In a collaboration between Comedy Estonia and Slothrop's bookshop, we are very happy to announce a comedy story writing competition.

The winner will receive:

- these books: Charlie Brooker's 'Hell Of It All', Stewart Lee's 'How I Escaped My Certain Fate' and John Stewart's 'America'/

- a €20 Slothrop's gift voucher

- Two tickets to Stand Up Comedy with Louis & Stewart at Kino Sõprus

 

SO, here are the rules:

 

- The stories can be about ANYTHING!

- All stories must be in English (some entertaining variations in grammar will be accepted) and a MAXIMUM of 500 words. 

- The deadline for entry is Saturday 14th April. 

- And the winning story, along with some for the best entries, will be featured on Slothrop's website as well possibly some other places with the authors permission.

 

The judges will be from Comedy Estonia and Slothrop's. So, good luck! 

 

All entries should be sent to:

info@slothrops.ee 

 

 

SATURDAY MORNING

It was early on a spring Saturday morning. Jeremy paced. He conceded under his breath that this time the chaffinch had been victorious. 

"Little feathery bollock" he muttered. 

 

A ball bearing rolled over the Cotswold stone floor of his kitchen. A muddy skid left by his garden boots. The palpable sense of frustration and calm hung in the air. Jeremy sighed. His wife was unaware of his presence in the house. She had not seen him in weeks.

"Fucker nuts".

 

Jeremy's war was like so many conflicts. He had the strength, the power, the cars and the women (except Jemima Kahn, for legal reasons). He had a regular BBC presenters job, and wrote for national newspapers. The world, according to him, was fucking marvelous. But in his empire, there were unwanted insurgents. Guerrilla forces hiding in the hills, all the while looking down on his and his families estate. From the tiny insects to the gliding birds, the shy fury creatures to the ever present carp, these were Jeremy's sworn foe. If he could ethnically cleanse the squirrel population in his village of Chipping Norton, he would. On a more than bi-weekly basis he would try to punch the wood pigeons living in the conifers and spend hour upon painting unerotic signage and messages with the aim of usurping the foxes' efforts to shag each other all over his crisp lawn. Nothing riled Jeremy more than wiping up the gallons of fox semen that glistened not unlike dew on a spring morning.

 

Often, his wife would wake early to place scatter bird seed but Jeremy would be awake and waiting. As soon as she disappeared inside the house, wrapped up in her pink cotton dressing gown, he would bolt from his shed to collect each seed by hand, all the time cursing the tiny animal eyes watching him from behind the leaves and high up from the trees. 

 

And Jeremy had had hair. Such a full head of hair he had had. And how he had used to enjoy is long bubbly locks! Until a crow took to pissing on him each spring morning of '95. Now all Jeremy had was a thimbly weave and the itching bother of the studio spots highlighting his thinning noggin.  Jeremy seethed. Nature had started this, and Jeremy vowed that he would fucking well finish it. 

 

DECAY 

Later that day, the Sun ascending it's worn route through the blue sky, Jeremy marched through his garden observing the woolly streaks of clouds above him, noting their speed and direction. Keeping this up for some time, he found himself someway from the house and feeling exhausted and beaten, he leant back in a mulch pile. A place to which he had become accustomed to rest of late. The moist rot and dirt clung sparingly to his worn waxy blue jeans, and like a Viking, his pyre beneath him seemed to crackle and creak. With his head tilted and ear to the ground, he listened to what he presumed were worms and beetles deep inside the compost, wriggling, chewing and recycling, perpetuating the natural cycle to which Jeremy had become so averse. He began to consider his garden, his land and his domain. His few acres of Chipping Norton and the fight for control for which he had been embroiled for many years now. 

 

Jeremy did not freely welcome the natural world into his realm. He adored organisation and control, and like an engineer or a scientist confronted with an uncertainty, he had spent considerable hours remedying and bringing whatever chaotic element had vexed him so back under his administration. 

 

One could not say Jeremy was a true contrarian. The sense of opposition to popular belief for which he was most known, especially on ecological and other blindly obvious issues, was contrived early on in his life as a means of covering up his deep belief in natural order and control. He considered it better to be perceived a libertarian than an empiricist. And when Jeremy had first bought his large house in Chipping Norton, he had begun to catalogue the wildlife in his new British garden, making extensive lists of species and habits catalogued alongside locations and time periods. In May 1996, fifteen sparrows of varying ages and markings lived in the large sycamore to the west of his living room window. Below them in the bushes, he had noted the occasional presence of a badger intermittently during the spring. He had not endeavoured to name the animals or anthropomorphise them, instead choosing an exhaustive numbering structure, making reference to a taxonomical guide he had found in a well thumbed mid-20th century British garden guide book. 

 

The balance of nature to which he derived the most joy, to which he could attribute the early contented, prideful summer days, was negotiated from the surrounding landscape by a largely impenetrable fence, dug at it's most shallow points a foot into the earth. Jeremy had taken great care by staking his land-claim with an overtly manifest barrier that was clearly at odds with the surrounding area's rustic aesthetic. What in retrospect seemed like a life time of hazy languid days, but was in fact a brief English summer, came to a sudden end when a mandatory animal audit threw up some disturbing numbers. Jeremy had noticed a significant dip in the rabbit population. A brief investigation told him that the cause was a virus. A deadly Leporidic disease which had scythed through the bunny burrows of his land. All of his rabbits were dying. And he was all but helpless. 

 

MASS GRAVE

He spent a few warm evenings, as the summer came to a close and the purple clouds gathered low on the glowing horizon, unearthing diseased, rotting rabbits and solemnly bagging each one. Limp bodies contorted in his hands. He would stare intently at the direction and colouring of their fur. With their eyes rested shut, a gentle but firm thumb stroke would reveal their glaring soulless pupils. Patches of their coats were missing uncovering raw scaly skin, deep formed eczema and webs of varicose bruised veins. Jeremy carried out further investigation of the animals with atypical tenderness and sympathy. He rolled back the soft flesh around their mouths to reveal their gums and yellow brown teeth. He foraged through fur to find lumps and sores hidden under stringy legs. Catching his fingers in caked blood and haemoglobin. Flaking dermis gathered under his nails. He stayed composed while handling the animals, resorting to tears only when the grim labor forced him to retire to his sandstone outhouse. Closing the large stable doors behind him he would slump onto a stool, surrounded by hay and dirt, shoulders weak and head hung forward, gushing and sobbing into his lap as all sense of control left him. He became childlike with unrepentant emotion, devastated by his confusion at the violence of the world. 

 

Forever stained on the backs of his eyelids were the images of endless fuzzy bunny's now muddied and cold as bags of milk. Now wilting sacks of cartilaginous threads and bones, their floppy pink ears like old corduroy which has been left out to dry for too long on a late October day. Jeremy choked down phlegm and tears. He swallowed the bile that came up as a part of his souls merciless attempts to detox itself. But how could he ever cleanse himself now?

 

A few minutes would pass and Jeremy would begin to rebuild his defences. Blinking away, swallowing, rubbing his face. He would often stretch his arms and yawn, as if to present a sense of nonchalance to the uncaring world. Then reopening the outhouse door, his tears forever consigned to the privacy of his property's annexes, he would again begin to dutifully dig mass graves for the small animals. Laying them to rest and speaking a few words to himself by way of a prayer. And all the time keeping his children in the house not wanting them to see the remnants of the massacre or how their father was loosing control of the land which he called his own.

 

What manner of pox and canker had broken through his defences? What alien element had plunged his lands into this long dark autumn and the seemingly endless frozen winter? Jeremy thought not of how he could thaw the earth and rebuild his system, but solely of retaliation. He negotiated with himself, whispering contracts and silently promising solutions. 

 

The irritation that he felt doubled and doubled until he could see nothing but red mist. His anger led to confusion. Confusion led to ill judgement. And soon, Jeremy was looking out over his garden seeing nothing but infestation and unchecked violence. The delicate balance of the British garden lay in ruin, becoming a formless battleground playing host to a war of devastating attrition.

 

THE WAR

The war raged as the leaves turned golden and fell to the ground. Curling brown then melting to sponge and disappearing into the muddy earth, all strewn over Jeremy's lawn. The picture of conflict mounted upon conflict, battle upon battle. Cracked DIY store garden tools plunge into the dirt, skewering torn up blue plastic sheeting blown from the roof of the unfinished pool house. The rain came down. Amongst the rolling slabs of grey autumn cloud, the sun barely rose over the pines to the east, casting long frigid shadows over the ravaged grounds. 

 

In mid-November he found the first of what he would later find to be many holes in the perimeter fence. Large enough for a fox to pass freely between his realm and the natural bedlam which seemingly engulfed him, Jeremy sealed the cavity with chicken wire and cable ties. This close to the border he knew was being watched. He saw a raven, unknown to him previously, perched in the branches of one of his acacia's. All the while staring as he worked and then with a knowing lunge, bowing the tree's branch, flying out over the fields to the copses in the distance. A watchman. A spy. This kind of invasion was regular for Jeremy and he had taken to owning a hunting rifle with ease despite his wife's protestations.   

 

Jeremy would often wake early. He would stalk the bushes and plant traps. He'd gotten used to the cold. The skin on his hands cracked that winter giving the impression to his colleagues and co-workers, of a man who was well accustomed to manual labor. Feeling the roughness of his fingers and his coarse palms for the first time in his life, the aches in his knees and shoulders, Jeremy began to feel evermore indignant toward the natural world that had caused him to confront his ageing body.  

 

The battlefronts of his war against nature opened up. He noticed how his back ached from crouching in flower beds for hours on end. How his eyes stung when a burst of wind would whip up sheets of dried mud from the patio. How the soles of his feet grew leathery and festered in his rain moist socks. And his wife too began to notice the changes. She saw how Jeremy evolved from a soft bodied conservative middle-class man into a wiry and worn woodsman. 

 

She became more attracted to him, despite how he was often distracted, forgot her simple requests and seemed to care little of her and more of the world outside their windows. As he asked less and less of her, the more alluring he became. The later and later he came to bed, the earlier he rose, the more she basked in the determined glow of her husband.  

 

Until Jeremy never climbed those stairs again. Never took to his marital bed again. Leaving his wife laying awake at night, leaving her worried, leaving her up there alone. Leaving her, Jeremy took up residence in his sandstone outhouse. 

 

FINAL ASSAULT

The war had raged for many years, but in preparation for the final assault Jeremy had isolated himself, living outdoors and making the great British garden his home. He snuck occasionally in to the house, often when his wife was out, sometimes to steal supplies, sometimes to collection munitions. 

 

What he believed to be an arms race with the animals had begun. Squirrels hoarded materials as magpies swept down to retrieve all manner of items left over from the years of war. Jeremy drew up plans, sketching in the soil the flanks and divisions of animal invaders, their long range capabilities evaluated, their ground operations assessed. Detailed maps of the theatre of war surrounded Jeremy in his outhouse, and he took to running through every terrifying eventuality he could imagine, fixated on the methodologies of bloodshed, staking his life and safety on the fineries of preparation. 

 

His aims seemed so clear when the conflict had begun, but those goals had grown to become simply unachievable. The more and more Jeremy fought, the more he laid traps, the more they kept coming. Endless legions of the animal world, their supply lines never stretched, their munitions never low, the troops countless in number.

 

Jeremy woke unnaturally early one Wednesday morning. For reasons that seemed only rational in the glow of the moonlight, he had decided to sleep outside the previous evening. As he stood up, Jeremy failed to consider the lack of a dawn chorus. This had not crossed his mind for months now. Instead, Jeremy heard a machine hum in the distance and he took a moment to take in the sound.  

 

What was to be done with this day? In considering if such an idle sentiment could conjure any form of decisive action, Jeremy was struck with the compulsion to gather his weapons and, for the first time, leave the British garden he called home. Not to return to the house (such thoughts had long since left Jeremy's mind), Jeremy was to leave the back way. To cross the fence. To straddle the muddy ditch surrounding his land, which he'd dug months before, and look nature in it's multifarious eyes. 

 

Jeremy's feet were rooted to the earth as he considered the possibilities of invading the natural world. Freezing globules of rain began to fall around him, waking him from his stupor. Looking up at the bruised sky, pregnant with it's thunder and it's knots of fat cottony blue ink spiralling over him, a rye smile formed on Jeremy's face. Yes, today would be the day. 

 

The storm gathered energy throughout the early morning hours. Growing, as if the cornfields and gnarled oaks on the horizon were vast conductive beacons, channeling the battery of the earth upward to the sky. 

 

Prepared, Jeremy stood on the edge of his land. His shoulders weighted with a large backpack full of concocted weedkillers, hand saws and slingshots. The dark swaying arcs of trees surrounded him as Jeremy looked out into the wilderness. He felt as if he were preparing to be born. Preparing to be ejected from uterine protection out onto the cold soil. Bowing and creaking under the stars, the world felt alive to Jeremy, with every bush, field, river and mess of branches groaning and devouring the fading light like a swarms of black holes. This disarray laid before him whipped up into a frenzy by the endless wind. And as if confronting a new and infinitely delicate point in the texture of reality, he felt a power far greater than himself, yet indescribably immature, calling to him as if seeking help. Jeremy felt his heart pulse with virginal terror. The abyss of an Earth battered by the extremities beckoned him forwards. He barely felt his feet touch the ground as he began to walk. As if a child, his mind was free of consequence. And as the gloaming swallowed him whole he considered what animals could live out here? Where were their traps? Perhaps they stalked the shadows. Perhaps they knew all along he would eventually leave his British garden to face them. Jeremy considered the infinite possibilities of walking out into the land that morning. Out into the fields. Out among the small wooded areas in Oxfordshire not 8 miles from the M40 Welcome Break motorway services with its Coffee Primo, Burger King and free two hours parking. Devoured by the sense of the loss of control to which he was powerless to prevent, Jeremy found himself on a path toward the heart of the dark realms of the natural world. 

 

EPILOGUE 

Jeremy Clarkson was never seen again, and is now presumed dead. A nationwide search took place following the event of his disappearance but his body has remain unfound. 

 

Amongst other glowing achievements, he is the author of several books including 'The World According to Clarkson', and 'Driven To Distraction'. He is survived by his wife and three daughters.