What’s in your pocket?

The message has finally gone out and our book is one step closer to becoming a reality. For those of you who aren’t accustomed to mine and the “Chief’s” (following our marathon stint in Prague at the start of the summer the “Dude” officially upgraded himself to the “Chief” and shall be known as such from now on) inane ramblings, we are trying to write a book based on a stupid conversation that happened many moons ago. The premise for this book is the contents of people’s pockets. It all started thanks to the idea that children, especially in cartoons have all manner of things in their pockets at any one time. The items usually only become clear whilst either they are pulling the pocket inside out to try to count out their pennies and find that a ball of lint, a button, an army man and sticky boiled sweet are not legal tender, or when mummy does the washing and the army man finds his way into the washing machine mechanism and causes a flood. I proclaimed that no normal person ever really has those things on their person and so the “Chief” challenged me and ordered I empty my pockets and prove it. To my utter dismay I found that I did, in fact, have a button in my pocket that i had accidentally pulled off my shirt a few days before. Needless to say he found my explanation rather lacking and my point was no longer valid. Somehow this began an even more inexplicable conversation about how the pocket contents of bo him and myself has come to be in such a place and what wonderful stories they may be able to tell. It descended further into madness with the introduction of a sombrero wearing worm named Edwardo who had lost his one and only biker boot in the “Chief’s” pocket and the tale of how he was sent to protect a small community of pigmies living deep in a South American jungle who live only on half chewed sweets and sleep on beds made of lint balls. There was a tiny piece of string in one of the “Chief’s” pockets that he informed me was the tiny lasso that was used by the sheriff who’s charged with keeping the pocket in order. We decided that this would make perfect toilet reading so we started collecting pocket contents from friends and then took it onto Facebook. The idea is to get it global and try to get entries from around the world with the idea of hopefully getting it published one day. We have so far written our own entries in full and I have written an introductory chapter and the rest is now up to you, dear readers. We want the same kind of stories as I described above so try to make them interesting. The trick is to not think too hard, just let the nonsense spill out and send it in!

The is also a secondary idea that we are working on but the concept may be slightly harder to grasp. The question this time is “What object or container of sentiment or emotion are you?” The two things don’t necessarily have to be connected but it tends to sound better if there is some sort of correlation, for example: a pushchair full of wasted youth or a coffin full of hope. This is more of an afterthought but feel free to join in with that too. Either that or using analogies to describe emotions, such as: the disappointment of a jewish mother looking at her child’s school report and finding out that he’s actually rubbish at maths.

Now I ask only that you send in your own entries if you’re up for a laugh and pass the message on. We are looking to get entries from all over the world to also try to see if where you live has any bearing on what may be lurking at the bottoms of pockets the world over and we might even stand a better chance of getting published one day!

Happy rummaging!