Pervy Paddy
I stopped for petrol, trundling my clapped out Mondeo estate into a south London station, wife beside me, two-year-old daughter asleep in the back next to five-year-old crayon-wielding son. As we halted opposite the shop door it opened and a tall, elderly gent emerged. He looked up past the grimness of Kennington and smiled at a blue sky, his still chiseled features spreading into a self-satisfied grin.

Then he saw us and approached. All the windows were down and he glanced at the wife, still beaming, then past her to me. Then with a cheery wink he stuck his head in the rear window, smile ever wider, relishing with evident physical pleasure the innocent, infantile vista that was the back seat. This elegant, well-preserved, expensively suited, leery old fecker ogled my kids for several long seconds before looking straight at me and speaking in a low, reverential and frankly creepy voice: "They are why I do it you know. They're what it's all about for me."

It was one of those occasions when you're miraculously blessed with verbal inspiration. "Good for you pal. Now get the fuck away from my kids." If my wife was proud, she didn't express it. She stared straight ahead through the windscreen as the tall, clearly shaken paedo disappeared fast.

"That was Paddy Ashdowne" she said, "I used to quite like him..."
(foxbean i am a one in ten, Wed 14 Oct 2009, 23:35, Reply)