"Howaya, Mick. Pissy day out."
"You're late, Davy. Did we not say 7:00?”
“Sorry, I’d a bit of trouble with the wife’s birthday present.”
“Oh, what happened?”
“It’s a long story, Mick.”
“Well it’s early yet and there’s drink to be drunk.”
“Ok, well she wanted a pet for her birthday, Mick.”
“A pet?”
“Yes. But it had to be some kind of exotic pet.”
“Exotic? Like a fucking giraffe or something?”
“No, it couldn’t be a giraffe, Mick, we live in a bungalow.”
“True, I forgot about that.”
“So I went in to Paddy’s Pet Shop in Summerhill to see what he had.”
“Paddy has an ectopic mix for sure.”
“Did you mean eclectic, Mick?”
“Fuck off, get on with the story.”
“Right. He had a lot of tropical fish in tanks.”
“Aquariums, Davy.”
“What?”
“They’re called aquariums, not tanks.”
“Ok. Well, he had a lot of them.”
“Tropical fish are exotic, Davy.”
“Yes, I know but she doesn’t like fish unless they’re lying in a wrapper on top of a load of chips.”
“Like us all.”
“So he talked me into a Polynesian hamster.”
“A what?”
“Yeah. Five hundred balloons.”
“For a fuckin’ hamster?”
“Yep.”
“Did you tell him to fuck off?”
“I was going to, but it’s a present for the wife, so who gives a fuck?”
“That’s fair enough, Davy.”
“So I told him I’d take it and he handed me a little book of instructions on how to look after it.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. It appeared that this hamster is a very delicate creature and needs minute care and attention, Mick.”
“What kind of care and attention?”
“Well it’s Polynesian so it’s used to a warm climate, different food. Stuff like that.”
“Fuck.”
“Paddy told me that it should be kept in a draught-free environment with a temperature of not less than 25°C.”
“Ok, well it’d be warm in Polynesia, Davy.”
“Probably, so I bought it and she loved it.”
“Lovely, did she show her appreciation in an appropriate manner?”
“Oh, yeah. She even let me use the two fingers.”
“And rightly so.”
“The next morning I heard her screaming from the living room.”
“Did she have a reaction to the second finger?”
“No the fuckin’ hamster was dead.”
“You’re fuckin’ jokin’.”
“I wish. I ran into the room and there it was, dead in the cage. The wife in bits.”
“What then?”
“I took it back into the shop and Paddy looked at me like I was the Yorkshire Ripper.”
“Ok.”
“He said I mustn’t have followed the instructions and the hamster couldn’t survive.”
“How?”
“He asked me how warm the room was, so I told him that I’d lit a fire for it before we went to bed.”
“Did you mention the two fingers?”
“Fuck off, Mick. He just said that I must’ve forgot about the draught from the chimney when the fire went out.”
“Ah no.”
“Yeah, he wouldn’t refund the money for the hamster, but he’d buy the cage back for a tenner.”
“Did you offer to hit him?”
“No, he said that, because it was Polynesian it still had a number of post death uses.”
“Really? Such as?”
“Well, he said that I could make the nicest jam in the world from it.”
“Ok.”
“So I made a big pot of it, took me all day. I let it set on the stove overnight and brought the queen her breakfast next morning with the jam on her toast and a nice pot of tea.”
“Did she give you the two fingers?”
“Almost. Anyway, she bit into the toast and she nearly puked. The jam tasted like actual shit, so she ran into the bathroom and spat it out, then she ran into the kitchen and fucked the whole pot of it out through the window and into the garden.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Two days later there was roses growing where the pot had landed. Beautiful yellow roses tinged with scarlet.”
“Roses? Are you sure it wasn’t tulips?”
“Tulips?”
“Yes, tulips from hamster jam.”
“You’re a prick, Mick.”
END
