A present story

My brother is so difficult to buy presents for. I know loads of men are, but he won't even tell me what he wants for his birthday or christmas, he says things like, whatever I need I can buy myself (but what can I buy you?!), I don't really need anything (ok, but what do you want?), something for the flat (uh, ok, but what does the flat want?), and finally after mucho pestering he fobs me off with either 'write me a story' or 'paint me a picture'. And I'm never sure if he actually wants either of those things, but he says it cause he can't think of anything else. And once you give him the things you watch him carefully to judge what he thinks and you cannot tell at all. Once I wrote him a story, and a few weeks later after not hearing anything about it, I emailed him to ask if he actually received it. The email I got back read 'yep. read it. liked it. thanks.' My brother is a man of few words. (nb. I thought it was a great story, all about mining socks - mine were miners, his were stinkers...)
Anyway, these days I tend to anticipate his request, and this year decided to combine the 2 - well, it was a decade birthday, after all. So for the big 30 my bro got the following little story book:


meet james

james is trying very hard to think of a way to make some money.




phew!! its hot with all this thinking.



Better give my brain some air...


better drain it so it doesn't make a mess.

there. That'll do for the moment.

all these acrobatics are thirsty work...



mmmm...

brainwave!

james' amazing brain juice: £1000

I write these little stories to entertain myself, more than anything else... but I did catch a glimpse of a smile I think...