-20

i remember farting.
i have never been shy about farting – happy to let a parp out whenever the mood or need strikes. the only time i have tried to control my flatulence was the early days of my tenure of being a step-dad. see i can be responsible.
so there i was at the london school of economics. the morning in the library hadn’t been as beneficial as i hoped. maybe a trip to the canteen for a coffee and a bite to eat would get me through the block. nice plan. for some odd reason i choose some fish sandwich or another. mistake. revitalised i returned to the library.
the block was still there. i read the same page three or four times and none of it was making sense. i went looking for another article or two – trying to approach the problem from another point of view. so i head over to the journal section. i start looking for the right issue of the american journal of sociology. that is when it hits me. or more accurately it is when it leaves me. a long almost silent parp. i look around to make sure that no one heard. it was a pretty quiet one so little danger of that.
all would have been well but for the fact that this long linger fart smelt as if it were the fires of hell wafting over a very large pile of stale tramp shit. it was foul beyond foul and it seemed to be drifting out into the body of the library. to make matters worse as i moved the stink came with me.
i took the only course of action available to me: i left the library. only to return when i thought the smell had gone.
i have never farted as bad as that again (though there was a time in sainsbury’s that was quite close).