Teashop Short

I sat outside for the first time this year and of course it wasn't two minutes before somebody landed on my lap. It's the same in carparks when you make for the most deserted corner and almost instantly a young bloke with mad eyes will park six inches away from the driver's door staring at you through the side window like a leering ghoul eyeing up the latest stinking bodies.

And so it was. At first, he wasn't sure about sitting virtually on my table, and so his thin bottom hovered up and down over a few different chairs. It was a bit like watching an old amusement arcade machine where somebody's bottom had a bullseye painted on it and the player had to shoot at it with a ropey air rifle.

But I knew before he started the ritual that he would end up so close to my tomato sauce bottle that it would be lifted up and over by his clenched buttocks. For many people, there really is some irresistible anthropological need to herd together, no matter how pointless.

Naturally, he had a fry-up. This was in the form of two gigantic sausage butties, augmented with black pudding. Normal enough so far, but the rest was mesmeric. In order to maximize eating efficiency he lowered his head to the plate and then cranked his neck over so that his left ear was actually resting on one of the sandwiches. His jaw then appeared to dislocate like a python's to allow a vast haul of dripping fat to enter.

Finally, a leathery tongue flicked and rasped around the platter and I was reminded of a rabid jackal rimming the red eye socket of a dead terrosaur.

Three minutes later the whole plate was licked clean and the coughing started. It was quite possible it hear the churning interaction between cooking fat and mucous.

A blocked drain receiving the plunger....