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GHOST STORY

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Everyone knew the house at the end of the street was haunted - probably because it was known locally as 'the haunted house'.  At night strange sounds could be heard emanating from its crumbling and decaying frame.  Crazed howling, manic laughter, low moans, mournful sobbing.  People also reported hearing shrill screams but that was assumed to be the widow Murphy filing her bunions.   The house had stood eerily vacant for years.  Its shuttered windows gazed mournfully over the neglected garden like sightless eyeballs.  As if to highlight the gloom of the building, the twisted branches of the trees outside pointed outwards like skeletal  fingers warning passersby to come no closer.   Old man Sweeney had lived alone in the house for as long as anyone could remember.  He made his money brewing his own brand of poteen (moonshine) which had the potency to peel paint, remove rust, cure mange, reverse baldness, and, according to local legend, ki...
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How to handle a bully

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    Alison Barry was the neighbourhood bully.  Everyone was terrified of her.  Small children would burst into tears if their stroller was wheeled past her.  Kids would stop playing and hurry inside if they saw her coming.  Grown men would cross the street to avoid passing her. At school she reigned supreme.  Kids parted like the Red Sea before her on the playground and handed over their lunch and any money they had without being asked.  It was easier that way.  Even teachers stayed out of her way.  She did whatever she wanted.  If a teacher said "the earth is round," and Alison said "No it isn't, it's flat," the teacher would immediately agree for fear that she'd be flattened if she didn't, which made learning geography very confusing.   Occasionally a new teacher who wasn't familiar with the routine would attempt to actually teach Alison, with predictably disastrous results.  A conversation along these lines would b...
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A HAMSTER TALE

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  It was a dark, gloomy night.  A thick, heavy fog descended over the city making it impossible to see your hand in front of your face.  Fortunately, my hand was at the end of my arm so I wasn't concerned. I was in a bit of a panic, though, because I had accidentally run over my neighbour's cat with the lawnmower earlier that day.  In desperation I had run to the nearest toy store to get a stuffed cat, figuring that my neighbour, an elderly lady whose eyesight was so bad she once mistook me for the Dalai Lama (I blessed her and went on my way), would think that her cat was just having an especially long nap. But they only had stuffed tigers and I didn't want to scare the bejesus out of her.  Noticing that the pet store next door was still open, I ran in and asked if they had any cats. They didn't.  Besides a three-legged dog, the nearest thing they had to a cat was a hamster.  I had no choice.  I bought the little fella and took him home with me....
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BACK INACTION

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  I went to the doctor with a back pain.  Wait, that sounds like the doctor had a bad back. Hang on...I had a pain in my back so I went to the doctor.  That's better.  Carry on. Having waited the customary 6 hours in the waiting room (well it IS called the waiting room), I was led into the smaller waiting room, where I spent another 3 hours reading old copies of Good Housekeeping and fiddling with the little instruments in the glass jars. I had just nodded off and was dreaming that a large trout in a tutu danced into the room, slapped me upside the head with an old sock and called me Dolores, when the doctor sailed majestically into the room, looking immaculate in a starched white uniform, and asked what ailed me.  I would have thought the fact that I was bent over like Quasimodo would have given her a clue, but I decided to humour her. After explaining that my back was stiff and sore, and ramming the message home by making all kinds of painful sounds, the docto...
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