Blogging From The Bathroom

For the sake of my health and my dignity, I’ve locked myself in the bathroom. Gabby is waiting for me outside and she’s armed herself with a pair of lacy knickers. Some might look on this scene of domestic disharmony and think it an example of why relationships don’t last in these troubled times. I merely say it’s good that people can express their honest feelings so we can work them out.

The argument began over a set of keys that Gabby had given to a homeless guy she met while doing her round as a traffic warden this morning.

I had slept late, as usual, only to wake up and smell bacon cooking. I emerged from the bedroom to find a stranger standing in the kitchen wearing Gabby’s nightgown and frying himself eggs, sausage, and the aforementioned rashers. He must have stood six feet three, with a large mass of hairy stomach pushing its way through the gown like some demonic pregnancy. His nose had been flattened by the impact of a small asteroid.

‘Morning,’ he said, stabbing a banger with a fork.

I reached for the nearest blunt instrument which I proceeded to wave in his direction. Only later did I realise it was a plastic pepper mill.

‘Who are you?’ I shouted, looking towards his large distended stomach. ‘And what have you done with my girlfriend?’

‘Done. I ain’t done nothing,’ he replied, slowly. ‘She gave me these keys and told me to make myself at home.’

You could argue that Gabby has a big heart but I knew that it was more complicated than that. She was getting her own back after reading some of the comments you’d all left to the photographs I’d posted of her last week.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘you can finish your breakfast but you can’t stay here.’

‘Not your business to say,’ said the man, stabbing another sausage in a somewhat threatening manner.

I shifted uncomfortably. ‘You might think that but I’m the owner of this flat. I get to decide who lives here.’

He turned and picked up a sausage from the pan. ‘You want me out,’ he said, waving the sausage with a malicious intent, ‘then you’ll have to throw me out.’

I had a better plan. I waited until the greasy breakfast had slipped its way into the large stomach and our guest stretched himself out on my bed to sleep off his breakfast. I found Gabby ticketing wheelchairs outside the hospital.

‘You’ve made your point,’ I said, ‘now could you get rid of him?’

‘Gabby not want to see any more bad comments about her on Chippy’s blog,’ she said, fixing a ticket to a paraplegic’s electric scooter.

‘No more comments,’ I promised.

She nodded and tucked her pen away. Ten minutes later we were back at the flat. Two more minutes and there was a lump of a man sitting unconscious in the seat of an electric mobility scooter that wheeled him down the road.

‘Now Gabby has one more request,’ she said, once we had returned to the flat. ‘Chip wear my knickers and I take picture to put on his blog.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Chip enjoy laughing at Gabby so now Gabby say people laugh at Chip. You wear my knickers and you put picture on your blog so people can laugh at transvestite Chip.’

‘I’ll do no such thing,’ I told her, backing slowly to the bathroom. Luckily I had the foresight to pick up my laptop as I did the backing.

‘Chip wear knickers…’

‘Never!’

‘Chip better wear knickers or…’

I turned, ran, and only stopped running when I felt lino beneath my feet and I had a solid door behind me. And that’s where I sit now, typing this while sitting on the closed lid of the toilet. At some point I might have to emerge and I might have to don something black and see through. I hope I can spare you the photographs but I can’t make any promises. Perhaps those of your with sensitive dispositions should just avoid my diary for a day or two. Just until this knicker business blows over…