Putting my foot in it

Oh no not again!

I’ve just been reading about how someone has found a foot on the beach. A human foot.

It’s not fair! I’ve been beachcombing for years. Every chance I get, I’m off down to the briney to furtively forage around to see what I can see. In fact, there’s a sort of undeclared contest amongst beachcombers. To see who can find the most interesting titbit.

But I’ve never found a human foot. Or anything even near. I’ve never met anyone else who has found a human foot either.

Or any other — non human — foot for that matter. Plenty of dead fish. But fish don’t have feet. Plenty of seaweed too, but ditto. Do crab claws count as feet? I suppose they must do. But they are almost invariably connected to the rest of the crab. So that’s cheating. It has to be a foot disconnected from the rest of the body. Lets get that straight from the outset.

So you crabs can relax. Not many people know that my insane ramblings are quite popular in the crabby community. You crabs can carry on reading. Feet intact.

I suppose an unscrupulous beachcomber could just pick up a crab and chop a foot off it. Most crabs on the beach are dead already anyway, so it wouldn’t mind. But that wouldn’t work for humans. I’ve never seen a dead human on the beach. So that’s not much of a plan. And the live ones are far too noisy anyway. You need a bit of peace and quiet for foot pinching.

Stop press: Further developments: They have analysed this foot in a high-tech foot lab. They say it’s a woman’s foot.

How can they tell? Painted toenails perhaps? High heels? You don’t need a lab to see that!

Anyway, this is a major triumph because it narrows down the search by approximately 50%,. Which is of course a statistically significant number. They can now ask around whether anyone has seen a one legged woman hopping away from the beach recently. Not just anybody. Hopping guys can relax. It’s not theirs.

Even more developments: They have identified the woman! Another amazing triumph of science!

How did they do that? Presumably not ‘It probably belongs to that one legged woman over there’? No. That’s not very scientific. If there were any one legged women hopping around near the high tech foot lab, I’m sure they would have been made to wait in a queue until the scientific results were in.

It turns out the foot belongs to a woman who was under police investigation for fraud. Or, to be precise, megafraud! Millions and millions of it! A criminal mistressmind!

They reckon she’s probably dead. Oh come on now! Just because your foot has detached itself from the rest of your body doesn’t mean you’re dead! Lots of people with a foot missing are living happy lengthy lives. Especially if they have millions and millions in the bank.

So I got to pondering: If I wanted people to think I was dead so I could run off with lots of money, which bit of me would I leave lying around? A foot seems a bit drastic. And shortsighted, because it would stop me hitting the pedal hard in my getaway car.

What about my head? No. My head is actually quite useful. Sometimes. Well, occasionally perhaps.

Maybe a finger then? Or a little toe? Yes. That makes much more sense. Little toes are of no use whatsoever. May as well have it off. Then I could leave it somewhere with a little note attached: ‘my name is …. and I’ve killed myself’. May as well save the lab a job. They will be terribly busy with all those feet.

And I wouldn’t necessarily leave it on the beach. If I did that I’d get sand between the other toes. Maybe I’d just post it through the letterbox at the police station. That’d save them having to find it.

Of course this is all my idea. So don’t go pinching it. Choose your own bit to remove.

Maybe I could get a patent on the idea? In the meantime, don’t go chopping off your little toe and then whining that you did it because you read about it on the internet. You know what happens to people who spend too much time online…