This was rather flattering. I was chatting to my mates Emily and Charlie. They’re both barstaff in the Saracen’s Head, they’re both very good at what they do, they work together really well, and bicker as if they’ve been married about 50 years.
They had been playing the Walking Dead game. This is the pastime where you decide who you want on your side come the zombie apocalypse. Some of the other staff had been rejected out of hand, indeed had been nominated as sacrifices, but then Charlie said, ‘Emily and I are agreed. We want you on board.’
‘That’s nice of you.’
‘You seem as if you’d be pretty resourceful.’
I had a ponder. ‘Well, I can fix a lot of things. And I can do lots of DIY stuff. I built a utility room from scratch once. Suspended floor, all the walls, plumbing, lecky, lighting. I’m quite useful.’
‘Fuck, you did all that from scratch?’
‘Yeah.’
Then I got to thinking. I’m a bit more frail than I used to be, but back in the day I was a very VERY capable gardener, grew nearly all the vegetables and fruit my partner and I, and her two daughters, needed. Hell, I kept half of my work colleagues supplied too. That might be a useful skill, mightn’t it?
‘You might need somebody with driving skills, too. I’m rusty, but I was quick in my day. I once overtook a truck in the wet, and my car was so out of shape I could see into the cab through my windscreen.’
Like a lot of men would, Charlie swallowed the bait here.
‘You’d have to be really quick to beat me.’
‘Well, let’s see. I went to a race training weekend once. Target laptime was 1:53. I turned in a 1:45, straight out of the hat in a rather tired XR3i, and in a tired old saloon car I forced a Formula Ford to spin out when I put the pressure on a bit.’
‘Impressive.’
I didn’t bother to mention the time I gave a mate a hard time when he was trying to outrun me in his Porsche 911 and I was driving the living daylights out of my Honda Prelude VTEC. We fetched up in a miasma of hot brakes.
‘Fuck me, you can drive that fucker can’t you? You actually had me rattled.’
I might be the man for the job, then. If I want to survive. Not too sure about that. I certainly don’t want to be around battling cockroaches after a nuclear war.
nobodysreadingme 
Zombie apocalypse is a valuable game, my family has it nailed down. Our daughter started having zombie nightmares when she was about 10 years old. We turned it into a practical life lesson. Our house, the kid’s school, restaurants, vacation hotels – any location imaginable sparked a matter of fact “what if” zombie attack game plan. She’s 33 now and we still play the game to amuse ourselves. All 3 of my children developed practical critical thinking skills courtesy hypothetical zombie invasion. 🙂 And yes, the fact they consider you a valuable team member is truly flattering. 🙂
I’ll break out the baseball bat and barbed wire. Yes. I was flattered, I have to admit.
This may predate your following my blog, but it was fun to write. https://nobodysreadingme.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/how-not-to-get-killed-by-a-zombie/