Monday 27 August 2012

Albert and the lion


On this rainy public holiday monday in the UK, an escaped lion wanders around the typically English countryside of Essex, and the day-trippers to Clacton-on-Sea look nervously behind them as they queue for ice-cream and chips.  Nobody knows where it escaped from though.  Some people just should not be allowed to keep lions at home.

I came very close to being imprisoned for assaulting a child the night before last, when a friend's little boy of about 3 years old, kept coming up to me and playfully spitting on the highest part of my seated body that he could reach, which was a recently washed pair of Giorgio Armani trousers at about knee-level.

I had repeatedly asked the lad to desist from this disgusting and anti-social behaviour, but I don't think he could have understood what the word 'desist' meant, or have lived long enough to appreciate the difference between acceptable conduct in public, and the sort which would have got me barred from the pub for at least a month.

You have to understand that the little lad looks - from the outside - like a juvenile angel, with long, curly blonde hair framing the face of Cupid.  You have never seen such a cute-looking kid, and I say that as one who is in no way related to him.  Of course, his parents know better, having lived with the little bastard for three years.

I tried to attract the attention of his parents (who are also extremely good-looking, which explains where the lad inherited his pleasing countenance),  but they were too busy laughing and drinking with others to notice.  It seemed churlish and mean to lodge a formal complaint after the deed was done - to inform on a child of that age would have been unforgivably snide, so I tried to deal with the matter myself by telling him to 'stop it' with greater and greater conviction.

At last, he began to run out of spit, but gathered as much as he had left in his mouth before taking a final run-up to launch it over my trousers one last time.

I held my hand out to keep him a little less than spitting-distance away from me as he approached, and the timing of lifting my arm to do so as he ran up, meant that he made smart contact with it and his momentum - combined with my moving hand  - sent him flying backwards, and he landed flat on his back about six feet away from where I sat.

Unfortunately, his parents and everyone else (who had been unaware of the boy's spitting) only looked up in time to see what appeared to be a very large, elderly man swiping at a three year-old boy with such force as to send him flying through the air as if swatted by a giant.

The benefit of experience through age is that a 61 year-old man can think a lot quicker than a three year-old boy, and as the father looked at me in horror, I dropped my own look of horror at what I had accidentally done and quickly feigned the aspect of a man who had been mortally insulted, at the same time as sternly asking Dad to stop his boy from spitting all over me.

The dad immediately apologised to me and both parents dragged the unhurt boy to his feet, took him outside and gave him a stern talking-to.

A minute later, the little angel returned with his mother, and formally apologised for spitting on me, and I forgave him at the same time as apologising for for swiping him half way across the room, which - I tried to explain - was not an intentional act.  His mother wisely said that this is what happens when you spit on people who are about 5 times your size.  Sound advice, in my experience.

I am still at liberty, but - like spitting - I had better not make a habit out of it.

18 comments:

  1. You had a lucky escape there Tom - or else are an extremely diplomatic person (which I find it hard to believe).
    Do Essex folk eat the ice cream and chips together?

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    1. Do you know that old 'Essex Girl' joke? How do you know when an Essex Girl is having an orgasm? She drops her chips.

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  2. Always keep ahold of Nurse
    for fear of finding something worse.

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  3. You should download the Australian series called "The Slap". Well worth watching.

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    1. I might get punished for doing that by the sound of it, Raz.

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  4. Ghastly little toerag...too young for a swift 'reflex' kick in the goolies, unfortunately...

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    1. If he remembers, I will be about 80 when he does that to me.

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  5. What a sweet child !! ..... I was going to tell a joke about spitting but decided that it was too rude !
    Once, my dad was returning from a gig in London. Public transport had finished so, he thumbed a lift. Someone stopped in a large estate car. When my Dad got in, he thought that it smelt a bit and, when he looked behind him, in the back, behind a grill, was a lion !!!!

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  6. Actually, good job. I hope the queue's for ice cream and chips are separate. I cannot imagine eating an ice cream cone from the left hand while the french fries get cold in the right hand.

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    1. you are my champion Thomas!
      I would have forgiven you, if you had nutted the little chap!
      a blow for old gits with standards EVERYWHERE!

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    2. Joanne (John has forced me to reply to you both by replying to your comment, the twat): You need three hands for ice cream, chips AND a hand-job.

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    3. John: I am glad I am your champion, Jonathan, but he is a very sweet boy, just lacking in standards, that's all.

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  7. I think I would have just carried him over to his parents and told them to look after the little beggar. If they were friends, they would have understood and maybe have been embarrassed enough to pay the dry cleaning bill for your Giorgio Armanis.

    Three year old boys are a pain in the arse. Mine has taken to inviting my friends to fight by punching them expertly in the pills. Having suffered the eye watering experience myself, I would sooner be spat on.

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    1. If I had offered the little man that particular alternative, then I sincerely believe I would be in solitary confinement for my own good, and you would never know the circumstances as to how I found myself there.

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  8. ps your blog entry has sparked an old memory of when my mother smacked another woman's child in the fishmongers in prestatyn circa 1969
    I may blog about it tomorrow

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    1. Is 'smacking a child in the fishmongers' a euphemism?

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