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For years she had used words like fate and serendipity to describe her situation but she’d never really believed it was fair, or right.

She’d been a pretty, stubborn and intelligent young woman, up for a good time, noisy, an outspoken feminist of the free-love type, a show off, she’d liked sex and music. She’d also been a student in that halcyon era, all Joan Armatrading and spliffs til 4, with trusted friends. And the future, well the future had been years away. Hopefully never.

Then, before her student days were over, Jake came. Limited, time-consuming, stupendously annoying Jake. And the old her had had to stop.

And yes she had resented it, wasn’t that her sole remaining right? her crutch? Didn’t she deserve some resentment? At the Mums in the school playground who were older than her but looked younger?

At Fucking Dominic who jumped ship with a yoga instructor in Florence, and when he came back part-time to take Jake every other weekend, used his Downs-syndrome child as a mark of his kindly humanity when women were about and got praised for it by all, including, gallingly, her own mother!

Yes maybe most of all and admittedly unfairly, at her mother, who told her that in her day people had just got on with it. “Aaaaagh” she wanted to say “but you had me, a clever girl! and I had Jake!”

She’d been a pretty, stubborn and intelligent young woman, yes, but then for more years than anyone cared to remember she’d been Jake’s mum, grey before her time struggling round in the rain on benefits in a chunky cardigan.

It was not fair, nor right that, the pernicious goody-goody girls of the school playground, bullied Jake with behavioural standards and patronisation, displaying righteous anger when he dropped a wild hedgehog on the playing field in his exuberance at having found it. It was not fair, or good, or right that the rough and tumble boys who he adored, never even played with him.

The Special school was even worse. She could not even think about the meat factory incident and poor Jake covered in mounds of offal.

And now Jake was about to die, from something to do with congenital heart anomalies, it was common for people with Trisomy 21.

And her mother had said “Well you’ll have your life back now dear like you’ve always wanted.”

On the way home from the hospital, she wept openly on the bus.

And it was then, for the first time, that she realised, consciously, that she had had a life! A brilliant life, with her son who she loved so much. And that in his wisdom, he had taught her something very precious. And suddenly, her tears turned to laughter at the mannered rebellions of her middle class youth, at people who trained themselves to act upon their worries about what others thought, and at the antics and joy and pain of the wonderful and truly uninhibited Jake.

Sludge in the radiators was the problem – builds up over the years, all for the lack of twenty quid’s worth of boiler inhibitor.

Marjorie said, ‘Oh, dear me. Can you fix it?’

The plumber sucked air through his teeth.

‘Well….the inhibitor, cheap as chips, but the system needs powerflushing first.’

There was more teeth sucking, more idling of gaze across the marble countertops and twin ovens.

‘It’s gonna be close to a grand.’

‘Oh dear. But if we must. Can you do it now? And, I have a favour. It’s a little delicate. Could you do it in the nude?’

His squint of incomprehension turned into a gape.

Marjorie said, ‘I have a little peccadillo. To return home and find a nude, sweaty tradesman, hard at it. And I’ll just watch him work, marvelling at the taut muscles in his back as he pulls and tugs at a hard nut that’s giving him grief.’

She sighed in deepest soulful despair.

‘And me without my husband, away these past two months and no hope of his return until the depths of the Antarctic winter releases him from its frozen claw.’

The plumber swallowed. He ran a finger around the collar of his grubby t-shirt.

‘Your bloke’s away at the North Pole?’

Marjorie nodded. She glided from behind the breakfast bar. Twenty years of yoga twice a day had honed her figure into one of taut lithe grace. She put up her arms above her head for a lazy stretch that pushed forward her chest and gave him a glimpse of the firm lines of her abdomen.

The plumber’s stubbly chin was hanging open.

Marjorie said, ‘I’ll be in the lounge. Just pop your clothes outside the kitchen door if you’re up for it.’

Safe in the lounge she sighed deeply, followed by a quick watch check. It was going to be tight.

She screwed her eye to the gap between the doors. A look for fierce determination crossed the face of the plumber and he began to tear at his clothes. He stood there in his socks, this mass of pale hillocks crowning above a scrap of pink offal nestling in the spines of an upturned hedgehog.

As soon as he was back in the kitchen she scampered over and scooped up his clothes, just in the nick of time to dash into the dining room as the front door opened and in strode Valerie, ranting on her phone how she’d been stood up. It was nothing she hadn’t done to Marjorie dozens of times, and there was no more perfect revenge than sneak into the woman’s house and set up a naked surprise in the kitchen.

Marjorie bit down on her lower lip as Valerie strode into the kitchen and stopped talking mid-rant.

And this the icing on the cake – Marjorie had spent six months trying to track down the no-good plumber who ripped off her Mum only to have him pull up at the bloody lights next to her.

Nudist dies while walking on bridge in South Korea.

A 35 year old British man has been found dead underneath the Heundeul Dali Bridge in South Korea.

On Saturday 15 December 2018, tourists walking along the Pungam Reservoir in Gwangju found the body of Mr Barry Epworth, lying under the bridge which is a well-known local beauty spot for nudists.

Dave Offal, a 51 year old butcher from Peebles said, “I just couldn’t believe it. Me and the wife have been coming here regularly for 6 years now and we’ve not come across anything like this before.”

Mrs Offal added, “back home people think we’re a pair of freaks, but out here they can’t get enough of us. It’s like we’re a tourist attraction in our own right! We feel like celebrities.”

Mr and Mrs Offal found the body of Barry Epworth, a 35 year old father of 9 from Scunthorpe, lying at the edge of the water. “We saw something which looked a bit strange and we thought it was a dead badger. On closer examination, we realised it wasn’t a badger, but a man covered in hedgehog excrement.”

Mr Epworth from Crowle in Scunthorpe was holidaying with his wife, Janice, when the untimely incident occurred. Mrs Epworth said her husband got up very early the morning before and walked to the bridge alone. When he returned, he said that after witnessing the numerous nudists and bystanders it attracted, he had never seen anything like it.

“He was drawn to the place,” Janice said. “I’ve been a nudist for years but Barry was a bit of a prude really. I tried to get him to strip off loads of times at home and just let it all hang out, but he just wouldn’t have any of it.” Mrs Epworth added, “it was starting to drive a massive wedge between us.”

After Mr Epworth returned from his morning walk at Heundeul Dali Bridge (translated as The Wobbly Bridge) he was enthusiastic and told his wife they would return before the end of their two week trip and he would strip off and feel proud as he walked alongside the other nudists.

“The funny side of this is, we weren’t even supposed to come here. I’d booked to stay in Dong-Gu, which is just outside the town but the hotel was fully booked and we were sent here at the last minute. Mrs Epworth smiled as she recalled her husband saying it was serendipity which had brought them there, adding “I am really sad that I never got to walk along the bridge with him.”

Police have released a statement saying, “tourists and new people to the area are unaware of the potential dangers of walking across the wobbly bridge. Our advice is to remain vigilant, and where possible, try to avoid walking across that particular bridge. However, if it is unavoidable and you have to walk across, under no circumstances do it alone.

They have asked for anyone who may have seen Mr Epworth with any hedgehogs, to please come forward.

Alison breathed in the freshness of the early morning air. Coils of coffee steam spiralled up as the morning gently begin to wake her. She gazed out at the view from their new house.

After years of city living, squashed in amongst their neighbours and their cars, dogs and children, their quarrels, their politics; separated from bedroom intimacies by a thin plasterboard wall, the peacefulness of the country was a literal breath of fresh air.

And then she looked across to the window of their only neighbour for miles and a spike of revulsion made her start.

“He’s doing it again!” she wailed smacking her cup down with a splash.

It was like passing a car crash; the horror of it, the distress, the compulsion to look overriding the abhorrence. Dave shuffled over in his tatty dressing gown and peered out.

“Jesus, it’s early to be seeing that” he said, but he left the window and began getting ready for work as if nothing was wrong.

That was the one downside. Every morning at 8.30 by the open window. It was unremittingly awful. The spiky hedgehog of pubes peeking through his Downward Dog, the jangling of genital offal as he leaned weightily into Warrior Two…

Worse, when he’d seen Alison staring, open mouthed at him, fleshy, exposed, sweat dribbling down his thighs, he’d just waved cheerily at her and carried on. As if naked windowside yoga was normal behaviour.

“Just don’t look at him, love” called Dave from the bathroom and Alison turned from the spoiled view, feeling sullied.

They saw him, Ralph, that evening. Fully clothed now and lifting shopping from his car he called a cheery hello. Alison returned a tight lipped smile, not knowing where to look, not knowing what to say.

In bed that night she turned over.

“We have to do something”

“Hmmm? About what now, love?

“About Ralph. It’s every day. I shouldn’t have to see that when I look out of my window.”

“Oh, he’s nice enough if you talk to him. I bet it feels great doing exercise with that view”

“I can’t talk to him I can’t look him in the eye because I keep thinking about how I saw his bollocks this morning. You’re going to have to say something to him.”

“Why me?”

“Because I can’t. It would be inappropriate. Maybe you can nip over before he starts tomorrow? Please?”

“Fine. But only because I love you.” He kissed her and switched off his light.

When Alison woke up Dave had gone. She sprawled luxuriantly, starfishing out over his side of the bed before slipping out from the warm sheets and boiling the kettle. How lovely it would be to stare out over the unblemished countryside at last.

As the kettle rumbled to its climax Alison poured the coffee and pulled open the curtains to drink in the view. Her eyes were drawn, inevitably, to Ralph’s empty window.

Only, of course, it wasn’t empty. Not one naked man, but two, lunging, leaning, spreading across Alison’s view. As Dave swept down in a forward fold he her caught sight of her and lifted his hand to wave, then unapologetically squatted, spread-kneed into crow pose.