Christmas Slugs
Prelude
This didn’t happen to me but to my schoolfriend O. But it did happen at my parents’ house.

Act One
At around 3 am one Christmas Day in the mid-1990s, my mother heard something rustling in the garden, but thought nothing of it. At 6, the doorbell rang. O stood there, looking bedraggled. “I was wondering, Mrs Enzyme’s Mum, if you might have a spare bed?” he asked. O was always very polite, and I think my mother fancied him a bit. She took pity on him and let him in.

Act Two, Scene 1
My schoolfriends and I, having gone to various universities, used to make a point of going to the pub to see in Christmas Day. (Non-linear narrative ftw!) At the end of the evening, we dispersed. O realised that he was much too drunk to drive to his house several miles away, and was invited to crash at V’s house. O and V had been going out before university; they had finished with each other now, but were on reasonable terms. However, in the small hours, O misjudged just how reasonable those terms were, and ended up getting thrown out. Still drunk, but now bewildered, alone, and far from home, he needed a plan.

This plan involved walking to my house.

Act Two, Scene 2
My father, having gone through a phase of insulating the greenhouse, the kitchen, the study, and just about anything else that didn’t move, had a large roll of bubble-wrap in the greenhouse. O arrived at my house and found it dark and quiet; too polite to wake anyone at that point, but still needing somewhere to spend the night, he let himself into the back garden with the intention of sleeping under a rhododendron, and found the roll. The greenhouse was too cluttered to sleep, but, wrapped in bubble-wrap under the rhodo, he would be fine.

Anagnorisis
What forced O to bite the bullet and ring the doorbell was that, few hours later, it began to rain. He apparently hadn’t really minded the slugs with whom he shared his bivouac.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 11:41, 3 replies)

Seriously...
Only you could work Aristotelian references into a QOTW post.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 12:14, closed)

Crackhouse...
Hehehe. It's such a lovely word.

(I do it all for you! God, that sounds sinister.)
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 12:31, closed)

it _is_ a lovely word
Now go and join the sinister stalkers queue: first on the left, one gun each :)
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 12:37, closed)