A Woman Who Intensely Fears Freezing To Death

There is a woman who intensely fears freezing to death. Her name could be Getty. The fear started when she was house-sitting for her friend Nora, who had went out to keep a tally on how many red cars used the nearby motorway. She has never revealed why she does it, but she has to do it at night because, “The numbers always work better that way.”

The fear took place inside Getty as a result of her unknown allergy to hamsters. She was sitting in Nora's living room, making sure Mario (the hamster) had enough food and water. Especially water. Nora had said that the past few hamsters had died of dehydration before, and it's particularly heart-breaking to throw them in the bin because at that stage they are “extra crunchy”.

At the time, Getty had been watching a documentary about polar exploration, in which plenty of people perished. She had been feeling a bit dizzy, her eyes got itchy and heavy and she felt very sleepy. She remembers nothing except when Nora came back from car-spotting and asked why there was no gin left. It was then Getty realised that she had almost frozen to death like the people in the TV, she had fallen asleep with the window open and everything!

That time Getty was lucky. She vowed never to almost (or completely) freeze to death never again. Unfortunately she lived alone. She decided that in order to not freeze to death in the night, she would need someone, a man, a husband to keep her warm. So, each night, when it got dark, she would go out to bars and places where she could ask a man “Do you want to come back to mine and keep me warm?”, most, if not all of the men said yes.

During the days, when she is about her daily business (she works in an accessory shop for land-line phones) she has to wear very warm clothes. Like jumpers and big, puffy jackets to keep her from even getting frostbite on her lobes. She is always rubbing her arms and legs to keep herself warm. When someone asks what she's doing, she says with a smile, “Ah, bad circulation runs in the family,”. After watching her rubbing herself to keep warm, some men walk up and ask if she wants them to “keep her warm” later all by themselves.

Getty could go to a sauna and keep warm in there, but she has also seen “Titanic” where people have drowned (and also frozen to death), so she has been put off.

Getty could go and live in warmer climates, but she doesn't speak any other languages and has always said “frankly, I don't see why I should have to bother learning”. Sometimes she thinks she'd rather freeze to death than do that.

The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies

The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies finds it hard to go about his life.

Obviously his first arduous task each day is to give himself a really, really good scrub, and inspect the crevices where flies may have laid eggs on his body in the night, like under his arms, under his nails and in his eyes. He hardly ever finds any most days. He once thought he was suffering from really bad dandruff, so he was embarrassed to go to the barbers, but when he got there the barber said that instead of dandruff he had maggots. That was the last time he fell for that one. He doesn't like maggots either, but at least they can't fly. Like flies.

He uses a mosquito net over his bed at night, of course. He had to go to the Exotic Shop to buy it. He wouldn't buy one from Amazon, as it is notoriously fly-infested. He asked the man in the Exotic Shop, who goes by the name “Jungle Ken” whether the net is designed only for mosquitoes and if flies were clever enough to get through the net. If so, would they tell the mosquitoes how to do it in exchange for a small fee of mosquito honey (human blood).

Jungle Ken just replied “£5.99” because that's how much the net cost. The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies gave him a Bank of England five pound note and a pound coin. Jungle Ken did not give The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies his penny change, even though it said “£0.01” on the change bit of the receipt (which Jungle Ken threw away). The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies stood there for a bit, then left. The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies let Jungle Ken away with what he did that time, because Jungle Ken looked like he was suffering badly from what he calls “Jungle Fever”, although The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies noted that Jungle Ken only gets Jungle Fever the day after he drinks his six bottles of “Jungle Juice” (Malibu mixed with Um Bongo).

The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies likes it when it rains because that means that all the flies are drowning somewhere.

The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies has a love-hate relationship with spiders. He loves it when they capture and eat the flies for dinner, but hates it when the spiders decline his “Thank You” gifts of fishnet stockings. The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies offers them to the spiders because they would be more durable than their own webs, but they seem okay with using their Spider Milk to make webs. The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies has fishnet stockings covered in jam hanging in his house to catch some flies of his own. He doesn't eat the flies. He eats the leftover jam though.

The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies likes Jeff Goldblum. He understands that Jeff Goldblum probably needed the money, rather than wanting to be an actual fly in “The Fly”. Nobody would want that. Not even Jeff Goldblum.

The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies doesn't like anything about flies, he doesn't like the sound they make when checking his ears for leftovers, he doesn't like how they leave the windows and doors open and he certainly doesn't like when they land on his food, eat a bit of it and then vomit it back up, and then keep eating. Only The Man Who Is Afraid of Flies is allowed to do that to his food.