monkey envy

On Eastenders, Pat and Shirley had a fight. Dave said it was like a scene from a Godzilla movie. ‘Well, they are played by men in rubber suits’, I said. Which is true, I believe.

Some time ago we got a free PG Tips monkey with our teabags in Sainsbury’s, and we were very pleased with the new addition to our household. However, the other night Dave and I were walking to the pub and saw through one of our near neighbours’ windows an absolutely enormous version of the same creature stuffed on top of some bookshelves with its long arms dangling down. We gawped at the monkey, craving it.

Later however, after the pub, it struck me that our neighbour’s monkey was too large, grotesquely large, like a bloated grey spider looming over the room. We don’t need to keep up with the neighbours anyway, because we have a Dualit toaster, which according to those in the know (which is Mat and Dave and practically nobody else) is the crème de la crème of toasters. Ours is a small one, but the important thing is that we are on the toaster ladder.

At work I am still searching out books, prompted by occasionally cryptic computer printouts. What could Victoria Beckham’s Learning To F be, for example? Well of course it’s Learning To Fly, what else? My all-time favourite of these is the poem Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep, which on the old Ottakars print-outs used to come out with just the last letter missing. Sometimes I think my sense of humour will never grow up.