Gary Cooper. Now there was a man who sat tall in the saddle. Coop’s face flashed through my mind as he rode his dusty horse into a fake sunset. Yeah, a real cactus hero. Everyone thought that I was odd, especially Sally, the love of my life and the prettiest girl on our estate not to have a baby before she was fifteen. She thought I should be into, like her, Garage or House music, instead of films featuring tall no-nonense fifties cowboys.This 'house' music was the very music she was trying to drive me insane with as we drove along the A234. It sounded like an orangutan getting out of a corrugated bin holding a spanner in eachof his leathery tan hands.

                        She turned the irritating noise of someone singing the same words over and over up, I turned it down, she turned it up to full volume. Annoyed, I blazed her a look meaner than a gang of pre-teen blondes, then it all went 'Eastenders at the end of a big storyline' slow. I slammed on the worn rubber brake pedal.The anti-lock braking system would have kicked in, if I had been driving anything but, a 1992 Ford Escort, but you can’t have everything (there’d be nowhere to put it.) A kick in the balls thud told me I had hit something with a heartbeat. 

                        Sally screamed, the car pulled to the left stopped on the other side of the country road. It bellowed steam from the radiator, which hissed like a nest of feminists. Shaking like a shite-ing dog I jumped out and ran as fast as what felt like someone else’s legs, would carry me. At the side of the hedge, face down kissing the McDonalds rubbish was a man. The grey hair told me he was old and his drawling cowboy groan, told me he was an American.

  “Jeeesus H Christ,” he cussed like they did on afternooon Living T.V. .

Remembering my first aid, but losing my bottle, I decided not to move him. What looked a wallet lay on the grass. I opened it and took out a card. It read ‘Roy McIntyre, voice-over artiste, vocal talent of ‘Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, ’Wacky Races...’ and in bold letters most prominently of all... ‘The Original Scooby Doo’. I ran back to the car. Sally couldn't look me in the eye, she grasped her chips tightly and mumbled down to her white stilhettos "Is they dead?"

Too panicked to answer, I grabbed the phone out of my jacket and dialled all the nines for and summoned white, shouty van.

“Hello, Ambulance please, Hello, yes? I’ve knocked down Scooby Doo.” 

                    The ambulance arrived swiftly, as did the Police car, driven by a ginger policeman who was sporting, altough it was night, fake designer sunglasses bought from ebay. Robert or Bobby The Bobby as I called him to myself. Also arriving in their cars, gloveboxes jam-packed to bursting with Werthers originals and travel sweets, a collection of ghouls, who had stopped their cars, hoping to see a dead body before bed.

          Bobby was unimpressed that I had used the bonnet of my former European car of the year with one wing black and waiting to be painted, to thrust a cultural icon and cartoon superstar into the dark water of a flood ditch. He was more interested in Sally, well Sally’s legs in particular,( I must admit they did go up to her neck) but also the line of chat up thinlt disguised as questioning, Sally’s address, and whether Sally would like to go out with him one night. When Sally made it clear she would rather ‘eat pins,’ he turned on me, like it was my fault Sally wasn't impressed with a ginger copper with all the charm of an open grave.

                     He ordered me to blow into his bag. Me asking  “why, are your chips hot?” was a mistake bigger than ‘The Cures’ Robert Smith deciding to abandon make up in the late eighties. A mistake that allowed a once intrigued an bi-curiousfan base to see a pale faced middle aged man with a double chin full of chip fat and sick.

                       Eventually, after Bobby tried to do all in his ‘power’ to get me imprisoned for the rest of my ‘miserable’ life in a cell no bigger than the room where he lost his virginity to his auntie, and where I would be traded between the ‘hard men’ on the wing for a copy of Hello and a bar of Dairy Milk, I was given a ticket to produce my documents and sent on my way.

                        Scooby Doo was rushed to hospital. We followed in it's jetstream and swept through the city in the void left by the shouty van driven by two teenagers in green overalls.When we got to the hospital, I was asked all his details. A nurse told me to sit down, when all I could offer was that he was ‘the one, the only, the original, Scooby Doo’. The accident and emergency department was the usual mixture of drunks, harassed mothers and someone in cheap paisley pyjamas. We sat next to a woman with a bag of frozen peas lashed to her left ankle, with a belt that had buckle so big it could only be a tombstone for a dead dick.

                   The funny thing was, she had come with a suspected broken thumb. She explained to Sally that when she’d been on her feet all day, her ankle swells up like an Artic Roll, so she liked nothing better than to secure a packet of frozen peas on it,  put her  feet up with a minestrone cuppa soup whilst she thinks of the bloke she should of married who looked like Lovejoy only with skin a lighter shade of Outspan.

                     Ten minutes in, sat on a orange plastic chair that made your arse scream for a bit of respect, a child, in a tracksuit with head like a dirty tennis ball, was sent hurtling across a row of wounded laps as he slipped on the pool of defrosted pea ice.  His mum, tormented it seemed by his very existence, grabbed him like a ragdoll and screamed.

“See! …see what you’ve done! you’ve broken the lady’s foot. Now she’ll have to get it cut off. That’s not all, a tall old lady with no teeth from the the hospital will bring it, still bleeding, around to our house and nail it to the head board of your bed.”

We all raised eyebrows in unison. The mother, realising the absurdity of her rant, turned bright pink and sat back down.

“Jesus.” I thought. “ Heaven help the poor lad if he ever does something slightly naughty, like not brush his teeth”. I wonder what she’d tell him would happen; a troll from the sewer would come with rusty pliers and drag the lot of ‘em out of his tiny mouth? “

                            The antics of the boy made amusing relief for the assemblage of walking wounded. A boxer, obvious by the fact he was wearing boxing boots and looking like he’d been hit in the face with a hot wok, plus a gawdy, red satin robe proclaiming that he was Edddie ‘Fast Fists’ Domingo, tried not to look, his broken ribs hurting like his first lost love every time he laughed. It was clear to us all but no one told him, his fast fists weren’t fast enough. And his claims were as false as Eltons hairline.

A man with a minor head wound and belly full of beer, dreaming of mum who never cared,occasionally woke and shouted something incoherent at the boy. Sally tutted loudly and he turned around, tried to focus and fell back asleep.

                       Impatient for news I approached the window and asked on the well being of Scooby Doo. I explained that it was I who had thrust him into the hedge. Eventually she rang up to the ward and told me that he was being made ‘comfortable’ as we spoke. “Can I see him?” 

“Obviously not the nurse cackled back ...or you wouldn’t have knocked him over in the first place”.

“Oh great!” I thought, an Angel Of Mercy with a bent for stand up comedy.

Sally came back from a vending machine with what tasted like soup with two sugars. The smell awoke Mr minor head wound, who had now been attended to, but sat back down in his original seat. They’d shaved a patch of hair from the back of his head and he now looked like a neutered kitten and judging by the state of the stitches, Doctor ‘Baron Von Frankenstein’ was sewing up in casualty tonight. He looked at Sally and said, “Soup?” Sally automatically entered into a game of word association with him.She did it all the time, it would bring tears to a glass eye. “Bowl? Spoon? Knife? Fork?”

The words ran freely until Mr minor head wound got back to ‘Soup’ and ran an unusually large tongue over his dry lips. Sally, somewhat freaked out by the sight handed him the soup.

“Any bread?”, he asked. Sally shook her head, He gave it back.

 “No Thanks.” It seemed that beggars could indeed be choosers.

Impatient as a rich man ordering a new car, I went up to the desk and enquired again, this time rewarded with a ward number. Sally left the soup on the chair next to Mr minor head wound and we made our way to the lifts to the ward. At the unfeasibly heavy doors to the ward the Ward Sister burst through like a ghost train carriage clutching to her comedy busom a clipboard and curry flavoured Pot Rice. She stopped and glared at us with a nurse Ratchett eye.

 “Yes?”, she demanded.

 I explained that we had come to see Scooby Doo.

“Well you can’t”, she replied, “Your sort stole the TV but left the remote two summers ago”.

Sally gave his real name. "It's Mr McIntyre, from New York we come to see Mr McIntyre."

 “Ah, the American nutter. he’s been driving everyone mad with stupid cartoon voices. Do you realise how disturbing it is to fit a catheter to someone who’s talking like Dick Dastardly?”

She burst into impersonation.

“Nurse you snickering, floppy-eared hound, when tenderness is required you’re neveraround. those badges you wear on your moth eaten chest, should be there for bungling, at which you are best”.

                    We looked at each other it was a good try. The nurse somewhatembarrassed by what she’s just said, blurted out,

“He’s in a private room-BUPA patient. treat ‘em like royalty, charge ‘em like fools.” The Doctor is just warming his bedpan for him now. you can go in when he’s finished”.

                            A short wait followed then we were ushered into (without the television of course) the now non tv room. A man in his mid-forties, with a large lint pad across the bridge of his nose, sat staring out of the window, he was aware of our presence, but chose to ignore our entry and continued his gaze into the night. He reached down into a plastic bag and took out a pair of binoculars, which he looked through and sighed heavily. Sally nudged me in the ribs, prompting me to break the awkward silence.

“Nice night”, I suggested like the small talking wanker I felt.

. “It’d be a lot nicer if that bugger would get out of my house and stop chatting up the missus,” he replied, not bothering to break his surveillance. It turned out that he was in for a bit of minor nasal surgery and only lived over the road. He could see his house from where he was sitting and, more than a little uncomfortable with the attentions of his neighbour towards his missus, then he started making sort of moaning-cum-howling noises, when he saw the living room light go out and the bedroom light come on. A nurse scuttled in, virtually wrestled the binoculars from his hands, and dragged him back to his bed.

  The ward sister returned soon after. “Walk this way”, she commanded and me and Sally followed not even attempting a joke. I felt a little nervous meeting the bloke. I mean, I’d just run him over . We were told to wait outside the door. The sister entered the room and came swiftly out. “Mr McIntyre will see you now”. I stepped in and there he sat. His face was grazed and his arm was in a sling, but he was upright and seemed conscious. He greeted me with a drawl,

 “Well if it ain’t the guy who tried to damn kill me?”

 Was he joking? what was I to say? I panicked. “Err, Pleased to meet you Scooby”.

We eventually got talking and he was a really nice chap.

 “How come you are in this part of the world?” I asked.

 “Well”, he sighed, “I was going to attend a voice-over convention at The Metropole”.

 “Really?”

 “Yep”, he replied, “and I would have made it too - if  it hadn’t been for you meddlin’ kids!”

 The End.