Comely Bank
​Publishing
  • Welcome
  • Blog
    • Writers' Diaries
  • Emma Baird
    • Katie And The Deelans
  • T D Burke
    • The Man From Outremer
  • Gordon Lawrie
    • Four Old Geezers and a Valkyrie >
      • Four Old Geezers And A Valkyrie Sample
    • The Discreet Charm of Mary Maxwell-Hume
    • The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold
    • The Piano Exam
    • Recipes
    • 100 Not Out
  • Lucy Lloyd
    • Russian Doll
  • Jane Tulloch
    • Our Best Attention
    • Assured Attention
    • Christmas At Murrays
  • Roland Tye
    • Weekender
  • Resources for Talented New Authors
    • Submissions
    • Style Guidelines
    • Formatting
    • Covers
    • Sequels Advice
    • Editing (External site)
  • Bookshop
  • R Mark Robertson Art
  • Info for Booksellers
  • Press & Media
  • Terms & Conditions
  • About Us
  • Contact
Community Publishing for the community

High Stakes, by Gordon Lawrie

2/10/2015

0 Comments

 
At the start of October 2105 a medical research paper declared that tall people were more likely to develop cancer than small people. Gordon Lawrie, who is 6feet 51/2 inches tall, responded:

​I was made aware of my own mortality this morning when I picked up the newspaper and read that I was rather likelier to die than I’d previously assumed. The cause of my misfortune, it seems, is that I’m very tall – 6 feet 51/2 inches, to be precise, or, as the French would say, 1.97 metres. Tall people, we’re told, are more likely to develop cancer than short people.
 
On reading this startling fact, I immediately googled the price of coffins, as you do, where I found the incredibly informative website www.comparethecoffin.com. There, my eyes were opened to a whole range of exit vehicles, including cardboard boxes – the pink cardboard coffin was Reduced! to a mere £375 – rainbow coffins presumably aimed at diversity groups, and things constructed more robustly from wood or steel. (You might think I’m making this up, but I’m not.) Comparethecoffin.com also sells cremation urns in many tasteful shapes and sizes and a selection of rockets so that the bereaved can scatter the ashes by firing them several thousand feet into the air.
 
My personal favourite was the “DIY flat-pack coffin with red liner” which would presumably allow the about-to-die the opportunity to while away his or her final hours wrestling with a screwdriver and some glue. I did check to see if it was IKEA-branded, but it didn’t have one of those meaningless Swedish names like Splorg or Kubrask, so I assume that at least it would come with instructions that made sense. In reality, of course, one has to live with the knowledge that the whole thing would probably fall apart at the most unfortunate point in the funeral. Incidentally, one of the rockets came in DIY form as well.
 
Then I saw something that made my blood run cold: one of the coffins described itself as ‘oversize’. I hadn’t really given this much thought, but I suppose I’ll need a bigger box, too. I should be used to this, actually, as my clothes are more expensive, I need to book extra-legroom seats on flights, I even have to look at a far more limited selection of cars, all simply because I’m a big guy. It’s not fair; being a monster costs a lot of money. We bump our heads a lot as well.
 
Nobody quite knows why tall people are more likely to develop cancer, but it seems the most credible hypothesis is that there are more cells in me than there are in someone shorter – I don’t have ‘bigger’ cells than average. That means that there are more cells in me to go wrong. I don’t feel I’ve been given a large number of cells, and when confronted by two short people trying to beat me up, I truly feel outnumbered two-to-one. Nor do I even have an extra finger or toe to show for my extra cells. Just an increased risk of cancer, thanks.
 
But a little time in amongst life’s coffins, urns and ash-scattering rockets at least gave me time to renew my perspective on life, and more relevantly here, death. I can only die once. What that means is that if I’m more likely to die of cancer, then I must be less likely to die crossing the road or in a plane crash, of being murdered, or of dying of other illnesses such as a heart attack or a stroke. So the good news about being more likely to die of cancer is that I can go back to enjoying all the good things in life, so it’s back to the burgers, pizzas, crisps and deep-fried Mars Bars. (That last one’s a lie – the very thought makes me want to throw up.)
 
And there are compensations in being tall. I can see over crowds. I can reach shelves in my house that no-one else can get close to. I can also paint ceilings, although that’s a horrible job and I try to pretend that ‘even I’ can’t manage to reach. Best of all, though, is that 1.97 metres, which you square and then divide the resulting 3.88 into my weight in kilos to produce my Body Mass Index. So the taller I am, the more weight I’m allowed before I have to admit to being obese – back to those burgers again. Being obese, we’re told, is a contributory factor in developing cancer.
 
So being tall helps combat cancer? Hang on...
0 Comments

    CONTRIBUTORS

    Gordon Lawrie is the founder and managing director of Comely Bank Publishing, and the author of Four Old Geezers and a Valkyrie. The Discreet Charm of Mary Maxwelll-Hume and The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold. He is also a flash fiction aficionado. He’s currently in search of that book that earns him a fortune. 

    Emma Baird is a freelance blogger/copywriter, and the author of Katie and the Deelans. Since then she's moved onto pastures new where she self-publishes experimental YA and chick-lit novels both online and as print-on-demand.

    Jane Tulloch is the author of Our Best Attention (published 2016) Attention Assured (2017) and now has a further lease of life as an expert on the history of Edinburgh's lost department stores. She is relishing the freedom of writing an (almost!) complete pack of lies after years of writing very serious reports on her professional topic of autism in adults.

    Eric J. Smith lives in Maryland, USA, and is the author Not a Bad Ride: Stories from a Boomer's Life on the Edge, which is available on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble and iTunes.​

     

    Archives

    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Picture

Website by Platform 36
✕