Folly

My Dear Fellow,

I am a bad blipper, and I know it. I tend to only take pictures on my way to or from work and it is getting repetitive. 

Consequently, I went a bit out of my way and headed up Calton Hill to take some pictures, including this one of Edinburgh's Folly.

Of course, in our house "Calton Hill" has greater significance than the Edinburgh skyline as you head west to east along Princes Street. It's also the source of a story that makes Er Indoors laugh until she wees.

You know, to this day I don't know why she finds it so funny. I didn't even bother to tell her for months after it happened. Not out of embarrassment. It just didn't seem worthy of mention. I expect it is my polite English reaction. Or just the unlikeliness of it. Either way, here it is.

So I'd been to another RX Christmas night out. This must have been 1999. I'd had a good night and was rolling home the week before Xmas full of good humour and wishing well to all. I get like that when I've had a drink. I'm a very jovial drunk.

Back then we were living in Pickett's flat on Montrose Terrace, so my walk home took me along Regent Road and around the base of Calton Hill. I'd often noticed, walking this route, that there would be lots of parked cars with men sitting inside, as if waiting for something. But dull little heterosexual me didn't really think too much of it.

Anyway, I'm walking home and I'd nearly got to the bowling club when a tubby bald man popped up from out of a bush. I was a little surprised, but remained sanguine. The drink, as I explained.

"Merry Christmas!" he said.

"Merry Christmas yourself!" I said delightedly. "And a Happy New Year!"

It was then that the conversation took a turn I was not expecting.

"Fancy a blow-job?" he replied with equal enthusiasm.

"No," I replied politely, "but thank you very much for the offer!" 

I saw no need to be impolite. It was a kind offer after all. And besides, it was nearly Christmas.

I wobbled off home directly from this encounter. I was literally five minutes from my front door. But I had the chance to reflect the next day. This poor chap, sitting waiting in a bush in the dark, one week before Christmas in the cold. On the off-chance that a tubby Yorkshire programmer might happen along and not be too drunk to take him up on an erotic adventure. 

I mean. It's kind of a shame for the poor chap. I imagine sometimes that he is up there still, crouching behind his bush and waiting for me to toddle by, in a more adventurous mood.

But this was Calton Hill in the 90's. These things happen all the time, I thought. And so it didn't come up again (if you'll pardon the expression) until a few months later when something must have prompted my memory. I repeated the story matter-of-factly to Er Indoors and five minutes later she was having trouble breathing.

Maybe it was that very matter-of-fact manner that tickled her. But we men walk around with willies all the time and therefore know what bonkersness they engender and what folly they inspire. Lacking a percy, women are far more sensible than us, perhaps this is why the willy is such a ridiculous comedy appendage to them. It's a terrible shame.

Now that I think on it, I feel sorry for people who don't have access to a willy. And also for all those men waiting behind bushes for one to show up.

El P.