Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

T H E E N G L I S H I N V AS I O N P a r t O n e

A diaper pail fire?

Nope.

A road kill skunk that’s been thrown in a vat of roofing tar?

Nope.

A hobo farting contest?

Close, but nope.

I was on a flight to England, and with my usual unerring skill and aplomb,
I landed a seat next to a middle-aged Middle Eastern chap. Of course, there’s
nothing wrong with sitting next to middle-aged Middle Eastern chaps on flights,
but this was when I was 18, and you could smoke on airplanes back then, and this
middle-aged Middle Eastern chap was smoking something pretty ferocious. These
majestic blacklung specials were a villainous green and they made odd sizzling
and snapping sounds and they shot out so much smoke that it looked like he was
smoking a signal flare.

From the exceptional aroma, I eventually deduced that they were a

swashbuckling blend of gunpowder, asphalt, moth balls, old Safeway bags, poison
oak, hemlock, wolfsbane, and a little something good that must have come out of
Chernobyl.

The smoke didn’t seem to dissipate and it had its own sort of texture…you
could’ve stuffed a sofa with it. It was the smoke that ate like a meal.

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

And it had reach. From the aisle seat you could watch the stuff seethe and
roil along the ceiling and every so often, it would pounce on a victim who would
sit up, sniff tentatively, and pause as if they were listening to something. In the
next instant they would launch into convulsions, their eyes would stream, and
they’d cough those way down crippling kind of coughs where your tongue sticks
out. After scrabbling for a drink and having their backs whacked by passers-by,
they’d invariably spin and glare, and I would be the one who ended up catching
the evil looks.

I looked at this middle-aged Middle Eastern chap with awe; his respiratory
system must’ve been made of sheet iron.

It made for an interesting flight, and by the time we’d hove to at

Heathrow, my throat felt like I’d just ate a cactus.

It was December 27th, and I was flying to England to meet my bestest

buddy and high school alumni Sean Choo-Foo and his family. Foo’s Mom is Irish,
but her family immigrated to England, and the Choo-Foo’s made regular trips
back home.

Back in November, my girlfriend had plans to fly to Toronto for the

Christmas holidays, and I was on the phone with Foo.

“What’re you guys doing for Christmas?” I asked.

“We’re going to visit Uncle Anto, Auntie Di and Woody in England.” He

was referring to his Mom’s brother, his Mom’s brother’s wife, and his Mom’s
brother’s wife’s mother, respectively. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m not doing anything cool like England, that’s for sure.” I said.

There was a big pause.

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

“So…” Foo said, “You could maybe join us?”

Another big pause…I happened to have the bread…why the hell not?

“Why the hell not?” I cheered.

Foo said he’d call right back, and after breaking the news to his parents
that I was joining them, he called back and we made plans. I respectfully offered
to come on the 27th so that their Christmas Day would be just family…and I
wouldn’t have to buy any gifts.

After landing, collecting my luggage, and croaking, rasping and wheezing

my way through customs, (those middle-aged Middle Eastern ciggys stayed with you) I prepared
to portage back across England, to Chester. This was my third trip to Europe, but
my first to the United Kingdom, and I drank it up. At that time Regina only had
one luggage carousel for the whole airport, so a walk down a flight of steps onto a
subway train right inside Heathrow was high excitement for a bumpkin like me.

A couple of transfers and a few hours later, I got to meet Uncle Anto (short
for Anthony), Auntie Di, Woody and the rest of the tribe at the Chester train station.
It’s been 20 years since that first visit with them, but they’re still some of my
favorite people in the whole wide world. Anthony is Foo’s middle name, and 15
years later I would give the same middle name to my first Son, Jackson.

New Year’s was rung in at a pub called The Black Plough, and while I’m
a bit fogged on specifics, by all accounts it was a rousing success. The pictures
look like we were having fun anyway.

A day or so later, we began Operation Scotland.

Foo and I graduated high school in a small town on the southern Canadian
prairies - Wawota, Saskatchewan, population 530. To be accurate, it was now 528,

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

as Foo and I had bolted. I had moved there at age 13 to live with my Father after
my Mom died. After graduation, I returned to the bright lights and whirlwind
action of Regina, while Foo went to purgatory in Brandon, Manitoba.

In grade 12, Mr. Laird, our science teacher, had had enough, and got
himself onto an exchange deal with a teacher from Scotland. He spent the year
there, and they air freighted us Ms. Sheila Gibson, who was responsible for
biology and chemistry, and by the end of her incarceration in Wawota, I think she
became acquainted with psychiatry too.

I wouldn’t say that Foo and I were troublemakers, but we certainly

weren’t the most diligent students. And from what I understand, things are run a
bit differently in Scotland than they are in Wawota.

For example, in Scotland, school uniforms were common. In Wawota,

they just preferred that whatever you showed up in was at least clean enough not
to stick to the chairs, or stink so badly as to affect that asthmatic kid in grade 7.

In Scotland, students tended to sit in their seats and keep quiet and alert. In
Wawota, a good third of the afternoon classes degenerated into full blown chalk
and eraser fights.

In Scotland, students actually did the work they were assigned. In

Wawota, and in my classes especially, the preferred custom was to avoid getting
assigned any work at all.

I became The Designated Staller. It was my sacred duty to distract the

teacher so that the bell would ring before they could give us any assignments.
Little bits of homework were simple; nobody bothered doing it, but when big
schoolwork loomed, it called for a specialist. The most basic tactic was to get the
teacher talking about a subject they were personally interested in and let them run
with it, but Ms. Gibson was too smart for that. At first the challenge was

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

enjoyable, but her workload became so onerous that the fellas and I actually had to
copy the girls’ answers in the library before class. Who knows how far the evil
would have spread if I hadn’t been continually launching salvos at her. I felt like
The Little Dutch Boy.

As Foo and I are gentlemen, we realized that we couldn’t go to the United

Kingdom and not pop in…that’d be rude. But for good measure, and to remind her
just who she was dealing with, we neglected to inform her that we were coming.

On the morning of Operation Scotland, Foo and I had about an hour to kill
before our train left for Edinburgh, so we thought we’d stash our bags and wander
out for a bite.

The British have taken a lot of well deserved guff over their cuisine. I
have very grim childhood memories of the time I dropped in to visit my Great-
grandfather and Auntie Ada (his second wife) on steak and kidney pie day. It was a
sun-shiny summer afternoon near Regina Beach, where my Mom’s family had
summer cottages.

I yodeled my hellos and wiped my shoes, and in the English tradition I

kept them on. Greatdad hated it when you took your shoes off indoors. He also
hated it when you went barefoot out of doors. I made the mistake of asking him
once if he slept and bathed with his boots on and nearly got a cauliflower ear from
Auntie Ada…but I digress.

Their cottage was swollen to bursting with the humid odor of “Soiled
Mattress down by the Train Yard”. The enriched ambience made my eyes water
and my nostrils smoke and unfortunately, triggered my finely honed gag reflex.
The kidneys been taken off of the stove by the time I got there, and with no other
evidence facing me, I was left to conclude that Greatdad was finally ready to get
checked into a home where they put those big diapers on.

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

Nonetheless, as I was in England, I was eager to get my hands on a proper

feed of fish and chips.

Foo and I stepped into a nearby chip shop and struck up a conversation
with the middle-aged Middle Eastern chap – not the same one as one the plane…a
different one – who ran the place, and we were introduced to the feverish
excitement of the fish n’chip business.

The shop was brightly lit, and this was a mistake. The interior was done in
whiteish ceramic tile that were probably installed during the reign of the previous
Monarch. They had that kind of penetrating discoloration that senior citizens
sometimes get in their teeth. The floor was tile. The walls were tile. The ceiling
was tile. It was echoy and had a suspicious disinfectant smell that was completely
at odds with how the place looked.

It was like preparing to dine in a communal shower that was equal

portions mental hospital and inner city flophouse.

The equipment was noteworthy too. There was an old fridge cooler
promoting a soft drink that the shop didn’t sell. There was a small griddle with a
nice accretion of creosote on it. The centerpiece was something that looked like a
huge steel deep freeze filled with espresso.

The middle-aged Middle Eastern Chip Chap smiled broadly – another

mistake - and bent to gather a hairy armload of pasty chips out of a big bucket on
the floor. He held them to his chest, waddled over to the steel deep freeze and
heaved them in. The resulting explosion showed us that the steel deep freeze was
actually a monstrous deep fryer, and the espresso was a sensational mahogany
colored fat of some kind. This was no ordinary oil. Long ago, something very big
and very powerful had surrendered its life and been rendered down for our
feasting this day.

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

I’m guessing whale blubber, circa 1889.

Our new middle-aged Middle Eastern friend grabbed a canoe paddle that
was leaning against the counter, banged the blade against his shoe to dislodge a
piece of food, plunged the paddle into the giant vat and began working things
around into a whirlpool current. Once edible bits of wreckage lifted from the
depths and swirled about with an Esther Williams flourish. Ancient schools of
darkened chips welled up and disappeared back into the murk. Remnants of things
cooked to a husk surged and bobbed in a heaving sea of fat.

Foo still swears he saw a tentacle reach out.

A batch of fish had been cauterized just before we’d walked in, he
claimed, and our host speared a couple of good hunks from the rack and bound
them in newspaper. It was time to go fishing for the chips.

He produced a sort of pool skimmer, and with a fierce cry in his native
tongue started attacking the chips circulating in the liquid gloom. He stabbed and
slashed and scooped and pounced and flipped chips out of the abyss. The air
became filled with splashed fat. I realized that the frantic teeth-clenching dance he
was performing wasn’t just multi-cultural entertainment; it was actually an evasive
procedure. While Foo and I were driven back by a pelting hail of molten chip
grease, this stalwart fella kept up the assault.

They must make these middle-aged Middle Eastern Chaps out of asbestos!

Amazingly, he managed to keep the different populations of chips

separate, and gaffed only the most youngish ones. Almost half of the chips made it
right into a draining thingy that caught and dribbled the precious fat back into the
tub. When he’d caught his limit, he cast the pool skimmer aside and passed an
exhausted arm across his forehead. He took a moment to collect himself then he

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

hefted the chips from the draining thingy onto more newspaper and crashed down
about a cup and a half of salt on them.

Foo pursed his lips and looked woodenly at the rocking swells in Davy
Jones’ Fryer.

“…I’ll have a burger” he said.

We paid and exchanged more pleasantries with the proprietor, and tucked
in, as they say. The owner suddenly seemed to notice that we weren’t British, and
naturally assumed we were American, so we corrected him and conversation
turned to Canada and his three or four hundred relatives living in Vancouver, and
did we know any of them?

We stood over by the door as we chatted and picked back the newspaper.
The reason we didn’t sit wasn’t that the place was full, quite the opposite, it was
because most fish n’ chip shops don’t have seating; the rubes, er, customers either
take their bounty home or graze as they stroll down the street.

These chips had none of that sterile white McCrispness that we’ve been
raised on in North America; they were deep dark and mottled. It was a mystery
how a chip could be this hot and not burst into flame when it came into contact
with the air. I commended my soul to God and champed into one…

They were fantastic! You knew you were eating something pretty
significant. Compared to regular bland wimpy frozen chips, these were
Superheroes! Normal teen-age chips gathered in school hallways and speculated as
to what it must be like to be Chips like these. Adolescent seed potatoes hung
posters of these chips on their bedroom walls and fantasized about becoming
Middle-Aged Middle Eastern Chip Chap Chips.

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

Foo looked suspiciously at his burger. We’d had a nasty shock a day or
two previous when we saw a street vendor open a large tin can, pluck out a
preformed patty and plop it on the grill.

His burger was a man-sized effort with lots of fixings. Lettuce and tomato
and chunky white sauce (!) slid out the sides and down Foo’s arms. That’s not an
indictment of the burger; most of the things that Foo eats slide down his arms. The
patty had some interesting green vegetative flecks, and enough onions to make my
eyes water from over here. Foo opened his mouth until his jaws creaked, paused
dramatically, and slammed into it. After working off a bite like a shark through a
surfboard, his eyebrows went up in shocked approval.

Foo has exemplary manners, and he felt it was his duty to praise the
burger to the proprietor. Unfortunately, he did this before he got around to
swallowing any of it, insuring that a goodish amount of the inaugural bite got
launched out onto the shop floor. Nothing unusual about that either. I’m pretty
sure he said “This is the best hamburger I ever had!” but it came out sort of
muffled. The owner seemed to understand him however, and was gratified.

Suddenly, another customer came in and took the shopkeeper completely

by surprise. It seems that he was used to having his clientele a little more spread
out.

We waved goodbye and stepped out into the street. Foo was so transfixed
by his burger that he didn’t notice that there was a small step that he had to deal
with. He took that nasty jar that surprise steps give you, and disaster struck.

It seemed to be in slow motion. As Foo’s teeth clacked together and his

limbs spasmed, the burger shot from the newspaper and began a long lazy vertical
arc up into the air over the sidewalk. The buns parted to each side like booster
rockets falling from the space shuttle. Sauce, onions, and thickly shredded lettuce

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.

 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

fell away like paratroopers. The slice of tomato dove backwards for Foo’s pants
zipper, and got a bull’s-eye. The patty spun slowly in its trajectory and a flap of
cheese waved in the wind.

“NOOOOOOooooooooo!!!!!” Foo clawed the air behind his beloved

burger.

It fell gracefully to the sidewalk, slowly bounced once on its edge, lost its
cheese, bounced again, and began towards the curb with a drunken roll like a lost
tire. It paused, teetered, looked back at Foo, saluted, then fell off the precipice into
the street.

Foo raced to the curb in horror, skidded on the cheese slice, and nearly
went down. He stared down at the wreckage and you could tell that he was trying
to see if The Three Second Rule applied out of doors. He made a couple of
desperate false starts at the patty, but finally recognized defeat.

His eyes were wet when he looked up.

“My burger…” his voice broke. I whacked condolences onto his back, and
offered to get him another one, but he refused.

“I can’t! He’ll think I ate this one already!” he squeaked.

“Who?” but maybe it should’ve been ‘whom’…I’m not always sure.

“The…man…who made this.” Foo looked reverently at the remains, and

had to blink away more tears.

“So? Tell him you dropped it.” I said.

“I can’t! It’s too embarrassing!” He said, horrified.

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

This didn’t make any sense at all. If there’s one person in this world who
has embarrassed himself more than me, it’s Foo.

For example, after one of our Saturday night high school campouts, Foo
awoke early and though obviously still drunk, kicked Porter – who was the
designated sober one/babysitter this time - awake. He (Foo) pestered him (Porter) into
giving him (Foo) a ride into town on his (Porter’s) dirt bike. I opened a bleary eye at
him (Foo).

“Where’re you going?” I slurred.

“I’ve got to get to church.”

I’d forgotten that he hadn’t been able to eel out of it yet and was still an
altar boy.

“Yup, have fun with that” I said and rolled over.

Monday morning was abuzz with the news of what happened, but I
wanted it from Foo himself. He was sitting in the main corridor, looking sheepish.
Mr. Laich, The Principal, was wishing Foo an earnest and knowing “Good
Morning Sean, feeling any better?”

“Is it true?” I asked as soon as Laich left.

“Yup.”

“You puked on the Priest?!?!”

“Yup.”

“In front of the whole congregation?!”

“Yup.”

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

“Including your Mom and Dad?”

“Yup.”

“Details, man!”

He sighed a long sigh and began. “I felt pretty ghastly yesterday morning,
and Porter had to stop 3 times on the way back to town so I could throw up. While
unpleasant, I thought it was a good idea, because then I thought I’d have got rid of
everything. But you know how it is, you get thirsty, and sometimes a little bit of
something can help settle things down. I had a drink of water and felt better, and in
the Vestry there were some little of those little church sandwiches laid out.
Well…I ate five or six and then I didn’t feel very good again. I didn’t have time to
go puke them up before Mass, so I had to try and tough it out.”

Mr. Meyers stopped by, clapped Foo on the shoulder, called him a
‘Turkey’, gave that head shaking “hi-yuk yuk” belly laugh we all mocked, and
went on, leaving behind his patented stale cigarette smell.

Foo continued. “It was awful. It was about a million degrees in the church,
and old Mrs. Vickerson in the front row was wearing that disgusting homemade
perfume, and I could smell that gross crisp-crunchy campfire smell in my hair and
for the first time ever, Father decided to light some incense!”

Foo turned greenish and swallowed hard at the memory.

“I had sweat in my eyes, my robes were plastered to me and I nearly

fainted a couple times. Pud and Bim were doing the service with me and could
tell I was hung over and every time I looked at them, they either mimed getting
sick or made quiet little gaggy coughing sounds. We rounded the bend towards
Communion, and the thought of wine finished me. I managed to swallow the first

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

couple of heaves, but when Father turned to me to dry his hands, I couldn’t hold it
back, and I puked into the towel he was holding.”

The dam burst and Foo had to pause. I was laughing so hard I thought I’d
bust a rib.

“Then what happened?” I asked, exhausted.

“Well, they got me backstage, but apparently a couple of people in the

audience felt sorry for me and sympathy puked, and then a couple more had at it,
and the final tally came out to nine people throwing up in church.”

“Are you serious?!? What did Father do?”

“Technically, he was the first sympathy puker.”

“WHAT?!?!!!!”

“He’s a pretty good sport though; I could hear him making a joke about
‘serving deviled ham in church.’” Foo said.

“What did you tell your parents?”

“I tried to blame it on some bad hamburger we ate at the campout.”

“Did it work?”

Foo looked at me. “No, it didn’t work…and since we’re on the topic, I
don’t think I’ll be making it to any campouts for awhile. Judging from Mom and
Dad’s big reaction, I have a hunch something’s going to come up in the future.”

“Just do everyone a favor and keep it off the Priest.”

Little did I know, but that wasn’t the end of the story. By the end of the
month he’d managed to wiggle out of being grounded and came to another of our

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

Wild West Shows, and believe it or not, he actually threw up on the same Priest
again!

So, standing outside a Chester fish n’chip shop, I couldn’t see how
accidentally dropping a burger could be claimed as embarrassing when he had
survived events like throwing up on every Priest within a hundred miles every
couple of weeks, but he was adamant – he wouldn’t go back in. Instead, he eyed
my giant wad of greasy newspaper and asked “Are you gonna eat all that?” Foo
made a rash grab for my chips – the fiend - and I pirouetted away and gave him a
sportive karate chop to the back of his neck, complete with “Wa-DAA!”

Then one of those incredible things happened. We looked up from our

mock battle and saw a woman so beautiful it took your breath away. You could’ve
put this hottie on one of those clam shells that Aphrodite sails around on, although
a purist may complain that her hair was a bit short to cover up all of the nummie
bits. (However, we colonials are big hearted, and believe in giving up-and-comers a chance.) She was
positively radiant, even though she was arm in arm with a local bloke who ruined
the view somewhat.

Foo and I were held spellbound. Our eyes bubbled, our chins bounced
onto our chests, and we had that automatic male-gut-sucking-in response. You
may not believe this, but she looked at us, focused on me, broke into a huge smile,
and with obvious relish, beamed “Oh look! There’s Owen! Hi Owen!” She
anointed my arm with an electric caress and they walked on, cautiously stepping
over the ruins of lettuce, sauce and smeared cheese.

A great wind seemed to rush in my ears and my vision got tunneled. I felt
my legs jelly and my face crimson and the spot where her palm touched my arm
got so hot I thought it’d blister. I wanted to say something witty and clever, but all
I could manage was alternating between polite gargling and high wheezing. As my
blood pressure leveled off, these symptoms were replaced with soaring violins,

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

rainbows, chirping birds and a brilliant smile of the highest wattage. I looked at
Foo.

I suppose one can’t blame him, really. When you’ve searched your whole
life for The Perfect Burger, and find it 4100 miles from home, at just the right time
to stop a personal famine, and then you end up dropping the dashed thing on the
sidewalk – snatched from the jaws of victory you might say - and your own
twisted values prevent you from getting at another one, and the hottest woman in
the realm says “Hello Owen” to your foul friend and lavishes affection on him and
she completely ignores you and you’ve got a jumbo slice of tomato splashed onto
your crotch…well…it would be upsetting.

“You rotten sonofabitch…” he said. He was shaking and his eyes were
wet again.

I was flummoxed. “What do you mean ‘you rotten sonofabitch’?” The

thought came that he was back on my refusing to give him any chips, so I prepared
to dish him another karate chop, this time with a bit more starch to it.

“You said you’d never been to England before!” he said.

“I haven’t!” I said.

“Then”, he said, with the air of a trail attorney who’s about to pin his
witness to the mat, “how do you explain that chick knowing you? Hah?”

“I can’t” I said, as I looked down the road after the couple. Over much
head scratching during the coming months, we eventually figured that she must’ve
been part of our New Year’s Eve festivities. One would have thought one
would’ve remembered someone like that, if only because one would normally
make a complete ass out of one’s self trying to impress her once one had lowered
that fourth pint into one.

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

Hubba.

Things were happening too quickly for old Foo, and he was going to
crumple any minute, so I bustled him off. He pleaded for some chips. I told him to
eat his tomato slice to hold him over. He called me another name.

We ended up getting him a dry, bready, and exorbitant sandwich at the

train station and after we ate, we spent the time until departure listening to my
arteries harden.

The train was pretty full, and we ended up sitting at a table next to two
little old Scottish ladies right out of central casting. They were the sweet,
understated, oatcake baking Scottish, not the dour, fire-spitting ones who wear
barbed wire socks.

The trip to Scotland is longer than you’d think, and to pass the time, Foo
and I began playing cards. Soon, we saw people returning to their seats with cans
of Guinness. I charged off and returned with a six pack, and we started betting
drinks. This would normally bring a couple of icy sniffs from little old ladies, but
our Scottish matrons were in complete support of the program, and we made some
of the nice chit chat that you make with strangers on trains.

The one next to Foo kept asking where these damn tomato seeds were
coming from.

Soon, I slid out for reinforcements, and disaster struck on the way
back…three of the cans of Guinness fell out of the plastic ring thingy, hit the floor,
and started rolling away. With the help of eager bystanders, I was able to round up
my little clutch of stout, and got back to our table. I told Foo what happened, and
quickly loosed the remaining cans and did a quick shell game. Which were the
shaken ones? It seemed like an innocent little joke.

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

I cracked one…it was safe. Foo cracked one…and disaster struck. We’d
all expected a little ‘phssst’ from the shaken cans, but this one exploded out and
showered all over the table, the window, and the poor MacGrandma seated next to
Foo!

It was like that safety foam they shoot out onto runways.

She sat sopping with her arms raised in front of her and she gave a
surprisingly good impersonation of a goldfish. Thick creamy stout foam dripped
from her nose and chin. It ran in rivulets off her shoulders and it flattened her
hairdo and it even got in behind her glasses.

You’d think something like this’d be hilarious, but when you’re involved
in it, it’s like getting sucker punched around the fourth button hole - all the wind
goes out of you, and you just want to crawl under the table and quietly cry. The
other passengers were looking at us with disgust.

Foo began bawling and frantically tried mopping the old girl up, but soon
realized he was using her shawl to do it. I sprinted for towels and returned to see a
jovial pair of ladies reassuring a sobbing Foo that it was ‘OK’. We got the mess
cleaned up as best as we could, and our gushing apologies were met with darling
responses and reassurances and hand pats.

Inexplicably, the old gals actually thought the whole thing was pretty
funny.

We sat back in sticky seats with sniffles and nervous exhaustion. During
the commotion, I had rummaged through my carry-on looking for something to
bail with, and had pulled my drumsticks out of the way and put them on the table.
Seeing them now, the lady next to me asked with obvious zeal if I played in a pipe
band. I said unfortunately no, and was about to explain that in the coming months

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 Excerpted from ‘How to be a Pencilneck’ by Owen Garratt

I was going to try and join one back home. While answering her, I had scooped up
the sticks and gave one a deft little twirl with my left hand…

…and promptly knocked my beer square onto her lap.

End of part one…

© Owen Garratt 2009 www.pencilneck.com All Rights Res erv ed.