A Misunderstanding

“You don’t want to sit here!” said the chair, brusquely, as I sat down on it.

Startled, I leapt to my feet.

“Ouch!” cried the carpet, “That bloody well hurt! I’m sick and tired of being trampled on all the frigging time.”

“You think you’ve got it bad,” called the wok from the kitchen, “You should try being me!”

Disorientated, I bolted for the door, slamming it behind me. “Bastard!” it shouted at my back as I ran down the stairs.

I went down to my neighbour Jim’s flat, and knocked on the door. “Hey, what’ve I ever done to you?” it complained, before Jim’s face appeared as he yanked it aside.

“Thank God you’re in, Jim, I’ve gotta talk to you man!”

Jim looked at me curiously, his mouth opened and he said, “Mwer!”

“What’s that?”

He opened his mouth again but, “Mwer, mwer, mwer,” was all I could hear coming out of it when he spoke.

“OK, stop messing around, will you?”

I followed him into the living room, and we both plonked ourselves down on the sofa.

“Ow! My fucking back!” it exclaimed. I jumped up again. Jim gazed at me with a look of intense curiosity on his face.

“Mwer mwer mwer mwer mwer?” he seemed to ask.

“Sorry, I haven’t got a clue what you’re saying, but this is really freaking me out!”

“I wouldn’t bother if I was you,” said the table in the corner of the room.

“Did you hear that?”

Jim just stared at me, puzzled.

“He doesn’t understand you any more than you do him,” chipped in the clock from the mantle piece.

I swivelled round to face it, “And what the fuck would you know? You’re just a clock!”

“Oooh, just a clock! Charming, how d’you like that eh?”

“Typical!” said the table, “As if he could keep track of time as well as you do. They think they’re so fucking superior.”

“Of course we’re superior, we make you.”

“Well that doesn’t prove anything,” the dirty mug on the table joined the fray. “I’d like to see what you’d do if I poured boiling hot coffee straight into you.”

“Ah, but that’s exactly my point, you can’t pour coffee into me can you? You’re just a mug.”

“I am not just a mug, I was issued to commemorate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, I’ll have you know!”

Meanwhile, Jim’s face was showing deeper and deeper concern as he occasionally mwer-mwerred at me. He stood up suddenly and walked across to the phone in the corner.

“Uh-oh,” mocked the phone, “Now you’re in trouble!”

“Trouble? What d’you mean?”

“Ha, ha, just you wait and see,” it taunted, as Jim anxiously mwer-mwerred into the receiver.

“Ha, ha, just you wait and see!” they all chorused together - phone, mug, clock, table, and so many other objects in the room that as they repeated the chant over and over again the noise deafened me.

I fell on my knees, hands clamped hard over my ears, and bent over forwards till my forehead touched the floor, trying to calm my head that was spinning like the cylinder of a revolver in a game of Russian roulette.

I was still collapsed on the ground when they arrived. I looked up as the three men walked through the door, their white coats almost glowing. Two of them held my arms, as the other one manoeuvred the jacket onto me, and together they tied it up at the back.

“All right, all right, you don’t need to pull so hard!” grumbled the jacket.


“And then they brought me here, doctor, I really have no idea why.”

I look across the small room from the couch where I lie. The doctor sits silently in his chair, the sun at the window casting dark stripes across his pristine coat. He smiles sympathetically as his steely grey eyes meet mine searchingly. His mouth slowly opens.

“Mwer mwer mwer mwer!”

“It’s no good,” the pen in his right hand tells me, “he doesn’t understand a word you say!”