An Abundance Of Catflaps
Mickey Bundles sat in the lounge bar of The Newt And Pimple and looked at his pint disconsolately. Normally he looked at it with cheerful anticipation (it was a pint, after all) but today his mood was low. He tried his best to ignore them but the thirty one boxes piled next to him were hard to ignore, as were the stares from Barry The Barman who clearly was not best pleased with the situation. Mickey could sympathise. He wasn’t best pleased with it himself.
It was all Scottish Jerry’s fault. He’d started it. This was usually the case but it never normally escalated this far.
Alright, maybe it wasn’t entirely Scottish Jerry’s fault. Mickey might have to take some small measure of blame. You see, he could never resist a bet. He didn't know why but there was something inside him that meant that he couldn’t walk away from a bet and, once he’d accepted, there was no way he was going to lose face and not see it through. The problem was that everyone else knew this too.
Particularly Scottish Jerry. He always seemed to judge the perfect tipping point, when the combination of boozy recklessness and stubborn pride was just hitting its peak. Like the time Scottish Jerry he bet him the he couldn’t climb the toilet walls using only his lips. Multiple lacerations and a course of antibiotic injections should have warned him off after that but sadly not. He’d been up for it when Scottish Jerry had bet him that he couldn’t make his way back home blindfold and still hadn’t been deterred by a night in the cells for accidentally groping an old fella.
This time, Mickey really did wish that he hadn’t got involved though. He’d been determined not to let Scottish Jerry get the better of him when, at around the sixth pint, Scottish Jerry had produced a small object from his pocket and waved it in front of Mickey.
“Here, Mickey,’ said the balding antagonist, “see this?”
“Yeah,” said Mickey with a hefty amount of suspicion, “what is it?’
“It’s a teeny, tiny, titchy, wee spoon,” said Scottish Jerry, turning the small object this way and that to catch the light and reflect it irritatingly back into Mickey’s eyes. Mickey narrowed his eyes, partly because the reflection was annoying, partly because it was always suspicious when Scottish Jerry (who had lived in London for over thirty years) became profoundly Scottish and partly because he had a sneaking suspicion where this was going.
“I can see that. What I meant is, what’s it got to do with me?”
“I bet you-” Mickey groaned but Scottish Jerry was undeterred, “I bet you that you cannae make….two thousand pounds from this teeny, tiny, titchy, wee spoon.”
Six pints were definitely causing a swirling feeling as he tried to think but there was something about the phrasing that caught in Mickey’s head. Mickey sensed a loophole; a way around it. This could be the one that he might well win. This would be it. This would be the time.
“What do I get if I win?”
“You keep the dosh.”
“And if I lose?”
Scottish Jerry grinned. “You spend an evening in here in the nip and you ask out Joanne The Barmaid.”
Mickey squinted, ostensibly to try and work out if this was worth it but also because he’d had six pints. After an almost audible turning of cogs, Mickey had nodded and stuck out his hand.
“You’re on,” said Mickey, shaking Scottish Jerry’s hand vigorously.
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It had taken some doing but, with all of his powers of persuasion, wheedling and flat out begging, Mickey had managed, through a series of frankly improbable trades to barter the teeny, tiny, titchy, wee spoon all the way up to a collection of thirty one catflaps. Not bad going but he’d hit an impasse. He couldn’t seem to trade them further up and no one was overly interested in paying two grand for thirty one catflaps.
That was until two nights ago and a conversation with Colonel Shitpipe in The Newt And Pimple. That wasn’t his real name, of course. Nobody had ever got his real name but, since he looked a bit like Colonel Mustard from Cluedo and every story he told seemed to involve some sort of disastrous bowel evacuation, the nickname had pretty much stuck. Mickey was now too embarrassed to ask what his real name might be and, on the one occasion that he had referred to him as “The Colonel” to his face (fortunately omitting the Shitpipe), the old duffer hadn’t seemed to mind.
The conversation had gone something like this in Mickey’s memory of the event:-
Colonel S:- “Blah blah blah small windfall blah blah not a full set of trousers hahahaha blah blah blah local businesses blah blah blah investment opportunity blah blah blah.”
Mickey:- “Oh, I have a new business.”
Colonel S:- “Really blah blah etc etc?”
Mickey:- “Yup, it’s new… set of exercise equipment. Very now, very niche, popular with young urban professionals.”
Colonel S:- “Splendid blah blah blah!”
So now here he was, waiting with thirty one catflaps that he was going to attempt to pass off as exercise equipment in order to sell them to a man he barely knew. A shadow passed over the table and Mickey looked up to see the rotund and tweedy form of the Colonel looming over him.
“Right then, let’s see what you’ve got,” boomed the Cluedo lookalike. Mickey winced and opened up one of the boxes, pulling out a catflap for his demonstration.
“Hnnnnng! Gmmmmf! Rrrrrgghh!” What followed was a frankly pathetic and clearly doomed attempt to con an older gentleman out of two thousand pounds. After a few moments, the Colonel held up a hand, stood up and walked out of the pub without saying a word.
“Fair enough,” thought Mickey, trying his best to pull the catflap from around his neck.
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After the first hour or so of general laughing and teasing, Mickey had found it fairly liberating spending an evening in the pub naked, Scottish Jerry having squared it all away with the landlord first who had then hit on the idea of selling tickets (of which Scottish Jerry received a cut). He’d even got a surprisingly positive response from Joanne.
“Fair play to you, young Mickey,” said Scottish Jerry, “ye’re a man of your word.”
He raised a glass and Mickey clinked his pint against it.
“I don’t suppose you fancy a wee wager mind?”
The spluttering of Scottish Jerry as he wiped Mickey’s pint from his face and general laughter of the surrounding tables meant that Mickey never did find out what that next bet was.
The Prompt
Here is what I had to work with courtesy of Andy:-
Story title - An Abundance of Catflaps
Character name - Colonel Shitpipe
Object - A teeny tiny titchy wee spoon
Line of dialogue - "Hnnnnng! Gmmmmf! Rrrrrgghh!"
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