My girlfriends and other animals

Boredom threshold was just about reaching its limit for a seven year old watching overweight office clerks shuffling around a field when hurtling towards me came a vision that would signal that monumental moment in all boys’ lives; tadpoles do in fact turn into frogs. As Gill from Accounts rose into the air clearing the oversized beer barrel with her newly adjoined twin, out they came. The theme tune to ‘It’s a knockout’ played from the monstrous metal tannoys, Stuart Hall couldn’t contain his laughter anymore and Eddie Waring punctuated the frivolity with ‘that’s a lovely up and under by Gill from accounts’. Bouncing up and down, side to side, free from years of male chauvinist restraint. Jellies on a plate, wibbling and wobbling, gasping for air. I was mesmerised by their power, their desire not to have me avert my gaze. They were crying out to me, engaging me in their silent communication. As Gill landed on the other side of the beer barrel out they came, her angel cakes, her baby pillows, her Betty and Wilma’s, my first glimpse of fully formed breasts reached out to me and begged for forgiveness. I ducked under the rope in an attempt to catch Gill and her metronomes but she and they were too fast. A Red Coat caught hold of me and told me to stay back as it wasn’t safe. WASN’T SAFE! This was my Shangri la, this was my moment of no turning back; this was his cue.

 ‘Hello my friend. I have waited a long time for you. Let us begin. So nice to have you at last. Shall we go?’

Back at the chalet of immeasurable fun Mother continued her monologue to Father that slouching was not acceptable and what would the neighbours think. Father was trying to finish his potato waffles whilst telling Mother we were in sodding Wales and if the neighbours could see him from their bedroom window then they’d be doing bloody well, sister had finished eating the buttons off the settee and I, well I was staring out of the chalet window overlooking the now deserted Donkey Derby Obstacle course, my once beautiful and unsullied mind now awash with images causing David Attenborough’s trousers to twitch and dance their own wondrous dance. Handel’s Hallelujah chorus drowned out Mother, Father and Sister now throwing up settee buttons. A smile, an epiphany, an enlightenment beamed across my face as the sun began to set and the last Donkey was led away back into its straw covered lorry.