Daft Wee Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

another example for you. An arsehole.
    He had to get a taxi to the hospital. Nobody would drive him, everybody said they’d had a drink, even the ones that were teetotal. It took half an hour before the taxi even showed, during which time he’d tried pulling out some of the shards of glass, cutting his hand open even more. When he finally got to the hospital and showed his hand to the triage nurse, it was much worse than when he first had the accident. Not a pretty sight.
    Now, if it were you or I going to the hospital with our hand in that state, we’d get seen to right away, or if there were people with more serious injuries, they’d see to us as soon as they could. But not this time. They just kept telling him he’d be seen to any moment, which was a lie. He watched people come in after him with less urgent ailments, people who twisted their ankles or banged their heads, nothing where they were losing blood or needed to be stitched up quick – and yet they were being treated first. Any time he complained, he was told to just calm down and that he’d be seen to any moment. They kept telling him that for four hours until he decided to just leave. And good riddance to him. You see, he’d been in the month before. He’d started an argument in the waiting room about foreigners coming over here to use the NHS, plus he made a remark to a couple of nurses about how they were all wearing trousers these days and he’d like to see them back in skirts to give the men something to look at while they waited.
    An arsehole.
    Anyway, the reason I’m telling you this story is because I just saw him. Saw him about an hour ago. He was lying at the side of the road in his suit, just outside a J.D. Wetherspoon’s. He looked like he’s been dead for weeks.
    If he was anybody else, back when he collapsed or whatever happened, I’m sure somebody would have asked him if he was all right. Somebody would have known that not everybody lying on the ground is drunk, they’re perhaps diabetic or having a fit. And now, now that he is quite obviously dead, if it was anybody else, I would have phoned the council. I would have phoned the council or the police and made sure the guy’s family was notified. If there wasn’t any family, I would have organised the thing myself. I’d like to think so, anyway. I would have made sure the guy got a decent funeral, I’d have perhaps raised some money to give him a decent send-off, I would have tried to get some people to come along. I’d probably visit his grave now and then to place some flowers there and give the gravestone a wipe.
    But this guy? The father of the bride?
    No.
    He’s an arsehole.
    A known arsehole.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
    Chris sat in work on the computer, looking at a spreadsheet. He couldn’t really get into it. It was his birthday.
    He glanced at today’s date at the bottom right of the screen. There it was. It usually gave him a wee rush of excitement seeing that date, like when he saw it last week on a carton of milk; Oh look, that’s my birthday, he thought. He had no big cause to get excited, it wasn’t like he had anything exciting planned, he was just going to come into work as usual. But, you know, you do expect things to be a wee bit different on your birthday, maybe a bit of extra friendliness from people, a bit of attention, that type of thing. But as the office worked away quietly behind him, it didn’t look like that was going to happen. He thought that was a shame. Or maybe he was just being a big baby.
    It’s just, well, Chris could do with something like that, the friendliness, the attention. In here, specifically. Here in the office. People were a bit cold towards him, he felt. It’s not that they disliked him, they didn’t want him out, they didn’t put in complaints or anything, nothing like that. They just weren’t as chatty with him as they were six months ago,