The Great Pet Shop Flood

To begin, a personalised message to my former manager, who doubtless will see this on Facebook: Kev, I only recently realised this was my fault. If I’d known at the time that I was responsible for thousands of pounds worth of damage, a day’s lost takings, and countless drowned rodents, I would have owned up immediately!

*ahem*

11 straight days of work had just passed, many of which were 14 hour shifts. Furthermore, the previous night had been sleepless as I battled to save a rabbit’s life by tenderly fingering it. Not only did my tiredness match that of an obese family after a third visit to the Harvester salad cart, but my fingers still smelled funny. I was not in the mood to stand ankle-deep in pet shop floor water.

After having been awakened early on my day off by a panicked phone call, I had anticipated raging floodwaters. With heroic abandon I would wade into the torrent, hoisting half-drowned guinea pigs like punctured floatation devices from the deluge, until Sean Penn rescued me with a rowboat.

Sean Penn cares about the guinea pigs

Now, the water might not have been deep. But in any flood, there is risk of disease. Let me walk you through my typical morning routine in the pet shop.

At 6am I’m cleaning out a cage full of dwarf hamsters, each one painstakingly hand-crafted by Satan. One latches onto my finger. My body immediately forfeits its last drop of testosterone. I shriek and flail my hands. The hamster is launched across the shop, before shaking itself to its senses and disappearing beneath the shelves. Meanwhile, its accomplices have jumped for it. I cram as many back as I can, but the lucky ones escape. Somewhere, the theme from The Great Escape plays.

The successfully liberated hamsters make nests which are approximately 80% faeces. Ergo, the water that has soaked into my socks was approximately 80% faeces. Ergo, I now had syphilis.

Let’s continue to abuse tenses and flash back to the previous night. No sleep for 36 hours and the sexual violation of a dying rabbit. My frame of mind is questionable. As we lock up, I run to the back room to grab an extra syringe. My attempt to rinse it beneath the tap is thwarted when it proffers no water. So, as I hurry out, the tap is on, but not yet running. And the plughole is clogged with sawdust.

You can probably piece the rest together

We spent 9 hours ushering water to the exits with brooms. Several doors throughout the shop warped beyond repair. Display stands collapsed and stock was wrecked. The community of escaped hamsters, presumably hitherto living out some kind of Borrowers-style utopia, floated from their hiding places, corpses like spent tea bags.

I assumed they'd find a way to adapt

Sorry, Kev.

25th Birthday

Last year I wrote a blog on my 24th birthday which was a bitterly indulgent summary of that year just passed. It was a banal shopping list of self-pity, narcissism, and derivative writing. Otherwise known as a Rihanna song.

Burn.

However, the only way in which I celebrate my birthday is by writing something on the occasion. The idea is to build a portfolio to gaze back upon when I’m living as a hermit beneath the floorboards of my ex-wife’s shed against her knowledge.

Me on my 26th birthday

So, to my 25th year.

In my final class before I gave up/was sort of fired from lecturing, I discovered that the lone gay gentleman I taught had publicly described me as ‘buff and relatively attractive.’ My initial pride was soon tarnished by the realisation of how severely the ‘relatively’ diminishes the comment. Anyone is relatively attractive, relative to a steaming heap of quivering dog viscera.

After having made it the principle target of my derision in this very blog, I embraced hypocrisy and tried online dating. I secured a number of dates, almost all of which went badly. I was violently sick in the middle of one, managed to convince the girl during another that I was homosexual, and finally convinced another girl that I was a different person entirely. Worryingly, it’s this date that went best. Though I should report that my latest date went rather well.

I had sex 0 times.

I published 2 novels on Amazon Kindle. To date sales figures are about equal to any Girls Aloud solo album not released by Cheryl Cole. Here are some shamelessly placed links. BUY MY BOOKS. IT’S MY BIRTHDAY.

Available now. BUY BUY BUY.

My deeply cerebral goal of being able to make my pecs dance has nearly been reached. Though at present it’s more of an exhausted arthritic shuffle than a dance.

I’m still going to the gym 3-4 times a week. Secretly I hope random people on the street will go out of their way to comment on my guns. No one has.

After a string of part-time positions, I’ve spent the last 5 months working full time. This means an hour morning and evening of being dry-humped by overweight businessmen on the London Underground. I’m glad of the physical contact.

I had forgotten how much working full-time encroaches upon free time for masturbation. Fortunately the job is only temporary. I intend to test the limits of self-inflicted dehydration.

I started making stop motion videos for this job. Despite having no knowledge or experience, they come out pretty well. Oh look, here’s one now!





Biggest achievement of the year: filling a Gourmet Burger Kitchen loyalty card and claiming a free burger.
Variety: Chicken with barbeque relish.