If, as seems increasingly likely, the world is actually a giant metaphysical sitcom created so God has something to enjoy when He’s relaxing at home after a hard day working on other, more plausible, realities (I mean, come on, He knocked it off in seven days! Where’s the pride, man?), then I’m in absolutely no doubt what my role would be. The klutz. The doofus. The well-meaning idiot who somehow manages to entangle himself in ridiculous situations and, while trying to extricate himself, somehow manages to make things exponentially worse. If you ever see me dangling from a hot air balloon, buck naked, covered in maple syrup, caught from my ankle by a string of bunting, rest assured that I was probably just trying to make some toast or something, before things got out of hand.
Take, for example, the sleepwalking incident. I mean, seriously. Who actually sleepwalks, outside of small-town America every Friday at six only on ABC1?
Well, okay. Sleepwalking doesn’t really describe what happened. Sleepwalking was merely the medium. My sleeping mind used sleepwalking like an artist uses a pen to create something truly dark, depraved, and, well, fucking embarrassing. Thanks, mind.
I was staying with my friend Mary (names have been changed to protect the innocent victims of this disgusting and unprovoked attack) for a few days, in her flatmate John’s bed. That night, however, our mutual friend Alex and his lady-friend Laura ended up staying over, so they took John’s bed and I stayed with Mary. At some point in the night, without really waking up, I got up, went to the toilet, washed my hands and went back to bed.
The bed I’d been staying in for the last week. John’s bed.
I woke up when I discovered that the bed that I was trying to get into was full of people. I found myself three inches away from Laura’s face.
I quickly summed up my feelings about the situation. “AAAAAAAAAARGH!” I noted.
Laura indicated her similar displeasure with the situation. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH GETTHEFUCKOFFME!” she responded. I rolled over, fell off the bed and neatly snapped my little toe on the floor. For the next week or so, I walked round with perhaps the most ridiculous limp that you’ve ever seen. And when anyone asked what happened, all I could say was “You know, I’m actually not sure”. Because what else could I have said? “Funny story, actually—I broke it falling off a bed when the girl I was straddling woke up and started screaming”?
And you can just imagine it, can’t you. God, on His sofa, feet up on His coffee table, slapping His thigh and saying “Oh, that Pete. What a dunderhead! What will he get up to next?”
