#335

There is nothing like hurtling through the dark, dank depths of the Earth to make you contemplate your life choices. I was certainly in a reflective mood as I plummeted through the centre of the planet. How had it come to this, I asked myself? Maybe if I had taken technical drawing at school, instead of advanced cake welding, I would never have found myself in this pickle. Maybe I should never have set out to recover my missing sandwich. Oh sure, it had meant I had got to travel and had seen some extraordinary things. If I had stayed in the house, I would never have seen that pirate dog wearing the jetpack, Greenland's second-biggest pair of underpants and the man who could do an impression of a spoon. I had certainly seen a lot of the world - even from the inside. They say that travel broadens the mind - they do, you know, I've heard them say it - but I think my head was probably big enough already. I was starting to think that it was time I went home. I couldn't keep going forever, not with my dodgy knees and debilitating inability to recognise the smell of asphalt. It was time to retire from sandwich hunting.

Suddenly there was a blinding glare as I shot out of the other side of the planet. There was a man wearing a hat festooned with corkscrews, a tin of Fosters in one hand, his didgeridoo in the other and with a billabong strapped to his jumbuck. "G'day cobbler," he said as I hurtled past him and up into the sky. I do love a national stereotype. I went up, up, uppity-up-up, then gravity caught up with me and I began to fall back down. "No worries, mate," said the man as I plunged past him and back into the hole.