Dangers of an Idle Mind

This piece was one of two pieces originally published in 2009 at The Spartan Opinion as 'Benny “down” Hill all the way' In the late eighties I was a support guy working from a narrow closet. It was just wide enough for a desk and chair and long enough for the desk and 4 or 5 floor standing computer systems which kept the room very warm. The building did have high ceilings and at one end of support room was a slender but tall, window that looked out over Teddington High Street. Teddington is an average, small suburban London town, ten miles west of the city along the River Thames. The High street had the usual assortment of pubs, small supermarkets, fast food shops and banks. Our building was next to the Barclays Bank The sun arced from morning through noon and onto dusk. People, buses and cars all passed by the tall window and the changing leaves on the trees across the road marked the seasons passing. Not much happened day to day in Teddington but there were little distra...

We haven’t had an embarrassing kid’s story for a while so here is the tale of Moochy and the monster under his bed. Moochy, my eldest son hated going to bed and never more so than when he felt there was something happening that he was missing out on. In those times he would invent all sorts of reasons for why he could not go to sleep or had to keep getting up. This story takes place on one of those occasions when he was about four. One beautiful spring evening we were staying at his Grandparent’s house in southwest London, near where me and his mother both lived before moving about 60 miles away. Anyway, we had arranged for some of our old friends to come around and hang out for a while. They were due around 8 and so just before that we put Moochy and his younger brother, Spud, into their pajamas, tucked them into bed and turning out the light, bade them goodnight. No sooner had the first visitors arrived than a little blond four year old appeared and told us. “I can’t sleep; there’s a...

Every parent has a s tory of h ow their children have embarrassed them and here is mine. Back at the end of the summer in 1996 I lived in a small village in Essex, England. That summer had seen the Olympics in Atlanta, an explosion over the Atlantic of a Paris-bound TWA plane and England were beaten by arch rivals Germany in the Euro 96 semi-finals. Oasis and Blur dominated the UK airwaves. By September 1996 my family consisted of my wife, a two year old boy referred to as Moochy and a six month old who become to be known as Spud. Oh, and a nameless Goldfish too. Moochy was as cute as any two year old ever was. He had a shock of white hair and big blue eyes. Overall he was a pretty happy kid. The only concern we had was that he was having some problems with talking, most of the things he was saying were pretty unintelligible but at least he was trying. The story takes place one Sunday afternoon. Spud and his mother were both taking an afternoon nap and I decided Moochy and I should do ...

As I pushed open the solid white door I had a feeling something wasn’t quite right. There was an unfamiliar smell. However, it was relatively early on Saturday and I was in my third European country this week so you have to make some allowances. I moved through the small anteroom with its hand basins and into the next room. It was odd that there were only two, both vacant, cubicles but it was a small place in an out of the way corner of the Dusseldorf airport so it is possible they just used the space wisely. I pushed open the door to the nearest cubicle and locked it behind me. Once inside I looked around and realised that even in a European toilet, a disposal unit for feminine hygiene items was not normal in a man’s lavatory. Oh boy! Now I was in trouble. I’m in a ladies toilet in a German Airport. But I was sure I had passed the door to the ladies right next to the door I had just come through. Regardless, my major concern was now ‘How was I going to get out of here’? Should I just ...