That sinking feeling

I’m usually a very peaceful man, you know that; one that wouldn’t normally ever think of hurting a fly, let alone doing it.

The idea wouldn’t have occurred to me at all if, this morning, a group of those young skinhead yobs who have been continuously breaking into my garden hadn’t completely smashed the little mermaid water feature, using one of my lovely hydrangea bushes as a urinal and writing an obscenity across the red cap of one of my expensive imported garden gnomes.

“Those animals”, I thought to myself, my blood pressure rising so high I nearly gave myself another stroke, “If only I could put up an electrified fence or something that would really hurt those buggers the way they’ve hurt me”.

But I knew that such a ploy would be out of the question, you see; that the law would be on the side of those criminals if one of them so much as hurt his finger climbing over my garden gate.

But then, as I was looking down at my desecrated gnome that was sinking up to the shoulder straps of its dungarees in my garden pond and holding onto its fishing rod like someone clinging, desperately, to a branch, an image, one that I had seen described in a thousand boys adventure stories growing up, flashed into my mind.

“Yes!”, I exclaimed, with a smile, as the seed of the idea started to germinate and grow in my brain, “That would do it. Easy to make, I think and the police would see it as an unfortunate accident rather than a deliberate act”.

All it involved was my garden pond, you understand, plus a few added ingredients; some ordinary sand and clay plus something of value to bait the trap.

And, that instant, feeling buoyant once more, I set to work, chuckling as I cleared away the wreckage the hooligans had left and, with the help of my trusty wheelbarrow and spade, tipped out the right proportions of sand and clay into my pond.

If only I had remembered to take off Abigail’s; my late wife’s, wedding ring as I was doing it.

It fell, slipping from my finger, onto the surface of the murky, brown, porridge-like concoction I had made, floating there and glinting seductively; cruelly.

And like the over confident fool I always was I was sure that I could reach it.

“Just an inch farther”, I thought, leaning over the pond and stretching out my hand, straining and grunting and feeling lumbago creeping across my lower back.

But then, well you can guess what happened next, can’t you, God? I fell in and that’s where I am now, in my back garden and up to my chin in homemade quicks-blub-blub-blub…