Shit I believe, so you don’t have to

1) Press-ups should only ever be attempted first thing in the morning, LIKE BATMAN.

2) Water is for people who are too poor to buy Pepsi Max.

3) Every ex has their own theme song. Recent ones for me have included Bad Religion’s 21st Century Digital Boy and Franz Nicolay’s This is Not a Pipe.

4) Rule three always comes back to haunt me. Years ago, it was a running joke that my song was The Offspring’s Self Esteem.

5) The most important wisdom my mother ever imparted to me: only amateurs get caught.

6) A bet’s a bet, so never wager what you can’t afford to lose. I say this from the vantage point of someone who has three names tattooed on her butt.

7) It’s perfectly acceptable to go to great lengths to set up an awesome one-liner. I recently bought Las Vegas bedding just so I could tell everyone that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

8) Life’s too short to paint your fucking toenails.

9) If in doubt, ask yourself “What would Tank Girl do?”. Well, unless it involves a kangaroo. PETA would be all over your ass.

10) The most important wisdom a dealer ever imparted to me: you don’t get anything unless you put your hand up.

11) If a spider is running towards me, then it is patently NOT more scared of me than I am of it.

12) Arguing with people you live with is like playing Russian roulette with an automatic: there are never any winners, and the police are probably going to get called.

13) Never trust a) Children’s TV characters whose eyes are too close together b) People who don’t read fiction yet claim to still have souls c) Riot police d) Anyone who claims to only like Rancid’s “early stuff” e) Cats f) Anything on my Facebook profile.

14) Nature is, for the most part, boring and itchy, and best viewed from the comfort of a skate park.

Tiny shoe

Last Sunday afternoon, Niall and I were walking down Queen’s Road when we passed a small, abandoned toddler’s shoe in the street.

“Ti-ny shoe!” Niall sing-songed, pointing to the seemingly innocuous object.

It was intensely unsettling, and not just because Niall had already reached the stage of daytime drinking where he was reduced to pointing at things and naming them. No, there was something about those words, that intonation…

The memory rose up and loomed over me ominously as I replayed the words in my head. Tiny shoe. Ti-ny shoe.

Oh god.

Something clicked. Broke. Crumbled under the weight of the words. The wave of memory crashed down over me in a thunderous tsunami of WRONG.

What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that I’m sorry about what comes next.

The Royal Oak, Winchester

J had found an abandoned toddler’s shoe on the way to the pub. It was an otherwise slow news day, so we were making a big deal out of it.

“Aw, ti-ny shoe! What happened to the rest of the kid?”

“I bet he was abducted.”

“…and that’s vital evidence you’ve stolen from the crime scene.”

“Which now has your DNA all over it. Way to go, J.”

“Maybe he did it after all, and this is a double bluff.”

“Yeah, and that’s the trophy from his kill.”

“Years from now, we’ll all be on one of those talking heads crime re-enactment programmes, telling the presenter how J always seemed to be such a quiet, unassuming young man.”

“Bollocks to that. I’m telling them we knew he was a wrong ‘un from the get-go…”

Gradually we lost interest in the shoe, and left it sitting on the table while we turned the conversation to more pressing matters, like whether we should order chips with or without cheese, and if the quiz machine was liable to pay out if we tried our luck at Monopoly.

No one really paid much attention to M when he plucked the shoe up off the table and walked off faux-casually, whistling to himself and spinning it on his index finger as he sauntered away in the direction of the bar. I figured he was going to hide it somewhere, so we could creep people out with it at a later date. I imagined the legend of The Toddler J Murdered on the Way to the Pub could have quite a bit of mileage in it.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed. Our chips arrived and were swiftly demolished. M still wasn’t back from the bar.

No, wait. M wasn’t AT the bar.

He was in the toilet.

When he finally reappeared he was looking strangely pleased with himself. He carried the tiny shoe back to our table slightly too carefully, pinched between his thumb and forefinger like a prized biological specimen. He placed it back in the precise centre of our table, and sat down with smug finality.

Silence. For a few seconds, no one dared to move.

Gingerly, B leant forwards, sniffing the air warily as he peered into the shoe.

“Oh god. You DIDN’T?!”

M grinned evilly.

D stood up to get a better look.

“Yeah,” he announced mournfully. “He wanked in the shoe. HE WANKED IN THE FUCKING SHOE.”

“You know M,” I said. “There’s a line. And then there’s crossing that line. And then, a really, REALLY long way past the line, then there’s you. Do you even share a fucking postcode with the line any more?!”

I burst out laughing. It might have been hysteria.

D picked the shoe up. Everyone dove for cover like he’d just opened fire.

“Well we need to get rid of it!” he yelped. “I’ll chuck it out the door.”

He flung the tiny shoe in the direction of the open back door. It ricocheted off the door frame, and splattered its contents across the back of the nearest chair.

The nearest chair belonged to a clean-cut yet imposing man who was treating his date to dinner and a bottle from bottom half of the wine list. The jacket draped over the back of the chair was light brown and looked expensive. Possibly suede. Definitely stickier than it had been five seconds ago.

Time stood still. I think I forgot how to breathe.

The man glared at us over his shoulder, annoyed at having to share the pub with a gaggle of shrieking children. Then, mercifully, he turned back to his companion. They were holding hands across the table.

“Um…” D piped up. “Shall we go to the Railway?”

We nodded in mute unison, and gathered up our things as quickly as we could. Rats from a sinking ship.

For months afterwards, we taunted each other with lilting calls of “Ti-ny shoe!” It was nails down the blackboard, crunching a snail underfoot and Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day all rolled into one.

It was, for a while there, our very favourite story.