I Never Learn

 Consciousness crawled slowly and somewhat reluctantly back into my body, made a few disparaging remarks about the furniture and finally settled down.  I opened an eye, I was lying face down on the carpet.  My carpet didn't look any better at close range than it did from a distance.  I became vaguely aware of voices in the background.

"Is he dead?" asked the platypus with what seemed like genuine concern.

"If he is I want his shoes," said the puffin.

"He's not dead," replied the plague doctor.  "If he was I would have removed his eyeballs."

"Why?"

"Don't you have a hobby?"

"Should we help him?" asked the spider.

I suddenly became aware of some suspicious mechanical noises.

"Already on it," replied the plague doctor.  "Behold, my mechanical leech inserter."

I heaved myself up off the floor.  Actually I heaved myself about eighteen inches above the floor before flopping back with a whimper of pain but it was enough to give them pause.  The puffin even stopped tugging on my boot.

"Keep that thing away from me," I rasped.  My throat was dry and every muscle in my body ached.  The plague doctor looked a little disappointed.

"Are you sure?  I've been wanting to test this for ages."

"I have never been more certain of anything in my life."

"You look like shit," said the puffin, not offensively just making a statement.

Slowly I dragged myself up into a sitting position.

"I've been playing soccer," I explained.

Understanding nods came from the plush toys.

Yes, I've been playing soccer.  People who have read this blog for a while will know that I used to play corporate soccer in my lunch break with a team of people from work.  Those readers will also know that I was quite spectacularly bad at it.  Then covid hit and suddenly gathering people together in a relatively small area was frowned upon.  Once we all got over worrying about that I got cancer and what with one thing and another it has been several years since I dragged a team t-shirt over my flabby body and stumbled down to the Domain to shame the traditions of football with my presence.

 Now however eager young colleagues have presented themselves as hungry for football and because my commonsense was apparently removed along with my prostate I decided to go with them.  I hadn't got any fitter in the intervening time and indeed an argument could be made for saying that I was in worse shape than ever.  The roster of available players was long and I thought I could just trot on and stumble around for a couple of minutes before waving to a substitute to drag my exhausted body off the field.  Naturally when the time came for the game we had barely enough players to make a team and there were no substitutes available for anybody.

Onto the Domains battered and somewhat lumpy grass I trotted and we faced down a team replete with replacements.  My colleagues played well, indeed they greatly impressed.  At least they greatly impressed me.  For my part I gasped and staggered and did my best not to throw up on the ball.  The only thing I impressed was the grass when I lay down on it and prayed for death.  Sadly the gods I worship have already proven they can get a lot more malicious amusement out of keeping me alive.  I waved my foot at the ball and occasionally hit it which I consider a personal triumph.

Now a couple of days later my body is extracting revenge for my inflicting the horrors of exercise upon it.  Stiffness has beset all of the parts of my body except one (work it out) and pain and general misery is my lot.  Still I drag myself around if only because experience has taught me that it is better not to spend too long immobile in the company of my plush toy room mates.  The puffin has a distinctly predatory gleam in its eyes when it looks at me lately and even the platypus seems to be calculating the odds as to whether its better to keep me alive or just let me go.

There's another match next Tuesday and I hope to be fit for it, by "fit" I mean "alive", but after that I'm going to have to book some massage to ease the aches in my body.  I suppose if that doesn't work there's always the mechanical leech inserter.