Gottfried was a bit odd. It’s fair to say that. Not mad exactly, but odd. And he’d make an argument in defence of his oddness and challenge you if you said something out of turn, or gave him a look that was not a straightforward look, or if you laughed – especially if you laughed.
Plenty have made the mistake of laughing at one time or another. Like when Gottfried said the moon was really God, the face of God, and so He was watching us from that high point and He could see into our thoughts and dreams and God knew if we was touching what we shouldn’t in our sleep.
And Peachy laughed then, cos Peachy, well, he’d been touching and more than touching – jerking off he was, and all on account of a girl called Sooky and she was texting him dirty messages in the middle of the night and he was texting her right back and like that they was both touching each other and touching themselves.
Well, Peachy laughing and that set Gottfried off and he argued then for the moon being the face of God and he pointed to the features of the face on the moon and the eyes sneering and the mouth sneering, too, and he said God would find Peachy’s sins out and he said Sooky would be found out, too. And Peachy just didn’t know how ever Gottfried knew about Sooky and that took all the laughing right out of him and when Sooky heard, she stopped with all her sexy texting.
And the sun was the son of God, Gottfried said, and nobody dared laugh at that or said to him that he was just playing with words and their sounds all mixed up.
He kept spiders in a matchbox in his pocket and he snatched flies out of the air and fed them to that spider, and Gottfried said it was his duty, said he had an aunt Jessica once and she told him if ever she died she’d come back as a spider and frighten the bejesus out of her interfering sister. And Gottfried said the spider in his matchbox, it was probably his aunt Jessica – you never know.
And he kept a duck in his front room, a full sized white duck and its feathered arse all wobbling and a paddling pool for it to swim in and he said that duck could tell the future. I asked him if he talked to it and if he talked duck, and he said that was just stupid and he said I was stupid. Then he went on to explain.
‘Ducks can tell when bad weather’s coming and they feel it in their livers. They know when to shelter in the barn or when to go out on wide water and that’s all to do with what they know. And when a half dozen ducklings will hatch out of a half dozen eggs, and they know that even before. And when danger is near and when it is not. They feel it inside.’
I didn’t see how any of that meant they could tell the future.
‘Well, what do you want to know?’ Gottfried said.
At the risk of being stupid again I asked Gottfried for the name of the winning horse in the 3 o’clock at Cheltenham.
It worked through a process of elimination. Gottfried just read out the names from the newspaper, one at a time, and he waited for the duck, counted to ten, and if the duck swam clockwise in the paddling pool then the horse was a loser and if it swam anti-clockwise it was a winner. And fuck if it didn’t pick the winner just like that and the horse came in at 10-1 and Gottfried had a tenner on it and he laughed at me cos I hadn’t been so trusting of the duck and it was just fifty pence I’d laid on the horse. Picked three winners in a row, and Gottfried laughing every time.
Patricia Ann McNair 
Gottfried was a bit odd. It’s fair to say that. Not mad exactly, but odd. And he’d make an argument in defence of his oddness and challenge you if you said something out of turn, or gave him a look that was not a straightforward look, or if you laughed – especially if you laughed.
Plenty have made the mistake of laughing at one time or another. Like when Gottfried said the moon was really God, the face of God, and so He was watching us from that high point and He could see into our thoughts and dreams and God knew if we was touching what we shouldn’t in our sleep.
And Peachy laughed then, cos Peachy, well, he’d been touching and more than touching – jerking off he was, and all on account of a girl called Sooky and she was texting him dirty messages in the middle of the night and he was texting her right back and like that they was both touching each other and touching themselves.
Well, Peachy laughing and that set Gottfried off and he argued then for the moon being the face of God and he pointed to the features of the face on the moon and the eyes sneering and the mouth sneering, too, and he said God would find Peachy’s sins out and he said Sooky would be found out, too. And Peachy just didn’t know how ever Gottfried knew about Sooky and that took all the laughing right out of him and when Sooky heard, she stopped with all her sexy texting.
And the sun was the son of God, Gottfried said, and nobody dared laugh at that or said to him that he was just playing with words and their sounds all mixed up.
He kept spiders in a matchbox in his pocket and he snatched flies out of the air and fed them to that spider, and Gottfried said it was his duty, said he had an aunt Jessica once and she told him if ever she died she’d come back as a spider and frighten the bejesus out of her interfering sister. And Gottfried said the spider in his matchbox, it was probably his aunt Jessica – you never know.
And he kept a duck in his front room, a full sized white duck and its feathered arse all wobbling and a paddling pool for it to swim in and he said that duck could tell the future. I asked him if he talked to it and if he talked duck, and he said that was just stupid and he said I was stupid. Then he went on to explain.
‘Ducks can tell when bad weather’s coming and they feel it in their livers. They know when to shelter in the barn or when to go out on wide water and that’s all to do with what they know. And when a half dozen ducklings will hatch out of a half dozen eggs, and they know that even before. And when danger is near and when it is not. They feel it inside.’
I didn’t see how any of that meant they could tell the future.
‘Well, what do you want to know?’ Gottfried said.
At the risk of being stupid again I asked Gottfried for the name of the winning horse in the 3 o’clock at Cheltenham.
It worked through a process of elimination. Gottfried just read out the names from the newspaper, one at a time, and he waited for the duck, counted to ten, and if the duck swam clockwise in the paddling pool then the horse was a loser and if it swam anti-clockwise it was a winner. And fuck if it didn’t pick the winner just like that and the horse came in at 10-1 and Gottfried had a tenner on it and he laughed at me cos I hadn’t been so trusting of the duck and it was just fifty pence I’d laid on the horse. Picked three winners in a row, and Gottfried laughing every time.