Is honesty the best policy? Does it make any difference if the only person who cares about your lie is yourself (or in this case me and myself). “BRADSHAW, WHY DIDN’T YOU HAND IN YOUR BLOGWORK ON TIME YESTERDAY?”
“Well, Sir... I, erm, you see I was going to do it, but I erm, well first I missed the bus. No, I mean I got home really late. Why? Oh, because I set off really late, and it snowed and the traffic was bad and there was salt on the track. I mean snow. And leaves. So the bus, I mean train, had to stop for, like, hours and I was going to do my blog on the train, cos I really really wanted to do it, but there was a fat man sitting next to me and I didn’t want him to read my blog before it was finished in case he laughed at a spelling mistake or erroneous word.
"Then the fat man went to the toilet for ages, so I tried to write a bit then but my laptop needed charging and the only plug socket was on one of those tables with four seats around it and it was all occupied by self-absorbed self-satisfied middle-class work-shy mums cooing over and kissing their runty livestock offspring. I begged them to let me use the plug socket, but they were just too obsessed with their haircuts and 4x4s and jewellery and their holidays and the academic and/or sporting tricks their disgusting litter can perform. It was like they were in a bubble of privilege where the thoughts, opinions and needs of their fellow humans cannot penetrate.
"Eventually the train, I mean bus, set off and when I got to the station I couldn’t get out because there was an impromptu recital of the Imperial Taiko Ensemble, and I tried to get out but there was such a crowd and it’s also physically impossible to walk passed big drums without stopping to gawp. They played through the night, working shifts so they could keep on and on; it was as though they knew I had a blog to write and were forcing me into a catch 22 where they were providing me with material, while at the same time preventing me from committing the experience to the written word.
"And then as soon as the drumming stopped and I left the bus station, I mean train station, I slipped on some sick, I mean some snow, and a big dog ate my foot. I’m OK now, but at the time it looked as though I had no foot. It turns out I did have a foot, two feet to be precise, but for a while it was touch and go. So like I said, I’m OK now, but they had to do all tests n that, and that, and I was pretty worried, and I had to phone my mum and she was all worried.
"I was able to walk home eventually, but when I got home my key wouldn’t work in the lock. I fiddled with it for about fifteen or sixteen seconds before realising my key was in my pocket, and I had just been blindly jabbing my index finger at the lock. Then I got in but the heating was off and the house was cold so I had to have a cup of tea and let the radiators warm up, and I couldn’t find a plug socket cos the Christmas lights were all plugged in, but I improvised a small generator out of an ironing board and an egg cup that created just enough power to turn the laptop on.
"I couldn’t remember the password, and the internet wasn’t working properly, and I had forgotten what words and pictures were, and I couldn’t think of anything interesting that had happened that day, and I was tired after all the excitement, and I had lots of other important blogwork to do for my other classes, and I had to eat some egg and chips, and I forgot what I was supposed to be doing, and I’m really really really sorry n that. Yeah?”
And that is all the honest and true excuse, I mean genuine reason, why I’m handing in yesterday’s blog late.
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