Long Weekend in Nod

Following on from my dream recollections yesterday, I bypassed the whole scenario last night and fell into a dreamless fatigue and red wine induced coma. Unfortunately my usually reliable catholic guilt let me down for once and I slept through the alarm, which meant having to start the day with a well crafted lie.

I am a good liar. There's no point in my being coy about it. I have an incorrigibly plausible manner. I discovered this quite early in life. I would make up something outlandish to amuse my school friends, and they'd (to my amazement) lap it up like mother's milk.

The temptation to use this skill for evil is huge, and one is always straddling the border between good and bad. It can make me appear withdrawn and brooding at times, like a bullshit Batman. It can also cause people to question my (genuinely) good intentions. Take my boss for example. Let's call him Commissioner Gordon for the sake of argument. I told Commissioner Gordon a bare-faced untruth this morning to explain my lateness, and he believed it. What's more, he wanted to believe it. We all crave narrative completion - disclosure followed by closure. And I did him the honour of creating a back story to the lie. He felt loved and I dodged a bullet - a victimless crime.

If there are any keen amateur liars reading this, the back story is critical. Otherwise your fib is like the faux cowboy town in Blazing Saddles: from the hilltop, it works, but as soon as the baddies ride into the valley, you're screwed.