Men’s Health Blog

I was woken at 4 o’clock this morning by someone kicking a gate. I think that’s what he was doing; he might have been hitting a gate, or trying to climb over it in a slapstick manner. I don’t know precisely what he was doing with the gate as it was 4 a.m. and I was trying to pretend that I hadn’t just woken up.

I live in a block of flats in the city centre, so there’s a certain amount of noise throughout the day, though we do quite well at night. You get idiots who show their delight at the amount they’ve drunk by screaming at the tops of their voices, of course, but that’s usually around midnight or so. I can live with that. 4 in the morning is a bit off though.

I heard a bloke shouting at the gate moron, and I imagine that he must have gone soon after that, as I managed to fall asleep again. Before that, however, I was lying in bed, concocting all manner of elaborate tortures for the empty-headed fool. This is the kind of situation where I’d love to have super powers. If ever the question gets asked, people usually reply that they’d like to be able to fly, or become invisible so they could walk into changing rooms and see other people naked, but I’d like to be able to inconvenience idiots.

The gate moron had no other desire than to let people know he existed, in the most irritating way possible, so it would have been a joy, just by thinking it, to make him disappear and pop up 30 miles away, far from any kind of public transport. And in the spirit of sociability that he extended to the residents of this block of flats, I’d also make his clothes vanish, and write on his chest, in glitter, the legend ‘I am a silly twat’. Let’s see whether gate-kicking would be a priority for him in that situation.

I’ve always thought that being to magically vanish clothing would be a fabulous power to have. Not for the obvious abuses you could make of it, no - rather because if you found yourself embroiled in, or witness to, any kind of violent incident, you could simply click your fingers and, poof!, the aggressors would find themselves suddenly at a very silly disadvantage. Nothing would dissipate violent tension as quickly as seeing someone realise they were exposing the paucity of their, um, arsenal to the world. You can’t seriously threaten someone if your bits are swaying in the breeze. And, at the very least, barefoot, they’re going to be risking a stubbed toe. Chances are that they’d run off, to look for a convolutedly-secretive way home, everyone else would have a good laugh and civility would be restored. It would be a wonderfully farcical response to some very nasty behaviour. Enforced nakedness, it’s a crime beater, take my word for it.

IN SUMMARY: I’ve never been in a fight. Don’t make me.