1. MY ROTTEN OLD BIKE

Part of the first of a little experiment I'm trying.

I knew it was going to be a different sort of day when I climbed out of bed the wrong side this morning. I don’t know why I did it. It was probably because I’d rolled over during a particularly energetic dream and ended up in the wrong place in my double bed.

I know. You’re thinking something along the lines of why does this Philip fellow need a double bed when he’s single and likely to stay that way?

And I’ll tell you why. It’s so I can cope with energetic dreams, something that would probably stretch the boundaries of the possible in a single bed. They’re things I’ve suffered from for years, hence my single state. Five wives have given up on me because of those dreams and I’ve resigned myself to a single life for the remainder of my days.

Anyway, I climbed out of bed on the wrong side and had a shower.

I don't want you to think I always have a shower the minute I get up. Sometimes I’m a bit tardy and there isn’t time for such hygienic luxuries as showers and I toddle off to work in a sweat-stained state reeking of all the bad things a man can reek of.

I like that bit of alliteration: sweat-stained state.

After my shower I discovered I hadn’t really had time for it. My watch, my best, most expensive watch, needed a new battery and had stopped during the night. I was, in fact, monstrously late rather than early.

Work’s a twenty minute walk in the morning. There are buses, but I’ve no idea when they run, I never had a car, so I resorted to my bicycle.

Let me tell you about that bike of mine. I made it up out of spare parts when I was a teenager, scrounging what I could from where I could. When I was finished and had painted it a lovely shade of scarlet I was so proud of it I swore to myself I’d never need another bike, and from that day onwards kept that as a promise made by myself to a conglomeration of what had been scrap metal and rubber.

For forty years that bicycle has served me well until today.

I climbed on it in considerable haste and set off on my scarlet racing machine towards the office, a mile or so away.

Half way there the chain broke, my legs suddenly didn't know what to do, I wobbled like a crazy thing and got violently knocked off into the gutter by a motor cyclist who hadn’t expected me to wobble the way I had.

The bad bit was I was killed.

Instantly. My head collided with concrete and lost the battle of toughness.

There was, subsequently, a lot of fuss while policemen measure skid marks (though why they did that I’ve never known) and drew white pictures on the road, one of them of me and the other of a motorcyclist who’d broken an arm and cracked a rib in the incident. My bicycle chain was put in a plastic bag for later examination and my bike itself was pooh-poohed as unroadworthy. Which, after forty years, I suppose it might have been.

Now then, you might be asking yourself how come I’m telling you this if I was killed in the unhappy incident. And the answer might be obvious to me, but you might find it a tad hard to believe.

You see, there was a mix-up. Don’t ask me how it happened because I was in no position to take notes.

I was scraped onto a stretcher and carted off to be examined by a pathologist who had a penchant for cutting people up. I suppose it was a natural curiosity in much the same way as I displayed natural curiosity when I was five or six and cut open a torch battery to see what it was made of and got unpleasant chemical marks on my fingers, marks that wouldn’t wash off no matter how hard I tried. See Lady Macbeth.

The pathologist discovered that my head was broken. Of course it was! He put it into fancy words when he wrote it up, but the essence of those fancy words was a broken head.

Then he went for a cup of tea and a chat with his female assistant who really fancied him something rotten and consequently wore the tiniest skirts in order to display her fascination.

I blame her skirt, particularly tiny and revealing on the day I was killed.

Because there and then while they were giggling in a corner and Dr Whatsit was pretending he couldn’t see her knickers the undertaker arrived to take my mortal remains away. He had a coffin to put me in. It wasn’t an expensive one, and he was distracted by the pathologist’s lady assistant as well. Who wouldn’t be?

And it was here that coincidence built on coincidence.

You see, being dead, my spirit had to find somewhere else to live or it would end up six feet down in the soils of England, there to rest for eternity with my mouldering flesh. So as soon as it had recovered from the extreme violence the concrete guttering had caused to my head it started to find its way out into the pure air of the mortuary, ready to drift off to pastures new and eventually locate Heaven or Hell or whatever the Afterlife is made of.

I’m right about it being the teensy weensy skirt’s fault. That, and the legs it failed to hide. And the saliva forming on the Undertaker’s lips as he tried not to stare too obviously at the carnal display.

“I’ll take him, then?” he called, “Philip Smith? Is that the right one?”

“Aye, you can take him,” replied the pathologist, making his assistant squeal by sliding a nervous hand up one of her thighs. “What is it? Dust or ashes?”

“The good brown Earth,” replied the Undertaker, “a nice little corner plot where he can see eternity out.”

“I thought corner plots were in great demand?” observed the pathologist, nameless because I never discovered what his name was.

“Not this one, next to the gents toilet,” sniggered the Undertaker, also nameless for exactly the same reason.

“Oh, you are a naughty boy!” squealed his assistant, clearly delighted by something.

And the mix up happened right there and then.

The Undertaker, distracted by whatever made the Pathologist into a naughty boy scooped up my ghost and carted it off in the coffin, leaving me behind.

And as I lay there with a label tied round one toe, my body, without the encumbrance of a troublesome spirit, decided to do a bit of self repairing before it was too late.

And no matter how hard my spirit hammered on the sides of the coffin, nobody heard it because, well, it was only a ghost.

© Peter Rogerson 22.08.19

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

Very good and imaginative writing. The subtle humour worked for me, and I smiled several times. Just what transpired with Philip's body and soul is a little foggy, but maybe it will become more clear with further reading.

[Peter Rogerson]

... and maybe it won't. I'm tgreading on confusing ground in this one!!!