get that man a handkerchief stat

 

The cafe cacaphoned with life.

Cunningham looked conspicuously ashen.

"What's wrong with you?" I asked him.

"The doctors don't know what it is," he said.

"You've been to the doctors?" I faffed.

"They've been looking," he told me, "but at this stage they're baffled."

"What doctors have you been going to?" I pressed.

"The best doctors in Ireland," he pronounced cryptically.

"Who?"I urged. "Go on. You can tell me. What doctors? Phibes? Frankenstein? Barn?"

He lapsed into churlish silence.

This was all very dramatic.

"What symptoms have you got?" I said, by way of light relief.

"My nose keeps bleeding," quoth he.

Ah gentle travellers of the internet.

Light relief indeed.

A good actor can nuance his emotions somewhat but I've always tended towards the more music hall style of performance.

My big rubbery face broke into a broad grin.

"I'm not a doctor," I stated unnecessarily. "But I think I can safely say that if you stop picking it, it will stop bleeding."

"Is that your expert opinion?" he muttered without a trace of anything you might mistake for credence on a dark night, never mind clearwater or revival.

"That's my opinion based on long experience as a nose picker," I told him confidently.

"I've been to the best doctors in Ireland," persisted he, "and they don't know what it is."

"These are the same doctors," I told him, "that if you said you felt a bit like a woman in a man's body, they'd say: 'Okay, no problem, we'll just give you a sex change,' They're not able to change a person's sex, mind you, but they'd be willing to give it a go rather than saying: 'Don't be such a ****ing eejit.' Doctors are sometimes a bit delicate about offending a patient's sensibilities while being perfectly willing to mutilate him or her if the cash is right."

"You think you know more than the best doctors in Ireland?" challenged he.

"That's a given," I affirmed; "And it's not saying much. But take it from me. If you stop probing for percies in your proboscis, your nose will mysteriously stop bleeding overnight."

"But it gets itchy," said Cunningham doomily.