Charles Bronson was a fool. Charles Bronson was a good man he made yummy toasted muesli. Charles Bronson was an actor with dark hair he liked to swim and was in The Great Escape with Steve McQueen and Telefon with Lee Remick and a movie not called Clambake with Elvis. Charles Bronson swam the English Channel and liked muesli. He had a wife who had cancer and he was in a whole lot of Death Wish movies which were all available at the video store except Death Wish VII. Charles Bronson had a helmet for a haircut like Tim Holt and The Incredible Hulk. Charles Bronson looked a lot like his brother. He never answered the telephone except in the movie Telefon which was not about telethons. He went to first grade in the Rockies and skipped fourth grade and always carried a knife. Charles Bronson was asthmatic he was a good man. Charles Bronson looked you in the eye. Whenever anyone asked Charles Bronson for money he always gave them twenty cents. He took amphetamines for a living and made a lot of movies few people saw except in the sixties when it was hip to see obscure movies. Charles Bronson had a friendly demeanour. He was Polish-Irish-Jewish and grew up in a coal mine was incredibly serious about work and had a facial once a week. He never went to the zoo except once by mistake when he was eight. Charles Bronson took out the trash and cleaned his car on Sunday. He didn't believe in lawns. When Charles Bronson went hiking in the wilderness he always packed a tube of glue. Charles Bronson never learned to play the violin or the saxophone but he had a deep alto tenor voice and sang in choir every second weekend. He never learnt how to spell his name. He was a good swimmer and liked fly fishing. He really wanted to be a skin-diver but the industry wasn't around when he left school at the age of thirteen seeking an apprenticeship so he became a cooper. Sometimes Charles got grumpy with his wife but he apologised and she forgave him and they went on picnics in the hills and sometimes at these picnics Charles would hallucinate that a white horse ran through their picnic platter and his wife would be Noddy. Charles Bronson could drive but he had a fear of heights and golf buggies. He didn't like having sex until he had a frank discussion with his neighbour who was a pianist and she passed on her copy of Erotic Aromatherapy. Charles Bronson broke horses for a living. His favourite food was brisket. He owned a promotions company in Dahomey that specialised in magicians. An Israeli woman taught him how to ululate which helped cure Charles's kidney aches. He was a self-taught cinematographer a millionaire a swindler a banjo player a snooker champion and a runner-up in fencing. He made his own movie for twelve hundred dollars which won twelve Academy Awards. For a wager Charles Bronson swam anti-clockwise around Graham Land from where he swam to Hudson's Bay to wrestle naked a polar bear which he lost and forfeited five dollars. He would walk home with his eyes shut and had long conversations with his natural therapist about Nice. Charles Bronson slept on a ledge alongside a sulphurous geyser for fifteen years stood on one leg in India for five years and milked a thousand goats in one sit. He thought Jim Morrison was an idiot. He sheared a thousand rams in a morning. Charles Bronson piloted tugboats for a living and liked to water ski. He lost a leg in the Bay of Pigs. He was an excellent grunter and flew a plane upside down from Paris to Quito. He won a bronze medal on the cross beam and owned a giant bean bag he named Quigley which was his father's middle name. The bean bag was filled with home grown beans. Charles Bronson had six species of runner beans named after him. His favourite food was rainbow cake he said it made his arms strong. Charles Bronson's arms were thicker than pipes. He refused to drink tap water or eat at restaurants which cooked with tap water. He thought a lot about sand and always ate everything on his plate. He adored Robert Mitchum but avoided him at parties and turned down a number of co-starring roles alongside Robert Mitchum while taking up chewing aniseed mintless gum because Robert Mitchum chewed aniseed mintless gum. In Telefon Charles Bronson was a sleeper on hearing the dumbo Robert Frost rhyme the woods are lovely dark and deep but I have motorbikes to keep Charles Bronson the zombie Russian would awake and kamikaze the nearest military facility. After making that movie Charles Bronson took Lee Remick to his ranch in the Nevada desert to show her his gila monster breeding facility. He could breathe fire sing in Romany smoke like a librarian and had a degree in nursing. He lived underwater most of his life. Charles Bronson accidentally chopped off one of his toes at one of the many illegal pigeon fights he would hold at his ranch over the winter months and a pigeon ate his toe. Charles Bronson criss-crossed the United States chasing that pigeon but the pigeon escaped. Charles Bronson was smoking a cheroot on the Sea Islands one holiday when a pigeon landed alongside his banana lounge and regurgitated a toe. Charles Bronson rushed to the nearest surgeon but unfortunately the toe wasn't his and his foot rejected the toe. Charles Bronson would only replace his artificial toe which he folded out of box cardboard and glued to his foot with Tarzan Grip intermittently. Charles Bronson owned a glue warehouse and could bake a mean loaf of bread he called scary loaf. Charles Bronson wrote a screenplay called Scary Loaf III. He got aches from time to time and took tips from bus passengers on how to alleviate these one of these tips was from an explosives expert who suggested Charles eat a packet of cigarettes a day. Charles Bronson ate packets of cigarettes every day for a decade and grew sprouts on his Grandma's allotment despite the boll weevil. Charles Bronson dwelled often on how he could live solely on chicken pellets. Charles Bronson was a virgin till eighty three he had three children lived with his mother till she died and slept with musk rats. His underwater tomb is visited by millions of scuba diving pilgrims each year. The pilgrims swim around his tomb in counter-clockwise motions which cause vast whirlpools that are a scheduled shipping hazard. Charles Bronson was a good shot and could shoot the cigar out of his own mouth from fifty paces away blindfolded. Charles Bronson had no regrets apart from chewing his Persian cat. He cured his own tobacco and lived in the hills outside San Diego most of his life propagating hallucinogenic plants from which he isolated psychotropic compounds trying each one and then destroying the formula he ran a sixty billion dollar publishing empire ate lying down slept standing up hummed very little and nurtured a three-metre moustache backpackers would mistake for a blanket. He kindly let backpackers sleep under his moustache for many a year. He was a sweet man who lived on very little and had two vulvas. He liked Lebanese cucumbers and didn't talk to many people other than his accountant who was mute and often had a mucky eye. Charles Bronson always carried tissues in his pocket and liked to mop his accountant's mucky eye. In 1893 he was born in a log cabin his father milled with his own hired hands and chocked with chocolate moss. He detested people who chewed gum calling them gum chewers. He got hit with a poison dart in the alleys of San Diego in 1987. The poison dart was shot by the mud-men of San Diego. Charles Bronson donated his extensive blow-pipe collection to the local chapter of mud-men. Charles Bronson would always light your cigarette for you put it in your mouth inhale the cigarette for you and then smoke another for you meanwhile flushing the rest of the pack down the toilet and say he was giving up smoking for you. Charles Bronson was never demeaning impolite or crass. He was a wonderful knitter knew most of the Cabala backwards and the seventeen mysteries of aging worked in an oil refinery as a sous-chef and held down his first full-time job in a call centre where he was sacked for leaving mandarin peel on a console. He had two
hot-air balloon accidents in his lifetime the first was over Montenegro when he was shooting the never to be completed prequel to The Prisoner of Zenda the second was on his third honeymoon in the middle of the Pacific Charles Bronson swam to Bonin raised the alarm flew the helicopter and winched the stretcher to rescue his wife fixing her a champagne breakfast when they got back to the hotel. Local authorities say it was his aftershave that saved Charles Bronson from being eaten by sharks. He lost his only elephant in a drinking game kept desiccated coconut in his wallet only ate bananas never shaved liked to dine on tiger steaks and lick the backs of rare South American frogs. Charles Bronson had few skills but never gave up trying. He looked up to people who were taller than him and never wore sneakers. He initiated many fiascos sold Fidel Castro a second-hand yacht and sailed with him to Trinidad in 1958 where they tried out a new invention of Charles's the land yacht a yacht with wheels or a car with sails it sank in the asphalt lakes. He tied to kiss Panther Woman but Panther Woman scratched his face. Charles Bronson issued a set of chewing gum cards with his likeness on them collected a whole set recalled the remainder and made a mint on the swap card market. Charles Bronson was always picking desiccated coconut from his chest hair. He loved Jersey caramels and swam to the Channel island of Jersey for a box of the things which he carried home on his back swimming breaststroke with the box inside a specially designed pouch. Fidel Castro now owns that pouch. Charles Bronson would go to the movies in his Andy Warthog T-shirt. He liked to throw popcorn at the ushers and drink Island Coolers in the carpark afterwards. He was kicked to death in Antigua. Charles Bronson mentored Scott Baio for the role of understudy to Tom Cruise in Cocktail. Scott accompanied Charles on his fourth honeymoon to Tobago and poured the pina coladas. Charles Bronson was weaned on pina coladas. Charles Bronson was born on Tobago as David Francis but changed his name on his mother's request when he went to live in a coal mine. Charles Bronson discovered bismuth in Georgia. He grew up in a derelict leprosarium and could only eat chalk. He was allergic to water and hated swimming but loved the inner-urban ruins of donut cities. Charles Bronson wore anklets and practised the ancient way of the invisible fist each morning. He swam to Australia in 1876 bought a pad in Sydney's west where he watched buildings a practice he helped pioneer. He has since made a lot of money in television. No-one not even Buster Keaton knew who Charles Bronson was until they saw his movies. He lived an isolated life in Brittany surrounded by his closest friends Geraldine Chaplin Omar Sharif Bill Walsh the Sasquatch Henry Kissinger Herman Hesse and International Velvet. He invented diesel the bunsen burner maraschino cherries the biro marzipan and putty. All the popes paid Charles Bronson at least fifty thousand denaris in lawsuits for infringing on his personality. He never gave anyone an inch and could bake wonderful choc-chip cookies. He could grow a beard in an hour but wasn't very good at table tennis and took too many anabolic steroids yet ground his own organic wheat which he sewed in land he ploughed with his own foot for seventy years. He could never remember long telephone numbers. Charles Bronson never shaved. His sweat was bottled as shark repellent and issued to pilots in WWII. He started his own shipping business at eighty three and owned twenty islands. His nickname was Thing. No-one ever called him by his nickname. He never flew anywhere preferring to swim. Charles Bronson lived till he was hundred and three giving it his best shot and then going to sleep. He overdosed on anaesthetics when he was twenty. Charles Bronson was a light opera enthusiast joined the red army at seventeen where he sang in the red army choir when he was thirty eight he left the red army to drive a jeep across the seven deserts of the world. His introversion was renowned and he smoked his own sausages. A high-flying equestrian he judged Miss Universe for twelve years running winning it once the year he retired and passed away. Miss Universe was held the following year in a coal mine in memory of Charles Bronson. Charles Bronson had a giant statue in Georgia built in his honour wearing a hard hat and wielding a pneumatic drill the statue's nose dripped. He invented a diamond tipped drill bit for the pneumatic drill miners to this day say my Thing's blunt I need a new Thing. Charles Bronson liked aquaplaning and teriyaki chicken. He could swing from monkey bars for hours learned to speak Russian and yodelled to an amphitheatre of six hundred striking meat packers one lunchtime. He only accepted payment in the form of stale bread rolls which he stored in a purpose built climate controlled storage facility. Each meal he ate one roll soaked in milk. There was never a dull moment in Charles Bronson's house because he never turned the lights off. Charles Bronson was afraid of the dark and Danny Kaye. He was the only man to have ever hugged Steve McQueen. He could never shake his French accent spoke seven dialects of Ugric learnt Turkish to fluency and his favourite number was two. Charles Bronson hosted a Turkish delegation of Tupperware consultants in 1963 at his ranch in Oregon taking them to a cattle sale where Charles snapped his shin on a mudguard he left the delegates to watch cattle to find a service station for medical assistance and the Turkish government never forgave him banning Charles Bronson from Turkey. Whenever Charles Bronson muttered he muttered only in Turkish and evolved his own personal Turkic dialect which a team of linguists recorded in the Charles Bronson Turkic Dictionary. Charles Bronson tried to smuggle himself into Turkey masquerading as a truck driver from Moldova but only got as far as Tbilisi where he developed an addiction to cod liver oil and became a hero worker. Charles Bronson was a born raconteur and natural mute. He only drank water with salt in it. He never said anything important to anyone was an amoral crank and the populace of Georgia loved him and miss him very much. He imported bananas to Iran and developed the world's first pant tomato. His Memories of Irian Jaya was republished twenty times. Some people knew him as the giant moustache. He lived on a Shoshone reservation and chewed his fingernails developing leukaemia aged thirteen. He pulled a child out of a burning hut at least once a month single sculled across the Pacific watched television for hours every day had skinny legs ate with a shoehorn swam to work collected mats had a large growth on his back which made him burp liked to eat under tables gambled for six months straight never lost a nickel made a million on uranium speculation in the Northwest Territories grew taller than his mother squared everything only ate cheesecake with blueberries invented a musical instrument made out of peanuts fell in love with a buffalo herder a mozzarella maker and a peanut pizza researcher from the West Indies owned a tatty gabardine coat and smelled musky. Charles Bronson never ate prosciutto on principle and gave up Swedish massage for coca leaf. He had a great rapport with trade unions and personal relationships with several federal investigators. He swapped secrets for tomato sauce recipes played the guitar sousaphone and harp at the same time could swallow a twelve inch pizza in one bite and ran a political campaign on a platform of saving the anchovy with the slogan Pizza was my first love. He wanted to be an astronaut but his head was too big so he became an aquanaut. He liked cocaine and apples. He taught hairdressers by the Red Sea how to lie on the beach and drink mint tea. He knew vitamins and minerals backwards and could recite the periodic table for as long as you required. He sank the Calypso taught the sideways tango and liked eating rare antiques. Charles Bronson never knew when to stop. He had trouble with his bowels and would go out on his driveway and shoot hoops to alleviate the symptoms. He dreamed about shooting hoops on the moon. He never knew when to shop. He killed two ants once it gnawed away at him for the rest of his life the ants would come to him in dreams and sing why didn't you love me. He carved whole villages out of teak with the pocket knife his grandfather found on a beach this pocket knife is now in the national archive for homemade villages. Charles Bronson grew radishes for a living which he sprayed with molybdenum and sold on the radish exchange. He never saw himself naked had the world's longest fingernails and married his television. His favourite program was the Lee Remick hour. He liked to buy things he didn't need at the milk bar and store them in his boat. Charles Bronson refused to walk anywhere. He was last seen covered in twigs roaming the hills chased by bees. Charles Bronson set up Charles Bronson Meat Research Academies throughout the known world. He retired to the Balearic Islands. He personally saved millions of acres of rainforest patenting new forms of meat. His lifestyle was patchy and we know little about him. His humming was phenomenal. He could recite whole chapters of video repair manuals off the cuff and liked to ogle. He didn't fly kites as much as he liked to but carried one in his pocket in case the occasion arose but because he spent most of his life indoors the occasion rarely arose so he set up the Charles Bronson Foundation for the Future Development of Indoor Kite Flying Opportunities which sponsored the purchase of industrial fans for scout halls and many reams of tissue paper. He wrote the beluga's national anthem and was halfway through the narwhal's when the narwhal suddenly decommissioned him. Charles Bronson knew all the desert plants by touch and lived without water for years at a stretch. He only drank when it rained. His favourite animal was the vaquita. He liked drinking cigars. He was a tout a baritone a ham radiographer a museum a fossil from the Dark Ages a real 1880s type who never cried unless he was lied to and took great pains to sit correctly. Charles Bronson had an immaculate toupee. The greatest compliment Charles Bronson ever paid was nice hat. He loved aviaries he had hundreds of them they never suffered from mites or birds. He traded in topaz but spurned rubies. He grew his own spelt but bought shop-soiled potatoes hated detergent collected gas and fire ants and the ends of safety pins wore purple felt abandoned a promising career in cricket for beekeeping which he ran at a loss until swindling his long-lost half brother into buying the hives and equipment but not the bees. On a televised reunion late in life Charles Bronson met his longlost half-brother who released a hive of killer bees in the studio they stung Charles to death. To this day he replies to millions of our letters in person spending two and half hours in the gym each and every morning. Charles Bronson had a back like a bandicoot and could speak beetle the world over. His home on stilts in Vietnam had a thousand kettles and one cupboard. There were only three things that meant more to Charles Bronson than burning a kettle bad breath horses lighting mosquito coils poisonous vipers and mumbling movie plots. Charles Bronson patented life coaching. Charles Bronson saw the Big Ungh in person. He could fry onions liked eggs and took yoga lessons went bicycle riding with his aunt because she was often depressed about world events devoured medals owned a kilt whittled corn dolls for his granddaughters talked of returning to Nelson in a caravan secured the last grazing rights in Fiji skolled a bottle of fish oil before an audition and went to the highest court in the land he was a Polish pea farmer from way back who nurtured boils on the inside of his nose he trained as an electrician and liked high teas he loved his wife very much but was prone to bouts of melancholia which he put down to lead in the ground water as it turned out it was cadmium he stopped eating chicken for a living he could walk on his hands at the edge of a precipice atop the Matterhorn with his eyes shut he never knew his aunt's voice threw wonderful parties and will long be remembered for his grace his gravely voice which he acquired through a mail order kit and his boat Charles Bronson caught public transport played billiards drank schnapps three of his friends died in a bus crash in Leeds he started a riot herded goats he was an only child with a penchant for Slavic languages who pogo-jumped into the Guinness Book of Records he had two face lifts facing each other in the shape of his face that went up either side of his building Charles Bronson's home was forty two stories high on the roof was an intensive aquaculture set-up dedicated to the breeding of snails and water chestnuts this facility is now the Charles Bronson Memorial Garden. His home its grounds and its giant library in the shape of a sheep and the trampoline he was born on and lived under till he was thirty five have all been preserved and now belong to the world and its people. We miss Charles Bronson very much.