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My Story

I have just begun to write a short story, as I finish a section I will post it in here.

                                 Strange Idea          
Written by Gary Walker 

It started as just a regular Sunday morning. By 7am I was washed, dressed and standing silently in the garden drinking my first mug of tea. Lately my mind and body seemed incapable of normal operation without at least three hot, steamy mugs of the strong, syrupy liquid. My wife, Christine was still fast asleep upstairs in our lovely, warm cosy bed. I had already fed the cat and was now contemplating with a touch of irony, what wondrous joys the day would bring.  

To say my life was in a bit of a rut would be an understatement of political spin proportions. My job was safe, easy, and unbelievably dull. My wife was sleeping with another man, and to be honest, I didn’t give a jot. We have no children. Christine only loved creatures with lots of fur, hence the cat. I was 42 years old, with no ambition, and a habit of daydreaming. It was at this point I took the first step to changing my life forever - about fifteen steps in fact.
Still holding my mug of tea, I decided to walk up the path to the end of the garden. We had a small area behind a tree that we liked to leave wild - well to be honest, I liked to leave wild. There were lots of stones, the ground was uneven and it was a real bugger to get the mower to cut anything. I had tried to convince Christine that every garden should have a patch of ground that was left as nature had intended.  She had replied that I was ‘just a lazy git’. 

I looked down at my little nature reserve and a ridiculous thought popped into my head. This wasn’t the first time a ridiculous thought had popped into my head; I was actually quite prone to a ridiculous thought. Normally these thoughts consisted of hair-brained business ideas, or madcap inventions of one sort or another. If I had ever got round to putting my inventive ideas into practice, I would have put Thomas Edison’s patent record in the shade. However ,on this particular occasion, the idea that had so miraculously arrived in my brain was not an invention or some money making wonder scheme, it was - a hole! Yes I wanted to dig a hole, a big hole. Not a hole to plant something in, or even to bury something in, although for a split second, (and I will always feel guilty for it) an image of Christine’s face did appear in my head. No, I wanted to dig this hole, just because I wanted to.

Part Two

I was excited now - what did I need? Where could I find it? Should I start right away, or should I have another mug of tea? Tea, one more mug, and then I’d get the shovel.  In fact I was so excited I ran with my second mug of tea to the shed to fetch the shovel. Tea in one hand, shovel in the other, I was now a man with a plan.  
So by 8am on Sunday 25.09.01 Malcolm Jones (that’s me by the way) was ready to begin my work of destiny. I raised the shovel high, then with a mighty blow, struck it into the ground with venom. The blade hit a stone and the resulting reverberation through the handle sent a shudder through my hand and up my arm. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ I thought to myself. From then on I decided not to be so cavalier with my shovelling technique. Instead of the high lift and crash to the ground system, I used the “place the blade on the ground and push it in with my boot” approach - less spectacular, but much less painful. 

I was now enjoying myself. Without realising it, I had been enjoying myself for more than an hour and a half. I had dug down to about a foot and to a diameter of around four feet. Every now and then I stopped to sift through the soil that I had thrown into a big pile beside me. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just enjoying rooting around in the dirt.

Part Three

I started placing the large stones I had found in one pile, the smaller ones in another, and anything that looked a bit odd in a special clean it up and have a good look later pile.

Just as I was thinking ‘I can feel another mug of tea coming on‘, I heard the dulcet tones of my wife's voice. Christine had awoken from her slumber and was now standing in the garden in furry lion slippers and a full-length silk leopard-print negligee. For sometime now, her fixation with furry creatures had been reaching a level of animal madness. I had even heard through the grapevine, that she had even persuaded her bit on the side to wear a novelty furry elephant's trunk over his meat and two veg. I digress. There she was, jaw loose, open mouthed, hands on hips, her full 'what the hell are you up to' pose.
"Morning darling" I said. "Don't ‘morning darling' me, what the hell are you doing?" she screeched.

Without waiting for my reply she carried on regardless. "Look at the state of the garden. What's the bloody great hole for? And why the hell have you got so many different piles of dirt? And why..."At this point I thought I should try to get a word in. "Darling, if you would just give me a second I will explain everything.""Malcolm it would take you a year to explain to me some of the idiotic, brainless things you've done in the past," she said. "Christine I promise this will only take a second."

To be continued