John Larkin would have to be one of the best simile writers in the history of English literature. Check out (below) his latest offering from ‘Nostradamus and Instant Noodles´.

Ian ran flailing from the house like a deranged bag lady after a flashing red-light discount trolley in a department store.

… she would leap about like an octopus on a barbecue

… he tip-toed nervously towards the lounge room like a politician approaching a lie detector.

His dog homed like a pigeon with radar.

… he heard what sounded like a longship of Vikings trying to ransack a round tower.

The dog somersaulted after it like a dolphin through a hoop at Sea World.

His tongue flopped out of his mouth like a roll of carpet off the back of a truck.

If they wanted to live in the nineteenth century like a couple of – well like the people who left notes for each other in various BBC nineteenth century mini-series – then that was their problem.

The boy looked up from his father´s note just in time to see the skirting-board leap off the wall and curl up like a startled snake.

He was like a complex VCR with multi-channel processing, three-hundred and sixty-five year recording facility/coffee and bread maker that had been delivered without its five-thousand page instruction booklet.

Ian lay on his bed groaning like a beached whale. Or rather, he lay on his bed groaning like a beached that had just scoffed down eight Cadbury crème eggs (two for entrée, five for mains, and one for dessert with coffee).

He looked down at his shirtless stomach, which rumbled as though a chocolate and cream soaked alien was about
to burst through it.

Ian crept stealthily out of the garage like a ninja and reached for the razor sharp katana that wasn´t sheathed in the imaginary holder on his back.

He was one of those people who occasionally turned up from your past, like a photograph of a bad haircut.

He was so careful with his money that he made the stingiest kid at school, Hamish McWeinstein, look like a wild spendthrift.

… a sudden thought hit him like a snowball made of granite.

… he was being dragged backwards towards the peak, like a drunk being helped from a nightclub.

… his stocks clattered about on his wrists like a pair of external bones placed there by his creator to stabilise him in case he ever hit trouble on a dry ski-slope towrope.

… his eyes made him look like a puppy that wanted a chocolate doggy treat, or not beating with a slipper for wetting or shagging the lounge.

… a wave of relief swept over him like a tidal wave over an aardvark.

Meanwhile Eric was dreaming that he´d died and gone to hell – a hell that looked suspiciously like a suburban rail platform.

He placed his fingers tenderly across his temples, which throbbed like an Amish kid who´d just discovered women´s lingerie.

‘I´m not going to school today!´ yelled Eric for no apparent reason, like a wino shouting theories on social reform at a police horse.

It seemed to force his brain even further back into his skull, which was already cowering in the corner like a cat on new year´s eve.

All he managed to find were a couple of dozen liqueur chocolates, which they immediately set about like a pitbull at a postman.

Eric gestured to the old drunk whose head lolled about on his shoulders like a wilting sunflower.

Ian stared at the old guy whose heavily soiled and greying beard made him look like a derelict Santa Claus.

The last time the guys had gone to the cinema John had stood next to the candy bar frothing like a rabid dog.

Finally he peeled open his eyes and looked out of his window just as Sydney Tower slid past far below like a gigantic toilet brush.

Sydney looked stunning from the air. It glimmered like a toothpaste commercial.

Ian glanced across at his grandfather, puffing away in his chair like an asthmatic steam-train.

During breakfast, which looked more like an industrial accident than a meal…

The icy pavement did little to aid their running style and their legs splayed out at all angles like a giraffe escaping from a pack of half-starved hyenas on polished lino.

Rupert reluctantly retreated to his pipe-smoking chair by the fire, grumbling like a distant earth tremor as he did.

Up the back of the room Brian Gratehead heaved his mass menacingly out from behind his desk like a landlocked sperm whale.

‘But, Missssss,´ whined Brian Gratehead like a three year old who had just had his Lego house smashed to smithereens by his older brother´s truck.

Brian Gratehead lumbered back to his seat like a large lumbering thing lumbering back to its seat.

They´re given one of these dolls that act like a regular baby – right down to the serial number on its backside.

You couldn´t dance with the gods in their heavenly mosh pit and then jump around like a live prawn on a hotplate because the person in front of you in the supermarket express lane had sixteen items rather than the permitted fifteen.

Rupert lit his pipe, poured himself another cup of tea and sat back in his chair like an old time village storyteller.

The future, Albert once said in one of his rare moments of clarity, shimmered on the horizon like a highway in a heat wave.

… he spent the first few days at sea hiding in his cabin and clinging desperately to his bunk with a grip like an electrocuted cat.

He´d created some not so useful things like an innovative three-legged stool that people tended to fall off in a spectacular fashion, particularly if they were standing on it while attempting to bring down a moth with a rolled up tea towel.

The dog looked like a neglected bathmat from some feral commune.