Lovely Brian.
When I was at university, my housemates and I were often visited by our next door neighbour Brian. He was an aged gent of around 60 years, and although he was pushing pensionable age, his demeanour and life attitude was always of a sprightly mid twenty year old.

He would come at seemingly any point throughout the day (or night) and tell whoever was about at the time a tirade of tales that would put Baron Munchausen to shame. He would regale us with tales of his hikes throughout the Nepalese mountains in bandit country with only a samurai sword for protection, his hunting expeditions of his youth in the Masai Mara and of his skill in martial arts, now lost due to age and physical decay. No matter what time of the day he arrived, we were always happy to see him, as the stories he told, whilst being clearly lies, were always weaved in a way as to completely enchant us.

One day, however, certain members of the house started asking for proof of his tales, some tangible evidence of that which he spoke. Brian, with a shrug of his shoulders wandered next door and bring back in a large canvas sack a veritable arsenal of antiquated swords and rifles. The bag was huge. Quite how he managed to drag it in at his age I don't know. What made it worse, was that whilst the items were clearly old and unusable, no-one knew if they were ornamental - the props an old man had amassed to give credence to his tales, or if he was actually speaking with a grain of truth. He would then go though each one and with a grin that I hope never to be one the receiving end of again, would inform us of the best ways to kill, main or incapacitate a man with each one. Usually with very descriptive mimes as accompaniment.

Our immediate reaction to this new development was to feign sudden tiredness and inform Brian it was getting a little late. Afterwards, we would suddenly become very busy whenever Brian came around, the only time he would make it past the front door being if our excuses we too feeble, and he had proven to not be carrying anything sharp.

The last time we saw Brian was just before we left university for good. He knocked on the door, and asked us to keep hold of his fishing rods.
'Why?' we asked of him.
'I'm going to kill my other next door neighbours for playing the music too loudly, and I don't want the police impounding the rods if they arrest me.'
And then he was off, waving us a cheery goodbye as he went to wreak havoc over his unfortunate neighbours.

Aaah Brian. But what I'll mostly remember is the laughter. That and the gut wrenching fear.
( Prof. Slocombe, Thu 1 Sep 2005, 14:28, Reply)