Category: Positive Moments

Avatar Dedication

Dedication. Say it out loud because you won’t be hearing much of that word for much longer. Why? Because dedication has a new name and that name is Christopher James Marshall.

Lunacy is infectious, much like laughter and most Class A drugs. Lunacy is responsible for a lot of things and I expect when they eventually drag me away, kicking and screaming, wrapped in a My Little Pony sleeping bag, it will be something that I try to pin the blame on in the hope they’ll let me go. When it comes to a lot of my nonsense it’s about 50/50 as to whether anyone else will join in. Some of it is too much, even for me, so I fully understand when people choose to ignore and carry on with their lives. For instance, this morning I was thinking about Loudermilk (again), an old animal’s home for all of Bob Ross’ woodland creature friends and Korean Karaoke (because it sounds nice).

Occasionally though the baton will be picked up and well and truly ran all the way to the finishing line. That baton was a petition to reinstate Monty Don back in the band Beats International. Even though none of that sentence makes sense in the real world, Chris took that petition and got it fully signed.

Two hundred and eleven individual signatures. Two hundred and eleven people. People may scoff that our generation never amounted to anything but I will wave this petition in their faces to prove them wrong. What an achievement. What a level of dedication unheard of in this day and age. So based on this and this alone, the word ‘dedication’ should be replaced with ‘Chris Marshall’.

What a level of Chris Marshall unheard of in this day and age.

You heard me.

Avatar Like the wind

Today one of my colleagues was looking for me. I could tell because there was a voice from the corridor that said “where’s Chris?”. At that particular moment Chris was sitting on a chair in the office where he usually sits, so this was not a mystery that would take long to solve.

A moment later the owner of the voice came through the door and said “how did you get there? You weren’t here a minute ago”. This was true. A minute ago I had been in the toilet having a little wee. But discretion is the mark of a gentleman, so I chose not to mention it.

My colleague contemplated my mysterious and unexplained arrival, and declared that I was like the wind, moving about silently and without being seen. That is not a comparison that has ever been made before, and if I were to dispute it I’d say that all I’d done was call in to the bathroom while moving from one room to another, and it was just chance that my colleague had been trying to find me at the moment when I was not in one place or the other. But I chose not to dispute it because I like this idea.

Yes. I am like the wind.

Avatar A fine view

We all know how wonderful it is to lay one’s eyes on a beautiful prospect. It can be a true balm for the soul. (Those of us with five or more pairs of eyes presumably get even more from the experience.)

As an avid looker at lovely things of every description, you can imagine my excitement when I came across this sign, promising riches beyond imagining.

The finest view in England, 450m

I was, of course, hoping for something truly breathtaking, like a city of dazzling bejewelled exotic domes and turrets glittering in the desert sun, or my own face hewn from solid rock in a rugged depiction occupying the whole side of a mountain. What I actually got, 450 metres later, was some countryside with some trees and that.

To say I was disappointed would barely hint at the extent to which this grand promise went unfulfilled. But I’m determined nobody else should suffer the same fate, so I am having the field boundaries adjusted across the whole of the parish so that, in future, others gazing upon the allegedly fine view see my face depicted therein, and they will know that they really have seen the finest view England has to offer.

You’re welcome.

Avatar Kareech Mantell and the Key of Destiny

Kareech looked at the ground. Sitting there, isolated from the rest of the bunch, was a singular key. For some reason Kareech always assumed that keys traveled in groups rather than by themselves.

The key shone in the mid-morning light and in it was reflected a distorted, bendy view of the street he currently stood in. There was nobody else around and so, with nothing much to lose, Kareech bent down in the incorrect fashion and picked up the key. It was much smarter than it should be; there were marks along the long edge, little nicks where the key must have been used to open a parcel, help with a struggling tin opener or possibly used to pick food out of an old woman’s teeth. No discernible indications as to whom owned the key or where it should be left in case of emergencies.

It was Sunday, the lazy day, the day for not doing much. Kareech had a very limited ‘to do’ list; other than picking up some salt for his mum and tying his shoelaces that was it for him. The world does not expect much from a fourteen year boy.

At first he left the key in his pocket, to jingle against the metal fixtures of his sad, faded foldy out velcro wallet. Maybe next year he will get a proper wallet rather than something that resembled a permanent reminder that adulthood was still way too far away. At the top of Evershed Terrace, however, he stopped to take in the brisk air and his hand grazed the intimate sides of the key. It was then that he made a decision, a decision that would ultimately change his Sunday and make it the kind of Sunday that he would look back on as an old man and possibly point a pipe up into the air, desperately trying to remember what happened.

Kareech tried the key in Number 1 Evershed Terrace. The metal reached about half a centimetre in before the mechanism forced it to stop; this key was not the key for 1 Evershed Terrace. And so onto Number 2 Evershed Terrace. It reached a little further in before stopping. Another failure. And so onto Number 3 Evershed Terrace. It barely got the tip in before the inevitable prevention and overwhelming sensation of failure. And so onto Number 4 Evershed Terrace…

Avatar In memory of Dick the Brick

We all remember Bert Papps. What a guy he was – but we’ve talked about him enough.

It’s high time we looked back at the life of another modern hero, one who few of us remember but whose life is charted in a thousand minor local newspaper reports of the late twentieth century. I’m talking, of course, about Dick the Brick.

I have to admit that I had never heard of this remarkable chap until recently, but a search of the Sutton and Cheam Gazette archives tells me that on four occasions – in 1964, 1972, 1980 and 1991 – he was drafted in by the Metropolitan Police as a medium and successfully used spirit guides to help detectives prosecute people who had been dumping trolleys in the canal.

Did Dick the Brick ever turn up in your local paper? Let’s unearth some more of his incredible life.