Mirth and Woe: Timmy

Mirth and Woe: Timmy

A tale from Kendo, the most excellent Scaryduck Father-in-Law

Timmy was Kendo's mate at school at the arse end of the 1950s. When he says 'mate', of course, he means 'complete and utter psycho who we never managed to shake off for the best part of thirty years'. Still, Timmy loved his mum. We're just not 100 per cent sure that his mum loved him that much in return.

According to Kendo, Timmy was the King of the Random Dare. You could make up just about any stupid, pointless dare on the spot, and Timmy would go off and do it. Within twenty minutes, there'd be a copper at his front door, ready to hand out a thick ear by way of summary justice, and that would be the end of that, providing he also went round and apologized to the Women's Institute by the end of the week for that business with the dog turds.

"Here lads," he said one autumnal morning, "I've got some bangers. Where should I let them off?"

Quick as a flash: "In yer mum's gas oven."

So he did. His mum was cooking at the time.

"You idiot! Get it out before it goes…."

…Off…

THRASH! went the carpet-beater on Timmy's arse in the time-honoured manner, and he was exiled from the kitchen while pie was scraped off the ceiling.

And ten minutes later:

"Go on Timmy, do it again."

"Right you are."

Alas, his old lady was waiting for him, still armed with the carpet-beater, and with the kind of skill that is currently sadly lacking in English cricketing circles, she clubbed the lit banger from her son's hand and clean over the fence into next door's garden.

'BANG ANG ANG!' It went in the small courtyard garden, which was all well and good apart from the small matter of their washing, now smouldering, and only mere seconds away from bursting into flames.

Which it did, with some gusto.

There was no need to get the local fuzz involved. Everybody in the street took turns to clip him round the ear and take turns on the carpet-beater.

"He got a job in a factory a few years after that," Kendo tells me. "They let him sweep the floors for a bit, and after a while they put him in charge of security."

As if anything could possibly go wrong with that little plan.

"He went a bit mental, cos of all of the break-ins on his watch, so he built a bomb."

Right.

"Yeah, a bomb to stop people from breaking in. The Police thought it was the IRA, an' everything, but it turned out it was only an idiot.

"He got on the TV over that."

Still, his mum loved him, exploding pie and controlled explosions in his former place of work notwithstanding. Why else would she patch up her number one son when he injured himself playing?

Why else would she scrape her poor boy off the grass when he fell out of a tree?

Why else would she nod in an understanding manner when he told her he'd nicked all of his dad's six inch nails? Nails, which he'd hammered into the tree to make a set of makeshift steps taking him all the way to the top.

Why else did she promise not to tell anyone that he'd come unstuck halfway up, losing his balance as he hammered away, falling, and catching his meat-and-two veg on one of those very stolen six-inch nails on the way down?

Why else, realising that he had ripped himself asunder, did she sew his ballbag back up with a needle and thread and send him on his merry way?

It is the very least any mother would do.

Top work, Mrs Timmy. It's people like you who ought to be congratulated, saving the NHS vital resources. I am wincing as I type this.

Dear reader: Your turn to be sick in a hedge, just this once.