TONY SAYS NOTHING

Tony loved to think about things that other people would probably consider to be strange. He'd been afflicted by this peculiar hobby ever since he first laid eyes on a pretty thing he thought he loved, namely, a pink ice-cream van driven during the swelteringly hot summer months by a stick-thin girl called Sally. It wasn't so much the van, or even the girl, that caught Tony's eye on that fateful August morn. No, they held little interest to a brain as warped as his. Instead, he fell head over heels, mad as a hatter in love with the rather gruesome, multicoloured fluorescent font which was sprayed along both sides of the rusting pink van. "Sally's Sweet Ices" was what it read, and those simple words seemed like God's very own poetry to young Tony, though admittedly he knew very little about poetry at all.

Every day he'd travel down to the beach where Sally parked her van, grab a pew on his favourite smooth rock, and gaze at those dreamy words for a daily average of five hours, forty-three minutes, and fifteen seconds. Tony soon realised that by staring at inanimate patterns for a long enough period of time, he was able to send himself into a mild kind of trance, one in which he'd often imagine himself to be a Roman guard marching behind Jesus on his way up to Calvary. He'd always wake from this sedately violent form of entertainment with a half-melted ice-cream cone in his hand and an uneven number of small wasps sucking on the gooey vanilla mess which usually accompanied it on his left knee. This seemed to him a strange occurrence as he'd always awake with the melting cone grasped firmly in his right hand. Anyway....

Tony and stick-thin Sally were eventually married on a stormy day in December by the local vicar, who was once a leading member of the burgeoning Hartlepool branch of rubber and whip fetishists. Vicar "Charles" (as we'll call him for the sake of his kids) swore off the rubber after a close encounter with a Ford Mondeo, three rampaging antelopes, and an unfortunately large golf club. The only acts of savagery he can now stomach are invariably acted out in his head whilst doing mundane chores such as dusting book shelves, peeling carrots, replying to written requests for confessional sittings, and marrying young couples.

"Charles" and stick-thin Sally started a brief affair the morning before Tony had written off the pink ice-cream van during a heavy night's font-gazing down the local pier. The poster read "fat chips make for happy fish" and was painted in a style reminiscent of many early art deco signs of the 1920s. After three hours of mellow gazing, all focus blurred and beautiful pictures started to flood the black gaps in his head; men in fedora hats berating a young girl for levitating before a flaming orange rainbow on Sunset Boulevard....an army of floating angels in green heralding the birth of a new king.....Tony didn't even notice when the tree slammed into the backside of Sally's pink van, scraping his beloved poetry from the left-hand side and causing a frothy stream of milk to spray from a small hole into the middle of the road. Fire quickly caught light and spread from front to back. Tony watched entranced with chips in right hand, ketchup on left knee, and an empty matchbox on his left shoe.

The divorce was quick and absolute. Tony went one way, Sally the other, ten years passed but neither could find another. They remarried in a smaller chapel than the last, inviting only a handful of guests, many of whom couldn't remember if it was Tony or Sally who'd been caught on bended knee with the vicar all those years ago. This second union lasted slightly longer than the first, only coming to an end after a disagreement over the font style for their new green ice cream van, which was to be driven during the winter months by Tony on a Wednesday and Sally on a Saturday. He went one way, she the other, neither could be bothered, they both loved to suffer. "Charles" eventually gave up the life of God and went on to form a new fetish club, catering for people who enjoy eating Mcvitie's biscuits whilst emptying the contents of their bowels into china bowls. For more information on becoming a member of this group please contact "Charles" on 07767 573458. Goodbye.