For two hours the pair had wandered around the town mulling over the choices at their disposal.  Lenny had helped him escape the clutches of the hospital and at the time Dave assumed that his wizardly friend had a clear plan.  Assumptions were all well and good but where did they get you?  Well in this case lost, harangued by a very insistent and particularly ill fragranced and very drunk tramp, trailed by a policeman who surely must have only just left primary school and added to that a little twist of good luck, fate had provided a nice brown pile of dog business that Dave managed to find and use as an opportunity to demonstrate his lack of skating skills – Torvil and Dean eat you heart out!.

“I thought these may be useful,” Lenny whispered as though the bag held some top-secret contents or a million pounds in used notes.  “After your little, er… your slip up I thought...”  He grinned, winked a yellowy eye and dropped the bag into Dave’s lap.

The shoes were a little too big and there was a certain odour, a fishiness that spoke volumes about their history but compared to the smell now emanating from his slippers they smelled of the sweetest flowers.  Dave grunted a ‘thank-you’ as he removed them from the bag which he used to wrap the soiled slippers in.  These were then quickly disposed of in the nearest bin.

“So what is the plan then Lenny?”

“The plan is we get on the next train my boy”.