It was all hotting up in the town of Sudbury; not because anything interesting was happening, it was literally bare hot outside. Summer had delivered its trademark torturous top tier temperatures, coating the country in horrendous humidity.

The temperature had turned the town and in fact the country into one giant sauna, and the thermometers displayed more degrees in fact than every single Oxford graduate in the history of history.

The locals felt like a Christmas turkey every time they set foot outside, with the atmosphere resembling an oven. However this was not merely an oven beginning the pre-heating process that is often a prerequisite when cooking your dinner, this was an oven deep into the cooking process, where the stipulated cooking temperature displayed on the cooking instructions had fully peaked, where the process risks replacing optimal golden brown of a Birds Eye Potato Waffle (other potato waffle manufacturers are available) with a much darker shade of brown which indicates overdone or even burnt waffles.

Anyway enough of all that (literal) waffling, Sudbury was more Sun-bury on this particular June afternoon. It was brighter than winning students on University Challenge and hotter than a dragon’s breath.

Given that many of the locals were enjoying fun in the sun, it would take an extraordinary aberration to dim the brightness of this summer’s day. However, dimness was closer than they were expecting and indeed hoping.

It came in the form of a disastrously dimwitted, horrifically haphazard, monstrously moronic maniac. It came in the form of a man so irritating, that Tina Turner wrote a song about him called ‘Simply a Pest’. It was none other than the Hunchback of Notre Dumb, Jim the Crim.

As (regrettably) we all know, Jim is a crim who is extremely dim. He is also slim, he likes to stim, his mother is called Kim and his father is called Tim. He was so dim in fact, that he once spent hours staring at a carton of orange juice because it said ‘concentrate’.

Following yet another incomprehensibly short stay in the slammer, Jim exited the imprisonment facilities with a tragic sense of loneliness.

He was moping about the house like a young’un who had been denied dessert privileges as a result of failing to successfully consume the vegetables anointing their dinner plate, due to a lack of companionship. It was the sort of companionship that his parents were understandably reluctant to provide given they had grown weary over their son’s relentless criminal shenanigans. As a result, Kim and Tim decided that it would be an incredible idea to place that particular burden upon a pet of some kind.

Jim’s mother suggested that he make his way to the shopping centre and have a butcher’s. Unfortunately as he was completely oblivious to the concept of rhyming slang, Jim ‘minced’ (fabulous foreshadowing meat pun) into the local butcher’s in search of his new animal friend.

The bewildered butcher somehow maintained professionalism and calmly informed the dimwitted delinquent that the animals they sell tend to no longer be alive. In fact, the butcher was no ordinary employee, he was a steak-holder in the business.

It was a long time until the penny finally dropped; no, he hadn’t reached an epiphany, there was just a small hole in his wallet.

Trudging through the shopping centre with the grace of an elephant in quicksand, Jim finally found his oasis in this desert of restaurants, supermarkets and shoe shops. It was the Purr-fectly Paw-some Pet Shop.

There were of course bare dogs, cats and guinea pigs all over the gaff, very well behaved and extremely welcoming and gentle with all enquiring customers. Well… when I say ‘all’…

Jim noticed that a couple of the guinea pigs had made a bid for freedom from their cage, a pair of very close guinea pig sisters who were truly memorable characters. They had immediately gained the respect of Jim as an experienced rogue himself.

These two guinea pigs were the well renowned dynamic duo, the Paul and Barry Chuckle of the guinea pig community, Betty and Cece. Betty is a levelheaded, rational and thoroughly supportive sister who does her utmost to keep her utter maverick of a sister out of trouble. Cece by contrast, had an expression more blank than unused sheets of paper; she is unfathomably unintelligent, for example believing that tennis courts are where tennis players get sentenced to prison, and that Dr Pepper was a qualified GP.

Betty and Cece have been inseparable since the dawn of time, living together and even working together in the past. They did endure a tricky time carrying out admin tasks, as often Betty needs to cc Cece in emails, while Cece does not need to cc Cece since Cece can automatically see see her own emails, but any email sent to Betty means that it needs to cc Cece for Cece to see see said email.

Using her immensely immense looking balls (more commonly known as eyes), Cece attempted to carve out a route to freedom, sprinting towards the door with all the power and purpose of Usain Bolt when he’s in a rush, with Betty tirelessly giving chase.

Cece’s path to paradise seemed smooth until she was hampered by the horrifying sight of the country’s most catastrophic and chaotic criminal. As mentioned earlier, Jim felt an immediate bond with this brave guinea pig who clearly held little to no respect for the rules. He carefully lifted Cece and brought her eyes closer to his, feeling the kind of warmth inside that only love could provide.

These feelings of companionship and love were completely foreign concepts to old Jiminal the Criminal, a real shock to his thoroughly flawed system. He had not been this shocked since he discovered that the Mexican city of Mexico City is located in Mexico.

Jim’s new sense of love encouraged him to study Cece’s interests. He noticed that her eyes had been drawn to the greengrocers next door, the guinea pig’s nose attracted to the fruit like a magnet. This gave Jim an idea, an idea where Cece could enjoy more than her body weight in fruit, and where Jim could educate his new protege on his criminal ‘expertise’ (the word ‘expertise’ of course questionable at best). This had the potential to be a highly ‘fruitful’ endeavour; Jim would train his new bestie to become a fully fledged fruit thief. It was the pear-fect crime!

As the brightness of overwhelming summer sunlight meandered into the pastelly blue gradient of a late evening summer sky, Jim and Cece trotted their way to the greengrocers like excitable horses on a sugar rush. Cece was so excited, that she began popcorning, which are basically joyful jumps which guinea pigs display when full of happiness.

Following the arduous journey towards the fruit stall, Jim had lost a couple of pounds; no, he hadn’t lost weight, the hole in his wallet had grown slightly.

The darkness of the eerily empty shopping centre was counteracted by the vibrant bright colours of various fruits and vegetables. The fruit shone and created an encouraging light that captured the attention of these two hungry halfwits. It was as if the fruit was gesturing towards the two of them, dangling like carrots in front of gullible rabbits.

There were more Apples than there were in Steve Jobs’ old office. There were more Peaches than a Super Mario superfan’s game collection. There were more berries than Mary Berry’s entire family tree, so many berries in fact, that the council should consider renaming the town Sud-berry.

Speaking of Apple, some might say that the atmosphere in the Apple company office is incredibly core-porate, and that the company cars were all Vauxhall Core-sas. Cece even gave Jim a blank and unimpressed look when he wrapped some apples around his wrist and claimed that he was wearing an Apple watch.

Back to the matter at hand though, Jim and Cece were certain that this would prove to be a fruitful endeavour; however, they were soon about to find themselves in a jam.

With his usual lack of subtlety, Jim had only gone and set off the alarms, moving as stealthily as a drunk rhinoceros in a music shop. After frantically packing the produce in their pouches, Jim and Cece bid a hasty retreat, knowing that the Sud-berry Five-O would be prompt in their pursuit of these pair of pinheads.

Due to his tragic lack of fitness, Jim’s bid for the exits was as swift as a sleeping sloth, leaving him vulnerable to the rampaging rozzers and a ridiculously easy capture.

Miraculously though, his new bestie would become an instant hero. Cece had sourced a sensational soap box racer hiding in next to the miniscule Morrison’s in the corner of the shopping centre, a rare moment of genius from a duo with a combined IQ score of approximately minus 400.

They hopped on posthaste and Jim planted his foot on the right of the two pedals that enabled acceleration of the vehicle. Conversely to their haste though, the racer was as skilled a racer as a snail. The top speed felt like a frustratingly futile five miles per hour.

Cece had an idea (which as Betty will testify is a highly horrifying prospect). She assumed that, rather than petrol, a soap box racer needed ‘soap’ to power the painfully puny engine. Fuelled by adrenaline, Cece snatched the wheel and veered straight into the Boots store at the other end of the shopping centre.

Sadly, Cece had all the accuracy of a blindfolded mole and missed the door, instead ‘parking’ the vehicle into the wall. This untimely ineptitude allowed the pursuing plod to apprehend the pair of fanatical fruit thieves.

However Cece countered their charge with an extraordinary charm offensive, hypnotising the rozzers with her persuasive puppy dog eyes, her cuteness and her charm. The officers became overwhelmed with affection and therefore had no choice but to let her off.

In spite of this, Betty’s feathers were duly ruffled, annoyed by her sister’s braindead burglary escapade. As punishment, Betty banned Cece from popcorning for a whole 10 minutes. Cece sheepishly followed her sister home, stunned by the incredibly draconian punishment.

Unlike Cece, Jim had all the charm of a blobfish with an attitude problem, and was thus sentenced to eleventy squillion years in institute of imprisonment.

As the police car escorted him to the facilities and with dusk approaching, Jim was alone with his thoughts, seeking the dawn of a new idea, hoping that for once, his future plans would bear fruit.