retrospective five
The other evening the doorbell rang with a different chime to the usual: a cheesy Big Ben impression. Nobody was there. This has happened several times now; Mat theorised that one of our neighbours has a similar bell which uses the same frequency. Or something. The upshot is: we have two doorbells. One which means we have to answer the door, and one which we can just sit back and enjoy in luxury. We’re going up in the world.
We also have a cat which sits at the end of the garden sometimes. Hopefully it will never come any nearer, because it does look worryingly large as it stares at us and licks its lips. And that’s at a distance: what would it would be like up close? The other day I glimpsed a black tentacle poking out from behind the shed, curling and uncurling. If it wasn’t a beckoning alien, it was presumably the tail of another cat (the first one being ginger).
Perhaps it is even bigger. Perhaps it has eaten the other one. Certainly, I haven’t seen it since.
In response to all these stresses, Mat has given up caffeine; or at least he’s giving it a rest. He has discovered that most of his personality traits are in fact symptoms of caffeine addiction (restlessness, stream-of-conciousness babbling, various mental disturbances) and since he has been addicted since the age of two, it seems that he’s on to something. The question is: can the Mat we know continue to exist? Here’s hoping.
What he loses in personality he can always gain in bulk. A terrifying glimpse of his possible future was offered by a documentary the other night about bodybuilding pensioners. All orange with fake tan, they were gasping and contorting themselves as desperately as lobsters in boiling water. Some, clenching their bodies tight, managed to make it look as though rigor mortis had set in prematurely. The runner-up in the ‘super ultra masters’ competition for the over-seventies said: ‘This competition has given me a taste of what it’s like to be in this kind of competition.’ See, brains as well as brawn. Mat, inspired, immediately headed downstairs for the big tub of weight-gain.
We also have a cat which sits at the end of the garden sometimes. Hopefully it will never come any nearer, because it does look worryingly large as it stares at us and licks its lips. And that’s at a distance: what would it would be like up close? The other day I glimpsed a black tentacle poking out from behind the shed, curling and uncurling. If it wasn’t a beckoning alien, it was presumably the tail of another cat (the first one being ginger).
Perhaps it is even bigger. Perhaps it has eaten the other one. Certainly, I haven’t seen it since.
In response to all these stresses, Mat has given up caffeine; or at least he’s giving it a rest. He has discovered that most of his personality traits are in fact symptoms of caffeine addiction (restlessness, stream-of-conciousness babbling, various mental disturbances) and since he has been addicted since the age of two, it seems that he’s on to something. The question is: can the Mat we know continue to exist? Here’s hoping.
What he loses in personality he can always gain in bulk. A terrifying glimpse of his possible future was offered by a documentary the other night about bodybuilding pensioners. All orange with fake tan, they were gasping and contorting themselves as desperately as lobsters in boiling water. Some, clenching their bodies tight, managed to make it look as though rigor mortis had set in prematurely. The runner-up in the ‘super ultra masters’ competition for the over-seventies said: ‘This competition has given me a taste of what it’s like to be in this kind of competition.’ See, brains as well as brawn. Mat, inspired, immediately headed downstairs for the big tub of weight-gain.
posted by martin at 6:51 AM
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