A request! One of my loyal readers wants to see this story again. So, here it is, re-written with exactly 135% more LOLZ and 12% more WIN. I'm open to requests for any further *spit* Duck Gold, so have at it.Martin the Hippy never actually made a conscious life choice to become a hippy. He just drifted into it through a lax attitude to life, alcohol (ab)use and occasional college attendance. He would, if out of bed at a reasonable hour in the afternoon, be the first to admit he was a layabout, and made it his life's mission to get away with doing as little as possible for as long as he could.
He got away with this for years, mainly because his dad – a lock-keeper on the Thames – was far too busy with sluice gates and idiot boaters to notice his son was a slob; while I spent far too much time doing his covering his back at college so he might actually get a job if and when he sobered up.
With his old dad away on lock-keeping business one weekend, there was only one thing to do in the circumstances – wake Martin from his hippy coma and organise a party.
All the best people would be there. Actually, absolutely every would be there. Martin made sure of this by telling a bunch of hairy-arsed bikers there would be a no-holds-barred party at his house on Saturday night. Just turn up. And hey, bring a mate.
"A stranger is a friend you haven’t met."
"And there better be fookin’ booze."
By Saturday evening the word was out. Every biker in the South of England would be descending on Martin’s place. A small house on an island in the middle of the River Thames.
It started off quietly enough for the unfashionable early arrivals. A few relatively quiet drinks and a chance to letch at Iron Drawers Debbie, a girl I fancied like buggery, but knowing deep, deep down that the chances of seeing anything more than a flash of her ankle were remote in the extreme.
She was "nice", from a "nice" household, had a "nice" job in a nasty bank and did "nice" things with her time, such as knitting and playing the hits of Stevie Wonder on a Bontempi organ. I don’t know why I bothered, but I did for far too long, getting precisely nowhere and falling out with an equally besotted Balders over which one of us should be first in line for her lack of attention.
And then, the bikers came. Dozens of them, cruising up the towpath in the dark like a long, evil snake of bearded, warty, foul-smelling, Hawkwind-loving DOOM.
Martin was entirely cool about the idea of his house getting totally trashed. This was mainly because he was unconscious in his bedroom, lying in a pool of his own rich, brown vomit which seeped over his best Afghan and his priceless signed copy of Thick as a Brick, while bikers smashed the vinyl over some poor student's head and ripped the arm off the record player.
"What’s this hippy bollocks?"
and
"Give us all the booze and music we want or we trash the place!"
and
"But, Badger, you’ve just broke the record player."
and
"Ah, tits. Just give us the fookin’ booze!"
As anarchy, death and destruction spread around us, and priceless family heirlooms shattered windows, I did what any sensible man would do in the circumstance. I grabbed Debbie and hid her in the shed, where she ripped her clothes off and seduced me in a frenzied whirlwind of lust, rimming, golden showers and something filthy with the hover mower. Or perhaps she just sat there and told me how much she admired Lionel Ritchie – the man and his music. Go on, guess which one I got.
Eventually coming to his drink-addled senses Martin decided the only way to get them out was to open both lock gates, sweeping away the bikers and their infernal machines on a wall of white water, destroying every living thing downstream into the bargain.
In the end, with one gate open, and several saner party-goers physically restraining the hippy in his attempts to open the other, the bikers got the message, and drifted away, taking all the booze and vol-au-vents with them. The party was dead in the rapidly-flowing waters of the Thames. With nothing to drink, it would only be a matter of time before some long-haired bastard got a guitar out and started singing out-of-tune folk.
Then - in a sudden moment of rare clarity - the Hippy suddenly realised the one thing he was supposed to be doing that very day.
"Shit!" he cried, suddenly and frighteningly animated. "House-sitting!"
He fled from the house, the rest of the party crowd in tow, over the weir into the rather plush grounds of a very large house.
"Mr Geller will go mental if I don’t check his house," he puffed, stopping only to roll up an anaemic-looking cigarette.
"Mr Geller?"
"Mr Geller."
Oh joy.
"Where’s the kitchen?"
"Don’t you dare touch the bloody spoons."
Too late.
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