Ridiculous

 

The wind made me think of Oz and then suddenly there was a yellow brick road.

 

"Woah!" I said, as a tin man, a lion and a scarecrow came prancing towards me.

 

"Ridiculous," I said, and off they pranced to find Dorothy.

 

I wasn't going to follow that yellow brick road. No way Jose! You see a yellow brick road and you follow it? What a cliche.

 

I turned round and a giant robot turned into a car and hurtled towards me.

 

"Oh come on," I said.

 

What to do? What to do?

 

I mentally rehearsed all manner of action hero options, but it was, of course, ridiculous to think the giant robot (okay, let's call it a Transformer) had any interest in me, so I just stood there and watched as the Citroen C5 sped past, got flashed by a speed camera and smashed into a parked BT van.

 

Transformer or not, those speed limits are there for a reason, folks.

 

Speaking of reasons, I started to wonder... why were these strange things to starting to happen? I didn't get very far in my wondering, however, as it had been a couple of hours since I had had breakfast and my stomach had started doing the Harlem Shake.

 

I went into a generic, nameless (or might as well have been) coffee shop, ordered a cheese toastie and a coffee (nothing fancy, just some hot brown stuff in a cup - I'm not made of money), sat by the window and imagined I was in some whimsical French movie. Then I stopped imagining, as I felt like a prat, said thanks to the waitress who brought me my coffee and toastie, waited for them to cool down a bit and wondered if I had enough toilet rolls. We don't all live in a movie (actually no one does).

 

Speaking of which, as my coffee was cooling, ripples started to appear on its surface. There was a rumbling, rhythmic booming and Godzilla walked past the window.

 

"Eh?" I said.

 

I didn't expect Godzilla, although there was a part of me that did, given the way this day was going.

 

Utterly ridiculous - I thought; then I got stuck into my coffee and toastie.

 

"Excuse me," I said to the waitress; "what type of cheese is this?"

 

"Edam," she said.

 

"In a toastie?!" I incredulously replied.

 

The waitress shrugged, then sat opposite me and started feigning an orgasm.

 

I downed my coffee, took another bite of my inappropriate toastie and left the coffee shop.

 

...

 

"Completely ridiculous!" I exclaimed, refering, of course, to the Edamified toastie, as an enormous Martian tripod burst out of the ground and started blowing things up with a laser. Despite the taste disappointment, however, my impromptu "brunch" had eliminated the Harlem Shake and I was able to proceed with my day without the impediment of a full blown digestive flash mob.

 

Speaking of which, I was relieved to bypass a spontaneous mass rendition of a medley of Abba songs, by way of seeking somewhere to relieve myself. I suddenly desperately needed a wee, as I had not gone in the coffee shop, and now I had no idea where the nearest toilets were!

 

"Excuse me," I said to a man in a dark suit and shades; "but can you tell me where the gents are?"

 

The man in black held up what looked like a pen torch and implored me to look at it.

 

"It's the middle of the day," I said in bafflement.

 

"You will forget everything," said the man in black.

 

"I've already forgotten where the toilets are," I said.

 

The man in black pressed a button on his pen torch and a light flashed in my eyes.

 

"Ridiculous man," I said, and as I walked away, I glimpsed him frowning and tapping the torch in the palm of his hand.

 

...

 

The afternoon passed uneventfully.

 

Apart from the zombie apocalypse.

 

...

 

That night, after I had had my Horlicks, checked Facebook and gone to bed, there was a tapping at the window.

 

"Ridiculous," I said under my breath, as I got up and opened the curtains to see what the commotion was.

 

"Shoo!" I said to the vampire, who, judging by the bit of blood leaking clumsily from the side of his mouth, had clearly recently fed, so was certainly not going to get a taste of my flesh.

 

Annoyingly, however, the vampire persisted, so I opened the window and, in as irritated a tone as I could muster, said, "What do you want?"

 

"I want to feast on your mortal blood," said the chap (who, I must admit, was looking a little pale).

 

"Well you may," I said (determined to hold my resolve, in spite of the encroaching sympathy on account of his pallor); "but I've had a long day, I've got an early start and I'll be jiggered if I'm going to be kept awake feeding the undead."

 

"But I-"

 

"Begone thy foul beast!"

 

"Okay..."

 

I had a wee, then went to sleep.

 

...

 

The next morning (I had slept pretty well, considering), I had a mug of Darjeeling and a croissant, opened the door to see if the newspaper had been delivered, then noticed that the street had disappeared.

 

"Oh how ridiculous," I said, then went back inside, had some more tea and switched on the news.

 

As I was catching up on the events of the past twenty-four hours, a spaceman burst into my living room. I turned the telly up and he soon went away. I got on the phone to the local council.

 

"Hello?" I said. "Yes, I'm calling from 23 Crawfish Road... Lower Framlington, yes... It's my house... It's been shot into Space... I have no idea, some time last night?... Well there's still a few feet of driveway... No, I can't talk to my neighbours... They're thousands of miles away!... I dunno, I haven't checked... Okay, hang on..." - I went and looked in the garage and the boiler was still running; all the dials seemed okay, it was making some sort of noise, and as far as I could tell, there was hot water running through the pipes; I went back inside and picked up the phone - "Hello...? Hello...?" - dialing tone... the council officer had put the phone down on me. "Ridiculous!" I said, and I was just about to pick up the phone, hit redial and give the sad little man (presumably) a piece of my mind, when a 1960's telephone-slash-police box materialised in my living room, a man wearing a very long scarf with frankly too many colours on it walked out, and before you could say, "Time Lord," he grabbed my arm, pushed me through the door of the telephone-slash-police box, pulled a few levers and took us to another time and place.

 

As it happened, the time was twenty-four hours ago and the place was a couple of streets away from my house.

 

It was a bit windy.

 

Suddenly there was a yellow brick road.

 

I shrugged.

 

"We're off to see the wizard..." I sang, as I pranced off with the tin man, the lion and the scarecrow, to find Dorothy.

 

Ridiculous!