Every seat in the house was filled. Not only that, but there wasn’t any standing room either. The place was so packed that a fire marshal who happened to be in the crowd, clapped his hands and told people they had to leave at least the centre aisle open.

As he was doing that, someone sat in his seat and refused to move when asked to. “There isn’t any assigned seating,” the man, a small impish looking loser, who knew he probably needed to leave soon before the fire marshal a man of considerable heft with a frame of 6 foot 8 inches sat on him. He oozed out of the seat and slid along the floor disappearing through a connecting door which he soon found led to the boiler room. A scream a few seconds later brought smiles to the fire marshal’s face.

I live in a log cabin on an immense property. I’m not quite sure how many acres my property is, but let me tell you, its vast. I’ve never been asked to measure my property for the simple reason because there isn’t a single soul anywhere within a hundred miles of me, and I certainly have no intention of selling it.

People visit me occasionally, but I do not encourage them to do so. But once in a while, I’ll get someone drive onto my property to try and find out who lives here. That’s why I have a very long driveway, littered on both sides with the bones of animals that I’ve either shot or who have just died from old age. So, that unwelcomed visitors will eventually tire of not reaching the end of the driveway and let their imaginations grow wild to where they think the carcasses are of people who died years ago attempting the same trip.

Strange things happen in the jungle at night. Leopards sometimes lose their spots, only to find them the next dawn when they catch the jackals trying to run off with them. While tigers’ stripes get broader and eventually become one big wide stripe and the blue parrot which is a rare breed of bird, drives by a hitchhiking mongoose.

“Ma!” shouted John, “Ma!” he shouted even louder when his mother didn’t come running into his room to see what the matter was that time.

For the past three or four years, ten year old John has woken up at 1am believing that it was indeed time to get up and go to school. Eventually, after the third of fourth time of shouting for his mother, Mildred opened the door to John’s room and poked her head in.

“Have you ever been driven anywhere by Karen?”
“No, I haven’t,” my friend john answered and then added, “wait a minute. Yes, I have,” and he laughed, “up a wall. Yes, Karen has driven me up a wall on many occasions.”

“I’m being serious. Yes, I know she drives everyone up a wall, but I’m talking about in her car or any other vehicle, when she’s the driver.”
John thought for a second and then replied sarcastically, “I don’t know why I’m thinking. I know for a fact she hasn’t and I don’t think she ever will, after what I’ve heard about her driving skills or lack thereof.” John looked at me intently, “why are you asking the question?” He paused and then added, “don’t tell me you have.”

“What are you doing out here, you’re halfway to France?”

I looked at my friend John and shook my head. “First of all, I’m not half way to France, I’m only about half a mile off the beach and secondly, didn’t you read the article today in the local rag?”

“What article and what local rag?” I felt my friend had decided to continue his backwards slide from quasi adulthood back to his infancy, where he scolded everyone who tried to get him to talk. His parents had threatened to throw him out of the house at age 5 because he wouldn’t stop stealing his father’s cigarettes. But then what was worse, was lighting them with a gold-plated Ronson lighter that was his grandfather’s during World War One, when it failed to stop a German bullet and ended his life. In all the thirty odd years I’ve never known John to have a real job. And that’s no lie. His logic was simple. He had not asked to be born and therefore it wasn’t up to him to earn a living. It was up to his parents while they were alive to pay him, and then after that the State. But taking part in his own future wasn’t of any interest to him.

During late autumn, from somewhere around the end of October until late March early April, Barry hibernated. He hated that time of the year. Barry prided himself with having the best and largest vegetable garden in the entire neighbourhood. Now he sat indoors sometimes with his nose pressed against the window making marks which his wife Gertrude would then have to rub out, she had given up asking and then pleading with himself to stop looking at the light frost which morphed into heavy frost and then finally gave way to snow squalls followed invariably by heavy blizzard like conditions.

A word of warning to the readers of my column. Whatever you do, never seriously date a TV anchor.

Why do I say that? Well, simply because when we went back to my home after our tenth date she used the pretence of having an after-dinner drink as the reason, though that was not correct.

I had decided on terminating the relationship before this because every time we went out to dinner, she attracted a crowd while I attracted the crazy people. What I mean is that once we had sat down, people from surrounding tables would come up to us ignoring me and introduce themselves to her which she loved. They then took photographs with her and would you believe it in some cases ask me to step aside so I wouldn’t be in the pictures. I felt like saying ‘hey what about me? I’m a famous writer,’ but I don’t think that would’ve mattered. They wanted pictures with this 30 year old blonde bombshell who they saw on their TV screens every night reading the news, while some may have read my columns but hadn’t put two and two together or if they had, it didn’t add up to much.

As far back as I can remember, on the first Saturday of every month, right throughout the year, John and I went to the Lazy Daisy Diner on Upton Street, which was about 2 miles from where we both grew up. It didn’t matter if it rained, snowed, or if there was a typhoon, we just knew we would we had to show up at exactly 8am on those Saturdays.

Our favourite waitress, Evelyn, was always there to greet us. It was as if she knew we would be there and dammit, so would she. Evelyn was a character, as was everyone who worked there or frequented the diner, regardless of the time of day. I guess they thought that John and I fitted in very well with the other characters, that either worked or frequented the diner.

Ever since I first met my friend Andrew 35 years ago, I always felt there was something not quite right with him. For instance, he would show up for classes which generally started at 9, around 7.30 in the morning. And when I made the mistake of asking him why, his answer was baffling.

“That’s it! I’m done! I’m out of here. It’s like I’ve been living in a wind tunnel for the last 4 months.”

Those were the last words said to me by my very good friend, Tom, before he left the high school track where we walked and jogged on and off for the last 25 years. I never heard from Tom again, until I received a letter from his attorney letting me know that Tom had suffered a fatal accident. He had fallen off a cliff in one of his Blue Zones.

Upon reading the letter I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry. Seriously. I knew Tom better than anyone else in this world. Better than his wife or his seven children. Better than his dog, or mine for that matter, even though we used to go on long walks up in the hills. just he and I and our two dogs, Butch and Cassidy.

Growing up in a family of high performers Stuart changed his mind on a daily basis as to what he wanted to be when he grew up. His siblings, he was one of four, two girls and two boys, made it their daily chore to come up with a new job in order to one up their other siblings. Stuart unfortunately was the youngest and so he had to wait his turn to see if he could come up with a job that outdid the others.

As he grew older, his choice of a profession became more and more exotic, until he reached his final years in high school and his favourite teacher one day asked everyone in turn to stand up in and tell the class what it was they were going to do in life. One was going to be an astronaut, while another a teacher obviously hoping that by saying that they would get extra marks on the final exam and nope, it didn’t work they still failed. Another wanted to be a vet and treat all the sick animals in the world for free, that got several rounds of applause from the other students while David, who was Stuart’s best friend decided that everything everyone said before was pie in the sky and that he was the only one to come up with something more practical.

“When did you last go on vacation?”
I thought for a second and then let out a laugh. “Not for a long time.”
“How come my friend?” David asked when we met together at the ice cream parlour that he and I frequented on most Friday and Saturday nights while we were growing up.

There wasn’t much else to do in the small village of about 500, all of whom could trace their ancestors back a group of lunatic Vikings who refused to get back on their ships after burning most of the villages in North Eastern England.

“No, it wasn’t!” I said rather dramatically. “That’s ridiculous! I’m amazed you actually wrote that in your book and neither your editor, nor your agent or your publisher for that matter, caught that stupid sentence.”
I was about to throw the book my friend David had written and which had, much to my amazement, climbed the charts of best sellers and was sitting at the top. “There’s no history in this, only garbage,” and this time after a moment of hesitation slammed the book down on his desk.

The electricity went out. My wife and I were in the bathroom getting ready for work. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Brushing my teeth,” I replied adding, “why?”
“Because you’re brushing my teeth, not yours.”
“Then you shouldn’t be standing so close to me.”
“Well, you’re closest to the window and it’s the only source of light, right?”
“Are you sure I’m brushing your teeth?”
“Yes, and I don’t like the toothpaste you use.”
“Oh damn,” I replied, “sorry about that. I was wondering why it was taking me so long to finish up. Would you like to gargle, or should I?”
“Well, I should because you didn’t brush your teeth.”

I grew up in the jungle. My parents clung to the hippie lifestyle when it was no longer fashionable to have extremely long hair, straggly beards, showers once a year and only when it rained, and ate vegan before vegan was a word. Grass stew, magic mushroom dessert, and river water left out overnight, so it could collect bacteria from the surrounding coconut trees. It was then left for a few hours to ferment and subsequently drunk by the adults, who were just my parents because everyone else from the colony had moved on to real jobs in places like Wall Street and insurance companies making oodles of money.

When Ellen was in Mrs Smith’s kindergarten class, she decided on her path in life.

“I’m going to be a zoo attendant,” she proudly stated and the entire class of 6 year olds looked at each other and then naturally wanted to know what an attendant was. Zoo, they knew. Attendant they didn’t.

Mrs Smith pondered the question she had been asked for a few minutes before answering. “What Ellen is saying class,” she began forcing a smile where no smile should’ve been forced, “is that,” she continued, “when she grows up she wants to work in a zoo as an attendant.” Well, that didn’t go very well. The entire class of 6 year olds looked at each other as if the teacher was crazy.

One of the benefits of being an old man and by that, I mean a really old man, is that by the time the bell tolls for you, you’ve seen everything there is to see and do in life. And that’s exactly how Ryan felt the day he got out of bed and said to himself, “nah I’m not going to make my bed today, I don’t think I’ll be needing it anymore. The only thing I’m sorry about is I won’t be able to take my favourite pillow with me.”
Now you have to understand something about Ryan. His favourite pillow has been his favourite pillow since he was still sleeping in his cot in his ancestral home. People who knew him well would ask what the brown stains were on his pillow, not the case, but the actual pillow and he would tell them they were drool marks he made when he was a few months old, and he never was able to get them out and then he would explain further. “It was a huge bone of contention between my mother and father, when it came to washing clothes. A battle my mother unfortunately for all of us seven children, she won and won quite convincingly. My father insisted that we use Bright All washing soap, but my mother insisted on La La Land biodegradable drool and stain remover because she said it was better for the planet.”