To fart is human

On the day of mum's funeral, I left very early in order to get to her town (about 500km away) on time , and by seven that morning, we were halfway there. I was dying for a cup of coffee, and looking forward to hitting the town of Riversdale where an old-fashioned road-house serves wonderful filter coffee at almost any hour of the day.

On this occasion, I had company, co-driver and moral support rolled into one in the form of Gus who I might or might not say more about another time.

'Riversdale!' I exclaimed 'I can smell the coffee!'

'I just farted' admitted Gus.

It's probably inappropriate to laugh so much on the way to one's mother's funeral, but I couldn't help it.

Bear with me, I'm not telling gratuitous fart jokes here, there's a point to all this, but I need to set the right tone in order for you to ponder my point properly: so... to anecdote the next.

I was living in the little bedsitter after having left property and posessions behind in the prelude to my divorce (I still have niether, but some things are more important than things, if you see what I mean).

Anyway, the walls of my room were so thin that I could hear my neighbor splashing in the bath of an evening, and since my loo backed onto that bathroom, I supposed that this worked both ways.

Now what do you do in that situation when you want to / know you're going to fart? It wasn't that I thought I'd get evicted for my toilet habits or anything, but one should be considerate of one's neighbors.

I suffered an enormous moral dilemma about this one day when my neighbor was doing the splashy thing in his bath and I wanted to do another sort of splashy thing which I knew was going to be heralded by a sound not unlike the last trump but not as melodious.

I paced the room (quietly so that I wouldn't disturb my downstairs neighbor), I probably went a bit green around the gills, I debated the matter with myself at length and guess what course I took? Sigh. I let fly, of course. Best fart I ever had.

I related this to a friend of mine, and he said, with great pride: 'My girfriend NEVER farts.'

'Oh!' said I, 'are you sure she doesn't at least 'Whooosh' - you know - the silent sort.'

He was quite offended and stuck to his guns. His girlfriend of the last fourteen years NEVER farts. Now that gets me. In fact, I'm reasonably sure, based on the evidence before me (and behind her) that she's not human at all.

And that's my point: she can't be! What do you think?

Today's pic: some non-human splashy things