The Pygmy Giant

John Ritchie

I went out of curiosity as much as anything. It was either that or Intermediate Line Dancing, whatever the hell that is. Personally, I have always avoided anything to do with dancing, except ‘Strictly’ of course. They get some belting looking birds on there with next to nothing on, and in that Passing DoughPlay the bloke gets to touch the woman up. I saw it with my own eyes, that hurdler fella did it, lucky bastard.

But ‘Getting on the right lines’ sounded like it might have something to offer. I was thinking about a change of career and it said you could look at your past, present and your future and discover your true direction. ‘Right!’ I thought, ‘I’ll have some of that.’

Well, I can tell you, if I’d known what was coming I’d been out of the door faster than a cheetah with its arse on fire. Mind you I should have got an inkling: the Group Leader looked like a walking Oxfam shop, with so many bangles on she could barely lift her arms and kept ringing this bloody bell. But by the time we got to the funny stuff, I was sitting between these identical twin red-heads who were holding my hands and telling me to let go. I was about to tell them to make up their bloody minds when I sort of drifted off.

The next think I knew I was in a previous life as a head-hunting cannibal. Then, before I could say ‘knife’, in the far future using a personal jet-pack to track down herds of sub-human ‘cattle’ for the abattoir: actually, not a million miles from my present job as a butcher.

Well, evidently, I am on the right lines, so I celebrated by taking the girls down the Beefeater.

John hopes he has a future, because he needs to escape his past, where he nicked the present.