AN APOLOGY
As I’m sure most of you now know, I was awarded third place for my cooking apples in the fruit category of the Aberdour Village show. Never in my life did I think something like that could happen to me. I was totally unprepared for the attention it would bring, and I’m afraid I let the adulation get to my head.
I was the guest of honour at glamorous nightspots from Burntisland to Rosyth. I attended showbiz soirées in Cowdenbeath, and partied the night away with all the top celebs in downtown Inverkeithing. I was The Cooking Apple King, The Gala Governor, The Bramley Behemoth, the rightful heir to the Granny Smith empire. My fortune literally grew on trees and I thought the good times would last forever. But then, the unthinkable happened.
When the storm hit, I was face-down in a pool of my own vomit, but the following day, (after I’d scraped myself off the bathroom floor) I looked out of my window and beheld a sight that shook me to my core — my beautiful apple tree, the tree that laid the golden fruit, had been uprooted by the storm. It lay on its side. Like me, a shadow of its former self.
News travelled fast and the invitations to open garden centres and allotments dried up faster than the Duchess of Oldenberg! (a joke for all the pomologist’s out there). The fair weather friends and hangers on drifted off, and eventually even my agent stopped taking my calls.
I guess the moral of this is by all means make cider whilst the sun shines, but remember, the good times don’t last. It’s the shitty times when you find out who your real friends are, and I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise to my family and friends for my appalling behaviour. (Do you know how hard it was for me not to say applogise for my appling behaviour?) I know that I can learn from my mistakes, and with a little bit of luck, and some careful pruning of my remaining fruit tree, it doesn’t matter to me if, at next year’s village show, I come third or even fourth. I’ll be happy just to have my plums on display.
I was the guest of honour at glamorous nightspots from Burntisland to Rosyth. I attended showbiz soirées in Cowdenbeath, and partied the night away with all the top celebs in downtown Inverkeithing. I was The Cooking Apple King, The Gala Governor, The Bramley Behemoth, the rightful heir to the Granny Smith empire. My fortune literally grew on trees and I thought the good times would last forever. But then, the unthinkable happened.
When the storm hit, I was face-down in a pool of my own vomit, but the following day, (after I’d scraped myself off the bathroom floor) I looked out of my window and beheld a sight that shook me to my core — my beautiful apple tree, the tree that laid the golden fruit, had been uprooted by the storm. It lay on its side. Like me, a shadow of its former self.
News travelled fast and the invitations to open garden centres and allotments dried up faster than the Duchess of Oldenberg! (a joke for all the pomologist’s out there). The fair weather friends and hangers on drifted off, and eventually even my agent stopped taking my calls.
I guess the moral of this is by all means make cider whilst the sun shines, but remember, the good times don’t last. It’s the shitty times when you find out who your real friends are, and I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise to my family and friends for my appalling behaviour. (Do you know how hard it was for me not to say applogise for my appling behaviour?) I know that I can learn from my mistakes, and with a little bit of luck, and some careful pruning of my remaining fruit tree, it doesn’t matter to me if, at next year’s village show, I come third or even fourth. I’ll be happy just to have my plums on display.
Talking of apples, here be a short tale featuring a character who is nae stranger to forbidden fruit. Twas published by Diceroll Press on the night before Christmas, when all through the house. Not a creature was stirring, not even a.. donkey.
From domesticated equines to feral felines, journey with me now to the marvellous Trash Cat Lit, where I flea-ture in a claw-some cat-alogue of furry stories. "Comida Para Gatos" is an a-paw-cryphal tale about the dangers (or benefits) of feeding waifs and strays.
If you’d have told me that a mere fortnight after moving to the countryside, a note was going to be popped through the letterbox informing me that a large housing development was going to be built on the idyllic field of wildflowers right outside my front door, and that years later I’d write a story about it (whilst wearing earplugs to muffle the sound of a cement mixer) and that story would go on to be published in a book of the funniest prose from around the world, then you have a bizarrely niche but astonishingly accurate precognitive ability. Well done you!
You can read my story “The Developments” in The Bare Bones Book of Humour.
In the meantime, why not gorge upon my brain-spouts in an interview with the book's editor, by clicking on my chiselled features in this fantabulous photorealistic portrait.
That’s all for this update, but please feel free to peruse the rest of this site for more stories and shenanigans and whatnot.
Stay frosty!!
