1971. Oh sugar!

Pamela was a sound sleeper. She lived alone. She locked the house thoroughly each night before she went to bed. The neighbours were a bit strange – especially the wife. She was a bit of a recluse. Pamela had met her just the once. Word had it that she had been in and out of psychiatric care centres throughout her life.

It may have been because of this that Pamela was nervously suspicious. She had suspected for quite some time that strange things happened in the night. She was always meticulous about things, and sometimes she noticed that some household items had been moved ever so slightly, or even that she ran out of tea bags faster than she should. In fact she counted the tea bags. She used two tea bags a day. The seventy-eight tea bags in the box should last for thirty-nine days. She marked the date on her wall calendar.

Ashley, the neighbour, was a bit strange, but not as strange as his wife. He would come over once a week to Pamela’s for a cup of coffee. Pamela had never warmed to him. But a neighbour is a neighbour and it was after all only about thirty minutes in her week that his visits lasted. His wife never came with him.

Now the doctor had told Pamela to go easy on the sugar, so she filled the sugar bowl (in case visitors came and took sugar) and put the sugar bowl high in the cupboard. That was the last time she used it. It was a lot easier to give up sugar than she had expected.

When Ashley came over next she filled the conversation with the usual small talk. She had given up sugar. Did he still want sugar in his coffee? Perhaps he would prefer a cup of tea?

“Oh,” said Ashley, “I think you’re out of tea bags.”

1832. A spoonful of sugar

Craig’s doctor had said he was to go easy on the sugar. “You’re getting perilously close to being diabetic.”

The only occasion that Craig used sugar directly was coffee. In the mornings he had two cups of instant coffee, black, with a heaped spoon of sugar. His wife, Tracy, was the same – instant and black, with one heaped teaspoon of sugar.

Of course, Craig didn’t tell Tracy about the diabetes. He didn’t want to worry her. He ever so quietly simply gave up putting sugar in his coffee.

A week or so later, Tracy seemed to be in one of her moods. It was not an uncommon occurrence. Every now and again nothing in the world was right. Craig couldn’t hiccup without it causing a tsunami.

“I’ve been meaning to say this all week,” said Tracy. Her matrimonial corrections always began that way: “I’ve been meaning to say this all week…”

“What is it this time?” asked Craig.

“I’ve told you time and time again not to use the same spoon in the sugar as you use in the instant coffee. There are granules of instant coffee in the sugar bowl. It’s disgusting. Before long everything that has sugar in it will start tasting of coffee. Use a separate spoon.”

“I’ll do my best in the future,” said Craig.

Some lines of conversation are best not pursued – especially if down the line one is hoping to spend a little of the housekeeping money each week on a new fishing rod.

1592. How best to murder a spouse

To poison someone by putting poison in their lemon curd or lacing a black currant pie with arsenic is highly uncreative. It’s very run-of-the-mill. Likewise to get a gun and shoot someone point blank is crass. Such gross behaviour is equally uncreative. Let it be made clear: to murder someone by shooting them with a pistol is the height of boring unsophistication. Only a yob would do something so dull and unrefined. Martin Werherall believed that if he was going to kill someone it was best to do it creatively. After all, he was a pharmacist and had all sorts of resources at his fingertips.

As a teenager Martin had developed wonderful, dexterous skills. His parents had sworn black and blue that no child of theirs should put sugar in their tea or coffee. Sugar was the scourge of the contemporary diet. One simply did not need to add sugar to a beverage. Drinking sweetened things was a matter of sugar addiction. But Martin knew a magician who taught him, with practice, how to conceal a sugar cube in the back of his hand and the palm of his hand and goodness knows where else. Then with a modest wave Martin could drop the sugar cube into his mug and his parents were none the wiser.

Now that he was all grown up with his own pharmacy and married and struggling to find happiness he decided to rid himself of all matrimonial encumbrances. The easiest way was to combine his pharmaceutical and magician abilities and drop a pill into his wife’s cup. It should be made clear, in the interests of creativity, that this pill was not a pill of poison; it was a pill that was intended to prolong life and happiness in the pill-taker. Martin frequently dispensed such pills to patients in this pharmacy. But it was for sick people. Healthy people would possibly discover that their heart would begin racing irregularly and they would drop dead, basically from too much health! Such was the brilliance of Martin’s plan.

One day, with a wave of the hand, he surreptitiously dropped a pill into his wife’s cup of Camomile and Spiced Apple Tea infusion. That should finish her off.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” said his wife of seven years, pulling out a pistol concealed in her breast. She shot Martin dead.

God! No wonder Martin wanted to be rid of her. That woman was so crass.

1074. Low calorie sweetener

Nelson Crozier (known to his friends simply as Kevin) was furious. Every morning he’d have a cup of coffee, black. And every morning he’d drop into it one tiny tablet of low calorie artificial sweetener. The packaging of the sweetener asked “Why not enjoy life and cut down on sugar at the same time?” Kevin had enjoyed life without sugar in his coffee for well over a year.

The packaging also clearly stated (very clearly indeed) that the container held 500 tiny tablets.

Well!!! Kevin had used that container of low calorie artificial sweeteners for 498 mornings, and now it was out. OUT!!! No more tablets.

Kevin is not one to be toyed with. That’s the last time he’ll be buying that brand.