Oddbod and the Victorian Freak Show

I was on my way to post a letter when my hitherto taciturn neighbour – a swarthy stoner with a rectangular head and sporadic stubble – beckons me over the road. Him: ‘Can I have a quick word?’ Me: (thinking, have I rammed his scooter during one of my  bish, bash, bosh parking manoevres, or maybe I’ve inadvertently stolen one of his recycling boxes?) No, nothing so prosaic…..’What do women want from men?’ he demands, his swarthy brows knitting as he draws heavily on his Camberwell Carrot. So deep, so meaningful, and so utterly weird. I mutter something about ‘understanding’ and ‘being listened to’ and, thinking about my rotten compost bin and toilet that jerks alarmingly to one side when an arse descends on it, throw in ‘most of us appreciate an occasional burst of DIY too’. As I’m musing on all the other things women want from men, like the ability to fight off a bear and an innate understanding of what’s good and bad in the underpant department, Oddbod mumbles something about a pizza, straddles his scooter and buggers off.  Later on that day I have two accidents; firstly, a new shop at the bottom of my road causes me to fall off my bike. I’m casually peddling along the pavement when I catch a glimpse of a baby in a bell jar. In a shopping street normally populated by Cuban hairdressers and Nigerian Mini-Marts, this is a strange sight indeed. I do a double take and lose my balance, falling off my bike, whereupon the shop owner invites me into his freakish emporium for a rummage. The shop specialises in ‘roadkill couture’ and Victorian antiquities and I put on a good show, marvelling at the Zebra’s head on the wall but really, I don’t feel that a set of stuffed spiders or a pair of mahogany calipers are going to add anything to my life so I make my excuses and leave. Later on that night I scald my hand on a hot saucepan and now have a large suppurating blister on my palm. I take much advice on whether water blisters should be burst or not but decide to operate on myself with a large darning needle. I am now leaking plasma left, right and centre.