A PROBLEM SOLVED

One sunny morning, surprisingly hot for early February, though had it been, say, August, it would have been rather nippy, I received a visit from a dear acquaintance nicknamed 'PG Tips' because of his morbid fear of anything to do with tea - teapots, strainers, milk jugs, tea plantations, tea bags, the word 'cuppa' and the British.

"Julian, you old fraud, how the hell are you?" And he punched me a hearty blow on the upper arm, which ruptured a muscle, already weakened by his daily ministrations of friendly hits.

How is one supposed to behave under such circumstances?

I have a horror of hurting a stranger's feelings, let alone a dear acquaintance's.

What on earth to do?

To give vent to an agonised bellow or even shriek? (Which was my first instinct)

But then how would he take it? Could it devastate an already fragile psyche? And yet surely I had some rights in the matter? What about my already fragile psyche? Let alone my more than already fragile ruptured upper arm muscle?

And then in one split second (probably the second half of the split and not the first, because if it had been the first half it wouldn't have been split yet, so I'm assuming that it was the second half. However I readily admit that I am a novice in all matters pertaining to division of time and could be at fault.)

As I say, in one split second a solution shot before my eyes in a blinding flash (figuratively speaking, obviously.)

[I say 'obviously' because I wasn't having visions and had not ingested any hallucinogens, well not recently, in fact never, but I suppose conceivably, as the muscle was in the process of rupturing, it could have sparked off a chain reaction of flashing nerves which might possibly have culminated in the optic nerve joining in out of sympathy.]

But no, it was simply that the ideal solution to my dilemma had suddenly occurred to me in this aforementioned blinding flash.

So without further ado, or as little ado as humanly possible, I lifted the fist at the end of my uninjured arm and punched Pg Tips on the nose!

"Sod his already fragile psyche!" had been the blinding flash.