Life seemed peaceful. The days were sunny, birds chirped lightly, and all the whifflewaffle seemed rather content to be whiffling and waffling harmoniously. It all seemed too good to be true, and oddly enough, it turned out to be one of those times when the forces-that-be condescend to lend some truth to these paranoid phrases.
Even now i recall the sheer tranquility of that time - made, as it was, to lend truth to usually rancid claim of being the lull before the buggering thunderstorm. It all started with my favourite pair of trousers, or to be more specific, the pocket of my trousers, or to be simply idiotic in being this specific, my right-hand trouser pocket.
It started innocently enough, with my discovering the odd dime in my sock and the occasional slice of toast stuck to my shin. Pondering longish over these unconnected pieces of evidence, I landed, with a fair thud i might add, at the conclusion of the presence of a hole existing peacefully at the wily vortex where the lining of my pockets met.
Oh.. a mere trifle, you might say, and right you would be too if you were one of those content to experience life from the comfortable depths of your armchair. Me, as my nanny will no doubt attest, I was always one to take life head-on, and given this predilection for gory battle, i do tend to get in the way of life's blind jabs, and this one, i must admit, got me fairly square on the sniffer.
Coming to an- as it turns out - ill-advised conclusion that this was a matter to be dealt with at leisure, I walked on, on the merry path called life. It was not long after that i began to contemplate suicide.
All of a sudden, my life seemed to be full of little objects that could fit into my pocket, seemingly with the sole purpose of falling out of it. They not only seemed to able to choose the trouser pocket they went into, but also the opportune moment they slid out of it.
I cannot forget the day when - in the middle of an impassioned intellectual debate with the Chairman at the Tway's club when i thumped my foot rather loudly on the wooden floor – (we were talking about M'Lady Betsy's form at the summer derby - a filly i had my heart and quite a few quid on ) and my trouser hem discharged out seven coins of varying denomination, a briar pipe and a pair of nose-hair clippers, the aforementioned not an inch away from the venerable chairman's gleaming brogues.
I won't even go into the agony of the Awagean ball that i attended, and my ill-fated waltz with the pretty daughter of the owner of the "Wailing Ale". (Suffice to say, my line of credit at the Wailer was withdrawn indefinitely.) Or recount the horrifying coincidence of my teaching the seventh graders at Chilton High when Gerald got the flu, my five-year old niece's birthday and my carrying a roll of rather pink satin ribbon for her birthday party in my pocket.
Haggard, jumpy and well wary of even the hint of a habit of stuffing life's essentials into my pockets, I had begun to seriously consider the prospect of spending the rest of the summer in roomy polka-dotted PJ's tending to my tomatoes at the farm, far away from all civil company when my tailor rushed back to town. Clucking with sympathy, he swiftly proceeded to deposit the offending pair into the dark recesses of his shop, offered me a cup of weakish tea, promising to sew in reinforced steel linigs on the pockets of all my trousers and sent me on my way.
After a month long diet consisting mainly of carrots and brandy, i approached something close to my good cheer - while not being reckless enough to venture into society yet, but well enough to look forward to contemplate what tomorrow might bring with not an unduly heavy heart.
A sordid tale I know, but one that had to be told.
