ROBIN RARE FOUR:BENJAMIN TIMOTHY DYER

“Now, as we were discussing before lunch, a picture that tells a thousand tales.” Ivory came out with and hoped that no mention of previous scenes conjured up in certain people’s heads would reoccur. “The young couple have been engaged in what can seem a harmless visits to the flicks.”
“Not a roller coaster then.”
“No!”
“Just the bright lights all about it could mean over here a theme park.”
“No!” Ivory shouted.
“Okay, old man keep your pants on!” Dirk said; “Oh and while you are at it, don’t let them be as pointed as David’s here.”
“A thing just as innocent as going to the pictures can trigger a collapse of sanity, especially if it is a horror, gangster or other violent movie. Images can stimulate the mind for good, also for bad.”
Robin must have drifted off as when he came round a new picture had just appeared on the screen. One of a young child stood by a costume of a Father Christmas.”
Ivory braced himself. “Now what does this scene depict.” The room went silent. Then like in a nightmare that woman put her hand up. “Anyone?” Nope! He had to ask. “Yes Margaret, what do you think the scene depicts?”
“It’s obvious to me. The girl has had a frightening experience, a trauma of some kind to do with the guy in the red suit.”
Doctor Ivory felt impressed, the woman was on the right track. “Go on.”
“She’s found out her father visited a sex shop and that father Christmas is a perverted one, dressed in a G-string and oiled all over.”
Like a train going along so well, suddenly it hits a object on the track and is derailed. “No! It has nothing to do with going to a sex shop, get off that subject woman and seek help from a marriage guidance councillor.”
The whole room went deadly silent, you could only hear a trickling sound as Andy felt he needed to men's room again.
“It was only a casual observation.” Margaret mumbled as she fiddled with her pens.
“So, the dude in the suit is Father Christmas. Then the mental break down is easy.” Dirk added oblivious to the upset doctor and fellow colleague.
“It is?” Ivory asked hoping for a bit of sanity in this room.
“Yeah, he didn’t bring her a present. She’s all upset and when she gets older will buy a shotgun and blow every Santa’s head off in town.”
“No!”
“Oh yes! That’s American’s for you, gun ho and oop’s lets just blow everyone we hate away.”
“No Dirk that is not it!” Ivory patted his head as he felt tense. “The girl finds out that Santa doesn’t exist, it causes mental repression and manifests itself at a later date, when she has children of her own.”
“I can understand how she feels.” Robin spoke up.
“How so mister Rare?” Ivory asked feeling the tendency to lay the man out on a leather feinting couch.
“My father used to play Santa Claus every Christmas when I was younger.”
“When did you find out and what caused your problem?”
“He always took his role very seriously until one day he tried to climb down my chimney.”
“And the old fart got stuck!” Dirk laughed with the vision of an old man stuck in a chimney all night.
“Exactly, he got stuck trying to put his zimmer frame down inside with him in it’s centre. A traumatic experience I can tell you when your faith in Father Christmas is destroyed.”
“That is how you lost your faith in your parents by feeding you a lie.”
“My faith was destroyed when the local fire service turned up all dressed up as Father Christmas. It was then I knew it to be a lie as all couldn’t be the main man could they?”
“Just how old were you if you say your father was in a zimmer frame?” Margaret asked overcoming her uneasy feeling and facing another with Rare.
“Thirty seven I was and my dad was in his late sixties just before the other incident that sallied our familles reputation.”
“Go on my son.” Ivory urged as all listened to this man’s tale of woe (Nothing to do with Chinese tales).
“It was after I told him he was a fake that he lost his job at the local store as Xmas man. In the end he tried to find a Santa job and was told he was too old and a bit on the loopy side. The police were called out on several occasions to remove him. The last incident was in the store when he sneaked into the ladies toilets. A woman opened up the cubical to find him sitting there saying; ‘Come and sit on my knee little girl and I will make your wish come true.’” Robin washed a solitary tear from his eye. “Shortly after that he died in the wardrobe.”
Marie looked up at the doctor. “Don’t ask and I’m certainly not going to explain that one, especially if it deviates from other things he’s related.”
“Anything else we need to know about your father?”
“Oh he was a cross dresser.”
Ivory ran over and got his pad out, noting others were as well. “Into mixed clothes was he?”
“A sexual pervert eh?” Margaret added with glee, only to get a disapproving look from the doc.
“Oh yes, he always got angry when mother used to make him get ready for shopping on Saturdays. He hated shopping, it put him in a bad mood all morning.”
Ivory had heard enough off the strange man, he climbed back up to where he formally stood. “Enough tittle-tattle. Now going back to this subject. Many women sadly go mental...”
“No need to go mental. Any babes that need a helping hand in the love department better see the master!”
“What the bad guy out of doctor who?” Rare asked amazed that the Master knew such things as he was always involved in destroying the universe.
“Not The master you dummy, um, the master of love...me! I don’t mind any babe, as long as she ain’t got a face that looks like a back end of a bus smashed in six times. Or is as wide as a forty ton truck, Or looks as butt ugly as Margaret here.”
“Why you!” She stood up and once more felt the restraints of the plastic table as she went for Dirk.
“Hey calm down chick, it was only a joke. A true joke none the less!”
Robin felt the need to get out of the way as the woman laid blows upon a fleeing Dirk. The doctor called it time for a tea break and hurried away. Robin went to the men’s, that pizza had given him a dodgy stomach.

From the confines of the cubical his mobile phone went off. Rare fired it up. “Hello Rare here. Hi Marie.”
“Are you on the toilet Rare?”
“Yes, how can you tell, I didn’t make any rude noises.”
“No, you’ve left your mobile phone’s camera on, I can see everything that is not nice.”
Robin was so shocked that he fumbled for the phone and watched it land in the basin, swimming with other things. “Oh well, easy come easy go.” He mumbled as he pulled the handle and flushed the phone along with other things away.

Robin came out to find the session was back in progress. He took his seat and apologised to Marie before asking; “What is the subject?”
“Professor Hinds is talking about mental problems developing due to wrong types of work environment; self induced or by mistake.”
“I can relate to that.”
“How can you? oh apart from doing our job you mean.”
She was joking he wasn’t. “I’m serious Marie I really am.”
She smiled as she leaned nearer. “Go on, I’m game, tell me.”
“When I passed my driving test, I decided to do some driving for people.”
“As in a taxi.”
“I was living in the midlands then, so I advertised with a local paper. I advertised as a Taxi to Derby, only the paper printed it as a taxidermy. I was turning up to collect dead animals and people telling me to get stuffed. Most unfriendly, until I realised what a taxidermist did.”
“Was that it?”
“No it happened to me when I was down in Portsmouth for a spell.”
“Not another advertising incident?”
“I advertised in my local paper. I put my ad in as garden composter for hire. They like the other paper misspelt it as garden composer for hire. It’s a little embarrassing walking into a large garden and setting up a composter in front of an entire orchestra with hundreds of people looking on. I have a lifetime ban at Osbourne house, apparently I ruined their night at the proms as the fireworks went off early to cover their embarrassment. It was a glorious summers evening, no one could see the blomin things in the daylight. I often wondered why they wanted me and my little composter to work for such a big garden.”
“Poor old Robin, always misunderstood.”
“No my fault entirely. Mother was always encouraging me to go my own way by telling me to get lost and never come back. One year she arranged for me to go to a major film festival in France. She told me to rub shoulders with the rich and famous.”
“How did you get on?”
“I went to Cannes and suffered from really sore shoulders, how was I to know she meant talk to them and not just brush past them.”
Marie sighed. “Well if you had brushed shoulders with the stars you wouldn’t have been here with us, with me.” She thought about this and found it not to be encouraging really. “You could have been a star on the stage or silver screen. Better than sitting here listening to a boring old fart going on about how to screw with people’s minds.”
Robin laughed that slow laugh of his. “I’d much rather be here with my friends and with a load of faces I don’t know.” He grinned at her hoping his teeth stayed in. “Much rather be here talking to you that is.”
Marie smiled before she heard the professor say: “ We need to take a look at beauty in its entirety. For instance, I woke up suddenly this morning and saw a big moon.” And Dirk shout out; “Yeah your wife’s fat backside knocked you out of bed again did it. Ha ha!”
The rest of the afternoon was spent getting the police to release Dirk and the Professor after a fight broke out.