Bartholomew Blackwood's Baffling Bad Luck Bonanza

Bartholomew Blackwood, a man whose life was a masterclass in cosmic misfortune, woke up one Tuesday with a singular, desperate hope: today would be different. He’d meticulously consulted his horoscope (which predicted “a day of unprecedented calm”), avoided black cats, and even wore his lucky (and suspiciously damp) socks.

He reached for his alarm clock, only for it to spontaneously combust, sending shrapnel into his prized collection of antique thimbles. “Right,” he sighed, already anticipating the day’s orchestral crescendo of catastrophe.

Attempting to brew coffee, the espresso machine decided that a better use of its high-pressure system was to launch a ceramic mug directly into the ceiling, creating a geyser of scalding liquid that then short-circuited the entire kitchen. He retreated, singed and caffeine-deprived.

Deciding fresh air might cleanse his aura of impending doom, he stepped out, only to find a swarm of migratory locusts had chosen his front porch as their pit stop. Before he could retreat, a rogue gust of wind plastered three particularly robust specimens across his glasses. Blinded, he tripped over a garden gnome, falling face-first into a freshly laid patch of concrete – installed moments earlier by municipal workers who were *just leaving*.

Pulled from the setting concrete by incredulous neighbours, Bartholomew decided a quiet afternoon at the library was in order. En route, a low-flying pigeon, apparently suffering from acute altitude sickness, dropped a rather substantial, half-eaten hotdog directly onto his head. The ensuing chaos saw him swerving to avoid a rogue shopping trolley, only to collide, at bicycle speed, with a parked ice cream truck. The ice cream truck, it turned out, was carrying not ice cream, but highly volatile industrial chemicals, which promptly exploded.

He awoke in a hospital, wrapped head-to-toe in bandages. "Just my luck," he muttered, spotting a rare tropical fruit fly (native only to a remote Amazonian jungle, never before seen north of the equator) buzzing around his IV drip. Before he could articulate his fear, the fruit fly landed on his drip, causing it to administer a triple dose of a powerful laxative instead of painkillers.

"This," Bartholomew thought, wincing as his stomach gurgled ominously, "is what they call an average Tuesday." He sighed, resigned. Somewhere, a cosmic prankster was cackling. And then the hospital alarm blared: "Code Red! Unidentified meteor impact imminent!"