Very English Fixations

Dave lay on his side with his knees drawn up to his chin as instructed.

“ Bloody hell !“ he exclaimed “ thank God I never went to public school.”

The doctor, who as a part time church warden and past boarder at MereOaks College throughout his youth, had strong views on both buggery and blasphemy as a consequence of which he gave an extra resentful hard twist of his finger.

“Thank you Mr. Smith, you can get dressed now, there’s nothing wrong with your prostate.” Dave thought he detected a touch of disappointment in the doctors statement.

“ I’ll send off the samples you’ve provided for analysis and we’ll meet again in two weeks time. Please make an appointment at the desk “. Dave muttered his insincere thanks and walked the few paces to reception .

“ I need to make another appointment in two weeks time to see Miss Hope-Foster”.

“Right,” said the receptionist, “ would you like morning or afternoon ?” Dave stuck with his plan and made the appointment in the morning to leave time in the afternoon for some period of what he termed “sexual expression” he hoped contact with Miss Hope-Foster, however formal,would stimulate.

He was purposefully bringing her into the diagnosis at this later stage as the preliminaries of a un-sexy pose and finger up the rectum Dave wanted to avoid. Miss Hope-Springs [as Dave liked to define her] was new to the practice and “ terribly keen”.As Dave occupied a place in a desert of indifference here was a little oasis of hope. He had in fact, as was his usual practice, become fixated on Hope-Springs.

Dave was a man of fixations. He was someone who would buy a sports coat for £40 in a sale and then spend £250 on pullovers to unsuccessfully try and match the color. He knew perfectly well he was fixated, his house provided him with a constant reminder of that with every drawer and numerous wardrobes crammed with garments and moths. His excuse was it was all down to his genes as his late father had had the same tendencies, though in his case it was old cars which he repaired in a most eccentric and budget conscious manner, employing, with some ingenuity, a range of unconventional materials such as putty, household filler and hearth paint. These he applied very skillfully to his structurally unsound projects. Unlike Dave, who considered himself a bit of a fashion icon, clothes were something of an anathema to his dad who had a true dislike of the tendency toward “American dress” especially those “ un-British jeans “. which he viewed with contempt. This turned out to prove something of a premonition on his part as one bright and sunny day, when he was driving one of his projects, testing the properties of putty as window fixing, irony struck in the form of a roll of denim which fell off a lorry he was following and proved the structural vulnerability of putty by combining with the cars front window to decapitate him. The lorry was never identified, nor the manufacturers of the denim, so after two months, and on the basis of “waste not want not”, Dave went to the police station to claim the denim, “ as was his right”. The Police Sergeant there was rather sneering as he passed Dave the denim with the words “would you like your souvenir wrapped sir “

Dave had already decided it would be a nice gesture to use the denim to memorialize his late father by having a suit made up for himself but in deference to his fathers prejudice towards denim he instructed the tailor to make the jacket in a "English shooting jacket" style. He didn't go so far as plus fours as he felt this might look out of place on Wigan High Street or Dance Night at the Labour Club despite the fact that there his fashion sense often provoked much attention. In fact the Chairman of the Entertainments Committee at the club often felt a sense of relief if, despite the fact that the comedy act he had booked for the interval bombed, Dave was there "strutting his fashion sense " to unwittingly raise the mood of comedy.

Now once again in his usual fixated way Dave took things too far with the denim with a jacket for the dog, new living room curtains and half a dozen cushion covers, two of which could only face one way due o the bloodstains which, wash them as the may, it seemed the stains would remain as part of the dedication.

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