Never in all my life
The car pulls over, hopelessly lost. The three young men get
out, two are arguing, and open up the map, spread it on the bonnet. They
continue to argue.
“We should’ve gone left at the junction…”
“No. Right at the roundabout…”
“You must be joking, where’d’you get this map?”
They have just passed a glazed bus shelter. In it sit an
elderly man with an elderly Labrador . The two
at loggerheads continue to argue. Eventually the third man says:
“Why don’t we ask someone…”
The ‘someone’ tails off as he realises the enormity of the
mistake he’s just made.
The noise of the birds and insects stops, the sky clouds
over, and the Labrador says: “never in all my
life”.
A vacuum tube comes down from above, and the man who
suggested asking shoots off skywards.
Never stop and ask…
…is, actually, a good policy:
- One football season when we played a number of unfamiliar opposing teams, every time we stopped to ask we got the village idiot or some sort of mental institution escapee. I think, on a couple of occasions, let alone setting off disappointed not to receive any useful information, we were thankful to escape without loss of life.
- We asked a posh lady where the football pitch was. “Oh”, she said “do they play football around here? I’m not aware…” the rest was lost as I sped away. Life’s too short for Hyacinth Bucket-a-likes.
- Too much detail. Too many lefts and rights, churches and landmarks, roundabouts and lights from Mr Roadmap-Bore, and, inevitably you say thanks, turn to each other and say “what was it after straight on for a bit?”.
- Look, the reason I’m lost and having to ask, which, by the way, is the absolute last resort, because I end up talking to mongs like you, is that I’m not from these parts. So, no, retard, I don’t know where the Queens Head is, neither do I know the location of the post office or St Algernon’s Church of the Latterday Godbotherers, and no, in particular, I don’t know where Mrs Mendlecott lives.
I’m with the Labrador and
the vacuum tube.
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