David Shakespeare Part II

Continued...

In January, David decided to spend some time alone with his ego. As he once said: "It's hard to be humble when you're as great as me."

David returned to the public eye in May when he kidnapped Michael Jackson's son, Prince Jackson Junior, and dangled him from the fifth floor balcony of the Llanfair hotel in Fishguard in Wales.

A few sad Welsh people were offended when David dropped the child and Prince plummeted to his death. But with that famous wink and infamous Shakespearian charm, David avoided all criminal charges, and even Michael Jackson saw the funny side in the end.

David came from a large family of writers. His great-great-great Aunt, Doris Bumblecock Shakespeare, once had an letter published in Playboy in 1879 and his great-great-great Uncle, Will, wrote some plays which were quite successful during the Elizabethan period.

David started his literary career aged 12 when he wrote to TV executive Stephen J. Cannell asking him why nobody was ever killed in The A-Team. He never received a reply and two years later, when The A-Team still hadn't killed anybody, David took his posters of Hannibal, B.A. Baracus, Face and Murdoch down from his bedroom wall and replaced them with posters of Keanu Reeves.

The posters stayed off David's wall until ten years later when he relented and Murdoch and his pals finally reappeared on David's wall.

However, David swore never to watch The A-Team again and he was true to his word - from then on he watched only Knight Rider, Airwolf, Street Hawk, Chips, Quantum Leap, Auto Man and The Wonder Years, in which the body counts were significantly higher.

Some years after the Stephen J. Cannel letter, David started writing professionally. He had several books published, the most famous of which were: David's Guide to David; How to Win David's and Influence David; The Joy of David; I Love David Coz He's Me and that popular classic, David's Guide to Satanism in Wales.

David was a big fan of popular culture. He enjoyed listening to the music of R. Kelly and Gary Glitter and he was especially proud of his collection of Pee Wee Herman films.

David had a long list of lovers in the two years he was in England. These included Paul and Caroline Heaton, Mike Bauld and Sylvia, an Italian girl with big eyes.

It seemed that no young man or woman could resist chat-up lines like: "Your dress would look good on my bedroom floor" or "I'm not Fred Flintstone but I can sure make your bed rock."

When David wasn't practising his Matrix moves, talking about Mike Bauld, eating oranges, trying to dig up Princess Diana's remains or attempting to convince people that the Welsh regime harboured weapons of mass destruction, he liked nothing more than to sit in his mahogany chair, a McDonalds takeaway at his side.

He would watch his favourite film - Shakespeare in Love - while listening to Marilyn Manson, at the same time gently stroking his Dr. Evil poster and rubbing peanut butter into his nipples.

You may think after reading this that David lead a blessed life. Well, he did. But even David had his problems. We spoke to one of his oldest friends who recalled the darkest chapter of David's life...

It began one day in Toronto when David returned home after a hard day's work as a bin man to find that his wife of six days, Agatha Christie, had left him and disappeared to Cardiff with her lover, the Secretary of State for Wales, Rhyf Griffiths.

She took their two children, David Junior and David Junior Junior, with her. The kids found it difficult to adjust at first but they soon got used to the weird Welsh people and they adopted the Welsh language as their own. And Agatha found work through Beaver Employment, as Canadian Ambassador to Wales.

Agatha and the kids wrote to David regularly but, sadly, their letters were written only in Welsh and at that time David had very little knowledge of the language or, indeed, the country.

This was a difficult time for David. His neighbour at the time, Ramesh Bead Boy, told us how he would often put a glass to the wall and listen to hear how David was tackling the crisis. He would often hear David watching Sesame Street at full volume. After the programme had finished David would start laughing and then he would start screaming. This went on about for six months.

David is, however, made of tougher stuff than this. He was soon able to put this difficult experience behind him and he soon re-emerged more confident than ever. In fact, just to show that he had no hard feelings, David had the Welsh flag sewn into his chest.

Shortly afterwards, David set off on his travels and came to the UK and the rest, as they say, is history.

We wanted to conclude this entry by speaking to some of the people who knew David well.

We visited the aforesaid hostel to interview Tiny Tim, Michael, Iker, Jenni, Reza, some Swiss people and Sylvia, who have all signed contracts to stay at the hostel for the next seven years, but the owners of the hostel, Paul and Caroline, insisted that we pay a fee.

They said we should pay twelve pounds for the first six interviews and then we could have the seventh one for free. We declined and instead tried to interview Ben Grant but he had gone to masturbate and was going to be about an hour. Fair play.

We also contacted Canadian coke dealer Deejay Dayton. Sadly, Deejay was unavailable - he had just spent half an hour on the toilet and he was busy writing a trip journal about the whole experience.

We remembered that David often spoke about a friend of his named Andrew Smithen. Sadly, we discovered that Andrew died 17 months ago after overdosing on pancakes while staying at York Youth Hotel.

David once shared a friendship with an Exeter man named Homeless Phil. Phil and David were inseparable, though they did briefly fall out when David discovered Phil had never worked for Adecco.

Phil was once a guest at the previously mentioned hostel, where he was an unhappy and lonely man. However, luck shined down upon him because one day he was kicked out and from then on he lived a blissfully happy life as a vagrant on the streets of Exeter.

We found Homeless Phil lying in the gutter outside Tesco.

After trying to sell us some rice, he agreed to talk about David. However, Phil insisted we buy him a bottle of cider. We declined and so the interview was called off. We shook Phil's hand and wished him well, then returned half an hour later and ran him over.

To conclude this entry we decided to speak to somebody who David had never met. We had hoped to find somebody intelligent and eloquent, but in the end we settled for Craig Hindmarsh.

Craig, who is the only black member of the Klu Klux Klan, said this:

CRAIG: "Well, I never did meet David. But I'm sure if I had I would have liked him. He sounded really great with hair that came down to his knees and those sun glasses. And I always did like the Addams family. I think David would really have fitted in around these parts. I'm sure he looked great in white."

On that note, we will begin to bring this entry to an end.

You don't need to read this entry again to know that David Shakespeare was, indeed, a rather unique human being who will be missed by everyone who knew him. We urge you now to join us in forwarding this entry to everybody you know. Come on! You can do it! Let's spread a little David around!

David touched people all across the Globe, from Torquay to Torbay, Exeter to Exmouth. And everyone who knew him will miss him and keep him in their hearts and minds forever.

Especially the Welsh.

As David himself would have said: "I agree."

DISCLAIMER: This entry is purely a work of fiction and any resemblance to people living or dead is entirely on purpose. David Shakespeare is not dead. He is, however, returning to Canada, which is almost as bad. Probably worse. David Shakespeare does not hate the Welsh. I, however, do. And Americans. To all my American readers: Please don't sue. I have a newt and three frogs to support - and I work for Adecco.

From the memory box of a Professional Englishman.

Email from the Edge Part II

Hi.

This is a tale of sadness.

It's the tale of a young girl called Kimberley Dryden and her struggle with anorexia.

It's also the story of a man who may well be a serial killer and the tale of a city I have come to know well during the past two years.

So, make yourself comfortable and let me take you on a short walk down the cobbled steets of an ancient city called York...

I returned to York on the 1st of April of this year after spending a few days in Paris. Paris is my favourite city - it's the most romantic place I have ever visited. A place which seems to have been created for lovers to walk hand-in-hand through its streets.

I returned to York for one reason and one reason alone. Kimberley.

Perhaps I told myself that I was coming here for another reason, but I know now that it was her who brought me back here.

It's funny, but Kimberley will never know just what I have been through during these past three months.

After arriving in York I stayed for two weeks at the worst hostel ever - York Backpackers on Mickelgate. Don't ever stay there - it's a nasty place full of nasty people.

After two weeks I made a decision to remain in York and I started to look for somewhere to live. It was then that I met the serial killer.

I was passing a post office and I noticed in the window an advert for a room for rent. I called the number and arranged to meet the landlord. What first made me realise that this might prove to be an odd encounter was when the landlord insisted we meet at a quarter to midnight.

We arranged to meet outside a telephone box on Mickelgate. He was late and so I called him and he told me that he was delayed because one of his windows had been smashed. Uh-oh.

So, a little disturbed, I waited.

After 20 minutes, a dishevelled looking man turned up with two dogs in tow. He told me he was in his forties. This later turned out to be untrue - he was actually around 55. He also told me his name was David. This was also untrue - his name turned out to be Jason. Memories of Friday the 13th started spinning through my head.

Jason took me to his house and showed me around. I couldn't help but feel a little strange as he left all of the lights out, except one, and he showed me the house in near darkness. This was, apparently, because he was afraid his windows would be smashed again.

This is all absolutely 100% true, by the way, and it gets a little worse. The room that would be mine was a pokey little box room and the last person to sleep in the bed was Jason's Mother, who, it's worth mentioning, had died in that very same bed two years earlier.

So, I left the house that night thinking that there was no way that I could ever live there. Then, as the hours went by, I slowly started to change my mind. All he wanted for the room was £20 a week - and £20 a week is a small price to pay for death and dismemberment.

So I moved in. And that's when things became even stranger. I soon found out that David - or Jason - was on a variety of pills. He was taking medication for a 'psychopathic personality disorder.'

When I foolishly mentioned that this made him a psychopath he insisted that, no, he just had a personality disorder. Okay, but that doesn't explain a few things - like the time that I was watching a video of The Simpsons with him, in total darkness, and he ran behind the settee and hid. (It happened).

One day I made the mistake of telling Psycho Boy that I had a secret. It's true - I do. I did something in my early youth that I'm ashamed of and I've only ever told a handful of people about it.

Serial Killer Boy then started sleeping downstairs on the settee and would rarely venture upstairs or anywhere near my room.

When I asked him why, he told me it was because I might go to the toilet during the night and he would "see" my secret. What? What on earth did he think my secret was - a sixteen inch penis!?

This went on for a few weeks and then came the day that I saw Jason/David's Princess Diana memorial. (He was in love with Diana). He put it in the window for all of the world to see - a huge collection of pictures, letters, framed photographs and other titbits. Wow.

Despite his strange behaviour, I eventually came to the conclusion that Jason was just a lost soul, someone who had been treated badly by people, and I vowed not to be like that. I started to buy him cakes and presents and things.

It's funny, but I remember that whenever we had a disagreement, he would say to me, "Oh let's not fall out" and I distinctly remember thinking to myself: Well, we never actually fell in!

A few weeks later Jason told me that he had decided to move away to be with his sister and so I had a week or two to pack up and find somewhere else to live.

I soon found somewhere - a nice, Italian-run Guest House, where I'm staying until tomorrow morning - and so I said goodbye to Jason and wished him well.

I thought nothing more of Jason/David until a week ago when I saw him just a few roads away from the House from Hell we had both apparently moved away from.

He told me that he was there to see an old friend and straight away this aroused my suspicions - Jason never had any friends.

So, a few days later I cycled past his house and, lo and behold, there they were. A hundred pictures of Princess Diana, staring out at me with their dead eyes...

Yes, Serial Killer Boy had lied to me. He wasn't moving - he just wanted to get rid of me! And he even went as far as to pretend to speak to his sister on the phone about leaving when I was there!

So, needless to say, I have absolutely no sympathy for Freak Boy now and the whole experience has only served to confirm for me many things I believe about humanity. This guy promised to send me a cheque for the kids in Belarus and this, along with almost everything else he said, turned out to be a lie.

Perhaps, in an Internet cafe somewhere in York, Jason sat down and typed a similar entry to this one telling his friends how he'd had a close shave with an odd guy with a crazy Versace coat! Who knows...

So, the four weeks I spent with David/Jason were an interesting, bizarre and unpleasant experience - and one that Kimberley Dryden will never know about.

But there are so many things that Kimberley will never know. She will never know that I have thought about her every day during the past three months. She will never know about this entry. She will never know that during the past few weeks I've come closer than ever before to taking my own life.

Every moment I spent with Kimberley was precious and wonderful. I felt utterly at ease with her, completely comfortable, and that's rare for because I often have problems relating to women.

Kimberley and I met when we worked together at York hospital. I still remember the way she looked as she walked the halls, with her brown hair and brown eyes, wearing an overall that was two sizes too big for her.

Kimberley and I spent a great deal of time together during the few weeks that we knew each other. Then in September of 2002 I moved away from York and began travelling around Eastern Europe.

I know that my leaving hurt Kimberley. I told her we would meet again. And I was right - we did see each other one last time. But it was different from anything I could have imagined.

I returned to York in April and I went back to the hospital to see her. She had not responded to any of my letters and I couldn't understand why. All I knew was that I had realised that Kimberley was the best friend I had ever had and I wanted to see her again.

So I saw her at the hospital and it was horrible. Very painful. She told me that she didn't want to spend any time with me. She didn't want to have feelings for me again. My last words to her were: "My heart is broken" and then I left and I never saw her again.

What Kimberley did to me wasn't nice and it hurt me a great deal. Being treated like that, knowing that I did nothing wrong, knowing that I only treated her with kindness and compassion, has been difficult to come to terms with when I cared for her so much.

But during the past few months I have begun to understand why Kimberley behaved the way that she did. You see, Kimberley is an ill girl. She has anorexia and she gets by on just a bowl of cereal a day.

I was like a little whirlwind in her life. Before me, she didn't really have a social life. She stayed at home with her long-term boyfriend who tries his best to control her. She had her little safe existence, with her routines, where everything was familiar, and then I came along and changed everything.

Suddenly she was going out and meeting new people. And she was starting to get better, too. I told her good things about herself, boosted her self-esteem, and encouraged her to take vitamin pills. She was starting to eat more. She was looking better, feeling better.

And then suddenly I left and she had to go back to the life that she had before. I know that I hurt her, though that was the last thing I ever wanted to do. And though nothing of a sexual nature ever happened between Kimberley and I, I know that I caused problems in her relationship with her boyfriend.

After I left, she probably apologised to her boyfriend and realised he was the only person that she could depend on.

And then when suddenly I reappeared seven months later it was just too much for her to take. The best thing for her to do, to protect herself, was to push me away.

Which is exactly what she did.

I know that Kimberley had feelings for me - she told me so - and I used to marvel at the fact that I wasn't in love with her. She was pretty, sensitive, funny - everything I could ever wish to hope for in a woman. And yet I didn't have feelings for her.

Then a few weeks ago I was lying on my bed, in the guest house, staring at the ceiling, when I had a realisation. What I realised, simply, was that not only have I been in love with this girl from the very beginning, but she is also the love of my life and the person I think that I should have married.

Kimberley was my salvation. These past few years I have moving around the UK, from Wales to York to Exeter, searching for that special someone. It has been a very lonely existence. And then I found that someone but realised it too late.

And I think, too, that I was Kimberley's salvation. Kimberley may not have long left to live and I think that I could ultimately have helped to save her life. And it is knowing this that hurts me the most.

So I have remained in York these past three months in the hope I might bump into Kimberley and strike up a conversation.

I have no friends here, they have all moved away or we have lost touch, and it's been a lonely three months. I stayed in the hope that I might see her again one last time. But it never happened. I never saw her again. And she never replied to my letters.

And now it is time to leave York and these difficult times behind.

I will always miss Kimberley, the love of my life, and I will always think about her and what might have been. I have given her three months of my life, waited for her for three months. But I should try to move on, although that's very difficult to do, especially as we once sat and shared a joke together in this very Internet cafe.

So, until next time, it's goodbye to Kimberley and goodbye to York.

I will continue to keep this city and that wonderful girl in my thoughts, and I will remember each of them until the day that I die.

Goodbye York - I will miss you.

Goodbye Kimberley - you were the love of my life.

From the memory box of a Professional Englishman.

Email from the Edge Part I

Hello.

How are you?

I don't know where this is going...

I'm going to sit here and let the words flow and see what appears on my screen. This could be a very personal entry, so if that's not your thing, go and take a walk and when you return I'll be gone.

I'm sitting in York library - my bum has graced this seat many a time - and I'm writing to you on a warm and sunny afternoon.

Life is a bizarre thing, man.

I often marvel at people who manage to breeze through life, hardly a care in the world, meeting all of the challenges that confront them on a daily basis and accepting and adapting to this crazy little world which human beings have shaped and conquered.

Life for me, and many of us, is not that easy. My heart was broken a few days ago, as it has been broken many times before, and now I am trying to recover the fragments and piece them back together.

I guess it's this that I want to write about today.

I'm aware that my entries sometimes have an air of tragedy to them, and I really try my best not to be self-absorbed, but despair and heartache confront me on quite a regular basis and an outlet is needed for the emotions that often threaten to overwhelm me.

If that outlet is a library, a computer screen, a keyboard and oodles of electronic space, then so be it. I don't know anyone I can talk to about my trials and tribulations, and so that's where you come in.

But before we go into that and before I tell you about Kimberley Dryden - the girl who is the cause of my latest troubles - let me tell you how things have been going in my increasingly bizarre and surreal life since I managed to get away from that damn hospital.

So, I visited London recently. I bought myself a nice Versace coat. It cost the equivalent of almost two thousand dollars. It 's covered in distinctive patches. I think - and hope - it's cool.

While I was in London, I bumped into Michael Portillo. He thought I was stalking him. (Michael Portillo is a high-profile ex-politician). It happened when I was travelling around London by tube. I noticed Michael Portillo standing opposite me. He was immaculately dressed, wearing a suit, with his hair gelled; frozen in perfection.

He was looking at me, because I'm wearing a mad coat covered in patches, and I was looking at him, because he's Michael Portillo.

This went on for a while - him looking at me, me looking at him - in a non-sexual way, you understand - and then the tube pulled into a station and he got off. This was also my stop, and amongst dozens of people, I ended up walking right behind him as he left the train and made his way across the platform.

I unintentionally followed Michael Portillo as he walked and suddenly he became aware that I was just a few feet away from him.

I'm sure that the poor guy thought I was some sort of nut. Maybe it was the fact that I was blasting Sting's Don't Stand So Close To Me through my personal CD Player. (Perhaps Mad About You would have been a better choice).

As soon as he got through the turnstile, he was off, faster than a race horse. He veered to the side, took a right turn, went in the opposite direction of the exit and disappeared.

As for Sting and I, we went on our merry way and thought how funny it was that we'd managed to spook Michael Portillo.

So the moral of this story is that you don't need a degree or wealthy parents to make a difference in politics - all you need is a two thousand dollar Versace coat!

So that was my first bizarre trip to London. My second strange visit to London happened about two weeks ago when I visited my nation's capital with the intention of purchasing a pair of Versace trousers.

I arrived at London Victoria coach station and joined a queue to purchase a ticket for the tube. I noticed that somebody had left a white envelope lying on the counter in front of me. Thinking it was empty, I took a look inside anyway and, to my amazement, I found that it was stuffed with crisp, unused bank notes!

My heart skipped a beat or ten and I looked around. There was a guy behind me but he seemed unaware that the envelope was there.

I contemplated leaving the envelope on the counter but thought that if I did the guy behind me would probably take the money. I considered handing the envelope to the ticket-seller but he was rude and I thought that he might keep it as well.

So I took the envelope and the money. I counted the money on the tube and there was one hundred and forty pounds there. And yes, I did rather guilty about it later, but it did pay for the Versace shirt that I'm wearing right now as I write this blog entry!

So that was my second bizarre trip to London.

There's a lot more to write about it. I want to tell you about my brief visit to Paris last week. I want, too, to tell you the Princess Diana obsessive and possible serial killer that I'm about to share a house with in York. I also would like to share a thought or ten with you about the whole Iraq situation.

And, of course, I want to tell you about Kimberley Dryden. She is the reason that I'm writing this entry and the reason that I'm in York. She's also the reason that my heart is in pieces...

Until next time, thank you for reading my words.

Bye.

From the memory box of a Professional Englishman.

Tears for a Little Girl

Hi.

I hate blogs.

Really, I do.

I prefer to write to people one on one. However, something happened to me recently and I wanted to share it with you.

It changed my life - just a little - and though it won't change yours, I hope that what I'm about to reveal will at least keep you entertained for a couple of minutes. That's all it will take to read this entry and let me share the memories of this day with you and the memory of a little girl who touched my heart.

This story comes to you from York in England. York is a fascinating city - steeped in history, friendly, fascinating, beautiful and with pub after pub after pub. In the two months that I've been here I've visited lots of interesting places and made many new friends.

Some nights ago I took part in a Ghost Walk. What's a Ghost Walk I hear you ask? Well, a Ghost Walk is when a large group of people meet at a particular place and time and are taken on walk around the city by a man or a woman who has guided that same walk hundreds, if not thousands of times before.

The guide entertains the crowd with stories of ghosts and ghouls, graves and goblins. Ghost Walks take place in York every night. Each walk lasts for around an hour and a half and costs about three pounds. It's a chance to soak up the history of York and see some of the most curious and often most infamous parts of this great city.

The Ghost Walk I joined - the Original Ghost Walk - started at about eight o'clock on a cold and foggy night in late November. The guide - a woman in her forties - told us lots of stories as she led us down narrow and cobbled streets, some of the stories were funny, some a little scary, some were sad.

There is one story I remember well. Even now I can recount it, almost word for word. The ghost part of the story doesn't really matter because the facts - the true, historical facts - were enough. They were enough to almost cause me to break down and cry amongst a group of strangers.

So. Let me tell you the story. And it won't cost you three pounds...

There is a house in York known to many as Plague House. It gets its name from the events that befell a little girl who lived in that house a long, long time ago.

I don't know the little girl's name and probably never will. All I know is that her parents were amongst those to be affected by the Black Death as it swept across Europe hundreds of years ago. (York was badly affected by the plague at regular intervals; In 1604, 3,512 people are known to have died before the plague hit York again in 1631). Both parents died and it was thought that this little girl would die, too.

So what the residents of York did was to board up the doors and windows of the house. But when they boarded up the house they left the little girl inside, alive, with the decaying bodies of her parents. Perhaps the locals left her some food. I don't know.

But I do know that the residents of York were scared. They were scared of catching the plague and they were sure that this little girl was doomed. So they boarded up the house and left her inside and completely alone. She was four years old.

There was one window of the house that wasn't boarded up. It was a window to a room at the top of the house. A window that I looked up at just a few nights ago.

Every day the locals would pass the house and they would see the girl, a pale little face, tapping at the window, asking for help, waving at children, smiling, crying, playing. No-one dared enter the house and so she was left there. Every day the girl would appear at the window, her face growing ever paler, until one day she was gone and the locals saw her no more.

Some time later, when the plague had passed, the locals entered the house to remove the bodies. They found the bodies of the mother and father but they couldn't find the body of the little girl. They eventually found her, in the top room, but she hadn't died of the plague. She had died of starvation.

Somehow she had not contracted the plague or she had recovered and she had survived there, for weeks, with the bodies of her parents. Eventually she had died because she had nothing to eat. And nobody had the courage to enter the house to help her. She was forgotten.

As I wrote, the ghost part of the story doesn't really matter because I feel the facts are enough. If the ghost part of the story is to be believed, then there was eventually a happy ending over a century later when the house was blessed by a priest. If you would like to hear the ghost story, just let me know and I will publish it here.

I wanted to share the story of Plague House and the story of this lonely and forgotten girl with you because it touched me a great deal.

As I stood there outside the house, looking up at the window, I could almost imagine her little face and how awful her last weeks on this earth must have been.

I didn't want to simply forget her and move on with my life, getting lost again in the routine of my day to day existence. That's why I wanted to share the story with you. This entry is for her. Now the memory of this little girl lives within you, too.

As I add this entry to my blog, years have passed since that day and York is a distant memory to me now, as are many of the people that I met amongst its old and cobbled streets. But this story and that night will remain with me forever, as will the memory of a little girl who I hope has found peace, wherever she is.

Thanks for reading this.

From the memory box of a Professional Englishman.