14
PRANK WAR
I moved back to London to live with Ollie. It felt good to breathe the
fresh smog of London, to crack out my party top hat and regrow my
famous handlebar moustache. We stayed in a wooden hut near the
whooping willow with our friends Kit and Julia. Muncho loves decorating,
so he begged me to allow him to put his expertise to work. He had
visions of magnolia wallpaper and chandeliers, but we wanted
something a little more rustic, so we painted it silver and added many
digital clocks. I planned to put these clocks away if Jordan ever came
to visit, because of his fear of time, but Jordan, ever the hero of his
story, told me that actually it was only grandfather clocks that gave him
the heebeegeebees by then, which were much easier to avoid. What
a relief! Finally, I could embrace my love of digital clocks! So I got ten
more and glued them to the ceiling above my bed so that I could see
them all as soon as I woke up and I could look at them with my open
eye while my slow eye got ready to open a few minutes later.
Third year was our final year at university and we were determined
to make the most out of it. I had a list of things I planned to do. I
wanted to write ‘buy more digital clocks’ on it, but I was worried it was
getting excessive, perhaps just one more. One thing I hoped might
happen was meeting a girl. It would be great if I found one with her
own opinions, that weren’t necessarily the same as mine. Maybe that
was crazy. In that time I only met girls who needed grandfather clocks
in their lives, and that was never going to work out. Also,
Legumasaurus Rex had advised me to call all girls ‘baby’ and to
explain what they were trying to say while they were trying to say it,
which turned out to be bad advice. It was even worse than Muncho’s
advice, which was to just go up to a girl and give her a puppy, which
was just irresponsible. So instead of dating girls, I cemented my
friendship with Ollie Kendal until it became solid like quick drying
cement, like rock but man-made.