Free Daft Wee Stories by Limmy Page B

an episode where nothing happens. Even when nothing appears to be happening, it isn’t really. It isn’t really nothing. There’s always something to it, it’s always interesting in some sort of way, or it’s to tell you something about somebody, or it leads to something that’ll happen later.
    â€˜Well, of course something happens,’ said Paula. ‘Something has to happen or nobody would watch it. Who’d want to watch something where nothing happens?’ But that wasn’t his point.
    His point was that it was unrealistic. These programmes try to be realistic, things like
Coronation Street
or
EastEnders
, they try to be real, but they’re not. He wasn’t saying they were utterly unrealistic, they didn’t have aliens or laser cannons or anything like that, but they just weren’t like real life. Not really. In real life, not a lot happens. Or, at least, when interesting things do happen, they don’t happen every single day. You get the odd interesting day, then you don’t, sometimes for a good while. Sometimes fuck all happens for days on end. There had been times in his life when fuck all happened for weeks.
    â€˜What’s your point?’ said Paula.
    He just thought it would be funny, and more realistic, if they had an episode of
Coronation Street
or
EastEnders
where fuck all happened. Fuck all interesting. Just nothing notable at all. Like, imagine if they had a few minutes of somebody putting their clothes in the washing machine. They don’t accidentally put a red sock in with the whites or wash something that’s dry clean only, they just put their clothes in the washing machine for however long that takes. Then imagine it cut to another character in a shop, thinking of what to get for dinner, picking tins of stuff off the shelves, having a wee look at the label, then putting them back. And it’s not like you get to see what they’re reading on the labels, it’s not like they’re reading the nutritional information and you see that the thing is high in sugar then that thing is given to a diabetic then there’s a mad rush to the hospital. In fact, maybe you just see them go into a shop, but you don’t get to go inside and watch, the camera just waits outside, like a dog, until the person comes out ten minutes later. Or maybe—
    â€˜Johnny, see seriously, gonnae fucking shut up?’ said Paula, shaking her head. The shite he talked.
    Johnny laughed, then shut up.
    For a minute.
    â€˜Like, imagine something like this,’ he said, looking at the two of them on the couch.
    â€˜Fuck’s sake,’ said Paula. ‘Like what?’
    â€˜Like this,’ he said. ‘Like us.’
    Johnny pointed out that this was real life, this right here, what they were doing right now. Johnny and Paula, right there on the couch, doing nothing, watching the telly, not saying a word to each other for almost half an hour, then having a wee argument. This was real life, this was realistic. Johnny thought somebody should write something like this, and stick it in on the telly, or in a film. Or in a book.
    â€˜Who’d want to read this?’ laughed Paula, flicking through the channels to see what else was on.
    â€˜I would,’ said Johnny. ‘A story about nothing. I really like the sound of that.’
    Paula said it sounded shite. Johnny said it didn’t. He’d love to read something like that, a wee story about nothing. Somebody should do that, he said. Paula said nobody would do that because nobody would buy it. Something would have to happen otherwise they wouldn’t even print the thing, they wouldn’t make it. Try asking a bookshop to put your book on the shelves after telling them nothing happens in it, nothing interesting, like, seriously, nothing at all.
    Johnny hoped that somebody would do it, somebody would write it. They’d probably get told by the publisher to put some big ending