Different

It happens occasionally. Despite the bear pits, the man-traps, the trip wires, snares and sniper's nests that beset my psyche. Every now and then, still it hits me, something makes it through, under the barbed wire, shimmying between the search lights. Out to the perimeter, to consciousness. The desire to do something different.

And I don't mean dye the carpet Prussian blue and deck my parlour out in the manner of a nineteenth century dandy. I don't mean stencil my khazi (you can't use ordinary stencilling paint for this, but you can buy it mail order from a nice little company called Latrine Dreams Ltd...). Or build a mediterranean-style water feature out of an old fiat bravo. Or stuffing quail with prunes and marinating them in sake. None of that, I don't mean the kind of difference that you can buy at all good art shops and hardware stores or larger supermarkets. And I don't mean "all in a good cause", pogo sticking across Peru, sitting in a bath of bake beans, bungy jumping different. Or "Seemed like a good idea after eight pints" different (although there are of course also lots of these).

No, I mean something earth shattering, bridge-burning and possibly arrestable. Of course the ones that break through most often are the ones about you guessed it. Like bending the cute girl sitting opposite you on the train over the seat back and rogering her senseless (for some reason physical impossibility or at least a high risk of cramp are ever present with these particular urges). Or leading a march of Greeks on Stone Henge claiming that we paid a bloke called Eric twenty quid for it and we have a receipt and anyway, even if we do nick it, it'll be much better looked after for posterity in Athens, out of all this nasty rain (of course the real fun there would be watching them trying to take it on the plane as hand luggage). But then there's real high wire adrenaline fuelled stuff. Telling somebody what you really think when they ask you what you really think, "Take, away the... (tits and arse /rakish god looks, freakish height and square jaw, delete as appropriate) and nobody would pay you the slightest attention." And then stand back, watching the tear in the social fabric rip wider and wider. Or to not tell the truth, to tell lies or create a diversion, but to just throw away the script and do something genuinely flabberghastingly unexpected. Like going into a song and dance routine in the middle of a job interview that you've obviously bollocksed up - "I'm not sure that I do have those skills but now I'd like to sing 'The Moon and I' from the Mikado please excuse the falsetto." Or talking dirty to the man who rings you up in the middle of your dinner to tell you that "we're doing a promotion in your area on replacement double glazing and..." (low groans)"What are you wearing?"

Yes, just occasionally, I have the urge to do these things. But I don't.