Messing about in boats - an absurd vignette by Moses Halfpenny

The dramatic shipwreck had occurred so fast that Jacob had not had time to gather his belongings; he watched as his porthole dipped beneath the roiling waves (affording him a unique and spellbinding view of the coral reef and assorted aquatic fauna) and knew he had just moments to find space in a lifeboat.

That had been two days earlier. The interim he had spent adrift in said lifeboat, alone and without food or drinking water. The hot Pacific sun beat down on him by day, and at night he was beset with mosquitoes. But in spite of the discomfit these insects caused Jacob, he was encouraged for their presence suggested he was close to land.

On the morning of the third day, these hopes materialised in the vision - on the far horizon - of a slither of land, shimmering with the promise of survival.

"Behold," cried Jacob weakly, addressing the distant island, "behold thy white, dry strand; behold thy copse of fruitful palms. Oh! Sumptuous, bounteous mother!"

Relief washed over Jacob, ironically swamping his raft and causing it to sink. He drowned.

The Resort Guide - an absurd vignette by Moses Halfpenny

Charles was the unlucky sort of man whose misfortune was consistently of a magnitude much greater than his incompetence; in other words, though only half a man in terms of brain function, he suffered more than twice the average man's lot in terms of bad luck.

At the age of twenty-three, he could be found in the newly fashionable coastal resort of Ankrum, on the Red Sea, where increasingly affordable air travel - and a vastly improved security situation vis a vis pugnacious and militant locals - had created something of a tourist boom (the only kind of 'boom' involving tourists which the regional governor was keen to know about). Charles, on the basis of his being a strong swimmer and past work experience as a fishmonger, had found work as a dive guide. (Despite being close to the sea, Ankrum's native population were, in the main, devoutly terrestrial, leading the resort administrators to cast their recruitment nets further to starboard (or to port, depending on which of the two administrators, whose desks faced one another across a broadly east-west axis, you consider to have been chiefly responsible for recruitment (on balance, the more northerly administrator tended to take a lead in these matters, and so 'starboard' was most probably correct in this situation)).)

Charles's brief was to escort resort guests on snorkelling and scuba expeditions to the local reef, which was a short distance off the main beach - between twenty and a hundred yards depending on the tide.

Of course, his half-year's experience as part-time junior assistant to the deputy fishmonger of Chetham-on-Sea's Tuesday afternoon market (held every other week, other than when such a Tuesday coincided with the feast day of Chetham-on-Sea's patron saint Nicholas (approximately once every fourteen years), in which case the market was moved to the following Thursday) did not qualify him in the least for his role. He could, with guidance, satisfactorily fillet a haddock. However, he knew nothing of Indian Ocean marine life beyond that which he could ascertain from a laminated pictorial fish guide which hung in the dive office. The aged and creased laminate material was translucent rather than transparent, and in many ways it hindered rather than helped the amateur fish spotter. Only the octopus, with its various flailing tentacles, could be readily discerned.

Charles ran into problems in only his second week on the job when he misidentified as the often-deadly bull shark the always docile cowfish, known famously to enjoy being tickled. Much panic was sown amongst the under-7s 'Happy Starfish Snorkel Club' which he happened to be guiding on the reef at the time, and more than one parent, having first established that their happy starfish snorkeller was alive and intact, threatened to sue the resort. Tempers were cooled by a complementary round of frozen banana daiquiris from the beachside bar, the cost of which was deducted from Charles's salary (and, in fact, far exceeded it).

Tragically, Charles made the opposite mistake only the following day, with fatal consequences for one Mrs Worthington, who was attending the resort to celebrate forty years of marriage to Mr Worthington. What remained of Mrs Worthington was recovered from the stomach of the half-tonne bull shark which she had attempted to tickle, and which was later harpooned and dissected by the Coast Guard. Her wedding and engagement rings, alas, were not found, much to Mr Worthington's consternation.

In a rare instance of good fortune, since Mr Worthington was a typically awkward British holidaymaker with no knowledge of, or confidence in, both the local customs concerning tipping and the local currency's value as it compared to British pounds sterling, when settling his bill with the resort he made provision - notwithstanding the loss of his wife, and with her two valuable pieces of jewellery - for a substantial bonus to the dive guide.

This is how Charles came to leave Ankrum after little over a fortnight's employment, with pocketfuls of cash and a very frank employer reference, which, owing to his illiteracy, he could not understand, and which he later mailed to the Inland Revenue, believing it to be some kind of statement of overseas taxable earnings. An employee of the Revenue wrote back to him some months afterwards to express commiseration for his untimely sacking by the resort, and to thank him for drawing their attention to the errant tax affairs of one Mr Worthington, who had apparently continued to make use of a married couples annual allowance (albeit rather meagre), despite being newly widowed. Revenue officials, wrote the letter's author, would shortly be in touch with the widower Worthington, to 'straighten things out'.

The Wolves - an absurd vignette by Moses Halfpenny

Paul burst free of the the gnarled thicket which had impeded his progress for what had seemed like hours. Thick, leafless vegetation gave way to a steep, bare hill, dark and moonlit, covered with thick snow. They were behind him, Paul was sure of it. They were somewhere behind him, in hot pursuit.

Paul surged on, through the thick snow and up that blasted slope. His lungs were burning and his legs were almost numb with the strain. Above the noise of his own frantic breathing he could hear the plaintive, ghostly howling draw closer; he could hear the sound of bodies crashing through the undergrowth toward him. He could picture their foaming jowls and dark, flashing eyes, wide and maddened with hunger.

Any moment they would burst free into the open - and, yes, there they were! Looking over his shoulder, and feeling his innards dissolve with panic, he saw large black shadows flitting from the briers, onto the clear snow a bare half-mile behind him: one, one more, another, then three at once! They could see him clearly now, the pack, and their pace doubled. They coursed over the snow with ease, and with every stride they were gaining.

A minute later Paul's left foot hit a log, square on the toe. He cried out with pain and shock, and tumbled forward into the snow, a cushion of ice-cold powered glass. Without pausing to gather his himself, he scrambled to his feet and was off again, but he had lost vital seconds. He did not have to turn his head to know how close the wolves had drawn. He could hear them panting; he could hear their huge, snapping jaws.

They were not howling any more. This, they knew, was the end of the pursuit. The hunt was nearly over; in seconds the lead wolf would lean forward and snap through Paul's ankle. Their were tears in his eyes. His legs were slowing, and his chest was bursting. He could not go on.

Just then, as the wolves bore down on him, Paul suddenly remembered he had left the iron on at home. He cursed inwardly. He had left it in order to hang up his ironed shirts, meaning to return a short time later to iron some other garments, but he was distracted by the startling yet plausible series of events which ultimately led to his being pursued by starving, rabid wolves across a deserted and moonlit prairie.

"Damnation!" he cried aloud, and immediately his panicked mind was churning with images of singed fabric and a circuit board damaged beyond repair; a burn mark on the work surface, and steam damage to the newly painted utility room wall. "I'll have to buy a new iron," he thought to himself. His disconsolate heart sank further still when he recalled purchasing the present model - it was more than twelve months ago. The warranty had expired.