Branson is for Lovers

The strange gurgling sound in his throat had begun only a few weeks ago, but he took it to be a sign that he was getting older. Gurgling sounds in the throat did not scare him as much as the emptiness in that place that some would call the heart, some would call the soul, and some would just ignore.

Yep, that's our Pinny. Pinny with the tongue of the Rocketman still lingering in his nose.

Precious, precious Pinny stayed low against the tops of the furniture (so as to hide himself from the snipers that might be outside) and he listened carefully. The only sound he heard was the gurgling noise in his throat, but he knew that sometimes the snipers were trained to move during the gurgling and remain motionless during the silence. Pinny gurgled in uneven intervals and tried to catch the snipers moving unexpectedly, but he had no luck.

He made his way toward a window (pure foolishness, he knew), and took a quick look outside into the chaos of his back yard. Chaos. Pure chaos. Loads of rusting automobiles and engine blocks, and loads of places for snipers to hide. This would not do. He collapsed to the floor, breathing heavily. Gurgling heavily.

You have perhaps realized, dear reader, that there are no snipers in Pinny's back yard – only rusting automobiles and engine blocks. The snipers, of course, exist only in Pinny's imagination. Can you say”imagination”? There you go. I knew you could. “Imagination” is where the Easter Bunny lives, along with personal freedoms in the early twenty-first century. Accordingly, “imagination” is being gradually being beaten out of our schoolchildren – not with leaden pipes, but with leaden curricula...but that's another story. Let's get back to Pinny and the “snipers”, so -called.

The whole of the day he limped about, gurgling, limping, crouching, avoiding chaos and avoiding the deadly crosshairs of the snipers. It was in the early evening when precious, precious Pinny stubbed his toe against a block of poly-resin that had been crafted into a scale model of the pyramids of Cheops. Or was it Ramses? Or some other Egyptian celebrity?

Pinny dropped to the floor to inspect the pyramid. He picked it up and held it before his eyes. Little crystalline chips seemed to sparkle on its surface as he rotated it upon its axis. He looked carefully at the little doorway molded into the pyramid's side. He imagined himself as being very small and walking right into the doorway, down the descending corridor into the pyramid's interior, into the ante-chamber, and then right into the burial vault. With a deft little pop of his crowbar he would pry open the lid on a mummy's sarcophagus, revealing the linen-wrapped corpse within.

The linen-wrapped pharaoh lifted his scoped rifle and cracked a single shot through the forehead of the imaginary Pinny-adventurer, who fell to the floor of the burial chamber, leaving the pink mist hanging in the air.

Justification for the beatings, now, isn't it?

Justification for the emptiness in that place that some would call the heart, some would call the soul, and some would just ignore.