These days I take lunch breaks. I’m becoming quite partial to them as well. You see, when you spend all your time staring at monitors and tapping keyboards hunched over like Richard III of the Interwebs, the odd hour or so away is a welcome diversion.

I only live a stone’s throw away from work, but it’s far enough to turn a fifty minute lunch into a tight half hour if you don’t play it canny and get your wife to pick you up. So bang on the stroke of midday I gaily flounce out of the McLain Building front door to a welcoming Stephanie.

Last Thursday saw me flounce to the same script only to find nobody waiting for me outside. It wasn’t an immediate problem as I’m not the type of fella who rules over his women with a rod of iron - then again. But, with five minutes gone I was getting a wee bit antsy wondering where she was. With ten minutes gone I was slowly beginning to fume (the first thing running through my mind that she’d nodded off or was gassing with her mother - not worrying whether she was ok).

I had no other choice than to march off as I had no means of buying my own lunch.

Each step I took, the baking West Virginia sunshine raised my temperature levels until I was as heated as my sweating brow. By the time my house was in view I’d worked up a serious cascade of perspiration that evaporated to a head of steam. Somebody’s ass was gonna have me going positively Doomsday on it.

As I came up to crossing the entry to Uncle Pete’s car park, which adjoins (almost) our pad, a police SUV was blocking my usually unhindered passage and with its backend protruding way into the street, my only route involved playing chicken in the oncoming traffic as I walked round it. Still, I was that pissed I was raring to risk getting tasered as I gave Mr. Plod what for.

Then, as my apartment came into full view, I noticed our car in the adjacent parking spot to Uncle Pete’s and our abode. Thing is, it was in the Uncle Pete’s side with the yellow fire hydrant and had a piece of paper flapping from underneath the right windshield wiper.

The cop was walking towards me concentrating frantically on writing and walking having just given us a parking ticket.

DEF. CON. ONE.

I yanked myself up the stairs on the verge of going truly ballistic as I pictured Steph on the phone talking crap with her mother about window treatments. I entered the door to an inhale of breath and immediately saw her scurrying about the kitchen like a female Fagin.

You’ve got to poop a pocket or two.

Straight away she asked me if the copper was still outside and began to explain how she’d come to pick me up but suddenly had poorly poo cramps and had no other choice than to hare home to let rip.

I don’t wish to get too graphic. It’s not as if we all haven’t been there.

I calmed down to eleven on hearing this, but couldn’t quite sympathize fully as she’d been watching traffic copper putting the ticket on our windscreen from our window. Not only that, but she knows full well that Aldi beef sticks always end in toilet trauma, and she’d eaten two cans of the buggers the night before. And on top of that, we’ve always known how keen they are at Uncle Pete’s to rat out any offenders to the cops and get folks towed away.

Library Beef Sticks

With this in mind, and the fact that Mr. Chubby Rozzineri hadn’t moved his police veh-i-cle for a good fifteen minutes, we needed to make sure we were:

a} Not going to get clamped/towed away, and
b} Somehow sneak out and away to get some lunch without him noticing.

Anyhoo, I had fifteen minutes to get out and get fed. As soon as we managed to get outside, Steph realized she’d forgotten, of all things, her bloody car keys.

I’m sure I felt a vein in my eyeball pop.

So, she whispered to me to stand guard while she ran back upstairs in case the tow wagon turned up.

Being a clever lad, I stood close enough to our car to be able to leap on anything or anyone attempting to take it away, but distant enough so the copper didn’t think I had anything to do with it.

We’d deal with any police interference as and when it presented itself.

I can’t say Steph was hurrying, and every second was vital in terms of my growling gut and the impending tow truck, which couldn’t have been too far away. Also, I kept seeing (eaten too many) CHiPs checking out our motor out of the side of my eye.

If ever we could do with a swift diversion and get away it would be now.

All I could foresee was a ten minute telling off from the policeman, and some kind of call-out charge argument as the tow guy arrived. Any kind of exchange would totally wipe the rest of my lunch break redundant.

I kill with my bare hands when I’m hungry.

With still no sign of Steph - obviously attending to another beef stick bowel release - I was thinking of just sneaking in to Uncle Pete’s and sod the car getting towed.

But, as I turned to salivate over the entrance to the restaurant, two guys came storming out and started screaming across the road at some other guy who’d just tried to park in the space Steph should’ve gone in first off. He’d tried pretty appallingly by all accounts as he’d managed to not only prang the irate guy’s back bumper, but also block him in.

There was shouting and storming from both sides of the street, which is busy and noisy a the best of times, and this prompted Chief Wiggum to spring into action.

A bit of street disorder sorting obviously had him feeling more police-like than waiting for some other fat chap to turn up and wheel our car off.

And just as he walked past me, as if by magic, Stephanie appeared.

With one deft flick of the thumb, the car doors were open; and we were in and off.

I had never been so happy to get stung for just a parking ticket in my entire life.