'So here it is, Merry Christmas, everybody's.....' being shafted.  Two weeks before
Christmas my wife left with our boys.  There you are, there just aren't any words are there?  
Just the end of the world.  

It's bollocks that men have no feelings.  It is.  When we love, there's nothing stronger.  When
we fall, we fall really hard.  I think it's a good thing blokes bottle up their feelings because if
all the men in the world suddenly let go and let them all out....well, it would put all the women
in the shade, shall we say.  

So at the moment I'm at war with my bowels.  Or they're at war with me.  I'm either shitting
or straining, half the time I'm not sure which and I don't know if I'm coming or going.  Mostly
it's just a lot of wind.  It's the grief, I think.  I'm walking around with the permanent imprint of
a woman's boot on my stomach and I can tell you it hurts.

When they were small Euan smelt of strawberries and Shaun smelt of biscuits.  Funny that.  
Course, they don't nowadays, now it's all farts and fishpaste, but I miss it all anyway.  Funny
things set me off.  I stood in the bathroom for ages yesterday just thinking, because the
mouldy grouting made me think of their bath toys.  All the black bits.

So it's just me this Christmas.  I could've gone to my mum's but I couldn't stand all the
sympathy I wouldn't have got, so I opted for loneliness and misery instead.  It's been really
Christmassy weather.  You know, you think it looks like snow all the way up to December the
sixteenth, then all of a sudden it warms up and pisses down.  I'm sure it was always snowing
when we were  kids.
Anyway I thought I'd go out for a bit of a walk, blow the cobwebs out, get away from the
silence.  I started trudging along the front path and before long it's drizzling again and it's
bloody freezing.  I was only wearing my trackies as well, you know the ones: cheap,
paint-splattered things you wear because you're a working man, but really it's because you
feel crap about yourself.

I walked out the gate and turned left in the direction of Priory Hill.  I'd only gone a couple of
steps when who do I see but Mr Angry, the original neighbour from hell. This man tormented
me and Lynette for three years before she left.  It started a week after we moved in, the night
we threw a housewarming - a one-off, Saturday night, 'who could have a problem with that?'
housewarming.  At ten o'clock a bloke in his sixties in a green cardigan turned up from next
door but one and complained that the sound of clinking glasses was keeping his wife awake
and she had to have her sleep because she had health problems, oh, and didn't I know it was
past nine?  Can you believe it? Well, neither could we, but it carried on like that and much
worse for the next two years.  

He said we were stealing his newspaper.  His hadn't been delivered so we must have stolen it.
 In fact, we must have cancelled his order at the newsagent.

He wanted to know why we had two cars.  He said it was only so that parking was more
difficult for him and he had dented his Rover 214 trying to get in.  I'm glad I saw him do it so
he couldn't pin that one on me.

He said our boys were dropping litter in his front garden.  So much litter that Mr. Angry felt
he had to collect it all up and dump it on our path.

He thought the tree in our back garden was too tall.  So tall that he felt he ought to ring the
council and complain until two bemused workers came out to see what all the fuss was about.

He said Lynette had been rude to Mrs. Angry.  So rude that she had a funny turn and spent
some time at County Hospital.

And so on.

After a couple of years it all changed.  Mrs Angry really was ill and eventually she died.  After
that he just blanked us.  Always a stony silence on the street, his face turned away.  It was a
very deliberate and noisy silence, not really much better than before.  I didn't feel any more
comfortable.  This went on for about a year.

So there I was one December morning, pretty much a hopeless loser, sloping past the privet
hedge, when Mr. Angry looks up from his front garden, looks me in the eye and says,
"Morning".

"Morning", I managed, cautiously.

We eyed each other briefly before I started to walk away, when suddenly he says: "Sorry
about your boys".

I turned back and stood there, didn't know what to say, I was so taken aback.

"Thanks", I said at last.

"I had sons," he said after a moment.

"Did you?"

"Two.  Both gone now," There was a pause, "Gay".

Then, of all the stupid things to say, I said, "What both of them?"

He sniffed, looked down, and put his hands in the pockets of his beige slacks.

"What if all the people," he started, then stopped and looked towards Priory Hill, "You might
want to have a look at my carp one day", he said.

He turned and walked towards the house.

"Yeah, thanks," I mumbled.

I went on in the cold and drizzle, still broken, still a loser, but as I walked up Priory Hill that
morning, I felt more hopeful with every step.





© M Johnson

All Rights Reserved The One Million Stories Creative Writing Project
What If All The People?   
                                                 M. Johnson
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