Gnome Confession

Had lunch at a garden centre cafe with the family today to celebrate my mum's birthday. Saw these guys when we were leaving.
Every time I see gnomes it reminds me of when I was about 15.

During the summer holidays, my friend and I decided to camp out in his back garden in his two-man tent. As you would expect with boys at that age, our camp-out included a big stash of junk food, fart competitions and ghost stories. However, after a few nights of this, we felt the need to be a little more adventurous and dared ourselves to take a walk though the village around 2 or 3 in the morning. Somewhere along the line, one of us thought it'd be hilarious to kidnap a gnome from a neighbour's collection. There we figured it would be funnier still to take a few and re-locate them a couple streets away.

So we did. All went well until one of the poor little bearded guys had a nasty accident in the rush and lost his head - literally. It seemed like a good idea to pop his head into a fellow-gnome's wheelbarrow before racing back to the tent.

It was as close as either of us had come to committing a criminal act. But the adrenaline rush of that night was nothing compared to the weight of guilt crushing us both the next morning.

To this day, I still have trouble looking a gnome in the eye.


PS - If you're reading this and those were your gnomes ... I offer my sincere apologies and hope that some superglue put things right deny everything.