1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a two-sided compressor.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Film.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like somebody who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E.coli and he was room-temperature Angus beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free power supply.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 storeys, hitting the pavement like a black bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on holiday in another country and Eastenders comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left London at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the other from Cardiff at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighbourhood with picket fences that resembled Janet Street Porter's teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a police informant and she was the East End.
18. Even in his last years, Grandad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not a make-believe lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was a family tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a dustcart backing up.
26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any swimming pool cleansing stuff.
27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
