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INFLATABLES     “What’s this?” said Atkins Down The Road.     When I answered the door he was standing there, his arm round an inflatable rubber woman. I hazarded a guess. “Your new girlfriend?”     “Very funny. Now be serious.”     “It’s an inflatable rubber woman. And you’d better come inside with it, I don’t care for people standing on my doorstep with an inflatable rubber woman, people might think you’re delivering it.”     “The only think I’m delivering is our very rosy future,” smiled Atkins, stepping inside.     I already didn’t like the sound of it. From time to time Atkins has ‘bright ideas’ which will make him a fortune. They never do. And for some reason he always wants to involve me in them, usually because he’s too broke to finance them himself. It will be a long time before I forget his mobile massage parlour idea which cost me eight hundred quid and almost cost me my marriage.     “Let’s be having it then,” I said, once we’d reached the living room, “The bright idea,” I quickly added, in case he thought I meant the rubber woman.     “What you are looking at,” said Atkins, going into his sales pitch, “is not an inflatable rubber woman. It was an inflatable rubber woman. Now it is an Artificial Passenger Aid. Or APT. Or at least it will be when I’ve got some clothes for it.” A thought struck him. He weighed up the rubber woman for a moment. “She’s about the same size as your wife. I don’t suppose….?     I nipped this in the bud straight away. “What exactly is an Artificial Passenger Aid?”     “Or APT. Well apparently the government intend making one lane of the motorways for the exclusive use of cars carrying at least one passenger.” He patted the inflatable rubber woman on the bottom, affectionately. “One passenger.”     “You intend to sell inflatable rubber women to drivers so that they can use them as pretend passengers?     “Got it in one.”     It seemed like a good idea by Atkins’ standards but I immediately saw a snag. “Why won’t car owners simply buy an inflatable rubber womanthemselves?”     “Embarrassment. Would you go into a shop and buy an inflatable rubber woman? No. Hardly anybody would. I wouldn’t.”     “You bought that one.”     “Yes but the people I bought it off didn’t know what it was. The Age Concern shop. They were using it as a mannequin. I’d have bought the clothes it was in too but they wanted too much for them. We can do it all mail order. All very discreet, plain brown packaging. I’ve costed it all out, we can get the rubber women for about a tenner, say another tenner for charity shop clothes, twenty quid all in, we charge fifty quid plus p and p. We’ll clean up."      I must admit it seems like a good idea on the face of it. But then all Atkins ideas do. I told him I’ll give it some thought. SOME TIME LATER I’d never have suspected in a million years that you could buy inflatable rubber women on e-Bay. However not only can you buy them, you have a whole harem of them from which to make the selection of the plastic partner of your choice. They come in all shapes, sizes and colours, in blonde, brunette and redhead, with or without ‘artificial vaginas with realistic juices just like the real thing’. Christ when I was in my youth you had to make do with a hole bored in a telegraph pole.     But who on earth would want to buy a used inflatable rubber woman? Especially when the part of it most used is likely to have been the artificial vagina with realistic juices just like the real thing? Apparently many people, if the very competitive bidding for Bouncy Beyonce is anything to go by. I hope the lucky man who eventually bought her takes the precaution of giving her a thorough scrubbing and disinfecting before he exposes his penis to her realistic juices otherwise he could soon find himself with a realistic sexually transmitted disease.     After I’d found out that these sex dolls were available on e-Bay it got me wondering if you could also purchase them from Amazon. Could you buy an Amazon from Amazon? Apparently not, although they sell a book about them.     It’s surprising how many outlets you can buy inflatable rubber women from via the internet though. Literally hundreds. However a minute’s careful consideration might inform you that the internet is the ideal place to sell these artificial floozies, as the comparative secrecy of the transaction completely cuts out the embarrassment factor; for while it would be a huge source of embarrassment for most people to have to enter a sex shop and ask for an inflatable rubber woman, there is no stigma whatsoever attached to receiving an inflatable rubber woman through the post in a plain-wrapped package, provided of course the consignors have let it down first.     All this has rather put a damper on Atkins' plan to sell inflatable rubber women as artificial car passengers, as it his contention that it is the embarrassment factor that would drive the inflatable rubber women/artificial passenger traffic our way.     In consequence of the above I reported my findings to him. He agreed it could be a major snag and is to give the matter some thought. Rather him than me. I haven’t managed to get the thought of artificial vaginas with realistic juices just like the real thing out of my head yet. EVEN LATER “You see not everybody is on the internet,” said Atkins. “In fact according to my figures less than half the population are on the internet. And many of those who are on the internet are kids, who don’t enter into the equation as they don’t have cars. And of the few left who are on the internet who aren’t kids, less than a quarter of themregularly shop on e-Bay.”      “All very interesting,” I said, not bothering to stifle a yawn. “But what has all that got to do with the price of eggs?”      “Nothing. But what it does mean is that our scheme to sell inflatable rubber women as artificial car passengers is not only off the back burner but very firmly onto the front burner again and cooking with gas.”      I was guarded, as I always am with anything to do with Atkins. “Well if your figures are correct….”      “They are,” he enthused. “Come with me.”      Atkins’ car was parked outside. As I followed him down the drive I noticed there was an inflatable rubber woman seated in the passenger seat. He stopped at the car and said: “The plan is while I drive her round the town you watch out to see if we get any funny looks.”      “Funny looks is the very least we’ll be getting, riding about the town with an inflatable rubber woman,“ I said tartly, not much caring for the way the situation was developing.      “Not a bit of it,” Atkins assured me. “My theory is that people will only recognise it as some sort of vague womanly figure.”      “Well they’ll certainly recognise that as a womanly figure; look at the tits on her. Couldn’t you get one with smaller tits?”      “They don’t make inflatable rubber women with small tits. Lulu they aren’t. Apparently there’s no demand for them. I tried letting it down a bit to make them smaller but the rest of her went down as well and by the time I’d got her tits down to something like normal proportions she was only about two feet high and had more wrinkles than a prune. Anyway it’s not as though her tits are bare, is it, they’re covered up by that rather tasteful Age Concern Arran sweater. And lots of women have big tits.” He opened the rear door of the car for me. “Get in then.”      Against my better judgement I did as he bade me. All manner of things that might go wrong went through my head. We could be involved in an accident. We could break down and have to send for the AA. We could have a puncture. “What if we have a puncture?” I said. “Well we’ll have to repair her and blow her up again,” said Atkins, starting the car.      “Not to the rubber woman, to one of the bloody car tyres!”      “We won’t.”      “Well just drive carefully, that’s all. We don’t want any accidents. I don’t want to end up in Casualty having to explain what I was doing in a car with an inflatable rubber woman.”      “I’m not a fool,” said Atkins, checking the inflatable rubber woman’s seat belt and primly pulling her skirt down over her knees.      We set off. Atkins was right. Hardly anyone looked into the car as we drove around and those who did didn’t seem to notice anything untoward. Even when we pulled up at traffic lights and the man who drew up beside us looked directly at the inflatable rubber woman from a distance of a few feet he didn’t register surprise, although it has to be admitted he was wearing very thick glasses and looked a bit dopey.      Atkins drove around for half-an-hour. When we got back he was jubilant. “What did I tell you,” he crowed. “We’re onto a winner here Razza my lad.”      I was non committal, but we arranged to meet tomorrow to discuss plans for the way ahead. When I got in The Trouble asked where I’d been.      “Oh, just driving round the town with Atkins Down The Road and an inflatable rubber woman,” I said, matter of fact.      “If you don’t want to tell me, just don’t tell me,” she snapped. “There’s no need to make up ridiculous excuses.”      You just can’t win with women, can you. EVEN LATER STILL Atkins and I soon realised that our plan to market inflatable rubber women as artificial car passengers had another major flaw, inasmuch as it would look decidedly odd if not downright suspicious if every person in the front passenger seat happened to be a woman.      To get over this problem we tried converting one of our inflatable rubber women (we have three now - for business, not for pleasure, I would stress) into an inflatable rubber man. The head was comparatively easy. We simply removed Bouncy Beyonce’s wig, turning her into an instant skinhead, and added a false moustache and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.      Disguising her tits wasn’t so easy. After much discussion we decided the best thing to do would be to turn her two big tits into one massive tit by filling in her cleavage with foam rubber. This got rid of her tits but what we ended up with was a man with a very large pigeon chest. Atkins suggested that if we dressed it in a Manchester United football shirt and did away with the horn-rimmed glasses people might think it was Eric Cantona. I observed that it would look even more suspicious if every person in the passenger seat was Eric Cantona than if every person were a woman, and anyway Eric Cantona didn’t play for Manchester United anymore. Atkins accused me of splitting hairs and I told him to grow up and we left the problem unresolved.      So this morning, clutching for straws and not in any real hope, I typed the words ‘Inflatable Rubber Man’ into the Google search box. After all, so far as I could see, the only possible market for an inflatable rubber man would be lonely and unloved women, and all they would want them for was their cock, and cocks are already readily available in the shape of dildos (and the dildos are in the shape of cocks). Google didn’t come up with anything, which didn’t really surprise me, however when I hopefully typed in Inflatable Husband it came up with a whole page full of them. I clicked on one of them and it informed me that the price of the Inflatable Husband was £7, all my friends will like him, he won't upset my parents, he is always willing to please, he doesn't like football, never breaks wind, is always faithful and he floats, and is 100cm of pure dominating pleasure.      All pretty straightforward then, and the answer, if not exactly to a maiden’s prayers then certainly to Atkins’ and my prayers. Except for the ‘100 cm of pure dominating pleasure’ bit, that is. For what on earth can this mean? Are we talking here of a man only 1 metre tall, or a normal-sized man with a 1 metre long cock? If it’s the latter it must be the bargain of a lifetime for a lonely woman at only £7.      I’ve sent off for one. If he doesn’t come up to scratch, and as he floats, I can always take him along to the swimming pool with me when I go for my next lesson. AND FINALLY The inflatable rubber man (called The Inflatable Husband) arrived in the post this morning in plain packaging. It wasn’t as plain as The Inflatable Husband! What a disappointment. I couldn’t have been more disappointed if The Trouble had given me a promise and I jumped into bed to find she’d changed into Margaret Beckitt.      The Inflatable Husband is only one metre tall, as I suspected, not a normal-sized man with a one metre long cock, but not only that, it hasn’t even got a cock. It resembles the picture of it on the box about as much as I resemble George Clooney, which isn’t very much.      The picture of it on the box is of a tall, good-looking, bronzed, bare-chested Lothario with a toned six pack. In the flesh, if that's the right word, it looks more like the Roswell alien from space which fetched up in America some time ago, or a giant jelly baby.      Why would a woman want to buy such an object? It can’t be for the reason that a man buys an inflatable rubber woman (Atkins Down The Road and I excepted), to have sex with it, because it hasn’t got a cock. Unless there’s some way you can attach a dildo to it, but if there is it isn’t apparent. And anyway why would a woman want to attach a dildo to a 1 metre inflatable rubber man unless she’s into dwarves? In which case she should go out and get herself a real dwarf, I’m sure there are plenty of them going short, if you’ll pardon the expression.      I suppose an optimist might say that the valve with which you blow it up could be a penis but as it’s only half an inch long and in the middle of its back that might be straining credulity a little too far, even for an optimist.      It’s certainly not going to be any use as an artificial car passenger, that’s for sure. I’ve tried it and it looks ridiculous. You can either stand it up or, with great difficulty, sit it down. The idea of the artificial passenger is of course to fool the police into believing it’s a real passenger but I don’t think even our police are thick enough to be fooled by a one metre high inflatable rubber man stood up on the seat, and if you sit it down they wouldn’t be able to see it.      Atkins suggested we could try pumping it up a bit more until it was man-sized, above five feet tall he reckoned would be the minimum we could get away with, but by the time we’d pumped it up to five feet tall it was five feet wide and we couldn’t get in the car, let alone sit it down in it. Still it was only £7 so I wasn’t expecting too much from it, and it was worth a try.      After reviewing the situation we decided to put the idea on back on the back burner again. I hope it stays there.