“S’cuse me sir, could you spare a cheque, you haven’t got any spare cheques by any chance have you sir?’ It was simply staggering how many people with cheque books were prepared to humour this staring-eyed twitchy waif, who despite his smart trousers and silk waistcoat had the distinct air of vagrancy about him. Those who did their best to keep the mockery from their eyes wrote and signed for £5.
‘Yeah? How much would you like it made out for mate? Tell you what, I’ll just leave it blank and you fill it in later yeah?’ Signed with a sprawled scrawl from which one could barely make out ‘Mickey Mouse’.

It was not so much a series of unhappy accidents that led Tom to beg on the streets of London for cheques, as much as intense tedium followed by action that was unforeseeably drastic. Someone had once told a vaguely youthful and largely impressionable Tom that consuming a large amount of ground nutmeg gave almost hallucinogenic qualities and would cause one to ‘Meg-out’. They hadn’t further elaborated and this notion of Megging-out had stuck to the roof of Tom’s mind.

Some months later Tom was in the grip of ennui. It was the antithesis of motivation. Nothing was wrong, nor particularly right; but one could not deny that there was nothing much. And nutmeg. Vast quantities of nutmeg; initially he scrubbed the little brown nub over a cheese grater, then he saw the error of his ways and sought out the glass pot with the green flip-lid of Ground Nutmeg, nestled between a similar portion of Oregano and a costly vial of Saffron.

Into a mug with some boiling water. He wished something of a Japanese tea-ceremony upon his actions. To no avail; the nutmeg scummed around the edge of the mug and he watched some of the Hollyoaks omnibus until it was sufficiently cool. Down In One.

The nutmeg prevented sleep in a passive aggressive fashion that rapidly shed its passive status. Perversely he watched The Machinist on repeat; that film which seemed to be Christian Bale’s ultimate exercise in one-upmanship on Daniel Day Lewis in the arena of method acting.
It was fair to say that Tom was Megging-out, indeed he continued in this state until once could bestow the accolade King Of Meg upon his trembling shoulders. Tom’s own feelings about Megging-out were less regal and related more to a sentence of comatose delirium. Regular life fell away from Tom, with only occasional references to time or individual instances. His girlfriend took umbrage to his jittering listlessness and could be heard muttering that he was psychotic and humourless as she drifted to sleep. Never mind, sharing a bed with her was agony anyway, the horror of her gentle breathing and dreaming next to him was too much to bear while he ground his teeth until they felt unstable and pinchy in his jaw. Tom had never known his father and he had begun to lose respect for his mother as a human being at a young age – this whisper of respect all but vanished when she suddenly deemed it viable at the age of 54 to propel herself to work on a push scooter, taking the utmost care not to scuff her heels or rid her face of a revoltingly inane expression of self-satisfaction.

Four weeks into his meandering exile Tom had scratchings of facial hair and, folded neatly into a battered leather Smythson envelope with his grandfather’s initials on it; 17 Mickey Mouse cheques, eleven of which were blank. Other signatories included several James Bonds, Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch, a Lady Penelope Richington, a couple from kindly Montgomery Burns and one Signor Pissoffandgetajob – who had generously bestowed one penny. Now, in the same way that the tale of nutmeg’s psychoactive potential had lodged in Tom’s mind, as had another rather vital piece of information, this had been implanted many years ago and had probably remained floating in the middle ground ether of Tom’s memory because it had been bestowed when his mind was otherwise blank with boredom. A decade and a bit ago his mother had taken Tom with her to the bank in order to try and secure a loan with which to pay his school fees. It was a vast, vaulted and stonily cool bank of the more old-fashioned variety and his mother was wearing a rather revealing satin top in order to appeal to her manger’s baser nature. Embarrassed and – naturally – bored, Tom whiled away the minutes trotting through peoples’ legs; commando crawling across the glossy floor and hooting in anguish at the mantle of injustice he felt so heavily on his shoulders at being made to wait for his mother. A portly gentleman intervened and halted this hooting with a look that suggested compliance would bring a reward. ‘Young fellow, you are making a truly beastly noise and in return for your ceasing this echoing assault upon all our ears, I shall tell you a secret.’ ‘Yes?’ replied Tom. The gentleman crouched down and told Tom that no banks now had the manpower to check cheques. Tom looked puzzled; he was only six after all. ‘You see young man, my name is Giles Featherstone,’ Tom nodded ‘and I am going to write you out a cheque for ten pounds.’ ‘Cor,’ countered Tom. ‘However I am going to sign it ‘Muffin the Mule’ and despite this the bank teller will hand over the money.’

More nodding. With hindsight it was clear to Tom that the old man had been in cahoots with the teller, who had handed over £10 and a glacier mint. But it now occurred to Tom that the likelihood that banks checked the signatures on cheques these days was genuinely low. So he continued to accrue these facetiously signed cheques and enlisted the friendship of a call girl with excellent credit rating while he was at it. Carleen was working the streets to put herself through higher education and as luck would have it she was specialising in financial law. Almost without further ado (he had to guarantee her 45% first) she set up an offshore bank account whilst Tom, who was looking and feeling a little less addled, decided which of the cheques would pass muster and how much the blanks should be filled in for. And so it came to pass that those who had mockingly handed the curiously dressed young hobo a cheque for £500, or £10,000, even £00.01, found that amount removed from their accounts and debited to Tom Allen. Those who had left blanks found gaping holes in their balance sheets and seethed to remember that turd of a street creature who had begged them for a cheque of all things. Further and more strenuous seething was entered into by all when it was realised that Carleen’s offshore bank account was almost impenetrable and the pair had entered an area of blurrily defined legality. The high life was lived in a way that can only be achieved by spending money taken from the sort of folk who find it a delight to write out false cheques to a homeless man on the tail end of a nutmeg bender. Eventually though this curious bubble of a fairytale was rather tragically punctured by none other than Signor Pissofandgetajob who could fairly be described as the most pungent variety of miser this earth has to offer, but it pleasured Tom and Carleen, who were by now amicably divorced, to hear that their downfall cost the Signor no less than £48,000 in legal and private investigation fees.