Revenge is a dish best served by a scratchy bra

ONCE upon a time there was a Boychild who used lockdown to get really fit. He developed the notion that he could up his game even further if he got a magical belt that emitted electrical waves to tense his muscles. He reasoned that this would mean an extra five million sit ups while gaming. So, for his birthday, the Boychild got the magical belt.

The magical belt emitted pulses from level 1 to 150 and the Boychild was demonstrating to his mother that even on level 25, it was very feelable. ’Twas the boy’s birthday, which, in the light of his rippling abs, seemed suddenly less a question of cake and more the 24th anniversary of a bloody long labour. “Turn it up! Turn it up!” chanted his evil mother. He cranked it up to 50 and his muscles tensed in a way that made him whimper and laugh. But his evil mother was not satisfied. “Turn it up,” she chanted again until he succumbed and tried level 150. It was only two seconds but he howled and she cackled.

The next day his evil mother got dressed in her usual outfit of elasticated black and went out into the forest of Nutgrove. First the label at the neck of her T-shirt, then the zip on her trousers, then a label on her bra (lockdown is like an extended version of The Snow, wearing a bra at all feels dressy, a bra and make-up is kind of Met Gala level) and finally her shoe all started to stab her. Each was not the source of a usual type of garment annoyance but as if each had been sewn with shards of glass. To have a scratchy trousers’ zip is bad luck, she reasoned, but to be stabbed by four different painful items of clothing at once seemed too much.

There in the forest of Nutgrove, she pondered her evil cackling ways.