In the beginning…

It has gone out of fashion in these post-modern times, but stories used to begin with a beginning, progress to a middle and conclude with an ending. Open-minded as I am, I have never minded a slight twist in the last chapter, but there my liberalism ends.

So, my story will begin with the iconic words ‘on a dark and fateful morning in the Savanna.’ I think that ‘once upon a time’ is a beginning appropriate for nitwits and girls with a deplorable princess fantasy. ‘As I walked out one Midsummer morning,’ is just about acceptable although promises a bucolic idyll which makes me want to sneeze.

So, I begin darkly as the sun is engorging the horizon and I find myself staring into the red face of a maniac with a gun. I stop to think, ‘he looks like a walrus with that moustache.’ That is my fatal mistake.

Clarence

[to be continued]