Seeing the Funny Side

Schoolfriends Jason and Marcus were deep in conversation.

“Are you sure about this?” Marcus asked.

“Course I am”, said Jason. “It’ll be a huge laugh.”

“But will he really see the funny side?” Marcus insisted. “This is your Dad we’re talking about. I’ve never been impressed by his sense of humour. I remember the time I was round your place when the TV was showing ‘The Greatest Comedy Moments in TV History’ and he stayed stony-faced through every single one of them.”

“But he was laughing to himself inside”, said Jason.

“Really? So why, when Del Boy fell through the bar, was your Dad’s only comment that the Trotters should have sued the pub for breaching Health and Safety? And why did he insist that playing the notes in the wrong order was just the same as playing all the wrong notes?”

“I’m telling you”, said Jason, “Dad loves a joke as much as anyone, and practical jokes are right up his street. He’ll definitely see the funny side of this one.”

“OK”, said Marcus, “so what’s so funny about being robbed of your cash at the ATM outside Sainsbury’s – which is what you appear to have in mind?”

“Simple”, said Jason, “Dad’s being going on for months about how careful you need to be at cashpoints, and how he would never be caught out by a sneak thief who tried any sort of trick on him. Well – I reckon we could prove him wrong. It’s all right – we won’t keep the cash, obviously, but we’ll show him that he can be caught out as easily as anyone.”

“And he’ll take that as a joke?”

“Believe me”, said Jason. “I know my Dad. He’ll be the first to start laughing”.

So, the next day being Saturday, the two boys followed Jason’s Dad down into town on the latter’s regular morning walk to do a little shopping. Dad was one of those people who much prefer to use cash than plastic when buying things over the counter, so his first stop was the Sainsbury’s hole-in-the-wall cashpoint.

The boys had rehearsed their tactics very thoroughly, so when the notes emerged from the dispenser, Jason shouted loudly “Oh my God, look at that!” which made his Dad spin round, leaving Marcus free to grab the money and run off round the corner.

“You seem to be going somewhere in a hurry, young man”, said a deep voice.

The voice belonged to a police officer, into whom Marcus had cannoned just round the corner. Marcus had not reckoned on an outcome like this, and he could feel his legs going extremely wobbly as the policeman grabbed him by his shirt collar.

“And what’s that in your hand? Nice crisp ten-pound notes if I’m not mistaken. They wouldn’t by any chance have been stolen from some innocent old person using the cashpoint, would they? Let’s just see if we can find their real owner, shall we?”

So saying, the policeman dragged Marcus back round the corner, where Jason’s Dad was standing next to the cashpoint.

Two things now surprised Marcus to a considerable extent. The first was that Jason was also standing there. Why had he not scarpered as soon as he himself had run off? The second was that both Jason and his Dad were laughing their heads off.

“I told you Dad would see the funny side”, said Jason. “The point is – do you?”

Marcus didn’t know what to say, so said nothing.

Jason’s Dad turned to the “policeman”. “Thanks for playing your part so well, Brian”, he said. “It sounds as though you made an excellent officer of the law for our little prank. Now I suppose you’d better clear off before a real policeman turns up”.

© John Welford

Changing Trains: Truth and Fiction

Part 1: The True Bit

After a short break in Berlin my son and I returned by rail to our home in Leicestershire.

The first train took us from Berlin to Cologne. The journey was notable for keeping perfectly to time, arriving at exactly the right time in Cologne after a journey lasting more than four hours. We therefore had no problem with making the connection for the next leg of the trip, from Cologne to Brussels.

However, that was when things started to go awry. Shortly after starting out, the announcement was made that the train would make an additional stop at Düren, which is a town between Cologne and Aachen. A later announcement said that everyone would have to leave the train at Düren and get on a train that would be on the opposite platform. All seat reservations would still apply on the other train.

As our train arrived at Düren another train was approaching at the adjoining platform from the opposite direction. The two trains stopped at almost exactly the same time. We all duly got off our train – as did the passengers who had just arrived on the other train.

We then swapped trains. When everyone was on board, the two trains set off back the way they had come, carrying a fresh set of passengers.

There was no explanation given as to why this took place, and there seemed to be no reason why two trainloads of passengers, travelling between Germany and Belgium, should have to do what they did.

Odder still, from my point of view, was the fact that I just finished reading Christopher Isherwood’s novel “Goodbye to Berlin” and had started on his other “Berlin” novel. The title? “Mr Norris Changes Trains”!


Part 2: The Fictional Bit – One Assumes!

So, what possible explanation could there be? Here is a possible – albeit unlikely – scenario.

Fritz, a train driver working for Deutsche Bahn, had a problem. He lived with his wife in a small flat in Cologne, and regularly did the run between Cologne and Brussels, where he sometimes stayed overnight so that he could drive the early train back to Cologne. He was supposed to spend these nights at an approved hotel, but had recently got very friendly with a young lady, named Yvette, who had her own flat in Brussels. He had therefore got into the habit of staying overnight with her instead of at the hotel.

This arrangement had worked very well for around a month, with the girlfriend in Brussels knowing full well that Fritz had a wife in Cologne, but the wife in Cologne being in total ignorance of the girlfriend in Brussels. As long as this situation continued, the happiness of all three of them would be maintained.

But it could not last for ever.

Things went wrong when Yvette, unknown to Fritz, made her own visit to Cologne to see Louise, an old schoolfriend who had done very well for herself and now worked as a senior controller for Deutsche Bahn. Yvette wanted to tell Louise about her new boyfriend, and she did so at a café not far from both the Hauptbahnhof and the Cathedral.

“His name’s Fritz”, said Yvette, “He’s a lovely guy. Tall, blonde, very well-spoken. He works for your company as a train driver - you might actually know him.”

“We’ve got more than one driver named Fritz”, said Louise. “He could be one of several.”

“I forgot to mention”, said Yvette, “his eyes look a bit strange. His left eye is blue but his right eye is brown. I don’t think I’ve ever come across that before.”

“In that case”, said Louise, “I know exactly who you mean”.

And so did the woman sitting at the next table whose attention had been drawn to the conversation of the two friends the moment she overheard the name Fritz being mentioned. As soon as Yvette had got up from her table to go the Ladies, the woman went over to where Loiuse was sitting.

“The next time you see my husband Fritz”, said the woman, “You can tell him from me that if he ever comes near me again he’ll get a lot more than he bargained for. If he wants to live with that trollop in Brussels, he can do so, but I’ll be chucking all his belongings out into the street as soon as I get home”.

She then walked off, presumably to go home and start packing Fritz’s things.

Louise had no idea whether Yvette knew that Fritz was married or not. Yvette sounded so happy and it might well destroy her if she found out that her new boyfriend already had a wife in Cologne.

However, Louise was a resourceful person and she had a solution to the problem, which she could do given her professional capacity as an arranger of train movements. When Yvette came back, Louise excused herself in turn and made some urgent phone calls.

She arranged for the train that Fritz was due to be driving to Cologne that evening to reverse direction at Düren, which is where it was due to cross with the Brussels-bound train on which Yvette would be travelling.

When she phoned Fritz to tell him, he was shocked by the news that his marriage was now in tatters, but very grateful to Louise for sorting things out. The prospect of facing his irate wife when he got home was not one to savour, and Yvette’s flat in Brussels sounded like a much safer place to spend the night.

Louise also had to get the driver of the other train to agree to the plan, which he was perfectly willing to do, being one of Fritz’s best mates.

All the passengers would have to swap trains at Düren, meaning that Fritz and Yvette would head to Brussels together, with Yvette being none the wiser about what was really going on.

Louise’s next job would be to collect Fritz’s belongings and take them to her own flat in Cologne.

She had always fancied Fritz. Getting Yvette to sit at the table next to where Fritz’s wife always had coffee at this time had been the only really tricky part of the plan.

© John Welford

An Evening I Will Never Forget

Groucho Marx is reputed, almost certainly falsely, to once having said “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it”. I think I can echo that line many times over, but there were also evenings that – if not exactly perfectly wonderful – were at least memorable.

One that comes to mind was when I was a young librarian working at a college that has since turned into the University of Chichester. In my student days at Bangor I had been very active in its Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and was delighted when the equivalent group at Chichester allowed me – as a non-student – to join their ranks.

After chorus appearances in The Mikado and Iolanthe I was promoted in my third year there to a principal role when they performed HMS Pinafore. I duly appeared for three nights as First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Joseph Porter KGB. I managed to remember all my lines, including getting the verses in the right order in “When I was a lad” shortly after my arrival on stage in Act I.

In Act II one of my numbers was a trio with Captain Corcoran and his daughter Josephine, who is reluctant to accept my marriage proposal, mainly because she is in love with Ralph, one of the ship’s crew. However, my only explanation for her coldness towards me is that she is dazzled by my exalted rank.

I therefore offer the salve that “love levels all ranks” and that she should therefore not imagine that being a humble captain’s daughter means that she cannot enter high society as the wife of the head of the Admiralty.

Josephine does not dissent from this view. If social rank can be ignored when it comes to matters of love, then her devotion to a humble “tar who ploughs the water” is equally legitimate. Hence the famous trio in which everyone seems to be in full agreement despite arguing in opposite directions.

The director of our production had the bright idea of illustrating the tangled web by having the three of us swinging about on ropes at various stages of the trio and getting our wires crossed almost literally. He apparently imagined that it would not look out of place for three vertical ropes to suddenly appear on the deck of a 19^th-century Naval vessel, presumably as pieces of rigging that had come loose for no obvious reason.

We were all young and foolish, and we reckoned that if it got a laugh, why not?

I was not quite as young as my colleagues, but equally foolish, so I suggested an extra piece of “business”. I thought it would be a good joke for Sir Joseph to swing right off into the wings at the end of the song, giving a loud despairing cry that would be followed the sound effect of a huge splash. He – by which I mean I – would then stagger back on stage soaking wet.

So that is what we did.

On the first of our three evening performances the stagehand in the wings scooped a tumblerful of water out of a fire bucket and threw it in my face. It got a reasonable laugh, but I doubted whether anyone more than three rows back would have seen any wetness on me at all. I therefore asked the stagehand to throw more water at me at the second show.

This is what he did. Instead of a glassful of water I got a jugful. This was a distinct improvement, but it still wasn’t enough. More water for the final night, please!

The guy in the wings was determined to get it right on the night. Instead of scooping water out of the fire bucket, he – being quite a strong lad - just picked up the bucket and chucked the lot over my head.

I don’t know if you have ever had two gallons of ice cold water thrown at you, let alone when you are in costume and about to return to a stage to deliver a couple of lines before you can escape, but I can tell you that the shock is a considerable one.

On the plus side, the laugh from the audience was the biggest of the night. As you can tell, that was an evening that I have not forgotten.

© John Welford

The Legends of John and Philip

At the end of the island where I live we are waiting for John to come back. At the other end, which we don’t ever visit, they are waiting for Philip. But we will see John back here long before they see Philip. John is a legend. I suppose Philip must be too, but our legend is better than theirs. That’s because ours is true and theirs is made up. I know this because my grandfather said so. He has actually seen John and knows he is real, but he hasn’t seen Philip. He thinks the people at the other end of the island made Philip up out of their own heads, just because we had John all to ourselves down here.

Grandfather is now a very old man, and it was when he was only a young boy that he saw John. It was at a time when huge ships, loaded with massive guns, went sailing past our island. Some people came from other islands and talked to our people about what was happening there.

It seems that on some of the larger islands people with much lighter skins than us arrived in big metal birds. They wanted to stay for some time, and they told the local people that they needed to attract much larger birds, but in order to do so they would have to clear away some of the forest and build a special track on which the birds could land.

This is what they did, and after the birds began to arrive, and the people had built huts near the end of track and really nice huts for them to live in themselves, all sorts of strange things started to arrive that were taken out of the birds and into the people’s new huts.

These people didn’t seem to do any work. They didn’t grow food or climb trees to gather coconuts, they stayed in their huts and the food arrived inside the birds, or so it seemed.

Some of the local people helped with unloading the birds, and what they unloaded was called “cargo” by the newcomers. It was wonderful stuff. They had boxes outside their huts that made whirring noises, and when this happened the inside of the huts were brightly lit, even if it was long after dark.

They even had boxes in their huts that cooked their food or kept it fresh during hot weather. One or two of them would go round the island in metal boxes that moved all by themselves.

This went on for some time, but one day all the people got into the metal birds and flew away, taking all their cargo with them.

Grandfather told me that some people on other islands wondered if there was a way of getting metal birds to come down and bring some cargo for them. What they did was go into the forest and cut down some of the trees in a long strip, just wide enough for a metal bird to land on. They built some huts at one end of the strip, just like the ones that the white-skinned people had built so that the cargo could be stored there before it was taken to their own huts.

Do you know, I’m just not sure if any cargo did land there, however much the people raised their hands to the sky and asked a metal bird to come down and land on their forest strip.

But we have something a lot better on our island. We have John Frum. At least, that is what everyone calls him. He came to our island once, a long time ago, but I’m not sure if he came in a metal bird or on a boat. He stayed for some time and then he went away again, but everyone just knows that he’ll come back one day. And when he does come back, everyone will be so, so happy because he’ll bring lots of cargo with him for everyone.

Grandfather has told me lots of stories about John Frum and all the wonderful things he did. He made people better when they were ill, by making them swallow tiny round pieces of food. If they did this for a few days, all their pains went away.

I have heard lots of other stories too, but I can’t be sure that they were all true. It was said that he could make a dish of water taste like anything you wanted it to be. When it was hot in a pot on the fire, he would drop some powder into it and it would smell wonderful and taste like nothing anyone had known before. John Frum had said that all the people where he came from drank this every day when they got up and it made them work so much better. He called it Caa Fie.

Some people said that John Frum could fly in the air and turn himself into birds or bats. Could he? Well, if he could make Caa Fie, who knows what he could do?

We had John Frum all to ourselves. At the other end of the island they say had a visit from a tall handsome man in a white costume who said his name was Philip. They asked him who he was and he said that he was the husband of a queen from a far distant land, and that this queen actually owned the island. That sounds very odd to me. If he was the husband of a queen, surely that would make him a king? It doesn’t add up. That’s why I think they invented him.

No, we’re far better off with John Frum, who’ll come back one day and bring lots of Caa Fie and other things with him. I asked Grandfather one day why he was called John Frum. He said it was because he had said – in a very funny voice that dragged out all the vowels, that he was “Jahn Frum Armorica” or something like that. Nobody was quite clear what the last word was – it might have Ormerocaw or Hamvericore or almost anything. So everyone just stuck with what they could agree on, which means that we are all now waiting for the return of our very own John Frum.

© John Welford

Blue Shade Views

God was in a bit of a stroppy mood. This was not unusual for God – his strops came at fairly regular intervals and the consequences could be distinctly uncomfortable for anyone within range of his thunderbolts.

He had been having quite a good time designing the planets round his latest star. Mercury had been OK for starters, and he quite liked Mars, although he had a sneaking feeling that all those lovely rivers and seas might not last as long as he had originally intended.

But the real problem was Venus. He had had all the right surveys done and had listed all the chemicals that were to comprise its atmosphere, but made the unforgiveable mistake of leaving the actual ordering and supply of the materials to a useless bunch of underling angels who couldn’t count. As a result, his lovely new planet didn’t stand a hope in Heaven (this was in the days before Hell had been invented) of it ever supporting what God wanted to call Life.

God knew precisely how much methane and carbon dioxide there should have been for a planet in the position it occupied in a solar system, but those clowns had managed to order vastly more volcanoes than they should have done, and these had been spewing so much in the way of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that Venus was doomed from the outset with the surface temperature rising far too high for any surface water or anything that could remotely be described as living.

Hence God’s extreme annoyance, coupled with the wish to start again and not get it wrong a second time.

He decided that his next project should be a planet between Venus and Mars. This time there would be no mistakes, nothing like as many volcanoes, and lots of water. Once he got life established it would continue for ever afterwards, and there was not the slightest chance of global warming getting out of hand, however long one looked ahead. How could it? It was impossible!

For one thing, he had had the notion, after he had played around with dinosaurs for a hundred million years or so, of developing creatures that walked on two legs and had proper brains. These would be so intelligent that there was no way they could possibly allow the planet to get too warm, or be led by people who had less than half the average brain power. That just had to be God’s brightest idea yet.

Once God got creative there was no stopping him, and he soon had lots of clever thoughts about the new planet. He had not yet decided on a name – perhaps he might hold a competition among the angels and pick the best suggestion? That would be fine, just as long as it didn’t end up as Planet McPlanetface.

He was very happy with the red colour he had given Mars and thought that this would suit the latest creation as well. He had a word with Bert, the angel in charge of the warehouse, about ordering lots more red, but was disappointed to learn that this wouldn’t be possible.

“We can do some of it in red”, Bert told him, “but we used so much on Mars that there isn’t much left. There are some bits down the bottom that we can do in red, the bits that nobody would actually want to settle in if their ancestors had not been forced to go there, but that’s about it”.

“What else have you got?” God asked.

“There’s lots of green, brown and yellow”, Bert said. “You can have as much as you want of all of them”.

“Great”, said God, “we’ll do the dry bits in green and yellow and the wet bits in brown”.

“Brown?” said Bert. “You cannot be serious. It’ll look awful. Do you really want all your continents swimming in chocolate sauce?”

“Have you got any better suggestions?” God asked.

“Funny you should mention that”, said Bert. “I’ve just taken delivery of a brand new colour that I think you’ll love for your seas and oceans. It’s called blue.”

“Tell me more”, said God.

“I’ve got the colour chart here”, said Bert. “Just look at all the shades you can have. There are different blues for angry seas, calm seas, in-between seas, seas at different times of day, seas near the land and seas nowhere near the land, the choice is yours.”

“I see”, said God, “and you can supply all these shades?”

“No problem”, said Bert. “And then for your skies …”

“Skies?” said God.

“That’s the trouble with you deities”, said Bert. “You’re always looking down, you never think about looking up. You need a decent colour for your lifeforms to look up at.”

“How about magnolia?” God suggested.

“Magnolia? You must be joking. That’s so boring”. said Bert. “Let’s go back to the blue idea. You could have a different shade of blue for the sky and coordinate it with your sea colour. How about this lovely pale shade?”

“What do you call that?” God asked.

“It hasn’t got a name yet”, said Bert, “but if you choose it we could just call it ‘sky blue’”.

“I like it”, God said. “We’ll have sky blue all the way across the planet”.

“Small problem there”, said Bert, “You’re going to have to get some of your water out of the oceans and on to the land, otherwise the green bits won’t stay green for very long. And that means you can’t have unbroken blue skies everywhere. Some places will have to make do with grey for much of the time”.

“Such places as?”

“These islands about three quarters of the way up. I reckon you could cut down on the blue quite a lot there, and stick mostly to grey”.

“But won’t the two-legged brainy lifeforms complain if they hardly ever get any blue skies?”

“I wouldn’t worry too much”, said Bert. “It’ll give them something to talk about. You take it from me – they’ll just love it”.

 © John Welford

An Invitation

The envelope was pushed under the door of my hotel room while I was over on the other side of the bed, so when I rushed across to open the door and see who was there, it was too late. The corridor was empty and I was left standing on my own to wonder who might have delivered whatever it was.

I had not been in the small Dutch town long and had yet to get my bearings. I had some business to undertake the following day and had nothing else in mind that evening other than going out for a meal and then straight to bed. I knew nobody here, so who on earth could be pushing strange notes under my door?

I opened the envelope as I stood there. The card inside bore an invitation, of sorts. All it said was:

“Come to 28 Prinzengracht at any time you like. Just walk in and come upstairs. MCE.”

The only thought that came to mind was to quote Lewis Carroll: “Curiouser and curiouser”.

But, just like Alice, I had no intention of letting the mystery lie where it was. I decided that, after my meal, I would take up the invitation to visit the address on the card.

I had no idea where Prinzengracht was, so after I had eaten in the small restaurant near my hotel, I asked the waiter for directions. He was curious as to why I wanted to go there at what was now quite a late hour. What number was I going to?

I thought I could detect a hint of a smile on his face after I said “Twenty-eight”, but maybe I was imagining this. Or maybe not.

The door of Number 28 was closed, but the handle turned easily enough and I walked straight in, just as suggested by the invitation.

There was no passageway or sign of other doors, just a staircase leading upwards. “Come upstairs”, the invitation had said, so I did just that. At the top of the first flight there was a sharp turn to the right, and another flight of stairs. There were no windows or doors on either side, but the stairs were well lit. I kept climbing upwards.

After the second flight there was another right-angled turn, then another, and another. The stairs just kept going on, and on, and on.

The thought struck me that this house must be immensely tall, given how many stairs I must have climbed, but I had certainly not been aware as I walked along Prinzengracht that any of the houses were higher than what one might expect to find in a typical street in a small town in the Netherlands.

At last, I could see a window in the side wall. When I got there I peered through it to see just how high up I was. But the view I had was of a typical street in a small town in the Netherlands. I was no higher off the ground than the lampposts that shed their weak light over the street.

I decided that I had had enough of this, so I turned round to take the stairs back the way I had come.

But that was when things got even stranger than they were already, if that was possible. The stairs did not go down at all, only up. What? If I had climbed all that way up, how come I could not go down? But that was precisely what I was faced with – whichever way I turned, the stairs only went up, and they never took me any higher than I was already.

When I next came to the window I could see a card on the window sill, which I could swear had not been there before. I picked it up and read:

“Welcome to my house. I hope you like it. Don’t worry, just snap your fingers and you’ll be back on the street. Yours in jest, M C Escher”.

© John Welford

Try Again, Ollie

St Peter had not been long in charge of the Pearly Gates, which give access to Heaven if you meet his strict criteria, before he became aware of a tricky issue that was raised by a number of would-be entrants.

This was when a recently disembodied soul, faced with the prospect of doing a considerable amount of time in Purgatory, asked St Peter if they could not possibly be given a second go at Life. They had made a hash of their first attempt, for one reason or another, and would quite like to show that, if given the opportunity, they could pass muster for direct entry if allowed the chance.

Being a reasonable sort of saint, Peter pondered the mattered for a few centuries and then came up with the answer. He decided to institute an Office for Reincarnation and appointed the Angel Gabriel to run it, seeing that he had far less to do these days now that all the most important Heavenly messages had been delivered to potential parents of Biblical characters.

Gabriel’s office, just down the road from the Pearly Gates, was soon doing a roaring trade and there always seemed to be a steady queue of souls hoping to be given their second chance.

It has to be said that Gabriel did not always get it right, and he made some appalling mistakes down the centuries. Genghis Khan was one such example, when Gabriel delivered his soul, after a suitable break, to a couple in Upper Austria called Alois and Klara. The boy began well enough, having distinct artistic tendencies, but it all went horribly wrong when he grew a silly moustache and started throwing his right arm upwards at a 45-degree angle.

On the other hand, it was nothing sort of genius giving Lucrezia Borgia another go as Florence Nightingale, and who else could Isaac Newton return as other than Albert Einstein?

Never let it be said that Gabriel did not have a sense of humour. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was full of complaints that he had been cut off in his prime and had plenty of great works up his sleeve, but surely turning into Mick Jagger was far from what he had in mind. No wonder he would lament in his new incarnation that he “could get no satisfaction”.

Gabriel had a particular challenge when Oliver Cromwell turned up. St Peter had been sorely tempted to point him straight down the road to the fiery furnace, but allowed himself to be persuaded otherwise. Oliver was quite convinced that he deserved direct entry in the other direction, but Peter had no intention of going that far. Instead, it was down the road to the Office for Reincarnation for the former Lord Protector of England.

Gabriel looked down the latest applicant’s CV and was distinctly unimpressed.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right”, he said. “You made war against the official King of England and Scotland, and eventually had his head cut off. A King, I might add, who has gone straight through the pearly Gates and is even now knocking back the ambrosia and twanging a harp. Give him a few more centuries and he might even learn to play it in tune.”

“He opposed the will of the people and the legally elected Parliament of the land”, said Oliver.

“So what?” said Gabriel. “Kings can do that if they like.”

“But they shouldn’t be allowed to”, said Oliver. “They should only rule with the consent of the people, as expressed through their elected representatives in Parliament.”

“I see that you then took over as ruler in his place”, said Gabriel.

“Indeed so”, Oliver replied. “But I refused to take the title of King.”

“And presumably you then allowed the rule of the people of England to determine your actions, said Gabriel”.

“Absolutely”, said Oliver.

“As expressed through their elected representatives in Parliament?”

“But of course”.

“On the other hand”, said Gabriel, “I see that one of your first acts after gaining power was to chuck out of Parliament all the members who opposed your intention of cutting off the head of King Charles.”

“So what if I did?”

“And you seriously want a second chance?”

“Why not?”

“Tell you what”, said Gabriel, “I’m in a good mood, so I’ll let you have another go if you’re prepared to wait a few hundred years.”

“Well, thanks for that”, said Oliver, “But can I ask you one more favour?”

“Which is?”

“I always hated the name Oliver. Could I be called something else when the time comes?”

“No problem”, said Gabriel. “I’ve got a great idea. How does the name Boris sound to you?”

© John Welford