started to produce King Steelies, 2 or 3 a week, the size of golf balls, besides physically smashing our marbles he obliterated our collections in straight trading and became quite the Baron.

His brother was a mechanic or something and that’s where the Steelies came from. I used to think this was unfair but now see it as the perfect balancing mechanism to our market; we could all afford to buy stock and gamble, the poor kid (David Fletcher if you must know) had no money but had the acumen and one the asset that all we needed, King Steelies.

I broke into a neighbours house to steal such treasures. He played alot but was a speculator, I suppose we all were, gleefully showing off a piece that would never be put into the game and kept safe in the collection. He had five of these weird white ones, slightly larger than the average marble with a ghostly blue hue. I wanted them. There was a communion or confirmation going on in our house and him and all his familiy were there. Knowing that his house was unattented and knowing where he kept his stash, I forced the front door and bailed up the stairs and ransacked the fucker’s room, I laughed because his Ma would make him clean up the mess I was making. I grabbed the 5 marbles but decided to take only 4. A small act of mercy and a reminder to him of what he lost. But I could never display them in public and eventually off loaded 3 of them.

But back to the crazy discrepancies, the rules of play were just as fluid as the naming. Until I moved to another part of Tallaght I had never played Shores. Kids would smash open the little shore covers outside every second house, fill them up with grass, define the oche and throw marbles in. The ritual of putting in your stake of an agreed number of marbles into the shore before playing always seemed very manly and exciting. Sore losers and chancers would always hit you with some lingo before starting ‘No rebounds, no tax’ or whatever and these rules could be invoked and made up at any stage.

I was talking to the walking Wikipedia that is my Grandad yesterday and his memories of marbles were strikingly similar, the rules and mode of play would change from street to street. He said ‘marble season’ was just one of the yearly cyclical fads that included conker season, tops season, rounders season etc. Got me wondering, do the current generation of kids play this way? Probably. Surley conker battles have been replaced by Yu Gi Oh duels and the trading of cigarette cards which dominated my Grandad’s youth have found a replacement in Pokemon cards. I saw a dude in his 30’s a few years ago down in Bushy Park excitedly gathering chestnuts while his two kids looked absolutley bored, they probably had their gameboys in their pockets and thought their Da was an idiot but they’re both sides of the same coin.

I’m now looking into doing further research on marbles, besides the funny parts of arbitrary rules I think the whole marbles thing can teach kids alot about supply and demand and all that boring shit called commerce which affects us all.Maybe not, but I learned a whole lot more from bartering some catseyes than pouring salt on snails and humping my pillow

———————————-

As above.

I got my haircut by a junkie. I strolled down in the sun to the barbers on Saturday with my hair in much need of a cutting. I’m a scab so I always wash my hair before I go get it cut and by the time I got there it dried into a massive puffy afro.

Got in and the place was packed with the young males who get their cut every week, who are surprisingly not all fags, just like to keep it tidy and styled. I’m the opposite, not the fag bit. I let it go for months and months. After flicking through the tabloids they have on the table I was called. She was the only female in the place, each of the eight chairs was manned by a man except this one. It was early Saturday morning so I was not alotogether shocked to see her in what I’d call pyjamas but still thought it weird. I instantly could tell she was either dying from a hangover or whacked out of it on something. She gets spraying my hair and she done a bad job of it, should have figured that if she couldn’t handle the spraying water part the chances were that this was going to end in tears.

She starts snipping, I make it clear that I’m not talking with my well practiced vacant stare. All of a sudden she freezes as if she’s listening to something important on the telly but it wasn’t the telly, they have it tuned constantly to some shit like ‘Mens and Motors’ the televisular equivalent of the tabloids on the table. Complete pap for complete saps. It continues and she jams a scissor tip into my head and I wince and she tuts to herself. She redeems hereslf with a burst of rapid cutting and it all appeared to be going swimmingly well. But with my fringe clamped between her fingers she sways backwards and I’m thinking she’s going to pass out.

God bless my volumous locks because she manages to keep balance by clinging fast to my fringe.

When she holds up the mirror for me see the back of my head I sigh with relief. The ordeal was over. I paid and left. On the walk home, I’m stopping to look in shop windows trying to suss out if my new do is passable and thinking about what just happened. Can anybody just walk into a hairdressers and rent the chair off the shop and then keep what they earn? Loads of scenarios popped up as to why a drugged person would be allowed to operate, they surely weren’t understaffed that day. I got around to thinking how maybe she owned the place and then I had a flashback to when I was around 14 in the same place and had another crazy experience with a blond hairdresser.

She was cutting away and all of a sudden she turns to her work mate on the the other chair, clutching her jacket thing she sez:

And indeed she did, there was nothing on under her jacket thing and I saw a glimpse of the tit, not the nipple but an apple sized segment. I saw enough to get a few weeks out of it. I heard from a friend how he was once mad about a female hairdresser and went in to get his haircut every few days to see her . I thought it was funny, not because it was endearing in a Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan kind of way but because I would have presumed that she thought he must be gay to get his haircut so often thus scuppering all hopes with her.

Was the ‘no bra’ incident a ruse to get a young pervert like myself hooked on the heady mix of Brylcreem and striptease? Give me a glimpse so that i’d come back next week and tell all my pals to go there. I reckon it was the same girl alright, the bra girl and the junkie girl. Maybe she bought the place from all the cash she made from the ruse. Maybe that’s why she was in her pj’s and out of her mallet, her place - her rules.

But back to the no bra thing, I’ve always wondered if I could take a sly one off the wrist when they put the cape over you. I reckon it happens all the time. Ever wonder why sometimes she gives you a tissue when the haircut is over?

——————

Fuck the world in the ear! Jesus christ just hand the reins over to the Polish as soon as possible, I’m sick of Irish people who are bad at their job. Last week I had to go down to The Square to buy provisions, Hayley was returning to get some stuff and intimated that she didn’t want me to be there while she visited so I decided instead of walking in the rain for an hour listening to The Smiths I’d get the shopping in.

35 minute wait at the terminus for a bus that’s meant to leave every 15 minutes. Getting soaked and brooding over my crummy life. Huge big queue at the ATM’s operated by fucking idiot women who treat each step of the transaction like Who Wants To Be A Millionare. You put the card in and take money out you corny old dopes, it’s a simple as that. These people should need a permit to leave the house.

Got the money and entered pulling off my hat. Noticed that the hat smelled really bad. Soaked in pissy rain, sweat and hate juice. I realised that my matted head must now smell too. Blaring UK Subs so I didn’t have to hear piped cover versions of Slade over the intercom thing I marched like I was holding in a liquid poo and got some stuff in Easons and went to Dunnes because I know Tesco’s don’t sell couscous. Oh they sell it in shitty little packs of individual servings alright but I want the good stuff, the uncut grain. Walked around filling the basket, cans and maltana bread but I couldn’t find the couscous.

No joy. Nowhere to be seen. I see couscous as energon cubes, something perfectly bland but open to wild variety. Bang a load of it into some soup and it turns into the gick that Robocop eats. Ready in minutes, cheap and modest, it has sustained me when times were bad and now that I’m unemployed it has become a near daily meal. It’s food’s best kept secret and I began to suspect that the purchasing managers in Dunnes decided to stop selling it because it took up too much space and the margins were bad compared to the other over priced pasta stuff.

Asked a young lad if they had it and I got the universal indifferent “mwha?”. I have no beef with the shelf stackers, they don’t give a fuck and get paid accordingly. I asked if there was a manager around. This faggy dude around the same age as me appears, wearinf a shirt and tie like he matters and he’s gunning for that promotion and I ask him where’s the couscous and that’s when things go wrong.

I can’t remember what he said or how he looked at me but I just got that red flash when you want to immeadiately kill somebody.

In the fraction of a second I got it, loads of stuff ran through my mind. Me kneeling on his chest smashing his smug face in with the heel of my fist and trying to remember to remember the actual colour of fresh blood so I could use it in a comic , me up in court acting as my own council ” Your Honour, I was just dumped by the woman I love a few weeks before Xmas, I’ve been made jobless and I’m homeless and tightly wound, this cunt was not only mocking me but the working classes, to deprive the people of affordable food, this Esperanto of grain, is a disgrace rivalling having to pay your doctor 50 snots to get a perscription renewed. And he had a ‘faux-hawk’”, me in prison appeasing the would-be bum burgulars with countless drawings of Bob Marley and cannabis leafs.

I just wanted to kill him and I was staring into space with the Saving Private Ryan tinnitus in my ear when I realised he was walking off. I paid for what I had and walked home thinking about it. Well I showed him!! Yeah, by writing about it on a blog that nobody reads. Yeah I’m stressed, things are shit and I’m trying to make sense of what has been the worst month in Bobdom since the Care Bears comic merged with The Getalong Gang back in 1986. I know strangling some idiot won’t change anything. But I’m sure it will help a little.

Death metal, violent porn and Bavaria are the only things that can get me through this. I KNOW I’ll be better in a few months, when I’ve moved out, banged a new girl and the timed explosives in the hall go off but untill then it’s Venice 1926.

Last Saturday, I was on the bus coming through Tallaght, a couple of stops before the Square. Staring vacantly out of moving vehicles has been a favourite of mine for years. I spotted this ‘Hardman’ about the same age as me marauding across a field, grimly clutching two crazy looking dogs.

‘oooooh! You’re so hard’ I thought to myself. What a pathetic and pitiful display of a man’s insecurities. The dogs were very excited. I felt sorry for them, disturbed fully grown dogs are a lost cause and the owner should be held accountable for not training them right. What a wanker. They suddenly stopped moving in the same direction as if to confer with each other. The Hardman faltered as they swarmed under his legs and he kept trying to walk at the same pace, it was great. Inevitably……

Beautiful. Truly beautiful. A full story told and resolved in 4 or 5 seconds. But nobody else was looking. It wouldn’t hurt him unless somebody saw it. I spotted 2 scanger girls in their 20’s directly below me who saw the whole thing and one of them pointed and laughed. The Hardman probably hung himself that night.

————————————-