My friend is a skinflint
He won't pay for things if he can avoid it. Oh no. For example, one year, he decided that it wasn't worthing splashing out on petrol to drive a few miles to a FREE firework display on Bonfire Night.

So he held his own. In his back garden. First up (and penultimate, it became apparent), rockets. Whoosh! Bang! The crowd gasped in sheer awe! Well, actually that didn't happen. It was more of a perfunctory pop, followed by an apologetic fizzle, rounded off by an audible snicker from a ragtag smattering of bored folk.

But then he brought out the coup de grace - a slightly manky Catherine Wheel. This he nailed to his shed, with the minimum of pomp and ceremony (remember, time is money. As are calories needlessly burned), and lit it up.

At first, we were all reasonably impressed. It belched flame and spit sparks in a whirling dervish of light and sound. However, I started to notice that, far from tracing a perfect circle of light, it was somewhat elliptical. No, wildly elliptical. Then I realised. He hadn't actually nailed it to the shed - it was simply hanging from a knackered old screw. And it was gradually working its way off of it.


Suddenly, it was loose, careening its way around the garden like a tramp with a sparkler caught in his hair. Correspondingly, people started yelling, and running around like idiots. The Wheel of Death shot through a pile of leaves, setting them ablaze...which in turn quickly set my friend's shed alight. Mayhem all around.

But Catherine the Great was not finished yet. Somehow, it performed a Roadrunner-style vertical run up the side of a nearly tree, catapulting itself into a neighbour's garden, smashing through their greenhouse window, and setting their plants on the speedy journey to ash and recriminations.

It began to dawn on my friend that this may well cost him Some Money.

The look on his face was a treat, so I laughed until I was nearly sick. We are not so friendly now.

Not since he tried to get everyone else there to pay for it, anyways. The arse.
( the_other_jeff_lebowski Croutons on my tits, Tue 8 Nov 2005, 10:25, Reply)