Please forgive the indulgence...

[Wordbender]

...but I signed the contract for the 'Morris' book today and I'm a bit chuffed. It'll be out at the end of July and it contains around 50 of the 'Morris' stories, some of which I've already inflicted on you lot.

 

So, in gratitude for your tolerance - here's another one.

 

 

STREET OF SHAME

I’m overjoyed to report that Morris hasn’t embarrassed me at all this month. He’s shown up my eldest son, instead. Which was a right larf, obviously. Strangely, my Kristopher entirely failed to see the funny side of it, but then he’s at that that nouveau-shaving, pre-spotty stage, where he imagines that the whole of Surrey is judging his every move and holding up scorecards. If that’s so, then Morris has just steered Kristopher to a fine set of minus-6’s.

 

Kristopher has already begged me not to tell the world of his catastrophic loss of cool, and I’ve agreed to consider his wishes. More importantly for my son’s development, I’ve decided to teach Kristopher once and for all that I never break a promise. Oh yes. I promised that I’d get him back for smashing my shed window, so here goes.

 

Kristopher sometimes takes Morris out for an extra-curricular stroll around the neighbourhood. His mother imagines that our beloved boy has come over all angelic and is contributing to the essential practice of Morris-depleting. A depleted Morris is a far more acceptable item to have barging around a house than the version with the industrial strength Duracell batteries with which we’re normally blessed. Kristopher’s dad (yes, me) knows his son. Was I not a gangly teenager myself? I could gangle-up a storm when I was Kristopher’s age, and I know what he’s up to. He’s using Morris as a babe magnet.

 

Oi! You can stop that sniggering right now, you lot. For your information, Morris attracts loads of admirers, and some of them are perfectly normal people. When he’s swaggering down the road in his posh leather harness, that self-assured smile bisecting his happy head and his bits all jiggling in time to the clickety-click of his two un-clippable toenails, Morris is practically irresistible. Sure, the occasional Philistine gathers its children to its skirts and hurriedly crosses the road to avoid him but there’s no accounting for such creatures, so we tend to swagger on regardless.

 

Anyway, Kristopher had trundled off with Morris en-route to collecting another sackful of style points while I was discussing the merits of rational expectations in macro-economics with Herself. OK, we were having a ruckette about me buying a more powerful pressure washer than the two we already have, when the telephone rang to sound the end of round one. It was Kristopher on his compulsory teenagers’ mobile phone.

 

“Dad. Pleeeease come and get Morris, he’s well-showing me up, Dad. He’s just laying in the middle of the pavement by the shops and he won’t move! I’ve tried everything to get him up but he weighs a ton and he’s blocking everyone’s path. Some mad woman just swore at me because she had to push her pram into the road to get round him. Pleeease come and get him, Dad, pleeeease!”

 

Naturally, I planned to hit the street at a run to salvage what I could of my lad’s cred, yet swift though my response was, it wasn’t anywhere near fast enough for Kristopher. Before I’d had time to lace up a second trainer, the ‘phone rang again.

 

“Daaaaad! You’ve GOT to get here now! Morris’s willy is hanging out and he still won’t move, and he’s howling and all that, Dad! Oooh Dad, run, pleeeease!”

 

I discovered that I don’t do ‘run’, not even to prevent my son melting from shame. I did manage a dignified power-walk on Kristopher’s behalf, though, and I must say that I felt flushed with the self-righteousness of healthy exercise when I arrived at the scene. Kristopher was considerably more flushed than I, however, and appeared to be hopping from one foot to another and clenching most of his body in pure embarrassment. Bless him, in a pathetic bid to plug the massive leak in his pool of cool, he was pretending to talk to someone on his mobile. Morris, his scarlet winkle thrashing like a mad conductors’ baton, still stood his ground and howled that soulful song I knew so well.

 

As soon as I was in range of Morris’s lead, Kristopher slammed it into my hand, muttered something along the lines of “Awwww Gaaaawwwd, I’m moving out. I’m going!”, and did just that as fast as his trembling legs would carry him. Morris barely noticed that he was the subject of a frenzied baton-change, preferring to sniff deeply at some magical, invisible substance he’d discovered on the pathway, re-charging his primeval urges for another mighty yowl. I knew in a second what was going on. Morris had chanced upon his favourite perfume - essence of in-season bitch - and the rest is primitive canine history.

 

Being over 30 and therefore bereft of cool, I had nothing to lose from this situation, so I simply wrapped my arm around Morris’s point of balance and hoiked him off his feet. Carrying a love-lorn, fully-paunched and by now gyrating in hula-stylie bull terrier even a few yards was no mean feat, but I eventually managed to get Morris down wind of the bitch widdle. The instant he’d cleared his sinuses of girlie sex-invitation aroma, Morris reverted to his oblivious self. He even had the cheek to look first at his deflating willy and then to me, as if to ask “What on earth is THAT all about?”

 

Re-playing the incident in my mind, I couldn’t help giggling as my dog and I walked toward home. Just as, in 20 years or so, my Kristopher will be able to laugh about it, too. Probably.

 

***************************** E N D *****************************

[Chris Plumb]

Brilliant - put me down for a copy when it comes out - I trust you'll be indulging AN regulars by allowing us to buy a sign one!

 

 

C.

[Wordbender]

I'm sure I can sort something out, Chris - and thanks for the kind words, mate. Dammit - have another Morris!

 

 

VIDEO NASTY

It had been one of those days when life at the office was so brain-meltingly tedious, that I was actually looking forward to coming home and listening to Herself’s daily recital about how well the PTA’s bloody Christmas bazaar was shaping up.

 

It’s a ‘Christmas Craft Fayre actually’, I’m usually snootily reminded, ever since the PTA Head Harridan decided the occasion needed an image boost.

 

Oh ‘scuse me, beg-pardon moi lady, but drafting in one old hippie who does strange things with candles doesn’t turn a bazaar into ye olde traditionale craft fayre - especially when you have 150 kids leaping about on a bouncy castle to the background accompaniment of Bing sodding Crosby singing about children listening for sleigh bells in the snow - neither of which we have in Surrey. Herself is now Vice-Harridan of the PTA and takes her role, as she does most things, extremely fiercely.

 

She came up with the idea of making a video diary of the outgoing pupil’s final year at Our Lady Of Eternal Guilt (a proper junior school, where children and teachers still tremble in the presence of the Headmistress) so the kids can have something to look back and be depressed about in 20 years time when they’re fat, grey, bald and mortgaged into adulthood.

 

Assembling the video footage, having it all edited, interviewing the kiddies on camera, designing the sleeve and sticking a class photo on each, was Herself’s only reason to exist for most of the year, and waiting for the finished articles to arrive from the video reproduction company had her in the same state of anxious snarliness as imminent childbirth. Then the great day came when the video-repro man delivered the baby, in the form of a huge open-topped box of superbly turned out tapes.

 

He put them down for five seconds while Herself signed the delivery note - and er...Morris peed all over them. Oh yes, the whole works - an entire bladderful. Herself had to get her delivery note signing pen from the kitchen, the video man followed her and Morris saw the chance to put his mark on the unguarded crate of tapes. He was just squeezing out the last few drops when Herself caught him, leg raised and bang to rights.

 

Oh my God. Oh everyone’s God. Oh Gods who nobody has ever heard of. Had Morris cocked his leg against a real baby, things would not have been so bad. But those videos were Her absolute baby, and now they had half a gallon of bull terrier widdle over, and in, them. Praise to all those Gods I mentioned before, that I wasn’t there when it happened.

 

The kids told me that when she found out what Morris had done, ‘Mum went all funny like that dinosaur in Jurassic Park, sort of roaring in slow motion an’ all that’. So it was, that when I came home from my tedious day at the office, I found my house reeking like a tramp’s pants with the central heating turned up full blast and every radiator in the house festooned with open video cases.

 

Herself and the children had gone to McDonalds to escape the stench, and I was left with written instructions.

 

Dear Terry,

Morris is in his kennel. Please kill him. This time I mean it. Your dinner is in the oven. It will taste of dog ****. For the next year at least, all of your dinners will taste of dog ****, all of your clothes will smell of dog **** and your children will go to school smelling of dog ****, because your dog is not, nor will he ever be, fit to live in civilised company. We now live in The House Of Dog ****.

Enjoy your dog **** lasagne.

 

P.S. It’s all your fault - and you will pay.

 

Well that’s OK then. Morris lifts his leg, and I get dumped on. ‘Twas ever thus as far as I remember.

******************THE END******************

[Chris Plumb]

Memo to self - don't read these whilst sitting at the PC drinking coffee!!

 

 

C.

[Newt]

Terry - it's 4am where I am and I'm tired. I need sleep and instead, I am trying hard to remain in this chair. Really difficult to do while shaking and sobbing from laughter.

 

You and your beastly companion - well, there ought to be a law against making a nice old fella across the pond laugh so hard his belly will be sore for a week. You should be ashamed. You should.

 

 

[ 25. March 2005, 09:11 AM: Message edited by: Newt ]

[northern mark]

Very good

[Wordbender]

Newt:

 You should be ashamed.  You should.

 

 

Shame is possibly the most frequently generated emotion around Maison Morris, Newt.

 

Did you ever read the one about him doing sex? Maaaaannnn - I'm STILL blushing.

[nursejudy]

Excellent ,ditto Chris...... not to be read at work where everyone laughing at me laughing and not drinking coffee.

Congratulations on the book.

You sure do have a lovely way with words.

judy

xxx to Morris

[kendo]

[Wordbender]

nursejudy:

 

xxx to Morris

Oi - it's me wot writes 'em, you know! Typical, that is, just typical.