Chase Post

She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed is over the moon because our son has befriended the son of the rich couple in the Big House.

This is an appalling brand of snobbery, of which I am not guilty: affluent or poverty stricken - anyone can buy me a drink.

The thoroughly modern family over the road have tutored their two children with Churchillian precision.

The youngsters have an un-nerving ability to describe the aches and pains collected during a day playing on the village green in medical terms.

Their 'book at bedtime' must by The Lancet.

I just can't sleep. I'd take sleeping tablets, but don't want to end-up like Judy Garland. A gay icon.

Every day this week I've been jolted from slumber, bathed in cold sweat, by fears over the spreading mould on our bedroom ceiling. The cause - despite forking out a fortune to a battery of tradesmen - is still unknown.

The council skip cometh.

Fifty two items of tat we loaded onto that rusting communal bucket. We decided to take 13 back, in the hope there may yet be someone on ebay who wants a one-legged Action Man with a stutter, a bird cage ladder with four rungs missing (a must for budgies who take really big strides) and a blender without the blades: we think the latter would make an excellent executive toy for high-powered businessmen who find it relaxing to watch vegetables spin very quickly.

I was asked to judge a pole dancing competition on Wednesday. Honest.

Complete con. The girls had Midlands accents. Not an Eastern European in sight. I thought they'd be wearing clogs and crushing cabbages.

Instead, semi-clad women, covered in baby oil, gyrated inches away from me. Gosh, it's changed so much since our maypole dancing at junior school. Not one of them hit me with a pig's bladder.

Bloke up the road is selling labrador puppies for £300! For £600, he'll train them, too.

"What do you train them to do?" I asked, stunned by the price tag.

"Fetch sticks," he told me proudly.

For an extra £300 I'd want the mutt to fetch the sticks, then knock-up a coffee table. Possibly drive me to the pub and back, to boot.

I've just come across a container full of all my schoolboy achievements.

That is one cramped matchbox, I can tell you.

I was so success-starved as a youth, I got a bogus certificate knocked-up for reaching puberty - with a 'well done' message from Hugh Heffner. Cycle proficiency and 50 length swimming certificate are still numbers one and two, under 'academic achievements', on my CV.

Our delinquent cat Keogh was affectionate for the first time yesterday, rubbing against my leg and making a soft mewing noise. Then she was violently sick.
I feel it was a protest by the mad moggie after being given cheap cat food, instead of the gourmet feline fare she usually feasts upon. Perhaps she was aiming for my shoes.
Whatever the reason, there can be no denying Keogh is not her usual self: her 'usual self' being extremely violent. She still lashes out with razor-sharp claws and sinks her teeth into my hand, but her heart's not in it. I can tell. I no longer bleed.
Julie is worried about the pampered puss. She fears Keogh is bored and needs more stimulation.
I'm bored and need more stimulation, but I try not to vomit on the carpet.
"Listen to that," whispered the wife. "She's never made that noise before."
Keogh was purring.
"We need to change her routine," fussed Julie, "give her something a little different." If she means a different part of my anatomy to savage, she - and the cat - can forget it.
The local 'cat whisperer', who in the past has helped with our pet's behavioural problems, thinks we should do things together. Keogh's favourite pastime is killing things, then flinging the mangled remains in the air for half-an-hour. She also carries earthworms into the house in her mouth.
I've promised to give it a go. I refuse to chase my tail, however.
"The problem is," cooed the cat shrink, holding the crazed creature dangerously close, "you are just too clever, aren't you, Keogh."
Three times this week Keogh has tried to urinate in her litter tray and missed. That's not the work of a MENSA member.
The odd behaviour could also be a case of worms, conceded the expert. It's often the way. There's a very thin line between pure genius and suffering from tapeworm.
If she's looking for excitement, the cat's picked the wrong house. I had to sit down and get my breath back after discovering a tub of hazelnut yogurt had past its sell-by date.
"A lot of this apparent naughtiness is a desire to feel wanted," said the cat whisperer.
"If she bites my hand again, she'll feel my foot up her..."
"That's exactly the kind of attitude that makes matters worse," scolded the woman. "How would you feel if you were threatened with physical violence by someone a lot bigger after a misdemeanour?"
"If I'd gone to the toilet in their new Nike trainers," I told her, "I'd probably feel I deserved it."

Old Tom, the parish's retired gamekeeper, has for the last three weeks dreamt the correct Wolverhampton Wanderers scores.
They come to him in almost Biblical visions as he's about to drop-off on Thursday nights. If Tom eats blue cheese just before bedtime, he also gets the Partick Thistle result, for some reason.
He gets other stuff, like the year the world's going to end, but nothing as important as football scores.
At a time when nuns are queuing to see Jesus' face on a digestive biscuit or a talking Action Man whose hands bleed, we at last have a miracle to really shout about.
What's more, everyone in the parish can make a few bob out of it.
In Old Tom's trance-like state, he follows the players into the dressing room, watches them change, strides on to the pitch and is only feet away from every kick. He's even there during post-match recreational activities.
"That means you know which players get the goals," I babbled excitedly to the 82-year-old, realising the financial implications of placing a bet on the score and the scorers.
Problem is, Tom hasn't been to a football match since 1952. A couple of times, the rattle he uses in his dream wakes him up before full-time.
"Wolves play Crystal Palace on Saturday," I implored, with fellow parishioners gathered expectantly around the sage. "What did you see?"
"I see a young man with an expensive hairdo," recalled the misty-eyed OAP between sips of best mild in the Drum and Monkey's smoke-free snug, slowly easing back into a dreamy state. "He's stepping into an expensive sports car. I think it might be a BMW."
"Yeah! Right!," scoffed Colin. "That's narrowed it down a bit."
"The match," I pleaded. "What about the match?"
"There's a beautiful, semi-clad woman gyrating infront of him," he stuttered. "She's covered in baby oil."
"He's at the bloody lap-dance club afterwards," I hissed to my fellow gamblers. "Tom," I shouted, shaking the pensioner. "What about the game?"
Tom's eyes half-closed and dribble glinted on the corner of his mouth. "Leave him alone," petted landlady Marj. "He wants to stay at Spearmint Rhino."
"I've got a shiny new six pence to put into your stockings, my dear," moaned Tom, grinning but comatosed.
"He's used his hands," shrieked the pensioner in ghostly tones before his head lolled onto his chest.
"Is he still at the lap-dance club?" asked Colin.
"It's a penalty," shouted Tom, suddenly shaking. "He places the ball on the spot. He strides towards it. The noise is deafening. He slams the ball in the top right hand corner of the net."
"You don't save those," he muttered, suddenly sounding Scottish, before slumping into his seat, sparking back into life a second later to resume the spirited running commentary. "The players are going wild. They're jumping on him...she's wriggling on his lap."
"He's gone back to the piggin' lap-dance club," groaned Colin.
"Tom," I asked gently, trying to suppress mounting despair. "What colour's the kit?"
"Black," he mumbled, "looks like latex and in the style of a nurse's oufit."
He was definitely still at the lap-dance club.
"Just think," I implored the dozing pensioner. "What did the goal scorer look like?"
"Black," babbled Old Tom. "Big...very strong. Just what you need in a hard game..."
"He's on about Wolves new striker," murmured the throng.
"...you can't beat a cup of Bovril," grinned Tom, licking his lips.
"Shall I kick him or will you?" whispered an exasperated punter. "I don't want to be here when he queues for the toilet," whispered one worried young woman.
"The Crystal, the Crystal...," he mouthed.
"The Crystal what?" I barked.
"...chandelier lights up the pictures on the wall..."
"That's so sweet," cooed Maj, "he's singing country and western." With that, Old Tom submitted to slumber, snoring loudly in the snug.
"That was a total waste of time," huffed Colin after the hour grilling.
Not at all, I assured him. "We know it's going to be 1-0, the goal coming from a penalty."
"And do you really think someone called Tanya Whiplash scored it?"
No, but the odds would be huge if she did.
We gambled on a 1-0 win for Wolves, with a spicy side bet that the goal would come from a penalty awarded for handball.
"Ten quid down the spout," I shouted, dramatically slamming the front door to Chateau Lockley. "It was 2-0 - all goals coming from open play."
Really," gasped my smirking wife. "Funny that - I followed Old Tom's dream to the letter and did rather well for myself."
But Wolves won by two goals, I stammered.
"Did they?" she tutted. "Partick Thistle, however, scraped through on a late penalty."