Today’s unwelcome writing prompt is timely, bearing in mind my last post. How does death change your perspective?

Well, for one thing, I’d stop buying lottery tickets, and there would be no point in worrying about air quality because I wouldn’t be breathing the stuff anymore. What sort of question is that?

I stopped ironing years ago, as it’s pointless at the best of times, and definitely over the top on the undead. I mean, how many times have you turned on a classic zombie movie (Night of the Living Dead or Cockneys versus Zombies to name but two) to hear someone complain about the rumpled state of the zombie hordes?

Meanwhile, moving back to other matters, I’ve had several culinary mishaps today. A new bottle of ketchup, when opened, proved to have a very tricky action. Squeeze and nothing happens, squeeze a little harder and so much comes out at such speed that you end up comprehensively splattered. Add that to the cream I spilled and the yoghurt drink that misbehaved and it’s clear that if you boiled my jumper in a little water you could produce a passable tomato soup.

You would think that after so many years of producing nozzles for squeezable sauce bottles they would have got it right, but it seems not. You press, nothing happens. You press again, maybe a little less carefully, and nothing happens. Another press, and even though it’s done gingerly, as the conclusion is obvious to all lovers of slapstick, there is a sudden splurge, which ends with too much sauce being dispensed.

The surplus goes anywhere except the intended target, including the front of my jumper and up my sleeve. Even the stuff that goes where it is aimed, is travelling so fast that you can feel the splashback.

The cream merely splashed me as I knocked it off the bottom shelf of the fridge, and the

yoghurt drink missed my mouth in a moment of carelessness. Generally this would have stuck in my beard, but today it run straight over the beard and ended upon my jumper. It is like life hates me today.

Mute Swans at Budby Flash