I read this, with complete disregard for the ten-minute time slot and just for shits and giggles, at an open mic last night instead of the usual poetry or a short story. It went down quite well.
Be warned: from the outset it goes for the cheap lavatorial laugh and it is, both in blog and open mic terms, HUGE, with a word count a tad under 3k. So take it or leave it, and don’t say you weren’t warned:
Up Yer Bum (AKA The Fantastic Voyage)
A few weeks ago, having reached the age of eligibility, I received an RSVP from my local hospital regarding a screening event they were planning. ‘Great,’ I thought, ‘I haven’t had a night out in ages.’ Sadly it turned out this wasn’t the star-studded cinematographic premiere I had hoped for at all, but an invitation for an examination to determine whether I might be at risk of developing bowel cancer. Additionally, rather than being an evening event worth digging my glad rags out for it proved to be an afternoon matinee. Still, beggars can’t be choosers and I have to take my fun where I can find it these days, so I put my X on the dotted line and signed up, figuring it was a sensible idea even if the main feature was unlikely to fizzle and pop with the kind of gung-ho, balls out, action and adventure I usually look for from my onscreen entertainment.
I have, in relation to other conditions, had several doctors insert a stiff finger (appropriately gloved and lubed, of course) into my back passage over the past couple of years, and while it is not a sensation I particularly relish I have been reassured following these undignified probings to hear that my prostate feels pretty much how a prostate should feel rather than resembling a bag of variously sized marbles or a burst balloon. That said, the finger-up-the-bumhole examination is a cursory one at best, so the opportunity for a more in-depth study, seemed, in best belt and braces tradition, too good an opportunity to overlook. Continue reading
in the bottom. I have vivid memories both of watching the races and collecting the participants from various hidey-holes around the school. I also recall collecting spiders and their cobwebs in traps I made from privet branches I would pull off the bushes around my front garden. I would strip the leaves from the branch and then bend it in a loop to form an oval. You could place this loop under a web and then lift the whole thing, including the spider who had woven it, free. I think this game was mostly played in autumn, because the webs were easier to find and more prolific on cold mornings and the frost trapped on the silk painted pictures with them.
On top of that there’s all the things we might accidentally swallow – Coins (Christmas pud); Keyrings (Christmas crackers); Shells (nuts, Lidl lobster); Date stones (dates); Board game tokens (Monopoly houses and pieces, Triv pie pieces, Miss Scarlet – the list is endless); Bottle tops and corks (alcohol cabinet); Bleach (cupboard under the sink); One of Aunt Mabel’s mince pies (Auntie Mabel’s house) – and any of these could necessitate X-Rays and/or MRI scans. And it goes without saying that tempers get frayed at Christmas too, and frying pans, coffee mugs and fists may present further hazards that need avoiding. Mistletoe is poisonous, by the way.
Go figure.