A man who hates going to work has told how he delayed going in this morning in the hope that some natural catastrophe such as an earthquake, hurricane, typhoon, monsoon, Biblical flood, volcanic eruption, or fireball from space might save him the bother.
Moys Kenwood, 56, loathes employment, and feels isolated and, to a large extent, alienated at his place of work. He spends much of his time daydreaming about alternate locations - home, the beach, the park, the countryside - where he might enjoy himself with his wife and two children, rather than pouring his life down the shitter at work.
The modern world, however, runs on money, and the need to get it.
Hence, his predicament.
But this morning, Kenwood was hoping for something different: an earthquake perhaps, that would rip a chasm in the fabric of the earth in front of the school, into which the school might plop. Or the rainfall of one year falling in one hour, like it does in the Bible, to wash the entire site away. Or maybe even an unexpected meteor shower could enter the atmosphere, with one meteoroid landing a square hit on the main office, and making a rift thirty miles long by a mile wide.
Even a measly hurricane would have gone some way to addressing the situation, by levelling the school, resulting in a two-year sabbatical whilst the mess was cleared up, and the school rebuilt.
But no. The weather was fine, with only a very light breeze, and the forecast gave only a 30% chance of some light rain later in the day. Seismographic charts were stable, and the nearest volcano was situated almost 1,000 miles away in Indonesia.
Space could not help either. There, silence ruled.
And then he remembered the tagline from 'Alien':
"In space, no-one can hear you scream".
He gave it his best shot, anyway, and, when nothing happened, went to work.
