I didn’t get round to blogging yesterday as I must have been doing something in the morning (though I have absolutely no idea what it was now), and set off for my stand-up course fairly early on in the afternoon. There wasn’t much to be said yesterday really though, though I did go to a pretty good restaurant in the evening before my course. It was a Thai restaurant called Sabai. It was cool. You could buy wooden elephants. I didn’t, because they were about £50, but if the desire had taken me, I could have owned a wooden elephant. Probably not the most important factor to many people when deciding whether to visit a restaurant or not, the presence of ornate animals, but I liked it. The food was also great. Overall, my review of this restaurant is: very good. Mind you, I’m happy eating anywhere, apart from, as we’ve probably established in an earlier tale from this very blog ‘Hank and Alan’s Mushroom and Onion Shack’. I don’t go there anymore.

Anyway, I had my stand-up course. I practiced some material. It went well, so I’m happy. I’ll continue to try new material every week until I’ve got to what’s known as a ‘killer 5′, which is, I’m led to believe, a level up from a ‘great 5′. I’m not quite sure where a high 5 fits into this heirarchy, but probably fairly high up. Although no doubt it’s probably been demoted considerably from where it was in lieu of Halifax deciding they’ve not had enough fun ruining the economy, so have seemingly set out to vanquish high fives with their almost impossibly annoying adverts. I say I’m working towards a killer 5 anyway, though I don’t actually have a ‘great 5′ yet. I’ve probably got a ‘fluctuating 5′. There are good parts. I like it, or at least, I seem to remember I liked it before I became so used to it I can’t remember whether or not it was funny.

I spent this morning at work, assembling promotional cubes for the National Lottery Euromillions draw on Friday. This required me to use my brilliant engineering talents to fold cardboard and insert tabs into holes. You’d think this was easy enough, indeed, many people would be hard pressed to mess this up. I did though, and my first attempt became some kind of hideous mutant cube. Before I could correct my mistake though it scuttled off and hid in the air conditioning system. I decided not to say anything, and continued to craft cubes.

Having finished my craftery, I found stood around with about 4 Euromillions cubes. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was meant to do with them. I had several ideas, though I’m not entirely sure customers would have appreciated being pelted with cardboard cubes by a man shouting ‘IT’S A ROLLOVER!’ as they walked into the shop to pick up their newspaper. Besides, they had bigger concerns. I heard the padding of tiny feet on metal, and looked up at the air conditioning vent. There was a brief moment of silence, then the vent flew down to the ground, and a nearby customer who had just come in for a bag of sugar and a Caramac got dragged in screaming. I tried to save them, but could only half-heartedly shout ‘It’s up to £85 million you know…’ as I gently threw another Euromillions cube in that general direction. I was quite tired, and to be honest, I couldn’t be bothered serving any more customers anyway.

Shortly afterwards, there was a growl, and then a giant ballpoint pen spewed out of the vent. I helped the ballpoint pen to it’s… point, and asked if it was ok. “I’M A BALLPOINT PEN!” It screamed in anguish. “I ONLY CAME IN FOR A BAG OF SUGAR AND A CARAMAC!”

I somehow felt this was my fault. After all, I was the one who had released the mutant cube into the wild, and now he was regurgiating people as ballpoint pens.

“Ah, don’t worry about it.” I said, as I patted the manpen on the back. “Think about how much time you’ll save on signing cheques!” I quickly realised this made little to no sense, but I reckon this manpen had greater concerns on his mind.

“Isn’t there something you can do? Can’t you do something? DO SOMETHING!” Shouted the pen.

“I could probably let you have a Caramac for free.” I said.

“BUT I’M STILL A PEN!”

“A pen with a Caramac.”

“BUT A PEN!”

“Oh fine, look, I’ll see what I can do.” I said. I’d been up since 6 AM. Going toe to toe with a mutated lottery cube was the last thing I needed right now, but I could see I was going to have to do something. I picked up a nearby broom and hauled myself up into the vent.

It was dark in the vent. I struggled to see exactly what I was doing, though somewhere in the distance I could hear the chattering of teeth. Lottery teeth. I crawled through the vent, using my mobile phone to light the way. The chattering of teeth got gradually louder, which meant I must have been going in the right direction. But then, it’s a small shop, our ventilation system isn’t the largest. Anyway, as I rounded the corner after crawling for 7 miles, my phone illuminated the small figure of a Euromillions mutant. I had cleverly managed to sneak up behind it. This was my chance to take him down quickly and easily. I reached for my AK47, but as I did, I accidentally banged my elbow against the side of the vent. “Argh!” I shouted. The cube leapt round and let out a piercing battle cry of ‘DREAAMMM NUMBEEEERRRRRRR!’ I panicked and began to fire my AK47, spraying rounds all over the place as the tiny cube leapt about the vent like a rubber frog. After I’d fired off about 150 rounds, the trigger began to click. My heart skipped a beat as I realised that this was not good news. Thankfully, my panic was short lived as I looked across to see the mutant cube lying still at the other end of the vent, bleeding numbers, dead.

I shuffled back the way I’d come and out of the vent.

“Andy, you’ve freed me from my curse!” Shouted the manpen, now just a man, as he danced with his Caramac.

“Please, I was just doing my job.” I said, as I brushed the dust off myself. “Now let’s scan that Caramac and forget about this whole thing.”

“Andy, I need to have a word with you.” Said my supervisor, emerging as a character from nowhere. “There are 7 corpses in the vegetable aisle riddled with bullets. Do you know anything about this?”

“No…” I said, as I folded my origami AK47 behind my back and subtley placed it in my back pocket.

“Well, in that case, as you were.”

“Ok. Now, I’ve just got one last question for you.” I said, as I turned to the former manpen.

“What is it?”

“Do you want one bag of sugar or two?”

We both laughed, high fived, and froze as we watched the credits scroll up the screen to the music of Duran Duran. That was pretty much the end of the day. Neither of us had anticipated that it would take up around 1200 words on a blog post, but you know, sometimes that’s just the way it goes. Now I’m off to eat some tiny pancakes like a Shrove Giant.