Man Up Ladder Without Underpants

I often jog through the local park and throw a few broken biscuits down for the squirrels (they're so tame they run toward you.) Leaving the park I get onto Chapel Street - a nice downhill run. One day I nearly ran into a tall ladder leant up against one of the terraced houses. On the doorstep was a bottle of milk and up the ladder was a man in a dressing gown. Chapel Street lies on a hill so he'd wedged a piece of wood under a foot of the ladder. It was windy and the man's hair was flailing about. When he saw me I asked if he wanted me to hold the ladder. He put a thumb up but didn't proceed to do anything up there. Had he frozen? Slowly he came back down and said he'd locked himself out of the house. I couldn't understand what he was doing as the horizontal upstairs window was closed. He said that years ago he'd been throwing a front door key out of the window for someone but it had landed on the windowsill. It was still there.

I didn't offer to go up the ladder as I'd only reach the forth rung before I started trembling. Perhaps I should have offered though as when the man crawled back up the ladder I saw he wasn't wearing any underwear beneath his dressing gown. My eyes glimpsed a sort of thick black tumbleweed with soft peaches dangling out of it. There're some things you can't delete from your mind and this is one of them. Oh dear (I've only ever been able to eat tinned sliced peaches since.....no full peaches.)

I should be grateful though: this man inspired this painting. It's a bit of an odd one isn't it but I'm sure the world has sufficient paintings of flowers in vases. It's refreshing to see an unusual painting now and then. I've altered the viewers angle so you've not looking directly up at the man's undercarriage. I added the cat in the window but there wasn't one there on the day of the ordeal.

You could buy this for £8,446 and hang it in your lounge. If you guests are running out of conversation you could talk about this unremarkable piece of art. I can post it to you tomorrow after the heavy-handed nurse "Sherman Tank" Charlene has rammed my clavicle back into place with her mallet.