All through his childhood he dreamt of being different. Where most boys his age had posters of Samantha Fox and the Cobh Ramblers 1972 squad, he had ones of Robocop and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit. In the corner of his bedroom, a mechanical arm made from Lego lay unfinished. His dog, 'Cyborg Sylvia' was forced to wear a suit made from tin-foil and bottle tops, and was made bark down a kitchen roll insert for that 'tubular and robotic effect'. The boys on his street eventually stopped calling around. He watched them through twitching curtains. Them, kicking balls to each other. Him, attaching electrodes to his. His Mother, long suffering and married to a stuffy conservative party member, called him 'FPX-115' and used to create dinners with imaginative, technological names. 'Chips' , 'Chicken Bytes' and 'battered car battery and mushy peas'. Kraftwerk's 'Robots', 'Computer Love' and rather inexplicably, Cry Before Dawns 'Witness for the world' were his mobile phones ringtones. His first girlfriend was made of jump-leads and an old computer monitor. He had drawn her face on the screen and would spend hours brushing his lips against her static. Occasionally receiving a slight 'jolt' that would transpond a reaction in what he liked to call his 'hard disk'. He regularly cursed his god-given limb collection and would look enviously at the toaster in his kitchen. On more than one occasion his mother had to intervene when he tried to implant a DVD player into his bottom.
As he hit adulthood, his robotic
desires became close to an obsession. He could regularly be found in Maplins, naked and with a guilty look on his face. He sometimes slept in the washing machine because he said the noise of the spin cycle was the most serene piece of music he'd ever heard. His one attempt at a relationship with a real woman made of human ingredients ended tragically when he arrived home one night and plugged her into the mains.
Recently, he had visited Ireland on holiday as he had heard it had the highest numbers of 'Robots' per capita, in the world. Unfortunately he had misheard, and it was actually 'Skobies'. It was during this fruitless trip, that his desire to be Bionic looked like becoming a reality. After being thrown out of Peat's for 'acting suspiciously in the scart lead section, he went to McDonalds. It was here, courtesy of a friendly headbutt, that he encountered Irish hospitality as it's very best. Giddily, he galloped out of McDonalds, being pursued all the while by a chirpy group of sknagers and skobies.
"I will be forced to inform the enforcement droid, ED-209" he pleaded, as they gestured their boots towards his face.
As it happened, it was this outburst that bought him precious time. The skobies, all stood round scratching each others heads and cross checking the lists of useful words their mothers had prepared for them that morning
"Johnny Blue, Geronohrawdat, Batch Loaf, Not Guilty." said one of them "Can't bleedin find tha 'enforcment' word"
Our hero, the bionic chap, had used this time wisely and could be seen, far in the distance making his escape.
Or at least, that's my version of what happened..
Here's the
official one
