One bright Sunday morning, you set off on a walk to your local hostelry (The Plough) for a mid-morning beer. (The pub is naturally allowed to be open whenever it wishes.) Rounding the last corner, you are met by a scene of devastation.

Here's what happened. An eight-year old child, who was hyped up by the consumption of two jumbo venti high-energy sugar drinks and who had just purchased a load of sweets on impulse at a supermarket checkout, came running out of the store and tripped on the cracked and broken pavement. The sweets went flying out of his hand and hit a cyclist on the side of the head. Because she was not wearing a helmet, the impact caused her to swerve, and because there was no cycle lane, this took her into the path of an oncoming car, which was racing up the unspeedlimited high street at 80 mph. (The reason the driver was going so fast was because the passenger in the car was in need of hospitalisation for severe food poisoning; it's unclear whether this is because the meat he had consumed the previous evening was contaminated at the unregulated abattoir, or because of shoddy health standards in the restaurant that prepared it.) The car attempted to brake, but the brakes (which had not been checked for years) failed, so the driver swerved across the street and hit a lamppost. The unfortunate passenger was sent flying through the air (no seatbelts, obvs), and his screams startled a bystander, who pulled out his (perfectly legal) gun and started shooting randomly. One of the bullets hit the tyre of an oncoming 18-wheeler truck being driven by a 14-year-old girl with no previous experience or training in driving such a vehicle. The truck veered off the road and ploughed into The (now unfortunately aptly named) Plough.

Although the building is clearly completely unsafe, the landlord is of course free to welcome you in anyway. You walk up to the bar and he pulls you a pint. Just as he hands it to you, the building collapses around you both. Miraculously, you survive, but are pinned beneath the rubble. Even more miraculously, your pint survives and is now upright on the floor in front of you, still completely full. And just out of reach.


I wish everybody didn't hate me.

It's not actually hate. It's a combination of boredom, frustration, irritability, cringe, antipathy, disinterest, revulsion, withdrawal symptoms and paranoia.
I hope that makes you feel a bit better

I wish the entire government would spontaneously combust

For that to happen it would have to have some substance.

I wish it would stop bloody raining.

Three days and three nights should do it. For behold the prophesy of Layamon:

"In the same time here came a strange token, such as before never came, nor never hitherto since. From heaven here came a marvellous flood; three days it rained blood, three days and three nights. That was exceeding great harm! When the rain was gone, here came another token anon. Here came black flies, and flew in men's eyes; in their mouth, in their nose, their lives went all to destruction; such multitude of flies here was that they ate the corn and the grass. Woe was all the folk that dwelt in the land! Thereafter came such a mortality that few here remained alive."

Better stockpile bug spray and food while you can.

I wish this rash would go away.

See. Wait long enough and it vanishes of its own accord. And it was probably nothing. Probably.

I wish I could remember where I left my keys.