A Dark Skit on Rural Life

'I Do Have A Personality! I Am A Farmer!'

In this story, I inadvertently enter another world. A world where people try to kill themselves with vegetables, Yorkshire tea has the same effect as alcohol and rogue tampon boxes can cause early labour. There is, however, a disquieting dose of reality in it, too.

The first mistake was on my part. I had been baby-sitting for a family friend. I didn't particularly fancy this job. My main motivation, to be honest, was a reference, one vague enough for it not to be obvious that I had only done this once. My mistake was agreeing to let him out. Not into the garden, where he could use our brand, shiny new swing, but out the front. He told me that he'd lost something and thinks maybe he dropped it 'amongst the ammonites' on the drive. I let him out because I automatically believed him - I was always dropping things. I also let him out because I was amused by his phrasing, and being amused, in my case, is a bit like being drunk. I am no longer of sound judgement. He didn't stop to look around the drive, he went right out through the gate and around the corner, to the neighbours' drive. They had fancy new asphalt. The rubble of their old drive was piled up on the pavement, on the corner. I remember thinking afterwards that he could've tripped on this and hurt himself, but I don't actually know whether he walked around the corner to the neighbours' drive. He might have climbed over the fence - it is only knee-high. Either way, he was in. No cars - they were out. The doors were open so he went in. Why wouldn't he? He left his shoes in the porch, and went in, patting their inert dogs on the way. That was the second error. If he'd kept his shoes on he might have gotten away with it. Upstairs, on our neighbour Joes' desk, he found a manuscript. A draft, really, for a novel he is writing (title unknown.) In the draft a woman with only 2 or 3 differing letters from my Mothers' name is having an affair with a guy a few letters away from Joe. I haven't read it, I just heard an 11-year olds' account, and it sounds ridiculous. But there are shades of Coronation Street; old-time, classic Corrie, back before people were smashing each-others' heads in with laptops. The couple in Joes' story bonded over a shared aggravation with peoples' cavalier attitude toward driveway maintenance - leaving rubble, and dog poo, and kids out there. And people just wouldn't cut the damn grass outside their houses. It's like old Corrie, but rural, set in Emmerdale. This couple who see kids as clutter end up acting like kids by drink-driving on a lawn-mower. Whilst making out. All over the village. And no one sees them. It's mental. It is obviously made-up. It wasn't obvious to the boy though. Finding out that the couple were planning to hook-up on a moving tractor next the boy decided he was going to catch them in the act.

As all this was being absorbed next-door, I was making a cup of tea. It happened fast. Carrying it, I checked in the drive and saw him coming out of next-doors' house, brandishing a baseball bat. Caught off guard, I swore at him.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I shouted. I heard it travel all the way down the street. Maybe the dog-walkers thought it was the name of our Lhasa Apso. 

"AAAH!" He shrieked and dropped the bat.

"Thank God. Thought you'd been run over by a lawnmower or something." Ridiculous diversion tactics, I thought at the time. Even more nuts considering our lawnmower is broken and next-door can't afford one.

"Run over by a lawnmower." I used my Grandads' telling-off technique - arms folded, stern voice, repetition.

"Forget it. My burden to bear. I was looking for the camera."

A camera. In a way, that's clever. I am unlikely to glance at our drive and see one of those.

"The one I thought I'd dropped in the drive."

"And it would be next-door becaaause?"

"Because I was next-door. Yesterday. That's how I know where they keep their key. Up Bo The Bunnies' bum." Bo The Bunny is made of plastic I'd just like to add. It's not that dark, but it does get darker.