After my release from prison – I'd served four years because of my tragic misunderstanding of the etiquette involved in the Kill For A Seat Comedy Gig – I mean, the charge was reduced to manslaughter in the end but even so, ambiguous marketing or what!? - and I never got my entrance money back ….anyway, water under the bridge … which was an unusually stupid way to try to dispose of the corpse, but, hey, I'd been drinking, right? - and I wasn't the only one. Yes, it could have been any one of you … think on, audience … and count your blessings.

Now if you're even remotely susceptible to suggestion, and so just a tiny bit grateful that you're not in prison as we speak – well we couldn't be could we, 'cos you wouldn't be here, unless - never mind - then this little nugget of gratitude gives me a head start because you're well-disposed towards me and you somehow think it's down to me that you're not in the nick – well, that was the case till I drew it to your attention just then, making the unconscious conscious and so ruining the effects of suggestion.

It must be a nice change for you to switch an audience from an unconscious to a conscious state rather than vice versa.

Ah, you've seen my act before! And a heckle: great – that's what the fortune teller told me – she said you'll do many many gigs and at your third gig you'll get your first heckle. At your eighth gig you'll get what you think is your first laugh. Although that will turn out to be a nervous reaction, and you'll realise it's someone stifling a sob as they lead out a troupe of disappointed, weeping school pupils, who thought they were going to see Glee. Speaking of which, you'll go on to have many many children.

Fine, I said, tell me more about the gigs.

So was she right about the heckle – is this your third gig?

Of course she wasn't right – she was a fortune teller! No this is my first gig; I knew I'd get my first heckle at my first gig. It’s not exactly rocket science is it?

Not comedy, not rocket science – we're definitely narrowing down the range of possibilities of what It could be.

Is it a boil on the bum!?

Now you're just guessing, friend.

 

I knew someone, Glynis, who used to cycle a lot. She died tragically, swerving to avoid an ambulance. It was answering an emergency call when it ploughed into a double-parked 4x4.  And Glynis inadvertently caused another accident as she tried to avoid the ambulance and blindsided a bus driver who ran into a petrol tanker as it was pulling out of the gas station.  Oh, you heard about it in Iran?  That's right, it was on CNN – the fire destroyed most of Far Headingley before they got it under control.

The 4x4 driver?  They prosecuted him for the parking infringement in the end.  Got three points on his licence.  He felt this was a 'dreadfully harsh' sentence as he'd been double-parked on the corner for less than ten minutes whilst his young daughter queued to get him money from the cash machine, and he was going to appeal against it, but his solicitor persuaded him that the 93 deaths resulting from the road crashes and the conflagration that he'd caused would probably count against him with the magistrates and the public.  As would the fact that he was the Head of I-Don't-Give-A-Toss Bank plc ... so he didn't bother with the appeal.  Just paid one of his minimum wage employees the equivalent of ten minutes pay - about £600 - to take the points herself.  In lieu of her annual bonus.

To clarify the maths: when I said 'ten minutes pay' I'm referring to the chief executive's annual salary of seven million pounds, not the office assistant's twelve thousand pounds.

Okay?

 

Three Bears

There's a nursery just down the road from us, it's called the Three Bears.  We thought about it for ages, whether to send her there, because there's also the Uncaged Tiger Nursery a bit further up the hill, and the Wolves Galore Toddlers' Centre quite nearby; and of course in the centre of town we've got a generic one, Carnivorous Megafauna.

So, spoilt for choice, really.

And I believe they organise the Carnivorous Megafauna on some kind of rota system, so you have the feline predators on the Monday, the ones with the biggest paws on the Tuesday and Wednesday – the polar bears and grizzlies are especially popular, as you'd imagine - Thursday is reptile day – crocs and alligators, good for aquatic hopscotch - and Friday is rounding up, or 'tidying-up-for-the-weekend-day' as they like to call it – so most of the assistants are Rottweilers and military-trained German Shepherds.

Anyway we went for the Three Bears option and on the whole it's worked out pretty well.  Some of the scars are starting to heal now ... the emotional ones, that is: I don't think the physical lesions will ... well, you can't expect that, can you? -  though the discolouration might fade a little, the consultant says.
Very reasonable fees; I think I would recommend it, overall.