Sunday, February 27, 2011

'This will do' said Benny!

This weeks prompt at Writers Island is Improvise and at Sunday Scribblings, Fire.

This’ll do said Benny as he climbed up the hastily assembled pile of boxes and crates. A couple of hours later he emerged from A&E with a plaster cast on his leg. He should have known better. Always inclined to improvise, his life was one of disaster after disaster. Not long ago he stabbed himself in the palm of his hand when he used a pointed knife as a screwdriver. He’s a regular visitor to A&E. As a child he dislocated a shoulder whilst using a tea tray as a toboggan. He once nearly drowned when taking to sea in a bath tub; he forgot the plug. On one occasion he jumped from the top of a tree using a bed sheet as a parachute with dire consequences.

His friends still laugh about the time he went to a fancy dress party as some kind of black knight. He thought he’d save money by making his own costume from black plastic rubbish sacks. At one point in the evening he leant for a while on a very hot radiator. He jumped forward leaving molten remains of plastic behind and spent the rest of the evening totally unaware that he was displaying his bare bottom! Then there was the party when he turned up in the guise of the incredible hulk. Instead of face paint he used food colouring and he spent the whole of the following week with a green face and arms! Soon after that he lost his eyebrows when he lit his fire with petrol instead of a fire lighter, and the flames shooting from his chimney could be seen for miles. One time during a power cut he used a cigarette lighter instead of a torch and set fire to the curtains. Recently Benny needed a new electrical fuse but couldn’t find one. A twisted bit of silver foil seemed a good idea at the time, but the burn marks on the wall and ceiling show that it wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Benny has never had much luck in getting a girlfriend, so he improvised there too – I leave the rest to your imagination. As for pets, he always liked the idea of having a parrot, but looking after it seemed too much of a chore so he got a stuffed one with a little devise inside which when switched on created a fairly life-like parrot voice. He saw it in a second hand shop and wondered why it was so cheap. He found out when he got it home and it started swearing like a trooper! His front garden is the only one in his road with a display of golden daffodils in midsummer; plastic of course, and his little pond is inhabited by several koi carp which would be worth a fortune if they were real.

Nobody has heard of Benny for a while. Apparently he was planning to fly across the sea without travelling in an aeroplane. He was last seen with a bag full of balloons, lugging a cylinder of helium gas and heading for the cliffs. Later that day they found the empty cylinder lying on the grass but no sign of Benny. I wonder where he is.

7 comments:

  1. totally enjoyed...thanks for sharing your words

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  2. Never say die Benny and yet he has that strange wish to do so. This is a really amusing tale.

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  3. Hopefully he's having better luck someplace..he hasn't stumbled into Rosey's world has he? That would be a fire-cracker..Jae

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  4. Hilarious story. Benny reminds me of someone I was in the R.A.F. with, Colin A....... Perhaps he was Benny's grandfather, and passed the traits on.

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  5. LOL! Poor Benny! Love your stories, Keith! :-)

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  6. Keith, reading this i dunno why i could picture a Charlie Chaplin scene happening in front of me...
    Loved it !!

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