Hello, hello, hello! What do we have 'ere then? Plantar fasciitis! Oh, dearie me. Also known as Policeman's heel, Plantar fasciitis is a beastly thing, and it has struck me here in the home of walking and hiking, good old Austria where I now live.
Plantar fasciitis feels as fascist and terrible as it sounds, an inflammation of the ligaments that connect the heel bone to the toes. My left foot now believes that it’s a ballet dancer wanting to spend its entire life en point - it just won't lie down and take it. Hobbling, I can manage, and I can ring the cowbell that I have by my bed and ask for food and drink to be brought to me in great quantities, but all the usual things I like to do are strictly out.
So, what to do? I am supposed to be a writer, and I haven't spent much time writing lately because of that thing called life, so this is an obbortunity, as the yanks would say - a golden obbortunity. So, yesterday I sharpened my laptop and got to work.
But what to write? No idea. I needed inspiration.
The interweb, as my good friend calls it, is full of inspiration, crap and inspiration. After several hours of time-wasting and looking at bee backsides and snail slime, I finally found a helpful page - "55 Funny Writing Prompts to Get Them Laughing."
My whole life, I have wanted to know who They are - I've never thought about Them, but if I can Make Them laugh, perhaps They will take note.
Anyway, I chose the first one on the list:- Write about someone trying to explain to a teacher that their dog did, in fact, eat their homework.
I got to work, and after many failed attempts, more interweb surfing, some more energetic cowbell action, lots of tea, and hobbling to the loo, I wrote something. So, if You are reading this, please can you tell Them to laugh?
The dog ate my homework, by Amelia Marriette
Mr Looney looked purple with rage, Johnny, where is your homework? I won't ask you again; he then proceeded to ask again very precisely - "Johnny. Where. Is. Your. Homework? – hitting Johnny on the head with a long ruler between each word, he didn't like to get too close.
"Well, you won't believe this, but yesterday we got a new dog; I know, you're not going to believe me, but the thing is, this dog, Satan, well he's sort of crazy, they were going to kill him!"
The entire class stopped and started to listen; Derek stopped punching Percival in the face, Raymond got down from the top of the stationery cabinet, even the colossal fly that had haunted the classroom for weeks came to rest.
There was a sinister hush in the putrid, sticky room.
"It's like this," Johnny continued, gulping for air. "No, no, nobody could handle this dog; he's deranged, but my mum's a big softie, so she brought him home." Mr Looney sighed, rubbed his eyes, and started to manoeuvre the board rubber; if he threw it just right, he could cause maximum pain with very little bruising; he might even manage a small fracture of the bone.
"He really is ugly and mean-looking, Mr Looney. And he loves to eat; I mean, boy can he eat: chairs, sofas, glass coffee tables, cats. The crunching sounds – horrible - ugh, I don't even want to think about it. Anyway, after he ate everything in our house, he wanted to play; he did that play bow thing, front paws down and everything. I'm telling you, Mr Looney, we were so, so scared. My grandma said, "let's all be calm, just get on down on the floor, real slow."
“Mum, dad and grandma and me, we were on all fours, with Satan in the middle. Then he started spinning around on the spot like dogs do in that crazy way, and then he grabbed my homework; it was the only thing left to eat. He dragged it around the room, grandma lurched at him and missed, dad started to cry, Satan's tail flailed and hit me in the face! My glasses whizzed across the room. Dad was sobbing now, grandma was bleeding a little, I'm blind without my glasses, but mum bravely lashed out, missed, hit her head on the wall, but managed to shout to me, “Pull, Johnny, pull hard, NOW!””
“I lunged forward, grabbed and yanked. But the thing I yanked, well, that wasn’t no tail. I’m telling you, there was a strange yelping sound and then a silence like I've never heard before, Satan gulped, and my homework was gone."
Every boy in the room went pale and began to squirm in his seat. "That's the God's honest truth, Mr Looney."
The door creaked open, and a tiny little Pekinese trotted into the room and jumped into Johnny's arms and began to lick his face passionately.
"Satan! Stop licking me, you ugly mutt!" The fly curled up and died, and Mr Looney was never seen again.
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