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You’ll knock ’em dead,” he concluded, straightening his tie.
    Jack’s wife, a beauty in her late forties, sliced bread in the kitchenette and worried quietly to herself. Worrying was good for her; it kept her mind off her problems.
    Jack came down the stairs two at a time. “Good morning, wife,” he said, limping painfully into the breakfast area.
    “Good morning, Jack,” said Jack’s wife. “And how would you like your eggs this morning?”
    “I would like them many, speckled and various,” said Jack. “Ranging – free ranging, in fact – from those of the mythical Roc to those of the pygmy heron of Upper Sumatra.”
    “They are on your plate,” said Jack’s wife. “Make of them what you will.”
    It was going to be the most eventful day in Jack’s long and uneventful life, but he did not as yet know this.
    The Excitement Hots Up
    “How would you like your tea, dear?” asked Jack’s wife.
    Jack worried a lot about her. Almost as much, in his own special way, as she did about him. Why does she say these things? he worried. Does she do it simply to annoy me? Or does she, perchance, believe that I am a different person every morning? Or possibly she is being unfaithful. Jack worried a lot about this.
    “Sugar, dear?” asked Jack’s wife.
    “Twelve lumps please,” said Jack.
    Jack’s wife popped the usual two into his cup and stirred them with the usual spoon. And then she returned to her slicing and worrying.
    Jack buttered up a slice of toast. “You’re a lovely bit of toast,” he told it. “Would you like to come to the pictures on Friday night?”
    In Jack’s front garden a postman clung to the roof of Jack’s porch. “Treed by a bleeding lurcher,” he complained. “Or was it a Dane?”
    And Grows Hotter Still
    “I must be off to work now,” said Jack.
    “Don’t forget your sandwiches, dear.”
    Jack thrust the brown paper packet into his briefcase. “The price of butter is scandalous,” he told his wife. “But not to worry, eh?” And he kissed her lightly on the cheek, hoisted his trilby hat onto his head, shrugged on his camelhair coat, tucked his case beneath his arm, picked up his umbrella and departed.
    “Morning, postie,” said Jack to the figure cowering on the roof of his porch. “I didn’t know it was raining.”
    “Raining?”
    “Well, as they say, any porch in a storm.”
    “Most amusing,” said the postman, who considered it anything but. “I thought you told me your dog didn’t bite.”
    “It doesn’t,” said Jack.
    “But it nearly had my leg off.”
    “This isn’t my dog,” said Jack. “It belongs to the wife.”
    Tension Mounts on the Bus
    The 8.15 bus was crowded with 8.15 passengers.
    “Morning, conductor,” said Jack.
    “Morning, Jack,” said the conductor. “Your mate Bill’s up the front.”
    Jack craned his neck and bulldozered his eye-brows. “Morning, my mate Bill,” he cried.
    “Morning, Jack,” Bill shouted back. “And how are you today?”
    “Fair to middling,” called Jack. “Fair to middle-diddle-diddling.”
    “I’m very pleased to hear it.” Bill returned to his study of the Daily Sketch. GIANT SPIDER CARRIES OFF WIDOW, ran the banner headline. She was probably asking for it anyway, thought Bill as his gaze left the tabloid and moved slowly up the legs of a particularly well-designed teenage schoolgirl. Shouldn’t be allowed, his thought continued.
    And meanwhile at Jack’s house the postman was giving it to Jack’s wife doggy style upon the kitchen floor. This lino needs a dose of Flash, worried the wife of Jack.
    Two stops on Jack got a seat. “We’re running thirty-five seconds late this morning,” he informed a fellow traveller.
    “Thirty-five seconds late for what?” asked the traveller, whose name was John Omally.
    “For work.”
    “But I’m not going to work.”
    “Where then?”
    “I’m going home.”
    “But this is the 8.15 bus.”
    “It was the 7.30 bus when I got onto it.”
    “Ah, I