DAY 22

Cleggy will throttle the first person he sees if he is ambushed by a tabloid newspaper front cover depicting UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson photoshopped as Santa. That’s a promise.

***

Anne has been helping her father, James to trace his family history, using the genealogy website membership gift she bought him out of desperation, after his new ant farm tank broke, resulting in a nasty home infestation. He had neglected to tell anyone about this ‘new hobby’ until too many concerned relatives began calling him about the blotches from the bites all over his face during Zoom calls.

The two of them are stunned to find that not just his father and grandfather and Anne’s four-year old son, James share the same name, but also the previous seven generations of men before them. Unfortunately, that’s where the excitement ends. Aside from his great, great, great, great grandfather James’ arrest and release in a case of mistaken identity over the theft of two apples, it turns out he comes from a family of workshy, imagination parched layabouts who mainly stayed in. How they managed to procreate is riddle worth the subscription alone, Anne thinks. James grumbles threats about revoking his BBC license fee for false advertising in their popular show Who Do You Think You Are.

(Day 18 continued) Ayanna and Bruce are met with a mixture of outrage and relief by their families and care home staff when they return. Errol’s absence comes not as a shock, but as a cause for grave concern, especially when his two accomplices put on their bewildered act and claim they can’t remember where they saw him last. Despite his prized swiss army knife, he is frail and long past his physical prime.

That said, he finds enough stores in the nearby town which accept cash and buys himself enough food for the next two to three days. By nightfall, he has appeared on the local evening news twice. Once as a mugshot; the missing, vulnerable, ‘likely scared’ missing elderly person and also with a host of local students, helping them tear down a fence their university tried to erect around the campus to keep them in their halls of residence. Afterwards, they invite him back and he not only earns himself 6 cans of Guinness and his first sample of cheap weed, but also a roof over his head for the night with a first-year criminal law student who happens to have a single camp bed going free. In the morning he takes several phone numbers in case he needs any help, then catches the first train to the next county.