So I had left my broken bottle of vinegar on the kitchen floor overnight. I had covered it with some newspaper, which served the duel purpose of soaking up the spilled liquid and more importantly hiding the whole thing from sight, so I could almost pretend it hadnÂ’t happened. Apart from there being some vinegary newspaper in the corner of my kitchen. And there being a vinegary smell permeating through the whole house.
The good news that my soaked trainers seemed to be vinegar free.
There had been a part of me thinking that I could just leave things as they were until my cleaner came on Thursday morning and then let her deal with it, but in the end the prospect of her finding the evidence of my stupidity, shamefully hidden under a stained Guardian would be humiliating as her finding one of my stools similarly concealed. She would think I was weird. The kind of person who broke bottles of vinegar and then rather than clearing them up, hid them under newspaper and tried to forget about them. Also what if my kitchen floor was permanently stained? What if the smell of vinegar never left? I would never forget the incident that led to the smell. I would have to sell my house and move on. But who would buy my vinegar stained vinegar smelling house? I would grow old and weak in my vinegar home and all the local children would call me Mr Vinegar-o and hold their noses as they passed by the vinegary gates of the vinegar house.
So I managed to locate my dust-pan and brush and start to clear up the remnants of the accident.
Predictably though I wasnÂ’t prepared to see the job through. I brushed up the bigger pieces quickly and mopped up the vinegar that hadnÂ’t soaked into the paper, with a clean bit of newspaper and then I lost interest and left things half done. There were still little shards of glass on the floor and the slight stench of vinegar, but enough had gone so that my cleaner could probably not piece together the evidence in her head to concoct an idea of what might have happened. As long as I didnÂ’t walk on that bit of floor without any shoes on I should be OK. Though in my mind I started playing out a scenario where I didnÂ’t bother to protect myself and stepped on some glass and it went up into my foot and into my bloodstream and killed me. I wasnÂ’t sure this was possible. But maybe I could cut my foot and not worry about the cut and it might become infected and I would have to go to hospital and whilst in hospital I contracted MRSA and died. If that happened then my decision to try and get a stick of liquorice out of the cupboard when my hands were full of bags of squash equipment, groceries and plastic containers would not just have led to the unfortunate smashing of a bottle of vinegar. It would have led to my death. I would have been killed by a stick of liquorice. Indirectly. It is hard to be directly killed by a stick of liquorice, unless it becomes lodged in your throat or if it is sticking end ways up and you trip over and fall on to it with your eye and the liquorice stabs you in the brain.
At least there would be some comedy value in that.
But dying indirectly from such an incident is too protracted to be amusing. If you want a notable comedy death then it needs to be summed up in a sentence, like those ones from the excellent Darwin Awards. Like
the man who almost died having sex with a vacuum cleaner.
If I was going to die it would be nice to go for some noble or heroic cause, like jumping on a hand grenade to save your platoon or pushing a child out of the path of a juggernaut. Or if not that, then peacefully in you sleep at the age of 95.
You wouldn’t like to get to Heaven and the bloke next to you says, “So I died after snorting cocaine off the breasts of three hookers in a Las Vegas hotel and making love to them all at the age of 65. It was brilliant – what about you?”
And you have to say, “Well I was trying to get a stick of liquorice out of a cupboard, despite holding four carrier bags, a ruck sack and some sports equipment, knocked over some balsamic vinegar and then a bottle of vinegar. And then because I didn’t clear up the glass properly and didn’t wear any shoes, I cut my foot which became infected and then I contracted MRSA in the hospital.”
YouÂ’d look like an idiot.
Yet despite projecting this far into the future and thinking of the dangers of walking on the floor in bare feet, I did not put my shoes on. Nor did I clean up the rest of the mess. And during the day I stood on at least three bits of broken glass. One of them was quite hard to pick out and my foot bled a bit.
Not content with being the kind of idiot who would know over a bottle of vinegar in such a convoluted way, I risked making all my worst nightmares come true. Hopefully I wonÂ’t die as a result of this. But if I do, could you tell people that I died because my sushi was poisoned with radioactive material by a Russian spy. And not let them know about the slightly pathetic reason for me shuffling off this mortal coil.
Thanks.
And to whet your appetite for the summer. Here are my Fringe programme entries for Edinburgh 2007 - Had to do a 40 and 60 word version.
Richard Herring – Oh Fuck, I’m 40! Star of TMWRNJ and ITV1’s “You Can Choose Your Friends” waves goodbye to his thirties. Can he still get away with his childish antics or is it time to don his pipe and slippers and await the blessed release of death? 20th anniversary of first Fringe appearance!
“Herring simply improves with age” List ****
Richard Herring – Oh Fuck, I’m 40! TMWRNJ star waves goodbye to his youth and awaits the blessed relief of death as he celebrates 40 years of life and 20th anniversary of first Fringe. “Herring simply improves with age” List ****
