... but I stopped. Now I'm a dad, and may blog again...

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

532: Beating a Bin with a Stick

There was a repetitive banging noise in the street outside my flat. It carried on in the background gradually drifting to the foreground of my consciousness until after about five minutes I decided to look out the window to see what in blimey was going on. A small child, about two and a half feet tall in his woolly bobble-hat, was beating on the side of a wheely bin with a stick. He seemed disinterested, as though it were a tedious but necessary task, like doing the washing up, changing a bicycle tire, or rooting around in the dirt for hidden caches of squirrel nuts. Gradually his enjoyment picked up, then cycled back down into it's a dull job, but someone's gotta do it.

Before you could say beating a bin with a stick I grabbed my favourite bin-beating stick out of the rack (the number 12a, I find it to be the most versatile), pulled on my bin-beating gloves, belt and boots, and high-tailed it out the door and down the stairs. I burst out through the front door and said that's my bin, step away. But in the time it had taken me to get together all my professional bin-beating gear and make my way down the stairs and out the door, it seems the little bin-beating junior amateur had lost interest and wandered off. No discipline, that's his problem. So I got in a good bit of bin-beating with a stick practise before retiring to my quarters. True story.

There was a repetitive banging noise in the street outside my flat. It carried on for quite sometime before I noticed it consciously. As soon as I became aware of it I grabbed my binoculars with the creepy night vision attachment, ran to the window tripping and stumbling over all the chicken carcasses and traffic cones, and sat in my peeping seat. At first I couldn't locate the sound. I scanned the gardens, rooftops and the road, eventually settling on a scene in the branches of a tree. Two squirrels dressed in spandex fought each other in a theatrical athletic spectacle; one adopted a clear role as protagonist (or babyface) while the other was a clear antagonist (or heel). A crowd of bloodthirsty pigeons responded to the roles and bayed for the blood of the despicable heel. It was good. I'm glad I was there to witness it.

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