I went into a pub at lunchtime recently and was rather surprised when I went in there was nobody else there. The place was empty.

I looked around and saw an old fashioned Space Invaders machine in the corner. I couldn’t resist so put the coins in and started defending the earth from the relentless slowly advancing aliens.

Suddenly I heard a voice: “I don’t know why you are bothering to play this game, you’re rubbish!”

I looked around but there was still nobody there.

I carried on and the voice spoke again: “You’ve just wasted your money. You might as well give up now.”

There was still nobody visible and it sounded like the speech was coming from inside the machine.

I continued and the voice spoke a third time: “Give up slaphead!”

I was so thrown by this that I forgot to watch for the missiles from above and lost my last life.

Rather upset and perturbed by this abuse I headed towards the bar, looking for some bar staff. There was nobody around but there were some peanuts in a bowl on the counter. I reached out to take a few when another voice spoke from nowhere: “Hello, it’s nice to see someone who is looking so smart come in here.”

I looked all over the pub and there was nobody around. As I reached for the peanuts again I heard the voice: “We don’t often get someone of your calibre in here.”

There was still nobody around and I started to get worried that I was losing my mind, while at the same time feeling better after the verbal mauling by the Space Invaders machine.

Suddenly, as if by magic, a barmaid appeared behind the bar. I went over to her and explained about  the abuse from the video game and the nice things the nuts seemed to be saying.

“Oh yes,” she said knowingly. “You see the nuts are complimentary, but the machine’s out of order.”

Be blessed, be a blessing

*lol = laughing out loud; rotfl = rolling on the floor, laughing; jars = just about raising a smile (a new one I have just created)