We (Mrs S and I) used to work with a guy whose wife frequently upped sticks and left, bag and baggage to stay with her mother. She would take the children and threaten never to return but always came back after a week or two. On one occasion he came to work in a panic. Could we all help out as he had received the "I'm coming back tomorrow... meet us at the station" call. We had all made free of his flat for about two weeks and he had called in his mother and some professional cleaners to remove all signs of the curries, beer, vodka, shagging etc that had gone on. Meanwhile he had forgotten, for two weeks, to feed or water the budgie which he was now carrying the corpse of in a plastic bag.
Duly mobilised we swung into action on the phones to contact every pet shop and budgie breeder in North London to find an identical model to the deceased "Peter". We succeeded at the last gasp and a perfect replica blue budgie was installed with an hour to spare.
The following day our pal came into work looking very pleased with himself. During the evening his children had noticed the budgie was talking and his wife had said "Oh Darling.... I'm so sorry to have walked out like that, you must have missed us terribly if you spent the two weeks teaching the budgie to talk" and in his words "She hadn't shagged me like that since our we were married ~ all bloody night"
