It is Wednesday night.

Sure, Wednesday isn't exactly your big night for socialising. It hasn't the pretension of Saturday or the sheer end-of-week joy of Friday, but its a good night. So, taking into account that I'm young and handsome. Well young and relatively unscarred, with a selection of waistcoats, how am I going about painting the town red?  It's pretty obvious how. I'm in my pyjamas, drinking blueberry vodka and lemonade and doing a crossword. A crossword, alone and drunk. And I'm not doing well. The crossword is alone, papery and defenceless against my drunken advances. I have a small pencil flopping around in my hand, and the internet to help me pin the crossword in place and... Wait, I don't like the direction this metaphor is taking..
 Well, the point is I'm a smart guy and I'm cheating, and I can't finish the crossword. I'd say it's frustrating, but that opens the doors for another unpleasant metaphor.


I used to be someone. Not 'someone', in an important sense - I was never the mayor or a timelord or anything like that - but I used to be a person. Now I'm just a gelatinous blob, devoid of form or bones, a giant pink sticky ball that keeps sticking to things and smudging the print on my newspaper.I had such dreams, and now I just lie around worrying, knowing the next time I have a shower I could disintegrate and wash away, the next time I stand next to an industrial fan I could be sucked up and sprayed across a wide area like pink jelly thrown inaccurately at a cat. My hands, although much better at cleaning surfaces of dust and surface debris are formless and without worth. My opposable thumbs, so long the topic of idle boasting at the zoo, are slimy and ungripping, no longer worthy of the jealous stares of chimps and gazelle.


Hear my lessons and learn well from them children, for I was once like you - vain and arrogant, with firm bones and a solid if comfortably proddable body. I have been cursed for my hubris, regressed like the primordial slime from which we once emerged. No more shall I know what it feels like to gently caress a pakora or stand on a grating without oozing through it and entering the drains.

Go quick from this place children! I already feel my form hardening, my jelly-like mandibles freezing like cement. Let us depart, and may my draining life-force be used to fill in a pothole while I still have some worth.