Monday, February 04, 2008

Well hello

One day Satan was wandering around with nothing to do when God caught his eye. 'See my servant St,' he said. 'What do you reckon?'

'Can't say I've noticed,' said Satan. 'He ever done anything that I should be bothered about?'

God was impressed. Developing the work and staying under the radar. Better than I thought, he thought.

So it came to pass that Satan gave God good odds that if he was allowed a little niggle that St would pretty soon buckle. They kept St unaware of the deal as he would probably have been into Ladbrokes himelf. Nothing serious like bereavement. That was saved for real heroes of the faith in the days when women, children and camels were deemed equally unimportant by the people who wrote these things down, despite God's best attempts to get through to them.

So Satan used the itchy skin disease with sores and boils trick. Nice one. St spent three months scratching himself although technology had moved on from broken pot shards to HC45 cream. Satan was particularly careful not to put the sores anywhere visible so St would look like a moaner if he spoke about it.

'See said God.' He remains optimistic.

So Satan caused West Brom to lose away at 9 man Preston, but he hadn't studied the tables and they were still top on goal difference.

'We'll see,' said Satan, who caused St to bite a massive chunk out of his cheek in two places so it ulcerated, a trick he saved for holidays. St shut up talking, cos it hurt, which was a bit of a rebound on Satan for it only made him more friends. His wife loved him more and more for using his listening skills on holiday and granted him favours, even though the house they were staying in was cold so that was nice of her.

So Satan gave St a fever which caused him to go to bed for 12 hours in the middle of his holiday and then he felt better. God wondered what happened to the all-powerful tormentor who brought houses crashing down on rooms full of slaves. West Brom beat Burnley to stay top as Satan had tickets for the rugby.

And so it came to pass that St and Mrs T came home from their holiday planning one final evening of relaxation know what I mean before disappearing up the backside of employment so Satan stuffed up their heating system which dissuaded one of the parties from parading around the house in a series of interesting outfits. The other party was stoical and three hours later the heating system fixed itself.

Meanwhile St got a sense of perspective, realised he had a good job, a good wife and many friends and threw himself back into his work with the sort of wreckless abandon for which he is easily ignored. He missed, which may, as Douglas Adams once remarked, be the secret of flight if it is the ground you throw yourself at. Consequently his first day back has only two appointments one of which is for a free lunch and the other for beer, as a baptism visit cancelled on him.

So he watched the video of last night's football while the heating system cut in and decided to have a quietish day and pop to the doctors for some more cream as he still felt a bit sore and itchy.

That was what I did on my holidays by St aged 52 apart from the restaurant reviews which will be posted separately. Not the greatest holiday of our lives but necessary and in the right place chronologically.

Did I mention that West Brom were still top?

7 comments:

RuthJ said...

Nicely crafted! My jury is still out as to whether 'wreckless' is highly subtle or a typo ...

Mike Peatman said...

Wreckless as in Wreckless Eric, I presume.

By the way, you did.

Steve Tilley said...

Typo. I found two others which I've corrected but I've left wreckless because:

1. I'm proud of it.
2. Your coment would look rubbish if I changed it.

Bloggers spell checker wouldn't work this morning.

RuthJ said...

Very considerate of you to preserve the integrity of my comment. You should take it as a compliment that I couldn't be sure it was a typo ...

Ruth the reckful

Martin said...

Did you mean to type "Bloggers" in the comment rather than "Blogger's"?

Steve Tilley said...

Yes. Strewth.

RHK said...

i went to boarding school. I felt massive envy for a boy in my year whenever he described his holiday adventures.

It seemed that he had free run to paly on what sounded like the hulk of an old galleon.

How fantastic, I thought.

Years later I discovered that I had walked the plank and jumped all the way to a wrong conclusion.

I thought he said: 'In the holidays I play on the wreck.'

But my ear was not tuned to the spelling.

He actually said: 'In the holidays I play on the rec.'