My Rivals Are Unlettered Knob Gobblers By Harry The Partridge

Have you ever been practicing your craft and everything was flowing and coming together in the most splendid of ways. You were in the zone. That peak alpha state that each of us would occupy forever were it not fleeting by it’s very nature. Have you ever been so engrossed, eating and drinking suddenly find themselves burdensome un-necessities. Indeed, breathing itself becomes scant necessity, for in the throws of your passion (if you were to take notice) you would notice yourself holding your breath. Each second is as long as you need it to be and each proceeding one blends with the previous in the most seamless manner. The distance between your consciousness and your medium has shriveled to nothing. There is nothing in this space but creativity and creation.

And then some bloody tosser comes and interrupts you.

Such was my situation last night as I prepared my piece for Writing Rendezvous.

I will now place you there. As I described, I am really digging in, and presently, a boorish Australian badger barges into my den.

“What say you” I shout “for what purpose do you enter my abode?”

The clumsy creature approaches my desk and I rise to my feet, standing my ground.

“What say you” I repeat “under what authority do you claim entry to this private space?”

“I am here to assist you with the writing of your piece” says the badger “and I come bearing tea and a biscuit tin.”

“Bosh!” I hear myself remark.

[As I write this now, it does not escape my attention that in a round-about way, this scoundrel of a badger has assisted with my piece this week by giving me something to criticize. This irony, now noted, is hence rendered impotent lest any of my sharp-witted readership try to give me grief about it]

The detestable creature from Down Under is now leaning over my desk, glancing transparently at my draft.

This wretched badger is not the first creature to fancy himself an interlocutor in my most private of thoughts, but I decide that he will be the last.

As he opens his mouth to comment, I draw a revolver from my waistband and fire a single shot, delivering the badger to my carpeted floor.

As any civilized fellow would, I dispose of the carcass and have at the biscuits and tea.

The following day, I received a parcel with the word “bomb” written clumsily on one surface. It was accompanied by a note which read as follows:

You fuckwit partrage [sic]. U R a Dead BIRD!

I marked the parcel ‘return to sender’, and read the obituary several days later.