Free Tigers on the Beach by Doug MacLeod

have seen it twice.’
    Ben gets an idea, and it’s a terrible one. He suggests a double-date.
    â€˜
Would you like to see
Eternal Winter
instead of
Up the Duff
?’ he suggests to Michaela.
    â€˜No, I want to see something funny,’ says Michaela.
    â€˜There are probably some jokes in
Eternal Winter,
’ says Ben.
    â€˜There aren’t,’ I say, too forcefully. ‘There isn’t a single joke in the whole movie. It’ll depress you so much your boobs will fall off.’
    Michaela looks horrified.
    â€˜Can I have a biscuit?’ asks Ben.
    I hold out the bag and am immediately bailed up by a stern man in a dark-blue coat. He tells me that I can’t take food into the cinema. If I want to eat during the movie, I have to buy the overpriced popcorn. So we decide to finish the biscuits in the foyer.
    â€˜I’ll get the tickets,’ I say.
    I walk over to the box office, where a girl wearing the same colour coat as the stern man tells me that
Eternal Winter
is sold out
.
She says there are still plenty of tickets left for
Up the Duff.
    I return and explain about the ticket situation.
    â€˜Great,’ says Ben. ‘We can all see
Up the Duff
.’
    There are no biscuits left and Michaela complains that we have made her break her diet.
    Sam and I sit in the back row with Ben and Michaela
.
Michaela makes an ugly snorting noise when she laughs. Unfortunately, she thinks that
Up the Duff
is
hilarious
. The American comedian Rob Ryder plays a pregnant man. He has morning sickness, cravings for weird food, bladder problems, all the stuff that pregnant women go through, only it’s funny because it’s happening to a man. I think the film’s okay, though Sam isn’t laughing much. In front of me are two middle-aged women who can’t stop cackling. But the weird thing is, one woman keeps explaining to the other what is happening.
    â€˜He’s in the supermarket now,’ the explaining woman says. ‘He’s picking out containers of ice-cream from the freezer and putting them in his trolley. He’s obviously got pregnancy cravings. Now he’s in the delicatessen and he’s buying pickled cucumbers. At least that’s what they look like. I can’t be sure. No, they aren’t cucumbers, but they’re
like
cucumbers. I can’t think of the word . . .’
    This goes on and on. It’s as if we’re watching a DVD and this is a commentary track for idiots. I try to ignore it.
    The bit that makes nearly
everyone
crack up is when Rob Ryder uses a breast-pump on himself. The suction is on too high, so it’s stuck to him and won’t come off. The woman in front can’t explain the scene to her friend because she is laughing so much. I’m glad. Then Rob Ryder’s parents pay a surprise visit. They don’t know their son is pregnant. They see him trying to pull off the monster breast pump. The looks on their faces are hilarious. I laugh loudly.
    â€˜He’s got a breast pump,’ the lady in front tells her friend, now that she has managed to control her laughter. ‘It’s stuck to him. His parents have walked in.’
    I can’t take any more and tap the explaining lady on the shoulder. She turns around. I ask her if she could stop describing to her friend every single thing that happens in the movie. My voice is louder than I expected and I sound angry. The explaining lady apologises for bothering me. She tells me that the reason she’s explaining everything is that her friend is only partially sighted. While her friend can
hear
a few things, she can’t see much. The explaining lady promises she’ll lower her voice if it’s too distracting for me.
    I feel terrible.
    It’s as if I have been mean to a blind person. But how was I to know? And why is a blind person seeing a film like
Up the Duff
? For the dialogue? Michaela stops snorting for long enough to give me a dark