Jonola14

HUNG, PHOTOGRAPHED AND SLAUGHTERED

With children the age of 31, 27 and 24, Mother would have good reason to think that whenever the family gets together, it can gel into a mature and amicable unit. So, so wrong. In Ben’s absence this year, it was down to Sophie and I to bicker and squabble and fight amongst ourselves but the point scoring took a bitter twist this year and involved our beloved soft toys.

Rory the lion has been my friend for fourteen years - he’s a floppy, balding lion that looks more like a monkey but is better travelled than a lot of people. He’s been on holiday to Greece and Venice, travelled across the USA, spent a day in Canada, relaxed in the Balearics and lived in France for a year. We’ve been through thick and thin together and I would be utterly distraught if anything happened to him, which is why I decided that Easter time in an empty flat in London was not safe for him and that he should accompany me on my visit to Mother’s.

Everything was fine until Easter Monday morning. I’d been assisting my stepfather with computer issues early doors when Sophie announced she was going shopping in Bicester for the whole day, would not be coming back to Mother’s before going back to London and would therefore say her goodbyes. Having waved her off, I eventually finished helping with labels, print quality, spam email, Macromedia Flash player and other such queries and decided that I too would soon make a move. Mounting the stairs once more, I entered my bedroom to find that Rory’s head had been shut in a drawer so that his little, helpless hairy legs were dangling over the side. Poor little mite. Consoling myself at such a needless and cold-hearted act of toy terrorism, I plotted my revenge. The trump card, I concluded, was that Sophie had gone out for the entire day and was not planning to return for at least a week.

Creeping across the landing so as not to alert Mother to my whereabouts or to disturb Mike from the wonders of fine quality inkject photo printing, I sneaked into Sophie’s bedroom and the plan began to unfold. Being a girl, her bed was laden with a large quantity of soft toys - the pick of the bunch being the large, cuddly white bear that Eds her boyfriend had bought her several months before.

Noting that she still had four overhead storage cupboards above her bed, each with hinged doors, I selected four of her most precious soft toys and shut their heads in the doors, giving an extra shove to the door just to make sure they didn’t budge. Next I grabbed the large white bear, tied Sophie’s dressing gown cord tight around its neck and hung it from one of the handles of the storage cupboards so that the bear dangled helplessly in thin air. But this wasn’t enough, she needed to be taught NOT to mess around with Rory. So I grabbed the Cadbury Mini-Eggs easter egg that she had eventually unearthed as part of the Easter Egg Hunt the previous day, ripped the cardboard off the top and wrote a suicide note from Teddy on the grey cardboard underneath stating that he “just couldn’t take it anymore”, also adding in a short PS saying “thanks for the mini-eggs, love Teddy” and with that I pocketed the bag of mini-eggs that Mr Cadbury had so generously included.

A flash of brilliance then struck me. Knowing that she was out shopping in Bicester, some 100 miles away and powerless to do anything to rescue her beloved toys, I took out my mobile phone, snapped a photo of the four toys whose torsos and legs were flailing in the light wind whilst their heads were jammed in the storage cupboard doors, with Teddy in the foreground dangling morbidly from the straining cord, and send her the photo message.

Revenge can be OH so sweet.

(this website does not condone happy slapping, except on this occasion…)