I'Ll Go Home Then, It's Warm and Has Chairs. The Unpublished Emails. - (10 page)

As I was banging, I struck a section that Christopher had plugged with plaster of paris and a hole the size of a ten cent piece appeared as a section of the makeshift repair popped out the other side of the boat. Elated by Christopher’s half-arsed approach to boat repair, I bashed excitedly at the hole and was able to increase its size to double.

Maneuvering my head towards the hole, I looked through and saw the family next door reverse their car down the driveway, with kids in the back, and drive off down the street. Deciding to wait patiently for their return, at which time I planned to yell through the hole and be rescued, I relaxed and had another cigarette.

Several cigarettes later, and with the sun setting, the neighbours had still not returned and I was becoming quite cross at them. Who goes out for this long? Surely it was past their kids’ dinner time and this was irresponsible parenting. Around midnight, I accepted the fact that the neighbours had gone away on a weekend trip.

An hour or so later, I stopped crying and decided that if I was going to escape, it would have to be without aid. As all attempts to lift the boat upwards had failed, my only recourse left was to attempt to move the boat horizontally.

Digging my fingers and the toes of my shoes into the grass, I strained forwards until my head was hard against the wood at the bow of the boat. Repeating this procedure, while also arching my back against the wooden seats, I felt the boat move forward an inch. Encouraged, I again pushed forward with all my strength and the boat again moved another inch.

Estimating the edge of the lawn to be eight feet from the sidewalk and the sidewalk approximately four feeet wide, I calculated that I would have to push the boat another one hundred and forty four times to reach the edge of the curb. At which point I would be able to edge the boat lip over the edge of the curb’s dropoff and crawl out.

On push ninety six, I hit the letterbox and had to back up a few inches to go around it but eventually reached the sidewalk and found the boat moved much easier over concrete. 

As the lip of the boat reached the curb, I almost cried with relief  as hours had passed and my fingers were numb and bleeding from the process. Gripping the curb’s edge, I pulled with all the energy I had left and the boat teetered, then slid, taking me with it, all the way onto the road.

I was now under a boat on the side of the road. Angry and frustrated, I banged against the hull with the palms of my hands and screamed “get off of me, get off of me” until my outburst was suddenly interrupted by the sound of car tyres screaming and a loud thud against the side of the boat; sending it sliding several feet.

Dazed by the knock and grazed by being dragged several feet beneath a boat along asphalt, I heard the sound of a car door closing and a man’s voice voice stating “There’s a fucking boat on the road.”

After an exchange that included “what the fuck are you doing under a boat” and “there’s no way I am going to be able to lift this son of a bitch,” the man, who turned out to be a milkman named Tom on his predawn local milk delivery run, managed to raise an edge of the boat by using a tyre iron as leverage and I rolled finally to freedom.

After explaining what happened, thanking him for rescuing me and attempting to hug him (denied due to the copius amounts of blood on my arms and face from sliding several feet underneath a boat along asphalt), Tom said to me “You know, that’s actually a really nice boat.”

Several months later, when Christopher asked where his boat was, I told him I had given it to a milkman.

David & his best friends go camping

Ten F26-A formal complaint notices in six months

Apparently after receiving three, you are meant to have some kind of formal meeting between the parties involved but this never happened. According to the rules, if there are five complaints, an external mediator has to be bought in. This didn't happen either and I was quite disappointed.

I don't really have anything against Simon apart from the fact that he likes the band Nickelback and I have no idea what his problem with me is, as I'm pretty sure I am an absolute pleasure to work with. I brought in donuts once, which is pretty nice. I found them in a bin and left them near Simon's desk. When he asked, "Who brought these donuts in?" I replied, "The girl from the shop across the road brought them in because they have too many" and watched him eat four, complaining between mouthfuls that they weren't very fresh. He would have eaten them all but stopped after finding a dead cricket in the box.

My very first run in with Simon was when he blamed me for stealing pens from his desk, which I vehemently denied. He then proceeded to point out the tiny engraved words 'Simon's Pen' he had done on all eight of the pens currently on my desk. It was so small he had to point them out to me with the aid of a loupe. Each two-millimetre high letter was meticulous. When I asked how he had managed to get the letters so perfect, he told me that he had a headset at home with a light and magnifying glass on it. When I asked why he had a headset with light and magnifying glass on it he replied, "For painting collector figurines."