"Charlie," said Bethel, Churlish's ex girlfriend but three.
"I don't want to get into drugs - that's what they are accusing me of!"
"You haven't been listening, have you? Never had any respect for women. Don't know why I... Charlie Churlish. Much bettter name than Pete Churlish for a Private Dick."
"Peter! I'm never Pete."
"Well, you're never Peter from now on, either. You're bloody Dick - I mean Charlie."
"That's why I broke up with you, Beth, you were always mothering me."
Instead of the nostalgia blow-job, Beth spent the rest of the evening helping CC draw up a plan of action.
"CC"! PI Charlie! He was beginning to enjoy the new image
But how were they going to find Geoffrey, his probably evil brother? After they's tried Facebook,they were stumped. "What about your mum?" Beth asked.
]]>"You are under arrest pal, for interferring with a policeman in the course of his duty. And uttering an abusive remark."
Our intrepid PI is tempted to answer back, but notices most of the other customers in the pub were being led away, stuggling, in handcuffs.
"What's your name?" the policeman with the biggest feet asked.
Once Churlish was installed in the back of a police van, everything became a little more relaxed. Everyone else in the van seem to be police. "We have to arrest a quota of Domestic Extremists every night to keep the Devil Worshippers happy, ha ha.," explained the big-footed one. "It's called racial prejudice if we look up too many dagos."
"I was just an Innocent Bystander" Churlish tries to explain. "Can't we come to some arrangement?" His aunt had recently left him four solid silvr candlestick in her will.
"Want some of this?" The policeman offers a spliff. "What we want is you drug connectiions. We haven't done a drug raid for ages. What's that stuff you want to try Kev? SLP? or Slut? Can you get us any, fast?"
"I am not a drug dealer!"
"Mr Churlish, it doesn't pay to be coy with me. Your name comes up on the police computer."
"I expect that my brother, Geoffrey. I haven't seen him for years."
"No family values, eh? We could do you for that, and all!"
"Nice one, Brian!" The van fills with raucous laughter. Tonight the filth are having a great time.
]]>But Peter Churlish, determined to begin his career of Private Investigator (Should he change his first name to Damien, Mitch?) presses on, until he has tracked down the name of Cheryl's boyfriend/alleged killer - Tom Smith - and the pub he drinks in when not under arrest.
There's a celebration in progress when Churlish arrives... Tom Smith has been released! No evidence against him, apparently. It seems he might not have been Cheryl's lover in the first place. Our fledgling Private Investigator is pleased his initial instincts were right - but miffed that there is no longer a Wrongly Accused that needs his name cleared (and might give our Churlish a fee).
Still, someone must have killed Cheryl, who had such a saucy smile.
At that moment, a vanload of policeman charge into the pub.
]]>"Good luck with the rest of your life," she shouts up the stairs. "You'll need it!" She closes the front door gently.
The shorn bits of Peter Churlish's moutache have mostly fallen into the washbasin.
"It's time to start a new chapter" he announces to the mirror, for there is no one else around.
Wednesday is the day Churlish buys most of his groceries. It's Friday, but what the hell. Groundhog grocery, day, ha, ha. Even repetition can be a new start. Anything to repress the nagging feelings of failure and loneliness.
"Don't you recognise me?" he asks the girl at the minimart till. She's usually quite flirtatios. "I've shaved my moustache off."
"Wouldn't know, dear. Only began this morning."
He feels embarassed he hadn't looked more closely at her. "What's happened to... Cheryl" At the last moment he remembers the name on the usual chashier's badge.
"Oh, she's been murdered. Didn't you see it the paper? Loads of blood in the bath."
He gapes.
"That'll be twenty four pounds fifty three. Pull you card in there. They've arrested the boyfriend. Apparently he's good at karate."
"He didn't do it."
"How do you know?"
"I am," Peter Churlish decides,emphatically, "A Private Investigator."
]]>Not every day has a word. Saturday 7th November should count itself lucky.
A star is born.
Peter Churlish, Private Investigator. He has a brother Geoffrey.
And a handlebar moustache, which he shaves off in the first episode. We only witness the very, very end of his dada period.
CHURLISH, PI
More than a series, it will be a franchise. Tee shirts, ringtones, later a theme park. Stamps.
But we first see him communicating with the bathroom mirror, contemplating his irritating moustache...
]]>"And who we are..?"
"Fucking Intellectual! Kill the fairy bastard!"
]]>Beside the desk there was a hole. It glowed. People kept disappearing down it.
The anticipation, the dread, the panic... Tom's heart would have beaten its way through his ribs if he still had a heart - or ribs, for that matter.
During the wait, of course, he had made a list of his principal sins - as he saw them. His adulteries, the fight in the pub when he was a teenager, shoplifting only once no twice, his erratically bad temper (surely swearing was tolerated nowadays)... They would know all this anyway. It would probably be best not even to attempt excuses.
St Peter smiled faintly at Tom and looked down to his list. "The cat?" he asked. "Why were you cruel to that cat?"
Tom shook with fear - and then remembered. Once he'd had a girlfriend who had been adopted by a mangey black cat. She kept complaining. One summer evening Tom had taken the cat in his car out into the countryside and dumped it in a place where it was unlikely to survive.
"No,not that cat" St Peter said, displaying an annoying talent for mind reading. "The other one."
Tom's mind went blank, then blanker. A sour taste, a red coloured blankness.
"It doesn't matter that much about the cat. But my boss hates forgetters. A short sharp shock in the flames for you, pal."
Short? A hundred years or so? An introductory afternoon? On earth Tom had been an optimist. What had happened to eternal damnation?
St Peter (or his body double) winked. "Oh, the Almighty is indeed Merciful. But He does have a Wicked Sense of Humour."
]]>There were quite a few people in the room. They got in Bob's way and he kept trampelling on them. He roared occasionally and the room shook. He stank to high hell. No one in their right mind could fail to notice that Bob was there.
But they must all have been out of their minds.
"Elephant? What elephant?" they said to each other. "There's no elephant in this room."
Pathetic isn't it? None of them dared deny the potency of the stupid and fairly recently coined metaphor. In the end, I think, Bob - out of pure frustration and boredom - probably trampled everyone in the room to death. But I didn't hang around long enough to give this story a definitive punchline.
]]>We'll climb aboard that sentimental cloud,
Hitch a tinted ride to Hollywood.
Lock into each other's blinded eyes
And see our own, fluorescent.
This is a by-numbers parody of love,
In nursery rhyme identical.
But better this than feel more dangerous -
To find all we have in common is
An itchy, inconvenient lust,
Earthbound, shabby, profound
Only in the way it's selfish.
A lust which might sanitate and dry
If we use big words about it.
]]>Life's full of failure-guys.
Some are idiots, some may be wise.
Puff! Cry!
Throw custard Pies.
You'll be wondering how this ditty will end.
Don't wonder - fight. Puff! Bang! Contend.
"You're talking nonsense as usual, darling, but I do adore the way you pronounce your 't's".
"Lets go to bed."
]]>I'm not a vampire, dad.
Don't try and be clever with me. It's in your genes! Your mother and I have always been regular users, as you well know. It's all we've got in common.
That doesn't mean....
Oh, shut up you silly veggie-pandy! It's dark now. Why don't you fly down the road and get your fill from the Robinson girl? It's rhesus positive.
Rhesus what?
Or whatever. I was never good at blood groups and stuff. But it does taste good.
]]>Yes, there's a gentle adverb in my heart,
But expressing that's the hardest part.
We as Men just do and fart.
We are Male
And should be Strong.
We have Muscles
So we Can't be Wrong."
Any sugar?
I bet you spill it. Two.
Two sugars?
Yes, yes. Now for God's sake don't spill it!
No worries.
I AM WORRIED.
Here you are.
Let go. YOU'VE SPILT IT!
Well, in a sense...
Never trust a servant. You made me spill it
]]>"You condescending creep. You are banned for life."
]]>What nonsense. He squashed the nasty little creature with a rolled up copy of that morning's Daily Telegraph. Even surrealism has its limits.
]]>"I am a ghost," said a voice, clearly pretending.
But Morgan took no chances. He shot at the curtain. Through the curtain, through his second-best friend's heart.
His friend was called Patrick. The police let Morgan go to the funeral. He made a short speech at the graveside. "Patrick loved practical jokes," he said. "That was his downfall." Morgan spat on to the coffin and was taken away in handcuffs.
In the film version, there's a musical number here.
]]>"What are they?"
"I want you to die."
"I can understand your anger, darling, but I've got a hair appointment this afternoon."
"You make me sick."
"You are adorable, sweetheart - has anyone ever told, you?"
"Oh, mummy, what am I going to do?"
]]>"You said Rosamary before!"
"Lilli with an 'i' at the end."
"I'm not a Lilli. Nobody's a Lilli with an 'i'."
"Your name is now Lilli. It has a good fit with the rest of our portfolio."
"No one will remember me as Lilli."
"I doubt if anyone will remember you as anything for very long."
]]>She squeezes his hands across the table. "Of course I love you darling," she says. He can barely see her eyes through the flame of the candle. "That's what you pay me for."
]]>God praise the carrots in the plick,
There on the table, spangled kangeroo.
Tension meeks out the diffidence of sprouts
And even tortoishells have passing fibrous doubts,
But who to clobber and what Hollywood to sue?
The Prince became impatient fr mre change. He rdrd hs advsrs 2 spk in txt language, but several had a lisp. Prince Sammy didn't ntce & sn he dcrd by pn f dth tht vwls wld b bnnd cmptly thrght th lnd.
The effect was disastrous, I shall explain if I am ever commissioned to write the full story.
]]>Head over heels.
She would begin to pine for him the moment he left the room. She spent her sleeping hours dreaming about him, her hours awake devising ways of seeing him again.
When he looked straight at her, she became breathless, weak at the knees, thrilled by the paralysis. She could barely speakk. She longed for her soul to disappear for ever in the blue depth of his eyes.
But she never let him touch her.
Touching would have sullied her feelings for him with something vulgar and carnal.
Instead their love remained uncompromised, untested - exquisitely perfect.
]]>The rigid waves are christie on their plot,
Disgrace despoiling in the Park of Lot.
The moons, sated and soft, are frankly froak.
Should I plant the orchids outwith Cranleywoat?
An easy question, and an unseemly Sid explains.
The thrills, the smorgasbord, the paradoxic drains
Blocked with Holy Arsenic, grinning with a fork.
An occham with foibles, blackboard and a squork.
Let's goof away with buttercups till dawn,
All thoughts of poetic fame forelorn.