Funny Short Stories
The Nerdy Gurdy Man
Eve peered out of her kitchen window, adjusting the net curtains to even out some of the kinks.
'I'm not curtain twitching,' she told herself. 'I'm simply adjusting my curtains the better to keep an eye on my neighbour.'
She'd been 'keeping an eye' on him with increasing regularity, even urgency, over the previous few weeks for he seemed to be working more obsessively again, getting thinner again, and, the cheek of the man, failing to speak to his neighbour.
Not that she'd thought 'he's not speaking to me'; that would be selfish. She'd thought he's working too hard, he's getting thinner. The other thought, if thought it was, had just turned up on its own. He's not speaking to me so often.
I don't want him to see me twitching the curtains. I don't want him to see me twitching the curtains, Eve thought, even though I'm not. I'm just anxious for his welfare.
There's a fat chance of him noticing me anyway.
Fidget meandered back along the cluttered path from his crowded garden shed/workshop to his house, eyes apparently glued to the ground, but more likely riveted to images of whatever he was presently designing. He whistled tunelessly, his mind far too busy for checking the pitch.
It's not exactly tuneless, thought Eve. Certainly not a monotone. I expect he's a bit too preoccupied to concentrate. I wonder if he even knows he's whistling?
Anyway, it's his business what he does. I'll leave him alone. I'll weed the flower bed out the front.
♠
After lunch, Eve decided she'd visit Fidget in his shed, just to check on his welfare prior to finally leaving him alone, permanently, totally and completely. Not a smidgen of interference would emanate from this neighbour.
This is a truly bizarre conglomeration of . . . er, . . . devices, thought Eve. Yet even within her private thoughts she resolved not to think it; it was far too critical.
'Such an inventive man,' she said, as Fidget looked up from the workbench and saw Eve approaching the half open shed door. He smiled and returned his gaze to the task in hand. A smidgen of tutting and tooth-sucking indicated that all was not entirely fine and dandy.
'I'm not disturbing your work, am I?' she asked.
Fidget continued to gaze at his gizmos and inspect his invention. His chin moved up and down a mite as though practising a long forgotten art such as conversation. He suddenly looked up and beamed a friendly short-sighted smile through his spectacles.
'Not at all! How are you, Eve?'
'Fine thanks,' she dutifully replied, then thought about it. 'Yes, I am well, thank you.'
And she smiled too.
'You don't happen to know anything about hormone-suppressing, bi-polar semiconductors drivers; preferably open-source?' fidget asked, without any trace of optimism.
'Absolutely nothing,' said Eve. 'I think hormone levels may be affected by overwork and poor diet,' she hazarded. There'd definitely been talk along those lines on BBC Radio 2, or maybe it was in the colour supplement of the Daily Mule?
'No problem here, then,' said Fidget. 'I never eat junk food.'
Eve bit her lip and decided to say nothing.
'Do you eat at all?' she asked.
'Yes. I decided to cook carrot and lentil soup when I woke this morning.'
'Oh good! You were mentioning that last month. Is it a good recipe?'
'I haven't done it yet. I'm sure it was this morning I made a note to buy the carrots. Or it may have been yesterday. Or perhaps it was Tuesday . . . .'
'You really must get out of your shed more often!' complained Eve, suddenly animated. She peered over his shoulder at an array of wires, a large slab of toffee and, apparently, several beetles with far too many legs.
'It's a lab,' responded Fidget without thinking about it.
Eve was temporarily struck dumb. It looked pretty much like a shed to her, despite the unusual and extremely cluttered contents.
'Do the beetles eat the toffee?' she asked.
Fidget raised one eyebrow and continued to tinker.
Eve decided they probably weren't beetles as their legs appeared to be metal, and her disinterested gaze wandered upwards.
The top shelf had apparently accumulated all the items of essential maintenance. Galvanised flat-headed nails suitable for securing roofing felt repairs; creosote for preserving ageing timber; a grease gun – ideal for saving the rusty innards of, for example, a padlock; a squeezy can of oil, ideal for curing squeaky door hinges.
A drop of rainwater dripped from the decaying roofing felt onto Eve's hair, causing her to stumble into the door, which squeaked alarmingly as she grabbed the padlock. The padlock disgorged a cloud of rust particles which made her sneeze and this in turn blew a cloud of dust from the door itself which was apparently suffering from dry rot, damp rot, and liberal-democrat rot all at once in its frantic attempt to experience to the full the wonderful life of a shed door.
Having dusted herself off, Eve observed that the essential items were joined together with cobwebs. Cobwebs so ancient that even the spiders had moved out and were tempted to complain to 'the authorities' that 'they' should do something about it.
(The archives of The Wogan Institute for Penetrating Sociological Insight and High Fat Diets on Planet Donut (and, through the phenomenon of parallel universities, at The University of Wherewithal, UpNorth, England, amongst many others) clearly demonstrate that both 'the authorities' and 'they' have never been identified for most essential tasks.
The Wogan Institute for Penetrating Sociological Insight and High Fat Diets (WIoPSI&HFD) (on all worlds) also records that all supposedly highly-evolved species (I.e. those with an opposed thumb and large clubs) on all worlds, parallel or perpendicular, loath 'the authorities' and claim 'they' should fix it. Even where 'the authorities' don't exist!
For the record, 'They' are a heavy metal band/seven strong religious movement based in New York, dedicated to a) becoming brainless pissheads with severe liver disorder; and b) complete abstinence from pre-marital common sense. They have only ever been known to fix anything with an axe (*a consensus was taken and it was resolved that all the brackets end here) )!
From the second shelf down, which contained electronic and mechanical components suitable for creating the bizarre inventions wrought by Zorba the Prophet's fevered imagination and, more recently, increasingly exotic forms of semi-conducting life, there was no sign of cobwebs.
Eve was disposed to notice things of this nature.
'It isn't toffee, it's a circuit board,' Fidget explained.
'I'm not surprised it's bored. I know!' Eve suddenly declared, 'Why don't you take up music!'
Fidget continued soldering and alternately humming or whistling, depending whether his teeth were employed to hold wires, tools or bits of string.
Eve had a vision of Fidget maybe singing, or at least tapping his foot as he played a guitar, a whistle or a drum of some sort. In her view – the view that seemed to her to be eminently reasonable – he was heading for back trouble. He spent virtually all his time hunched over a workbench, or, more recently, his home-made computers.
Fidget looked up and beamed as a tiny light lit up on the circuit board.
'Good idea,' he said.
Eve was puzzled for a moment. She'd been fairly certain he wasn't listening and she'd slowly lost interest and, as she gazed at his cluttered workshop/lab/shed, she'd relapsed into daydreams.
'I thought you weren't listening,' she confessed.
'Wellllllllllll, part of me was,' said Fidget. 'But I do have to concentrate until I finish what I'm doing.'
He certainly is concentrating, thought Eve. I suppose I'd better leave him to it. I certainly wouldn't want to interfere.
'I'll have a word with Acronym Stanley,' said Fidget without looking up. 'He plays music in the pub.'
'Ooer,' said Eve, twisting her hands nervously. Pubs sounded a bit of a risky venue to her way of thinking, and her mother had thought so too. Then she reconsidered.
'They have food, do they?'
'Yes.'
'What a good idea!'