SO there I was on Southern Road Rec at half past nine on Sunday morning.
Fear not, I hadn’t just woken up. And I was fully clothed. This time.
No, I was there to put up nets and plant corner flags for a football match.
Why I keep planting flags I don’t know; they never seem to grow (Am I overdoing the terrible puns this week? Okay, I’ll leave it).
Anyway, having marked out my territory I had a few minutes to spare so plonked myself down on to a bench under one of the trees and waited for everyone else to arrive.
Imagine my surprise, dear reader, when I found my attention drawn by six, three foot high, Crayola crayons (assorted colours). This is unusual even in my own psychedelic life, so I tried to ignore them.
Then I found the crayons had been joined by a couple of fairies, a cat, a walking banana and what might have been a 10 foot high slice of toast or could just as easily been a shoe. To be honest the costume wasn’t that great.
A small boy with elephantitis tottled past. Then I realised he was actually carrying two spacehoppers, and then I started to see people in running gear mixed in with the hundreds of little kids in fancy dress.
This was the Sports Relief Mile and can I just say a well done to all the people who set off from Southern Road in the brilliant sunshine to raise money for this great cause. It looked great and only a strained ego ruled me out of the running this year.
The crayons and fancy dress were not the oddest thing about my morning. Shortly after the run had ended I was standing with my back to the car park watching the football and admiring the rather splendid nets and flags.
I happened to look over my shoulder and was startled to see a man and woman stealing my car.
This was literally daylight robbery and I had to do a double take at the sheer nerve of this.
They were rifling the back seat of my car with both doors open, while people walked past as if this was perfectly natural.
I was across there faster than the very fastest crayon in the world. “EXCUSE ME,” I bellowed.
“That’s my car!”
The gentleman robber emerged from the back seat and looked me in the eye.
I was relieved to see that he was shorter than me, and did not appear to have a gun.
He looked me up and down then looked two cars along to where a near identical car, with very similar numberplate, also stood with its doors open.
“Sorry mate, you must have left yours unlocked. We were just packing up from the fun run and thought it was our car ...”
A likely excuse I thought as I sidled away, slightly humiliated.