Wednesday, 31 May 2006

A monkey could have seen what the problem was

Working purely from my posts, a reader might imagine that I spend all my time travelling to and from work, trawling through the fruit and veg aisle looking for unusual produce and reminiscing about my childhood. Not wanting to disappoint, today’s instalment deals with an amusing situation the writer observed on the way to the train station.

With Frou Frou acting as a ghostly soundtrack, I spotted a short Alexei Sayle attempting to put a Swiss Ball into the back seat of his car. He was carrying it with his arms spread-eagled and his little bald head poking over the top of the sphere like the rising sun. The guy would approach the open doorway, walk the ball into the hole and upon finding it wouldn’t fit he’d back off a couple of steps, rotate the globe a seemingly random number of degrees and then approach the car once again. As I advanced, I must have seen the guy repeat this process at least six times like a malfunctioning automaton caught in a logic loop.

The situation was so ridiculous that I was scared I was being punk’d (as in Ashton Kutcher not the prison slang) but as I pulled level with the car, he gave up on the idea of getting it into the back seat, slammed the door, then moved to the back of the car and proceeded to attempt to put the giant orb in the boot. I bent over and pretended to tie my shoelace just to see how it played out. Unfortunately, after a couple of failed attempts to push the ball through a gap that was physically impossible to get the thing through, he swore, removed the stopper, thus deflating the whole thing and finally getting it in his car.

From the look of it, Alexei could have really used a couple of sessions with the Swiss Ball so I’m glad that he managed to conquer the devilish device. Also, I was reminded that we should never forget that watching the misadventures of short, bald men will always be funny.

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