Did Something Stupid

This week­end, I vol­un­tar­ily pitched myself from a small metal cage, moun­ted at the head, so to speak, of a massive erection.

It was a sin­gu­lar act of spon­taneity. I had not woken up that par­tic­u­lar morn­ing with an unex­pec­ted yearn­ing to exper­i­ence the delight­ful sen­sa­tion of a gravity-assisted plum­met. Nor had I pulled up at the NEC that lunch­time in search of a means to appease a deep-seated crav­ing for the pleas­ures of high-velocity flesh-concrete fusion. No, by all accounts it was just another day, and I was think­ing no fur­ther ahead than my sand­wich fillings. Smoked ham or stilton? Chut­ney or pickle?

Fate, how­ever, is inex­or­able, as a fic­tional Bern­ard Corn­well char­ac­ter might slip onto the end of a par­tic­u­larly poignant sen­tence. That day, it was fate that caused the crum­bling remains of the for­tune cookie to reveal a bis­cu­ity sur­prise — I had won a bun­gee jump! As quick as light­ning I was fast-tracked through to the sign­ing of a dubiously-vague dis­claimer, upon which I left my excited, sweaty mark, and ushered in the dir­ec­tion of the exit with dir­ec­tions float­ing round my head in a most mis­dir­ect­ing fashion.

And so it was that I found myself with my toes hanging over the edge of the door­way, look­ing out of a wildly-swinging, wind-buffeted cage and into — well, noth­ing. There were people far below me, I knew that much. The big green tar­paulin looked decidedly smal­ler than it had on the ground. And the man with the kitchen-roll had def­in­itely hid­den his absorb­ent prof­fer­ing from view. I remem­ber look­ing down on the roof of the NEC. “I’m let­ting go in three… two…” said the other chap in the cage, who I now noticed was reced­ing upwards at an alarm­ing rate. I had already fallen a hun­dred feet before I real­ised, then I was flail­ing through the air, limbs gyr­at­ing, great glob­ules of phlegm spurt­ing at ran­dom passers-by.

I wish I had been an observer at this point. As my limp form was lowered gingerly to the ground, occa­sional spasms show­ing that I was still in fact one of the liv­ing, the crowd became silent. There were no words from any of the onlook­ers as I shed har­ness and col­lec­ted bag and coat. They had just wit­nessed some­thing rather unpleas­ant hap­pen­ing to a fel­low human being.

“Was it pain­ful?” enquired a girl tim­idly. I exited the com­pound, briskly replied and made for the nearest patch of grass.

“…you weren’t sup­posed to say that…”