Tale B for Banana

Between Tania Xavier and You.

Tania Xavier 8 April at 17:19

Dear Ed,

Could you please stop sending me messages to sponsor you in the London Marathon. I do not know you and have already sponsored four friends running. I don’t even know how I am part of your group. If you don’t stop inundating my inbox with requests and updates, I am going to have to lodge a complaint with facebook.

Tania x

Ed Chamberlain 8 April at 18:01

Dear Tania,

Wow, thank you for letting me know, thank you. You have really managed to ruin my day. Thank you. I’m so sorry that you felt ‘inundated’ and I apologise that you had to strain your fingers to click ‘delete’ and then press the button AGAIN to ‘confirm’ that you wanted to delete it. Maybe I should run for YOU instead of my charity? We could use the money to send you on a cruise to help you get over the stress from the whole episode. I strongly believe in Karma and I hope that someone ruins your day and your belief in human kind the way you have done for me. Ed.

Tania Xavier 9 April at 18:45

Dear Ed,

What an emotional angry tirade. Pull your knickers up! I was trying to be polite and business like, but you had to insult me and drag me down into your guttural sarcasm. I just received another email from your running group, which I’m sure was intended, thank you. I do not know you, but I have every right to send the POLITE, ADULT message that I sent to you and feel no need to sponsor you or the ‘Rehouse Betty the Donkey’ charity. Thank you for ruining MY day. Tania x

Ed Chamberlain 9 April at 19:44

Dear Tania,

You are right about one thing, I did just send another message to annoy you. From the bottom of my heart, I hope that it did. I have been training for the last six months, four evenings a week to run for a cause that I truly believe in. If you even knew half of what Betty has been through. I presume from your photos that you are some Upper Middle class media type who is too busy snorting cocaine and topping up her blonde roots to realise that the world does not revolve around you.

Ed.

Ed Chamberlain 9 April at 19:45

Yo Giles,

Look at the message that I just got off some cunt about our Run to Rehouse Betty The Donkey Campaign. What a total cunt, didn’t think they made cunts this big, but there she was in my inbox, gaping open. What a total cunt. “Dear Ed, Can you please stop sending me messages to sponsor you in the London Marathon. I do not know you and have already sponsored four friends running. I don’t even know how I am still part of your group. If you don’t stop inundating my facebook inbox, I am going to have to lodge a complaint. Tania x”

Cunt. Pints tomorrow?

Tania Xavier 9 April at 19:49

Dear Ed,

You sent that to me.

Tania x

Ed Chamberlain 9 April at 20:21

Dear Tania,

I actually feel bad about that. Not that you deserve my pity. I am still so angry at you for having the bare faced audacity to send a message like the one you did. The world is a worse off place because of uncharitable, intolerant people like you. I was still brought up right however and I apologise for my language but not my sentiment. It was my passion for my cause and a real belief in the project that motivated my tirade. I wonder if you can understand that? Doubtful. Ed.

Tania Xavier 9 April at 20:25

Dear Ed,

I do understand. Takes one to know one.

Tania x

Ed Chamberlain 8 April at 20:40

Dear Tania,

Are you calling me a c%”*? That is so typical. I was trying to be nice in my last message but you take the bloody nice biscuit! You are totally soulless. Do you have a job? Because I hear that they are casting a sequel to iRobot. Answer me this: (a)Why haven’t you left the group if we annoy you so bloody much? (b)If you hate me, (a man GIVING HIS TIME AND ENERGY FOR SOMEONE ELSE, something you would clearly know nothing about) then WHY do you end each message with a kiss. You cliché.

Ed, - x.

Tania Xavier 10 April at 18:46

Dear Ed,

Heaven help your girlfriend or any other women in your life, if that was you trying to be nice. You wouldn’t know compassion if it came up to you in the street and smacked you in the face with a live mackerel. How can you take the moral high ground? You are a disrespectful, probably wealthy squatter, with more free time and ideals than intelligence.

How is your poem/painting/book/acting career going? Out of 37,000 people running in the London Marathon, the odds of one of them being a c%”*, as you so nicely put it the second time around, were high, and now here you are proving the laws of probability correct.

In relation to your questions. (a) I don’t know how to leave a group. I, unlike you, given the speed of your replies, do not spend all of my time on facebook. I have a life. I spend very little time on social networking sites. So when I am on them I like to spend that time getting in touch with family and old friends not answering stupid donkey emails from people whose profile picture is them pissing into the sea while on a “finding yourself in Guatemala" holiday. And: (b) If you were clever enough to look above each message, you will see that my surname is Xavier, hence the ‘x’. Feel safe again, I was in no way trying to kiss you.

Tania x.

Tania Xavier 10 April 18:48

And by the way “- x” Minus x?...really hilarious...not.

Ed Chamberlain 10 April at 19:03

Dear Tania,

“Not”? Really? I thought that ‘not’ jokes died in 1997 with the popularity of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s McDonald’s Happy Meals. Was Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime your autobiography? Because you are clearly autistic and devoid of normal human emotion. It is the artists of the world who give meaning and substance to our otherwise meaningless existence. It is my honour to be attempting to contribute to that with my writing. Your cynicism is that of a lonely old woman.

What age are you? What I write actually makes people feel something other than hate which is what you write makes me feel. The only part of me that you could put an x anywhere near is my ass, and I don’t mean Betty the Donkey. Though for your information, she has already been hideously branded with Xs over the last two years before she was rescued by the Donkey Sanctuary. If you were as clever as you make out, you would have put a capital X after Tania. Ed.

Tania Xavier 10 April at 19:09

Oh but Ed, if I had put a capital ‘x’, then you might have thought that I was giving you a BIG kiss and I would hate to lead you on or for your ass to get over excited.

Tania small x because you are not worth my time pressing the shift button to do a big x.

Tania Xavier 10 April at 19: 10

Also I’m sure that your writing does make people feel something; that their taxes are being wasted.

Ed Chamberlain 10 April at 19:40

Dear Tania,

I cannot even comprehend how you have survived this long without someone putting a bullet in your evil head. How do you have 367 friends? Are they all your coke dealers or the rest of the extras from Mean Girls? What is it that you do that is so beneficial to the world that you feel in a position to talk to me about moral high grounds you animal hating, cold hearted, loveless wench?

Ed.

Tania Xavier 10 April at 19:45

Dear Ed, I am a relief worker for the Red Cross. Tania x.

Ed Chamberlain 10 April at 19:46

Seriously?

Tania Xavier 10 April at 19:49

Dear Ed, Yes. Tania x.

Ed Chamberlain 10 April at 20:35

Dear Tania, I cannot understand then ho

Ed Chamberlain 10 April at 20:39

Dear Tania,

I pushed reply by accident there. I cannot understand how you, as an aid worker, would ever send a message like the one you did. Given that you have full working knowledge of the hard work that people like me put into training and fund-raising. How you could want to scupper someone aiming to make the maximum amount to help a charity that he believes in. Especially when my efforts are hurting no one, only benefitting. I looked through your photos again and there are ones of you in the desert entitled “African Adventure”, did you enjoy your holiday? Did the children miss the medication that payed for it?

Ed

Tania Xavier 10 April at 20:50

Dear Ed,

I, as an aid worker, might know a little something about hard work. The title of the album ‘African Adventure’, was given by my good friend Adroa, who runs that Ugandan branch of our Red Cross office. We used the title with the orphans that we were ferrying through the war zones so as not to panic them and to try to put smiles on their hopeless, devastated faces. When you have walked ten miles for water and back again with only enough for a child that will probably die in your arms before nightfall, believe me, you understand hard work.

So yes, you could say that it does aggrieve me to get your updates on how your one donkey charity is going. And not only because I know for a fact that Rehouse Betty the Donkey is the only charity without it’s full quota of runners. Perfect for those who left it too late and fancied jumping on the bandwagon.

Now I’m sure that Betty is a wonderful animal but I wonder how much clout you give her with your regular 'updates'. Please excuse my directly quoting you:

“Dudes, training going well, the laydees in the parks digging the charity hole. Making sure to wear my donkey teeshirt when out running, EEeAw! Donate so that we look good dudes! LOL! Thinking of working on a cover of Baby Got Back. “I like big asses and I cannot lie” Also what are opinions on doing it drunk in donkey costumes?ROFL www.justgiving/EddyCRehousebettythedonkey.com.”

Or a later jewel:

“Those Children in Africa bitches won’t know what has hit them once we give them a taste of our donkey running medicine, did ten miles in an hour today! We will run so fast that we will get Betty the Donkey a house in Primrose Hill with Kate Moss cleaning her horse shoes and the Virgin Mary coming back to ride her to Bethlehem. Eat our dust Christian Aid!”. I cannot wait to read your books. Will the crayons be provided? Your messages pull into disrepute the fundraising aims of genuine dedicated philanthropists.

Tania x

Ed Chamberlain 12 April at 08:14

Dear Tania,

Okay. So from the way that you have been reading my updates, I may have come across as slightly jerkish. My friend, Christian is running for Christian Aid and my friend Dave is running with a group from work for Children in Africa. So, the comments were intended for them, which I’m sure was lost on you, especially if you don’t know me or my sense of humour. The tone of it was jovially intended when written and was to entice younger friends on facebook to donate. Just because I’m a writer, it doesn’t mean that I have to be on form every hour of the day. I sometimes need a break and a chance to rake my brainsoil, so I try to leave work behind when I’m on facebook. I’d like to consider what I do just as important as what you do. The penis mightier than the sword.

Ed.

Tania Xavier 12 April at 18: 46

I presume that you meant “pen is” ?

Ed Chamberlain 12 April at 18: 49

Yes. Though I’ve often been told both.

Tania Xavier 12 April at 19:15

Are you sure that you wouldn’t like to re-read what you just wrote aloud, listen to yourself, go away and have a look in the mirror, have a think about it and come back and take that statement back out of shame?

Ed Chamberlain 12 April at 19:23

Okay Tania. This has gone on long enough. You have been the first woman to make me feel such a wide range of emotions in such a short space of time since I got separated from my mother in the supermarket when I was three. I was hugged and beaten within the space of 25 seconds. I’ll put it out there, if you will accept the olive branch. I’d like to take you for a charitable drink to signal the end of this war.

Ed.

Ed Chamberlain 13 April at 19:27

Way to make a guy wait, would have been polite to at least reply.

Ed Chamberlain 14 April 01:37

I’ll take that as a no then. Fine, see you at the pearly gates.

Tania Xavier 14 April 18:56

Hi Ed,

My internet was down and we are not allowed check facebook at work. I also had to think about it. I don’t know what you get up to with your weekends, but I don’t tend to spend mine with strangers that I meet online. I also don’t tend to go for drinks with men who have called me heartless, soulless, wench c*&%s. But a lot of things were said in the heat of the moment. So yes, I finish work at Moorfield at five tomorrow and there is a pub called The Rack and Tenter. It’s my local and they know me there. Just in case you are a mad rapist.

Tania x

Ed Chamberlain 14 April at 19: 23

Wonderful, I can’t wait to call you a heartless, soulless wench c*&% to your face. X

Ed Chamberlain 15 April at 15:09

Hi Tania, I should probably get your number in case I don’t find you this evening? Mine is 07834487654. I will be the one that looks like a branded donkey. Betty x

Ed Chamberlain 15 April at 17:07

Shit, I’m running late, hope you get this and are still there? Tubes are a nightmare!

Sent via Facebook Mobile

Ed Chamberlain 15 April 17:20

Seriously nightmarish traffic! Ah!

Sent via Facebook Mobile

Ed Chamberlain 15 April at 17:39

Are you still here? So sorry I’m late. If so give me a buzz! I’m by the bar in the red jacket. Sent via Facebook Mobile.

Ed Chamberlain 15 April at 18:22

Okay, so I’m going to head, this has been a disaster! Should we try again tomorrow evening? Sent via Facebook Mobile

Tania Xavier 15 April 19:23

It depends. Would you turn up on time this time, or would you leave me sitting there flirting with the Spanish barman again?

Ed Chamberlain 15 April 19:30

I’ll set up camp there now, flirt with the barman until he falls for me, then break his heart so that he has to run back to his mother in Spain to recover. Your gin full and Hispanic free evening awaits….

Tania Xavier 15 April 19:45

The gin is the first thing that you’ve gotten right this week. There is hope for you yet. You can have my number when you turn up in time.

Yours sincerely, Tania Xavier x

Ed Chamberlain 15 April 19:45

So can we call this an up’date’? I apologise for that joke.

See you tomorrow,

Edward Chamberlain. x

Ed Chamberlain 16 April 9:20

You left your scarf in my kitchen. X

Tale A for Apple

Jane was adamant that she was going to avoid her ex-boyfriend today. The fact that he was in bed wrapped around her, was going to make this difficult. She was not one to give up on a good idea though and so this plan was going to take some..well...planning.

She had wasted ten quite average months of her life on this bearded mess who was currently out for the count and breathing heavily into her left ear. The effort of having bought her two drinks once he realised it was going to be worth his while and then splitting the taxi back, had clearly taken it out of him. And of course he must have been just knackered after carrying her up the three steps to the door before having to put her down because his back was sore and “you get the picture babes”.

Not to mention all of the physical exertion required in watching her make them toast at 3am. He’d taken off her top and bra and then decided it was probably best to get some food in ‘beforehand’. “I miss us eating together Babes. You love bread”. The man had been right. She did love bread. She loved bread very much. It’s a pity bread hadn’t arrived into the Harmington Arms at 10.45pm on ‘Gin Friday’, pinched her drunken arse and brought her home two hours later for seven minutes of activity which didn’t even burn off the calories from the toast. Indeed it would have taken some pretty mouldy baguettes to give her the same shameful flashbacks she was currently enjoying. Lord knows she might have even ENJOYED goddamn bread and it certainly would have tasted better… But then bread would never have thought of ending such a sparkling evening by reading out its hilarious facebook banter between itself and ‘Crichley’ questioning the sexual orientation of ‘Hamish’ from accounts.

But the bread metaphors had gone stale. Jane was caught in a 5ft 11 trap. She was in a naked cage. They were a pair of dessert spoons stuck together from the heat of a malfunctioning dishwasher. He had his left arm wrapped around her neck, pinning her head to the pillow. His left leg was doing something similar around her waist. She presumed that his right leg had wandered off towards the far wall and must have been involved with the duvet because she certainly had none of it. His right arm had arched itself over his own head like a lampshade and his hand was for some reason gripping her fringe and pulling it backwards from the front of her face. She must look like Jedward. Well one of them. Perhaps whichever one was naked and drunk at 6am and had the lowest self esteem. The one on the right.

It had also been quite a clammy affair, so there was going to be some bare-skin-on-a-barstool-in-summer-peeling afoot, once she got moving. She wasn’t going to lie. This would be difficult. She was still quite drunk. Though she hoped that this would give her a flexibility that she would only realise later she didn’t actually have.

Time to go for it. Rigor mortis was beginning to set in. If she didn’t act soon she would be forced to stay with him like a wheelchair bound James Caan with Kathy Bates in ‘Misery’. But there was no recognisable background piano music here and it was time to make her move. If she didn’t act fast this pothole of existence would wake up and beg her to stay with him. And she bloody well would as well. Especially if he gave her the ‘jigsaw’ speech again. “You might not like the picture babes, but you can’t deny that the pieces fit”. He knew her too well. Putty.

Right. She would begin with the feet. Currently her only soldiers not POWs. She latched them onto the end of the bed like hooks and used sheer drunken determination to slide her body down the bed. It had been a successful enough first attempt for a climb down human mountain. Her head was almost out of the clinch and her hair had slipped quite easily from his right hand grab. But her feet could only pull so far and the bed end was now pressing sorely on her calves. She had slid down just far enough that the monster’s arm was now pressed like raw sausage meat over her eyes and left ear.

Still, she could breath. That would help. It had been quite an energetic twenty seconds there. She had come quite a way. But the physical escapade had reminded her of how much more ‘g’ than ‘t’ she had consumed in the last eight hours.

Time for a pitstop. She would use this little break to think about where her clothes might be. She knew that her shoes were definitely in her handbag. She had taken them off in the kebab shop. Her tights were in a sanitary bin in the pub toilet and her knickers were in some lucky taxi man’s drinks holder and her bra was definitely near the toaster that had inspired the tea break. But now where, oh where were the big staples? The Primark shirt-dress, the ironically big cardigan, the pleather bomber jacket, the scarf that was ingeniously also a hood? At what point of the evening’s entertainment did they get folded up neatly and hidden in a tree by the invisible night squirrel? She was assured that the kitchen would probably account for a huge amount.

Time for round two. This next episode would heavily feature the character of ‘her right arm’. It was already pointing upwards as if she had been doing an impression of superman flying. Using it to push off against the wall, and helped by some knee pumping, she forced the rest of her body downwards slowly. She had slid herself so successfully down the man ladder with movement number two, that from her shoulders down, she was free as Nelson Mandela. But alas her neck was now trapped underneath his bloody thigh and she decided not to consider what might be sticking into the back of her head. Her noggin and neck were Northern Ireland; not technically belonging to his body but certainly not comfortably her own. But dear god, she was hardly going to find her iPhone without them. She twisted her body anti clockwise slowly so that she was now on her back with his leg casually traversing her oesophagus like a pork pashmina. The aerial view was impressive. Placing her two hands on either side of her shoulder, she wedged her fingers underneath his leg and bench pressed it up and over her head and quietly back onto the bed.

She then continued to slide down the bed using her feet which were now planted firmly on the ground. Using a foot action indicative of a Flintstone driving his car, she dragged the remnants of herself from the bed and forward rolled into a squat.

Slowly rising to her feet, like a Russian Gymnast post pole vault, she turned around and surveyed the unlove of her life. He sort of looked quite cute, all pink and hairy like a guerilla with alopecia. And still sound asleep! Ha! She was a genius! A veritable James slutty Bond! She could have worked for MI6 with her crafty slithering. Indeed she was too good for him, she was a queen of tact and discretion. An homage to the female sexual liberation movement. Yes, you could have your cake and eat it too girls! She mentally high fived herself and looked around.

“Now that’s a bit of a pity” she thought. “We’ve come back to mine”.