The wise ponderings of a former Royal Marines Commando

WARNING: Scatological

Peculiar changes to my body. For a start, in recent years I’ve been plagued by an appalling short term memory. It’s a physiological thing, the endocrinologist told me. I think. Somebody said something about it, anyway. I can’t remember who. On a day to day basis it can be a bit of a problem. For instance, last night I was walking upstairs opening my pay slip. It’s one of those security sealed things, loads of squiggly lines and so on, which you open by tearing three sides off, leaving you with three long, broad strips of white paper that need ditching plus the folded payslip itself. Coincidentally I was going to use the toilet. We’ll say ‘big job’ and leave it at that. So I’m looking at my payslip, doing sums and deciding what I was going to buy this month. Get myself the new Jonathan Meades DVD from Amazon. One True Saxon hat for the cold weather. Some books. I dropped the strips into the toilet bowl, got down to business and thought no more about them. Took a dump.

Now, I’ve always wiped my backside stood up. Don’t know why, I just have. So I stood up, Andrex tissue paper in hand and, as is customary, I glanced down to see how things were looking. An appalling rush of adrenaline. ‘Bloody hell,’ I says to myself, panicking, ‘I’ve got worms the size of Tagliatelle.’