Chapter Twenty-Five

Directory of Humor Blogs

The Cheesied Pimple and Mousse

After what seemed an eternity of being carried through the stratosphere by an unseen force, the giant, White Fuzzy Lozenge came to rest with a loud thwump on the top of a very high and ornate tower, the like of which had never been built in Miss Havering’s Bog. The air surrounding the tower was sickly sweet and with a clarity unknown to any denizen. “Definitely,” pronounced Olivia Spider from within the lozenge, as soon as she regained her breath, “I feel we are in an exotic and foreign land!”

“It certainly does smell very peculiar,” concurred Owld Misther Bucket, sniffing loudly “much like an over-abundance of strawberries. Are you able to see anything? My eyesight seems to have completely disappeared.”

“I do not believe it has anything to do with your eyesight, which last time I looked was perfectly reasonable for a person your age,” replied The Spider. “If only we could untangle ourselves from this cocoon I wove, we might see practically everything there is to see.”

“Shhh,” whispered Owld Misther Bucket, “I rather imagine I hear someone climbing stairs.”

“What a sad, complicated life we lead,” sobbed Olivia Spider, though not very convincingly, “one minute I’m hanging out the washing and you’re delivering water to the community centre, and the next we’re trussed up in silk like an Egyptian mummy and in a foreign land with an evil, threatening stranger climbing the stairs and carrying a very large sword.”

“WHO GOES THERE?” shouted a very high-pitched voice. “STAND AND DELIVER!”

There was a moment of silence, after which Owld Misther Bucket, being a brave sort (at least when he had no other choice) addressed the aggressor in a cautiously polite voice. “If you will be so kind as to help us out of here, we will be most pleased to introduce ourselves.”

“YourSELVES?” shouted the high-pitched voice. “How many of you are there? More than a dozen? A hundred? Are you violent? Have you weapons? Are you marauding invaders?”

“I assure you,” cooed Olivia Spider, “we are entirely peaceful. And as for our number, there are but two.”

“BUTT TOO?” screamed the voice, much surprised. “BBBUTTCHOO?” it screeched, this time more desperately. A third scream, sounding very much like a demented “AARGGH”, was followed by a great clattering rumpus as whoever it was fell all the way down to the bottom of the stairs, after which there was heard a softish splat and a sigh, followed by an eerie silence.

“For an evil, threatening stranger it frightens very easily,” ventured Olivia Spider, “rather like a mouse.”

“All the same,” replied Owld Misther Bucket, “I should be very careful if I were you. Evil, threatening strangers can be most devious. Take this one. Most probably he is trying to lull us into false sense of security. He wants us to come out so he can eat us.”

“Nonsense and piffle!” said Olivia Spider. “Since when can a bucket be eaten?”

Owld Misther Bucket thought for a minute and then blushed. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said, quickly adding, “but how about you?”

“You let me worry about myself,” she said sternly, “no one has thus far eaten me…”

Before she could finish her sentence, however, someone - quite a different someone - knocked very politely on the side of the lozenge. “Is anyone at home,” called a soft, little girl voice.

“Who wants to know?” replied Owld Mister Bucket, sounding very much like The Chief Justice. “If you intend on eating us or behaving in a presumptuous manner, we sha’n’t answer you one way or t’other!”

“If it pleases you,” answered the little girl, “you needn’t tell me who you are. I was only enquiring for politeness’ sake. You see, you are a MOST attractive egg and I should like very much to take you home with me.”

Owld Misther Bucket, much taken aback and more cautious than ever, responded as intelligently as possible. “What for?”

“It’s very simple really,” said the girl. “In my nursery I have a very large table, but nothing in the way of a centrepiece. Such a large expanse of nothing is not such a good thing. Besides, it makes the table cry. It feels neglected, you see, and every night he bawls and sobs until exactly five o’clock.”

“And what does he do then? ventured Owld Misther Bucket.

“Why, he goes to sleep, of course. What else should he do?” demanded the girl.

“And where, pray tell, do we come into the picture,” asked Owld Misther Bucket, adding under his breath to Olivia Spider, “this place, wherever it is, must be even stranger than we thought. I simply do not trust them and fear for our lives if we agreed with her demands. The minute we allow one of them to take us home (wherever that it) something is bound to happen. In any case, I do not entirely approve of being used as a centrepiece.”

“I,” mused The Spider, “was once taken to school by a little boy and used for ‘show and tell’. They gave me treacle dumplings with custard for tea, and it was not an altogether objectionable experience. In fact, I won a red rosette as the ‘best display’ and made my mummy very proud.”

“I hear you discussing something. Is there a second personage in there with you, Mr. Egg?” asked the girl. “Are you about to hatch a baby something? Is it perchance a very large and beautiful bird? I saw a very large and beautiful bird once. It was called a macaw and was all the colours of the rainbow. I asked my guardian if he might stuff it for me (it was making ever such a racket), and to this very day it is sitting on my mantelpiece. Do you have a mantelpiece? Mine is ever so pretty. It’s made of marble and papier mâche and has hundreds of tiny flowers painted on every possible surface…”

“I simply dread what might become of us if we relent,” whispered Owld Misther Bucket to Olivia Spider.

“I have an idea,” she replied. “Do you trust me?”

“Implicitly,” he said.

“Then leave it to me. In any case, we can but fail,” said Olivia in a voice redolent of gung-ho and old school spirit. “Little Girl,” she called out. “Little Girl, are you still there?”

“Oh, yes!” replied the girl as she jumped up and down with glee and clapped her hands together. “And how thrilling it is! You must be the most beautiful bird in the world to have such a lovely voice!”

“I am, indeed, extremely beautiful, and my feathers have twice as many colours as a rainbow,” sang Olivia to the girl. “I would be more pleased than is possible if only I could perch my entire life upon your mantelpiece.”

“Are you crazy?” rasped Owld Misther Bucket under his breath.

“You promised to trust me,” hissed Olivia Spider, before returning to her singsong. “Please, Little Girl, allow me to grace your nursery with my variegated plumes, and I shall grant you three wishes.”

“Three wishes?” replied the little girl, somewhat crossly. “I wasn’t exactly born yesterday, you know. Why, only last week, a Bog Faerie promised me the same if I freed him from my little jam jar, but until today I have yet to see hide nor hair of my presents?”

Olivia Spider immediately assumed a schoolmistressy voice and scolded the little girl. “You must be a very stupid Little Girl, indeed, if you trusted the word of a Bog Faerie. Bog Faeries are not allowed to make promises, and every little girl with more than a pickle of wit knows that.”

The little girl (or at least Olivia and Ould Misther Bucket assumed that was what she was; in actual fact, they couldn’t see a thing; she might very well have been a purple marmite) grew very red in the face, exactly the colour of a plum. Steam came out of her ears and her teeth grew very long, indeed. “YOU CALLED ME STUPID!” she screamed. “If you ever do that again, I shall do something horrid to you!”

“And what can you do that is so very horrid?” taunted Olivia Spider, who by now was feeling exceedingly fed-up.

“I shall cast you over the side of our lovely land and into the great abyss,” the little girl replied. “My name, in case you are interested, is Ursula Biggins, and I am very tall, indeed. Much taller than you will ever be.”

“Well, push all you like, you horrible UGLY little girl,” sang Olivia Spider through her nose in a most annoying fashion. “I happen to know your teeth stick out straight and you’re more ginger than a jar of marmalade. You are spotty and freckly and you wear cheap knickers, and all the little boys pull your plaits and spill peas down your frock and call you ‘Smelly Smelly Poop Poop!”

Little nasty smelly Ursula Biggins (for that is truly what she was) started screaming very loudly. She screamed and screamed and screamed and eventually turned into a fat toady-looking creature with outlandish greenish orange eartufts. A fat caped crow with a very bad disposition came along just in time, caught her up in his beak and squished her flat before eating her.

“Did you say something about an abyss?” interjected Owld Misther Bucket, suddenly aroused from his stupor.

“Yes I did,” said Ursula Biggins from inside the crows crop,” and once you fall in you will never climb out again, not even for jam pudding.”

“Is that a promise?” asked Olivia Spider.

“Mpffph mpffph,” answered little Ursula Biggins, before falling silent forever and ever.

The Crow burped softly, but not before covering his beak with his right wing. “I do believe you upset her,” he said politely to the Giant Lozenge. “She is threatening to tell her papa on you.”

“Will this torture never end?” moaned Owld Misther Bucket. “All we want is to find our way home. Tiny Rumpus Libbedy Spider” (“my beautiful baby daughter,” interjected Olivia) “was washed away in a torrent and we are desperate to rescue her in time for tea.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” answered The Crow. “We thought you were after stealing our Sacred Jewels.”

“What ARE you talking about?” demanded Olivia.

“Why,” replied The Crow proudly, “The Cheesied Pimple and Mousse! They have lived since the beginning of time in the tower (he pointed straight down) directly underneath your bottom, and were getting very worried. Besides,” he added officiously, “it is against the law.”

“What is?” asked Owld Misther Bucket and Oliver Spider in unison.

“Aiming your bottom directly at The Sacred Jewels. They have feelings, too, you know, besides which your bottoms are not necessarily worth talking about, much less what we might call excellently calibrated. The quality of bottom is extremely important to The Sacred Jewels, not that you would understand, being of the common wold.”

“Wold?” Owld Misther Bucket interjected, his eyebrows raised, thus rippling that part of the cocoon.

“Before you travel to more cultivated lands such as ours, you really must study the language. I have not the time to teach you myself, but I highly recommend my cousin for the job. Abeline Heron her name is, but she doesn’t come cheap.” The crow was clearly in lecture mode, and both Owld Misther Bucket and Olivia Spider feared that unless they could steer him back to the matter of their plight, they might remain where they were forever.

“Please, kind sir,” pled Olivia Spider, “we beg your forgiveness and throw ourselves upon your mercy. We are but simple uneducated souls from a simple uneducated bog. We know not foreign languages, nor can we speak our own (not so as you would notice), for we were reared in accordance with the latest educational guidelines. Up until today we had never even heard of The Cheesied Pimple and Mousse…”

“Would you like to meet them?” beamed the crow. “I know they would be delighted to make your acquaintance! They do get so lonely, what with this and that and being far too sacred for others to breath upon.”

Olivia Spider had an idea. “If we say ‘yes’, will you help us go home?”

“Oh yes,” said the crow, “that would be entirely satisfactory. I shall pop down to their chamber this very minute and complete the arrangements. In the meantime you must wash your teeth, bleach your socks and put on your best party frocks.” And with that, he disappeared.

“Really,” huffed Owld Misther Bucket, “this place is most infuriating. ‘Wash your teeth, bleach your socks and put on your best party frocks’ indeed! Who does he think he is, ordering us about like that?”

Olivia Spider patted his brow in a soothing manner. “There there, dear Misther Bucket, don’t get yourself in a tizzy. We must be careful not to upset The Crow. Remember what he did to little Ursula Biggins? The two of us put together may be too big for him to eat, but he might be inclined to lock us in a dungeon and swallow the key.”

“Oooooo me, oooooo my,” sobbed Owld Misther Bucket, “what a horrible horrible mess we are in! And all because of meee…”

“Now now,” cooed Olivia Spider, “everything will be all right. We’ll think of something.”

At this moment someone or something knocked very loudly on the side of The Lozenge, in the exact same spot where Owld Misther Bucket’s nose would have been, had it not been concealed by a layer of spider’s silk. “OW!” he sulked. “Don’t do that, whoever you are.”

“If you are the number forty-nine bus,” commanded a Deep Deep Voice, sounding very much like a Great Aunt, “you are late! You should have been here fifteen seconds ago. Open your door immediately!”

There was a long pause, after which Olivia Spider ventured in her best bus conductor voice, “terrible sorry, ma’am. A new driver we ‘ave, ma’am. Forgot to empty his bladder before leaving the house, ma’am. Was forced to return home, ma’am, and refresh hisself.”

“Well,” demurred The Deep Deep Great Auntish Voice, “that was very naughty of him indeed, and very vulgar of you to mention it. I have a most urgent appointment with Mrs. Throttle and I refuse to inconvenience her.”

The mention of a familiar name caused a great deal of excitement within the cocoon. “Did you hear that?” squeaked Owld Misther Bucket, “she said ‘Mrs. Throttle’!”

“Sshh,” whispered Olivia Spider. “It may be a trap. Have you noticed how many people have knocked on your nose since we arrived?”

“Twelve at least,” sighed Owld Misther Bucket sadly, adding, “and all of them extremely peculiar.”

“Exactly,” replied Olivia.

The intruder knocked a second time. “I say there,” she demanded. “You shall permit me to board this very instant!”

“This is ridiculous,” whispered Olivia Spider to Owld Misther Bucket, “and it is getting us nowhere.”

Olivia Spider suddenly puffed herself up into something very much resembling Mrs. DaFarge on a bad day and blew her nose. “Madam,” she said in tones reminiscent of the Lord Chief Justice during sentencing, “you will cease and desist at once and will identify yourself before I box your ears.”

“Eulilie?” gasped the Deep Deep Voice from without The Lozenge. “Is that you?”

“Who I am or what I am called is neither here nor there. You have addressed me in the familiar and for that I must pinch your nose.” At this point, Olivia Spider was forced to stuff a handkerchief into her mouth to stifle a laugh.

Owld Misther Bucket quickly whispered, “We are getting nowhere at all. This day is going round and round, as is the conversation, and I am becoming quite dizzy. We can’t just carry on absurd conversations with every Tom, Dick and Harry who knocks on my nose.”

Olivia Spider took a deep breath. “Yoo hoo,” she squealed at Whomever It Was demanding to be let in. “If I confessed to be your Eulilie, would that be a good or a bad thing?”

The intruder, however, was through listening and knocked more loudly than ever, causing Owld Mister Bucket to squeak. “If that is the bus driver I hear expressing his views, I must warn him that impertinence will do him no good whatsoever. I demand to board this conveyance this very instant!”

Olivia Spider rolled her eyes from exasperation. “Have you,” she called, “the exact fare?”

“Of course not,” shouted the intruder. “I am of a certain age and have a bus pass!”

At this moment there was a violent SCLOP SCLOP SPLAT. The tower shook violently and The Lozenge rolled over the edge.

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”, shrieked Olivia Spider and Owld Misther Bucket in harmony. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

And down, down, down they went, eventually landing with a mighty thump in either a large pile of horse bumps or an ancient purple bonnet.

“OOOOOOOOOOFFF,” they gasped, before breathing a great sigh of relief that they had escaped (once again) from an exceedingly stupid and pointless place.

Copyright 2007 JA Weeks

Chapter Twenty-Four

Directory of Humor Blogs

The Three Gentlemen of Wobbly Means

The Three Gentlemen (two of whom where impeccably dressed, unlike the third who was very much tied up with gummybands, and with a scarlet-dyed gorgonzola protruding from his forehead) approached the table under which Daff Maud Bunkum was sleeping and came to an abrupt halt.

“We shall stand as close to her as we possibly can, and even closer,” proclaimed the largest and roundest of the three in sepulchre tones.

“All the better to loooom over the creature,” said the second largest, bending so low over the sleeping damselfly (for that is what she was) that his nose (and it was a very long one, practically as long as a barn) detached itself and crawled into her left ear.

“Do you think we might eat her?” asked the third largest gentleman.

“Oh, no no no no no,” boomed the first, obvious a leader among men and a true intellectual. “That would never do. We are, lest you forget, but figments of her dream…”

“A very BORING dream, if I may say so,” interrupted the second largest irritably.

“That may well be the case, by dear Bumpy, but it is nonetheless a dream and we are trapped within it. If we choose to dine on her (and I agree she is very tantalising indeed) we shall cease to exist, and then our little children shall become waifs and strays, and our beloved wives shall meet fates worth than death…” said the Humpy, known by all and sundry as The First Gentleman, letting his explanation fade away into a desolate silence. A pause followed, during which neither of his companions could think of anything to say, after which he continued. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “we might try nibbling her shoes and see what happens. Shoes, as you well know, are often inanimate. If that is the case with hers (which appear to be quite new and fragrant) then it is doubtful they joined in with the dream…”

“Of course they wouldn’t,” screamed the second gentleman, whose face had turned unnecessarily purple and whose ears seemed to be whistling like steam engines. “THE DREAM IS BORING!”

“If you would permit me to finish, you will see that I am in complete agreement with you,” said the first gentleman somewhat indulgently. “The dream is indeed unspeakably boring, which, considering the dreamer is the most boring person on earth, is hardly surprising. If the three of us do not wish to become thrice as boring as she, it is up to us to perform several wildly exciting and interesting feats.”

“Well, Humpy, I did suggest looming, but I was interrupted,” answered the second gentleman unkindly.

“We could all don scarlet gorgonzolas such as mine,” interjected the smallest of the three, who had up until then remained silent, “and undertake an hour or so of Morris Dancing, which is, as you well know, not only extremely wild and exciting, but is of great historical interest, as well.”

“Do be quiet Scrumpy,” huffed the second largest gentleman, “the last time we attempted Morris Dancing in a dream, we nearly gave the dreamer a bilious attack. It was most unfortunate and we all agreed never to try it again.”

“That wasn’t my fault. Besides I’ve been practicing ever so hard and don’t fall down nearly as often,” sulked the third largest gentleman. “In any case, the dreamer had eaten a large quantity of stewed prunes directly before bed. You can’t blame me for that!”

“Can so,” yelled the second largest gentleman.

“Cannot!”

“Can if I want to!”

“No you can’t”

“Wormy wormy, fat ‘n’ squirmy. I can do anything I want to and you can’t stop me! Nya nya nya nya, nose full of bad stuff!” taunted the second largest gentleman in his most elegant accents.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, do be quiet, both of you!” boomed the largest gentleman. “I’m trying to think! The situation is most complicated. Please go over there,” he added, pointed to Daff Maud Bunkum’s head, “and sit down quietly (like two obedient children) on that round protuberance. If you are very good, uncle Bumpy will give you beebleberry jelly for tea.”

The two other gentlemen immediately assumed the postured of toy wooden soldiers and marched quickstep over to Daff Maud’s head. They sat down and took out a very large book from the yellow canvas bag they had been carrying between them, and proceeded to read in a loud though strangely modulated voice:

§THE STORY OF ELMONDE ANDA CLOTILDA§
By The Two Of Us With Really Annoying Corrections by Bumpy

“Once upon a time, when the world was new and clean and nothing bad had been invented, a young boy by the name of Elmonde lived in a small cottage by The Fens” (“You know perfectly well it was nowhere near the fens. It was a bog mile to the west of Beachy Head,” corrected Bumpy). “He was a gentle young man who possessed the most beautiful manners and prepossessing nature anyone had ever seen” (“That is rubbish and you know it. He had no neighbours. He never saw anybody. It is extremely easy to be mannerly when you are not constantly irritated by a gathering of twits from dawn ‘til dusk!” boomed Bumpy, more exasperated than ever). “More than anything else in the world Elmonde loved medlar jelly and clotted cream. He loved it so much, in fact, that the day he was born he pledged his first-born son to the sea if only he could sup on his favourite repast every day of his life” (“You are telling the story all wrong,” reprimanded Bumpy very loudly. “I was there, and so were you, so don’t tell tales out of school!”). “One day, when he was nine or ten” (“Twelve, you nincompoop!”) “or twelve and had finished more of his breakfast than usual due to cook having prepared bloater with custard sauce rather than the usual boiled onion surprise, Elmonde dressed in his most useful waxed coat and purple boots, the ones kept by the kitchen door for walks in the garden” (“You know perfectly well they hadn’t any garden to speak of!” screamed Bumpy in a weary tone of voice. “They lived in a sewing box next to the thimbles.”). “He loved his little walks, he loved them very much. Nanny always accompanied him, holding on to his little hand as tightly as possible” (“Which was why her arm eventually fell off and she lost it”) so he would not lose his way when they ventured into the forbidden maze” (“Forbidden maze? It was the carrot patch, you idiot. DO try and get it right!”). “On this particular day they stumbled across a stuffed chicken walking about trying to find its spectacles” (“Its HAT. It was trying to find its hat.”). “Elmonde skipped over to it, which was ever such an impossible thing to do given that he was dragging Nanny’s arm bump-bump-bumpity behind him. He bowed very low to the chicken and introduced himself. ‘My name is Elmonde,’ he said politely, ‘and I am very pleased to make your acquaintance!’” (“You forgot the Nanny,” roared Bumpy. “You always forget the Nanny, and her story is far more interesting than that of stupid Elmonde, who was after all nothing but an earwig!”), whereupon the third largest man slammed the book shut with a bang, provoking a horrible cloud of dust which set everyone to coughing furiously. “Will you stop interrupting me?”, he demanded. “In any case, it doesn’t really matter if I read the story correctly or not.!” “Yes it does,” replied his larger and slightly better dressed gentleman, “every time you make a mistake your clothes fade away”).

“Have you noticed,” said the largest gentleman, who up until now had kept silent, though not from manners but for fear that his mother, an infamous harridan, would beat him senseless with a rampant heraldic device, “how utterly blameless this person appears in the autumnal light?” He was, of course, pointing to daff Maud Bunkum with the large sponge he had been using to scrub the passing grains of dust until they sparked and twinkled like sunbeams. “She lies there, curled up under a tastefully tatty cardigan, with a beatific smile on her face and not a care under her bonnet. I should like very much to take her home and put her in a drawer. And if that is not a suitable end to the affair, I should remind you that she makes quite a delightful, though nobbly, cushion.”

“On no account will you do anything whatsoever with her,” humphed the third largest gentleman, “until I have finished reading my story!”

“I personally think,” boomed the largest and most self-important of the three, “we should eat her for lunch. Bumpy, in your capacity as ‘carrier of the tapeworm’ will you please be so kind as to measure her carefully from top to bottom. She is somewhat peevishly small and I fear there are not a sufficient number of tender bits on her. She must be divided into three unequal portions (it goes without saying, the grandest and most succulent organs have been fattened especially with me in mind, while the lesser, grittier tougher slices are for Bumpy, with the scrag end of gristle going to Scrumpy and his anciently, widowed mother). If this is not possible we shall have no option but to go to war. BUMPY!” he bellowed at the second largest gentleman, causing him to jump so high his teeth fell out, “have you drawn up your battle plans.”

“Mrffump miffh,” replied the second best gentleman, replacing his teeth.

“Excellent!” boomed Humpy. “We shall meet at dawn upon this person’s person. I,” he trumpeted, pointing at a small antimacassar cassock growing on what amounted to Daff Maud Bunkum’s modestly tiny bosom bumps, “shall place my cannon there on that modestly tiny hillock.”

“And I shall position my elephant on this hill,” declaimed Bumpy, indicating Daff Maud Bunkum’s pleasantly round stomach, thwacking it so hard she let out a snort.

“And where shall I position my pony and cart?” asked Scrumpy in a soft and hesitant voice.

“Yooooou?” bellowed Humpy, in several simultaneous tones, suggesting haughteur and ennui, “I suggest you not bother to come at all,” adding, “The two of us have taken the only suitable vantage points. Besides, when last I looked your pony had run quite away. That was, I believe, in the penultimate dream but two and he hasn’t come back since.”

“He might have,” sobbed the third largest of the three gentlemen with a great wheeze, “if you hadn’t eaten all my barley sugar.”

The second largest gentleman, who was feeling distinctly peevish and wanted to adjourn for tea and cucumber sandwiches, changed the subject ever so slightly. “Might Scrumpy not procure the medals for the victory ceremony, and perhaps bake the crumpets and treacle for the banquet?”

“With pink sugar sprinkled over the fairy cakes?” beamed the third largest gentleman from inside Daff Maud Bunkum’s pocket, in which he had sought refuge from the swarm of caddis flies he suspected might be arriving through the door at any minute.

“If it make you any less grumpy, I shall be only too happy to agreed,” said The largest gentleman of the three, his voice sounding extremely reasonable and wise beyond his ears.

At that precise moment, there was a mighty earthquake and the three gentlemen were thrown into the air and disappeared without trace.

Copyright 2007 JA Weeks

Chapter Twenty-Three

Directory of Humor Blogs

The Muddles of Daff Maud Bunkum, or, The Adversary Worm

Mr. Peveral Murkin had disappeared. “He said he was going to spend a penny,” said Ermentrude Pinkley, “but that was over two hours ago. Do you think something happened to him?”

“His bilberry tart is looking distinctly poorly,” commented daff Maud Bunkum, eyeing Mr. Peveral Murkin’s place setting and twittering her fingers in a worried fashion. “Not only is it grey round the edges, but it is being attacked by midges.”

“Perhaps,” Ermentrude continued, quite ignoring her friend’s culinary disquietude, “he fell in and accidentally flushed himself down the drain.”

Daff Maud refused to be swayed from her subject. “I think I shall be forced to eat the silly thing any minute, and I don’t even like bilberries. It’s the principle, you know. How can I allow it to go to waste when there are starving children living inside the southern boundary wall?”

“I think I shall have a look in the lavatory,” said Ermentrude, abruptly rising from her chair and surveying the room. “If he’s stuck he may need our help.”

Daff Maud drew the plate of neglected bilberry tart closer to her and gazed at it sadly. “Starving children always make one feel so helpless. Just like fudge.” She paused for a moment and then looked over to Ermentrude’s chair for moral support, but it was empty. Ermentrude Pinkley was nowhere to be seen.

“And now SHE’S gone as well. AND she’s left her cream cake.” Daff Maud, overwhelmed by the responsibility, burst into tears. She drew an enormous yellow handkerchief from her pocket and honked her nose into it.

While Daff Maud Bunkum was eating the food from the plates of both Mr. Peveral Murkin and Ermentrude Pinkley and coming to terms with a new life alone and without the boon companionship of her dearest and oldest friends, tasks she was performing at one and the same time and without the benefit of professional advice, Ermentrude found herself standing at the end of a long queue in The Bank (like so many denizens of a discerning temperament, she availed herself of the services of B. R. Throttle & Co., Bankers and Usurers To The Gentry, commonly referred to as ‘The Bank’. The only other financial institution in The Bog, Smiley Beamish’s Happy Money, Ltd., was generally given a wide birth by those who had learned to read without moving their lips). It really was most annoying. Ermentrude had rushed from her corner table in Begonia Throttle’s Tea Cosy, leaving at least two-thirds of her lovely, fresh cream cake on the plate (“I just know Maud will eat it, even though cream cake gives her hives”). She had gone directly to the lavatory, which was located in a small shed around the back of the café. Finding the door locked, she’d knocked politely three times, but to no avail. After an additional knock, this one somewhat louder, had failed to elicit a response, Ermentrude had put her mouth to what she thought was a crack in the door (but which was actually a sleeping worm who was most put out at having been disturbed) and called out. “Peveral dear, it’s Ermentrude Pinkley. Are you in there?” Immediately there followed a great thumping and thrashing about, as well as what was presumably a startled and desperate cry for help (or so it seemed. The door was solid oak and a good fifteen feet thick; therefore, aside from the beating of her own heart, she had actually heard nothing at all).

Ermentrude Pinkley opened her copious handbag and rummaged for a few frantic minutes. “Don’t tell me,” she cried, “I came out of the house without a penny!”

After accosting a number of passers-by, all of whom ran away screaming, and being arrested on suspicion of committing a “heinous act of robbery with thuggish intentions” by Police Constable “Bobby” and his partner, Police Constable “Nobby”, she found herself, bound, gagged and caged, before Chief Justice Sir Humbart Pincer-Pettigrew (still the father-in-law of Dorothina Flumpe, who, once again, proved to be invaluable when testifying for the prosecution). Sir Humbart, who despised weakness and prayed nightly for a return of ‘The Cane’, refused to allow Ermentrude Pinkley to testify on her own behalf and sent her down for an indeterminate length of time. “In my experience, I can only say that the gravity of this despicable and heinous crime defies reason and is utterly beyond belief. The accused must be punished, punished severely, unceasingly and without end. I therefore place this black cap upon my feverish brow and wash my hands,” at which point, a small boy carrying a very large basin full of scented water and with a towel draped across his right arm, appeared at the judge’s side. Sir Humbart dipped his fingers, wiped them dry in the boy’s hair, and immediately wandered off the bench and disappeared through a door, which had mysteriously materialised in the panelled wall directly behind his chair.

“Well, that’s that,” whispered Ermentrude’s brief, out the side of his mouth. “You’re done for it and that’s a fact. All that’s left is for you to come back tomorrow morning for your execution. Beheading all right? Or would you prefer having to sit next to Owld Missus Mingus MacLeary at Friday Night Bingo?

Ermentrude Pinkley thought for a moment before answering. “Beheading please, if you don’t mind.”

“Much the more satisfactory choice, for all concerned. Would half ten be suitable, or would you prefer eleven o’clock?

“Eleven, if you don’t mind,” Ermentrude replied. “Begonia’s fresh cream cakes are out of the oven at half ten and it takes her at least eight minutes to add the finishing touches.”

“I shall make a note of that,” said the brief, who had never given his name, and seemed not to have much of a personality, prompting Ermentrude to comment to herself, “I wonder if I shall recognise him when we meet? He is so very thin and puny he could disappear at any moment. And then where would we be?”

The brief waited politely until she had finished speaking to herself before continued. “All you have to do is to leave your name, address and description with the clerk, and he will issue your invitation.”

“I know where I have seen him before!” proclaimed Ermentrude Pinkley with an air of triumph. “He was having a nap on the lavatory door and I mistook him for a crack.”

“Well,” huffed the brief, “that was completely uncalled for. You’re lucky I didn’t testify against you!”

“But you did, and as my legal representative I found it MOST reprehensible!”

“You can’t talk to me like that,” whined the brief with a cheesy grimace, “you are a convicted felon and, by rights, should not be sitting on my lap!” He paused and adjusted his wig, which had taken on a life of its own and was investigating one of his pockets. “You should be thankful the court is issuing an invitation to the likes of you.

“Invitation? What is all this about an invitation?” screamed Ermentrude, standing up suddenly (for she had not realised she was using her brief as a cushion) and becoming increasingly confused.

“Why, for your execution! Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening?” replied the brief, totally aghast.

“But what if they change their mind and uninvited me?”

“The last time The Chief Justice changed his mind was in 1918, and even then it was a mistake,” he replied, adding judiciously, “you should be advised it is quite an honour to receive an invitation. Without it, you will not be allowed in, so I advise you to see the clerk this very minute before he goes to lunch. Afterwards, he is liable to be quite drunk and will have forgotten who he is.”

“Oh dear, oh, dear,” gasped Ermentrude Pinkley, though only to herself, “and to think I have just seen him leave the building!”

“In that case, my dear,” scolded the brief, “you are completely done for and will lose your place in the queue!” Huffling and snorting, he rescued his wig from his left ear, adjusted his robe (which had sought out the nearest breeze and was dancing vigorously to its exotic, Latin rhythms), and dashed out the front door to catch a taxi.

Left completely alone in the cavernous courtroom, Ermentrude Pinkley took a moment to get her bearings, and then shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, well,” she sighed, “perhaps I shall be invited again sometime in the future.”

***
It had gone half-past three by the time Ermentrude Pinkley had joined the queue in The Bank, waited for the elderly gentleman in front of her to cash his cheque (for some reason he was having difficulty in persuading the ink to adhere to the paper long enough to be read by the clerk), and withdrawn the single new copper penny she needed for the necessary rescue of Mr. Peveral Murkin from the lavatory. “Poor Maud will be quite beside herself by now,” she worried. “After all, I had intended on leaving her side for only a minute or two, long enough to check on Mr. Peveral Murkin. I do hope she has not succumbed to hysteria or has gone looking for me. The last time she did that, she walked as far as The Big House, and we had ever so many problems rescuing her from the cats.”

In fact, on this occasion Daff Maud Bunkum had behaved quite sensibly. When neither of her friends seemed inclined to return to the table, she simply ordered ten of everything on the menu from Mrs. Begonia Throttle and consumed the lot. This was quite unusual for her (she was not known for her appetites), but having no idea as to what she should do or what was expected her, it occurred to her that eating a great quantity of Begonia’s splendid pastries and cakes and sandwiches was a splendid plan, and one that should please her friends, should she ever see them again.

All those beautiful cakes, however, made Daff Maud feel quite unlike herself. “Why am I so sleepy,” she asked herself, before sliding off her chair and landing softly in a heap under the table. “I wonder where I am now and if anyone will find me,” she mused, before adding, “I do believe someone is heading in my direction this very minute.”

And sure enough, three very large, round gentlemen were at that very minute walking towards her, two of them in an exceedingly determined fashion and the third lagging behind. “He reminds me of me,” Maud murmured sleepily, “He’s trying to hide behind them,” at which point she yawned several times and closed her eyes. “Please introduce yourselves when you reach me,” she sighed happily. “You may leave your cards under my chin.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Directory of Humor Blogs

Mrs. DaFarge, The Marriage Bureau and The Great Draught and Famine of 1947

The box hedge within her garden had matured, aged, withered and died in the interim since Mrs. DaFarge had dispatched her most recent spouse to the great beyond, and she was feeling rather disappointed with herself. “Clarence (as he was called) was SUCH a satisfactory husband, by far the most congenial. How tiresome it is to be a preying mantis when one is so completely devoted to the sanctity of marriage!” She then heaved a hideous sigh and entered into one of those penetrating self-examinations of which she was so passionately fond. “Poor dear Clarence. Is it not frightful that I cannot even recall his surname? Elm-something, I’m pretty sure. Elmhurst? Elmbotham? Oh, never mind, it does not really matter… Still, we did have such FUN together, sitting in the library of an evening and reading poetry to each other. Silly romantic fuzzy Clarry Barry, he was drawn to Shelley and Browning, whereas I have always found Wordsworth and the Bloomsburys and the Neo-Pagans, especially dear, beautiful Rupert Brooke, to be particularly thrilling… Elmleaf? Elmdisease? Slippery-Elme? Oh, well… never mind.”

Mrs. DaFarge had an intensely dislike of sentimentality. One did tolerate it, of course, when others lapsed into The Pit of Treacle (after all, that was to be expected where the common hoi polloi were concerned; one had to be mindful of their origins). However, it was her rigidly held belief that she, as a member of both the local and county councils and the arbiter of manners among the socially élite, had a responsibility to maintain irreproachably exalted standards. If, therefore, she suspected that she might be wallowing in depths plumbed theretofore only by certain Germanic Composers of overripe and overblown grand opera, daytime television (which was banned in her household) and (God Forbid) The Pseudo Pre-Raphaelites, she condemned herself for letting the side down. “I have never shed a tear, neither for my loved ones in extremis nor for myself, and I refuse to be swayed by romantic twaddle,” was how she prefaced conversations to strangers, in the event they jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Mrs. DaFarge had intentionally forgotten how many husbands had exchanged with her the marriage vows. “The majority were ruinous mistakes!” she liked to confide to her confessor. “In spite of myself I have always been attracted to the wrong sort, to the reckless and handsome bounders. Officers of a certain rank and eldest sons though they were, they were also cads who, had I been another woman, would have left me broken hearted and bereft.” She would then pause for a studied moment, turn inwards, and with a secret smile, punctuate the sentiment with a joyful flourish. “Of course, darling, I ate them.”

Very recently, Mrs. DaFarge had begun to suspect it might be time so seek out another spouse. “Not for myself, you understand, but for appearances.” Unfortunately, because of her age (which was considerable) and rigorous demands, there were not many options available to her in Miss Havering’s Bog. She had, after all, exhausted the entire population of suitable gentlemen, leaving The Bog very much in a state of social imbalance, and those who had resisted her charms theretofore tended to flee at the very sight of her magnificence. It was out of the question to insert a line or two in the want ads of The Times of The Bog (the other publications were excluded from consideration insofar as she refused to admit to their existence). Coy and subtle advertisements rarely fooled anyone, not in this day and age. Not only would the wrong sort single them out for ridicule, but all the gossips and busybodies would immediately know it was she who had placed them. Meeting gentlemen over a rubber of bridge in The Club was also out of the question, for she was well-acquainted with all the other players and found none of them up to scratch. They either played their cards rather badly, or snuffled, or drank excessively (or displayed distressing tendencies), or were already enjoined in wedlock with one of her social equals. And as Mrs. DaFarge held the opinion that The Community Centre was a charity to which one donated money for the good of The Lower Elements, it would not have occurred to her that she might avail herself its Single’s Club.

This, unfortunately, left only The Marriage Bureau for Respectable Gentlefolk, a self-proclaimed ‘charmingly discreet’ listing (much like an upper class escort agency, only with respectable cobwebs) founded many years previously by Mrs. Begonia Throttle and her brother, Isidor Throttle-Zonker, the aggrieved husband of the hideous Lithuanian Assistant Librarian, Ms. Delilah Zonker. Mrs. Begonia Throttle, ever the astute businesswoman with an eye for the main chance (she also owned an immodest chain of betting shops, formerly Throttle & Co., Turf Accountants, recently rebranded www.betbegonia.bog), was, for the right price and under her own terms, discretion itself. Given that her clientele was, in the main, comprised of hideously respectable matrons such as Mrs. DaFarge, Mrs. Ridglet-Grassworm (recently widowed for the twelfth time) and Baroness Winitraudl von Dragon-ffleugen (“I must be dazzled constantly. A perfect husband is like a soufflé, exquisite and so imminently deflatable”), not so much as a whiff of scandal could attach itself to her bureau. She never took notes (“for every note written down there is a secretary who will make copies”), committing every detail to memory and often eating witnesses (usually personal assistants, of which she had rather a lot; because of this she had eventually founded an employment agency, Begonia’s Fulfilling Positions, Ltd., which was by its second week, the most profitable of its kind in the bog, if not the county). No stone was left unturned to ensure that confidential information gleaned (often under torture, but that is another story) would find its way only into the right ears (long a bog obsession). The end result of such vigilant security measures on the part of this quaint, respectable and slightly mouldering marriage bureau was that the agency leaked like a sieve during a rainstorm, a result not altogether lamented by Begonia Throttle, who (as has been previously stated) owned the majority shareholding in Slash & Burn Publications, Ltd., publishers of the more odious (and, hence, most lucrative) tabloids in the bog. Among the cognoscenti, The Marriage Bureau for Respectable Gentlefolk and Un Secret de Polishinelle were synonymous. However, this was still preferable to The Singles’ Club or the other alternative, which was to post a shy notelet in the telephone kiosk behind the underwear factory.

Mrs. DaFarge was, quite naturally, aware of Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s shortcomings. “I am fortunately very thick skinned, and although I find Mrs. Throttle and her enterprises repugnant, odious and vulgar in the extreme, both she and they are, to put it succinctly, more than a little convenient when it comes to filling my copious needs. She is, of course, trade, and therefore completely untrustworthy. I find a good flogging before our consultations helps my cause considerably.” What Mrs. DaFarge did not admit, even to her pillow, was that she herself possessed certain ‘information’ concerning Mrs. Throttle and had made it perfectly clear to the matchmaker that she would not hesitate to use it. “Be Warned, Throttle,” she would thunder, adding sweetly, “I do believe we have an understanding.”

There was one fly in the ointment, and a very large, juicy one it was. Ms. Delilah Zonker. Several years previously, in a moment of exquisite weakness, Mrs. DaFarge had allowed herself to be transported to the outer limits of ecstasy whilst in a punt with a certain well-known lothario named Prof. Dr. Polymorphius Stickleback. It was in the first week of June, when spring was at its sweetest and the bog, pungent with fecundity, was fairly bursting at the seams with érotisme (in all its splendidly raw and rampant hues, flavours and variations). Professor Doctor Stickleback (whose mother may or may not have been French from either Île de Re or the chorus of the Moulin Rouge) lured the redoubtable matron to the furthest, dankest and most claustrophobic regions of the southern swamp with promises of never ending adoration and the secret recipe for mousse au chocolat avec sauce haut-le-cœur supreme, the famously addictive dessert sans pareil of Chef Blatard de Flumpe’s Café aux Quinze Oublis (about which we have not heard the last).

Appearances are deceiving at the best of times, but in Miss Havering’s Bog there exists a saying, “those who believe their own eyes are doomed to weep.” Nothing was ever as it seemed and nothing was the slightest bit straightforward. This noted lothario who had wooed and won Mrs. DaFarge (in a moment of supreme weakness) was in actual fact the despicable cad, “Badger” ffermin-ffrench of Epping-on-the-Sea, a detestable blackmailer and white slaver who had, several years previously, fathered and then groomed the Lithuanian gorgon, Ms. Delilah Zonker, to be not only his protégé but his eventual successor. But all this was so very long ago, and had quite escaped the normally deadly antenna of the well-informed Mrs. DaFarge, but even had this not been the case, the moment the dashing “Professor Doctor Stickleback” whispered words of magic in her shovel-like ear, her cottage cheese-like thighs turned to jelly. Ignoring her head and throwing caution to the wind, the romantically inflamed matron, doyenne of polite society and discretion personified, was once again a schoolgirl. As she lowered her vast bulk into “Prof. Dr. Stickleback’s” ‘Vessel of Love’ (the aged punt for which he had traded a cracked cranberry glass vase, two ham sandwiches and a pencil), her heart fluttering as though in the breast of a young maiden, her mind (usually so worldly and astute) adrift in the seas of romance, her eyes failing to notice a subtle movement in the tall reeds bordering the foetid swamp. It was, of course, the diligent Lithuanian spigot, Ms. Delilah Zonker, camera and sound crew at the ready, recording every swoon, blush and grown, and thinking of her future prospects (and smiling very broadly indeed). The world was hers! The haughty Mrs. DaFarge, the most evil woman in the world, the beast who had consigned her to cleaning the Incontinent Ladies’ Reading Room in The Lending Library and who had revoked her front entrance privileges. Vengeance would be hers!

And so it was, though not as effectively as she hoped. Mrs. DaFarge refused to be blackmailed and reported the lowly Lithuanian to the Vice Squad, which in turn arrested her (following a lengthy investigation during which some fourteen hundred fifty-seven suspects and seven hundred twenty-two witnesses were interviewed). Legal loopholes prevented her from being brought to trial, however, but nonetheless, Chief Justice Sir Humbart Pincer-Pettigrew (father-in-law of Dorothina Flumpe (erstwhile wife of Chef Blatard, who, herself, proved to be a most valuable asset to the Prosecution’s case) used The Accused in various ways, all under the guidelines of the The Official Immoral Purposes Act (of 1907) and afterwards condemned her to spend the rest of her life dying of an unspecified number of ailments and occurrences. It was, all in all, an unfortunate and scandalous affair, and one that occupied the denizens’ complete attention for nearly three weeks (a period coinciding with the great draught and famine of 1947, when there was very little else going on).

Awful Lithuanian Peasant Ms. Delilah Zonker, convicted criminal though she now may have been, was not to be defeated. She had hidden on her person (in a little suede bag with purple drawstrings) an unplayed card: a photograph of Mrs. DaFarge with a small rabbit, taken behind the carriage house on a fine summer’s day. This time, however, the Lithuanian hoodlum did not make the mistake of approaching the society matron directly. Instead, she visited her own sister-in-law, Mrs. Begonia Throttle, in the dead of night disguised as a beggar and weeping copious amounts of artificial tears. Claiming to be a wise woman and gentleman of mysterious Eastern extraction, she/he sang of the many fortunes that were destined to fall into the lap of Throttle Enterprises, Ltd. Flourishing the picture, now reproduced in faded and scratchy sepia in a barely discernable faux-medieval frame, she/he wove her magic spell.

Da vurlt gows wumpity wump wump wumpity
Ant yer life it gows vump vump vumity.
All yoo gotz ta doooo isss pump pump pumpity
Unt cross myee hents mit silver.
Yoy Yoy Yoy.

Yur vurlt it isss un oyster
You isss zo vury blessszt.
Mine troadt izt full of goiters
Mine pents dey isss ha messs.

Pleeeze du halp me ladeee
Aiull lub yoo till hai die
Hai vanst to kizzzt unt skveees yooo
Unt baik yoo inna pie.

Ai chavva liddel fotow
Id isss zo vury neis
Unt ven yoo lookit ovow
Aiyul gif yoo mai adwize.

By this time Mrs. Begonia Throttle was beginning to feel distinctly queasy. Stars floated in front of her eyes and she was sure that vapours were no more than a second or two away.

“Please,” she cried, “I shall do anything you want, only please stop singing.”

But the exotic foreigner of mystical extraction, appearing not to hear her (which since she was in a trance-like state at the time may or may not have been true) continued her strange lament:

Ai needza lodda munnee
Id isss zo vury nais
Ai vunna buy zym toolibz
Und puddum inna vais.

“If I find you some employment, will you go away and leave me alone?” interjected Begonia Throttle, reasonably voiced yet with a trembling subtext.

The interestingly clad beggar fell silent for a minute to consider the proposition. She then straightened her jingly veil (which had become distinctly unhinged during her dance) and looked the other woman in the eye.

“It will have to be in a professional capacity, and I warn you in advance that I shall have nothing to do with either farm implements or dust cloths,” she said, suddenly sounding as if she were recently down from Oxford.

“Absolutely no farm implements or dust cloths”, replied Begonia Throttle, distinctly relieved, and making a note of it on her little computer thingy. “Would you be interested in working with animals?”

The beggar (who Mrs. Begonia Throttle had not failed to notice had a suspiciously large mouth, somewhat reminiscent of a pigmy hippopotamus’s) immediately picked up her lament from where she had left off (only this time a great deal louder)

“I vasss ha liddel parsnip
Zittun inna feeelt
Und vennn hai feildt mine noseslip…”

Mrs. Begonia Throttle immediately clapped all four of her hands over her ears and fairly screamed at the interloper. “All right,” she cried. “You have made your point!” She thought for a moment, then suddenly her face cleared and she turned to the exotic mendicant. “Do you like books?” she asked.

“It all depends upon the paper,” replied the beggar in her best Cheltenham Ladies’ College accent. “I find first editions quite tasty, especially the bindings and spines.”

“What are your feelings as regards paperbacks?” asked Begonia Throttle, hoping the question would not provoke another bout of singing.

“I am sure I do not know what you are talking about,” replied the interestingly dressed woman, “mummy said she sampled a volume sans binding (if that is what you mean) once by mistake and found it indigestible. She henceforth banned all such items from the house, and I have as yet to lay my hands on one of their breed. Tell me, do these ‘paperback’ to which you refer taste good with brown sauce?”

“Banned them from the house? Do they taste good with brown sauce?” muttered Mrs. Throttle to herself, careful not to offend the perfumed stranger by speaking out loud. “I know where you grew up, my dear, and you were lucky to have a court summons, much less a book.”

“Are you feeling poorly?” asked the stranger, suddenly looking concerned. “Have you lost your voice? You appear to be talking to me, but nothing is coming out.”

But Mrs. Begonia Throttle was by now completely lost in her own world and wanted to finish her thoughts. Lest the awful beggar might be tempted to take up her song where she had left off, however, she smiled wearily at her and apologised for her behaviour. “Please bear with me, my dear, I am quite overcome and sedentary. Would you be so kind as to sit over there,” she added, pointed to a low stool, “and I shall be with you in a minute.”

“Would it be helpful if I sang to you. It wouldn’t have to be the same song. I know ever so many”

“No thank you dear, I shall be fully recovered before you can swallow your toes.” The motley coloured beggar sat where she was told and immediately took an old currant bun from her pocket and nibbled at the edges.

Mrs. Begonia Throttle frowned and murmured to herself via her left ear flap. “I wonder where she bought that dreadful currant bun? It most certainly is not one of mine. And how rude of her to bring her own food into my delightful tea shoppe.” She peered over her spectacles at the lowly creature and then continued the appraisal she had begun earlier, being more careful than ever to speak utterly sotto voce and inarticulately. “I don’t know whom she thinks she’s fooling. I know exactly who she is, and one thing she did not have is a ‘mummy’. For that matter, she wouldn’t know a book from a mealy bug. The poor deprived creature probably can’t even read…”

Having got her own feelings straightened out, Mrs. Throttle arranged her mouth into her prettiest, most alluring smile (the one she reserved for only her favourite customers) and turned to the wayward foreign stray. “As I was about to say, if you are interested in respectable employment, I may be able to obtain a suitable position for you,” she purred, adding quickly, “professionally speaking.”

“No animals or small children,” harrumphed the beggar, idly brushing crumbs off her sleeve, “and no aardvarks.”

“Oh, nothing like that, I assure you,” chirped Begonia Throttle in her best butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth tone. “It is in the Lending Library, as (she added quickly before the beggar could imagine the worst) The Official Second Assistant Librarian. Absolutely respectable and above board, you understand, and best of all you wouldn’t have to do anything,” she said before whispering silently to herself “except for a few light callisthenics every other Wednesday.”

Mrs. Throttle, warming to her subject, continued. “The Official Head Librarian insists on conducting all the official Library duties herself. She even makes her own tea. Of course, if you are not interested…” she let the sentence dangle mysteriously.

“Oh yes, it sounds delightful,” the beggar chortled, quickly adding, “but I have a condition. Should The Head Librarian abandon her post, I should want to slip into her shoes at a moment’s notice.”

“That is, I believe,” answered Begonia Throttle, “the usual practice.”

“Then I shall accept! It sounds ideal,” sang the awful stranger. “How much will I be paid? When can I start? Would it be convenient for me to take time off for my monthly holiday now?”

“Well,” Begonia cautioned, “I shall have to ask Mrs. DaFarge, but…”

“MRS. DAFARGE?” screamed the exotic eastern-looking woman. “Did you just say Mrs. DaFarge? How very exciting!”

The slimy little beggar turned her head around in a complete circle, as if in furtive contemplation, then relaxed, smiled and beamish smile (one which unfortunately showed her teeth) and shook Mrs. Throttle’s hand all too vigorously.

“Please consider the position taken. I could not be more thrilled if I had kippers for a nose!” And indeed nothing could have been more to the beggar’s liking. Just think! Twice the power over Mrs. Dafarge! Twice! He/she would be both the rude Librarian’s Assistants at the same time. Perhaps, with any luck, the Third Assistant Librarian (the lacklustre and ineffable Mr. Cyril Bump) would meet with an untimely end, in which case he/she could acquired his position as well!

“I do hev von furder contizhun,” he/she said cautiously. “Hiy hem in neet uvva vife.”

“A vife?” interjected Begonia Throttle, suddenly interested and confused at the same time.

“Hay continzhun uf mine imploeemind iz yoo fint mee he vife.” The beggar paused and smiled a secret smile. “Hay beeooodifol brayink mentisss. Doo yoo tink….?

“AH!” whooped Begonia Throttle, assuming her best marriage broker voice. “A wife! How thrilling! And a praying mantis you said! I have just the thing! A beautiful (mature) mantis of means, as well as great respectability and elegance. In fact, I do believe you know her, or if you don’t you will shortly, for she is none other than your future employer at the Lending Library!”

“Do yoo meeen Missiz Dafarge?” the beggar asked, speculatively, his/her upper lip moist with anticipation and his/her lower one trembling.

“Yes,” replied Begonia Throttle, trembling slightly. “Is there a problem with that?”

“No,” replied the exotic foreigner, “not at all. In fact, it is compleedlee vonterfill!”

With that, the beggar ran from the café as fast as he/she could (disappearing in a cloud of dust). “I must see my dearest husband Isidor immediately, and also my darling Polymorphius! We have triumphed! Victory is ours! Soon I shall take my revenge on my nemesis Mrs. DaFarge. She will be ruined! I shall eat her beloved, so-superior co-conspirators for breakfast. Chief Justice Sir Humbart Pincer-Pettigrew and dainty Dorothina Flumpe will be mine. ALL MINE!… I,” she added ripping off her beggar disguise and flinging it into the gutter, “will rule the bog! Fire up the barbeque, Chief Justice Sir Hoity-toity and your flimsy Dorothina, you will be mine for breakfast!”

And then Ms. Delilah Zonker giggled hysterically and gleefully. “On toast with a fried tomato and beans.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Directory of Humor Blogs

Tiny Libbedy and The Mudmonster

Tiny Rumpus Libbedy Spider was dreaming. The poor dear had spent far too much time (practically the entire morning) wondering exactly how she was going to get organised, with the result that she had rather exhausted herself and drifted off into a sleepy daze. “I’ll just lie down for a bit,” she yawned, “and close my eyes. (yawn) What with everything that’s happened, I’ve come over all dizzy. Perhaps (yawn yawn) if I look at a magazine and drink a cup of tea, I’ll be able to relax. I’m soooo sleepy. If only I could go to sleep… sleep… sleep (yawn yawn yawn) I’d wake up all (yawn yawn yawn yawn) alllll bright ‘n’ shiny and know what to (yawn yawn yawn yawn yawn) dooooo.”

Libbedy reached up and unhooked her rucksack from the peg on the door (even though in the manner of dress and musical affections she was a punk rocker and sometime hip hop hottie, by nature she was an exceedingly tidy young spiderling). She rummaged through it until she found the magazine she wanted (the latest issue of PondPunk Unzipped), then lay down on her bed (well, it wasn’t really her bed, so to speak, in that she’d decorated it in sunshiny pinks and yellows and golds especially for her beautiful mother, Olivia, who always surrounded herself by such shades of happiness). Libbedy had to admit that the new bed (made from the softest possible moss) was cosy soft, just like a cloud. In fact, the instant her head touched the pillow she was in dreamland.


*Libbedy’s Dream*

Perhaps as dreams go it was not particularly memorable. After all, dreams are dreams and are as insubstantial as mist. This one was really more a series of tiny snippets really. Tiny Rumpus Libbedy led such an active and enthusiastic life, and her brain was (at times, or so it seemed) so completely used up and, well, exhausted, that by the time she finally went to sleep there simply was not a single remaining kilowatt of energy with which to power exuberant flights of fancy (and the like). The cerebellum (and its helpers) knew full well (from past experience) that what it really needed most of all was rest and plenty of it. The following day would be upon it within a blink of an eye, and without all the mettle in the world, it would not last an hour. For this reason, when Rumpus Libbedy Spider (as on this particular day) exhausted herself into a nap, her picture album had very little of value to show her.

Pipsqueaky images, mostly, there were, of friends and family and past events, such as Owld Misther Bucket’s kindly face looking exceedingly odd, with his eyes turning purple and bugging out like two gooseberries who’d just seen a crow about to eat them. She saw millions and millions of teeny tiny pinprick holes, all over the old gentleman’s sides and bottom, and liquid gushing out as though from a demented sprinkler. And wasn’t there the strangest, roundy, leering face, and waves and torrents of crystalline water gushing over her, sweeping her head over heals down the bohereen? Clumps of goo and mud splotting her face, and then again that roundy leering countenance. What a stranger than strange world it was…

Then quite suddenly, the dream blossomed into something altogether more mysterious. Bigger, brighter, it became, with flashing lights and surround sound and oscillating ring tones squeaking in her ears.

***

Copyright 2007 JA Weeks

Chapter Twenty

Directory of Humor Blogs

The Sisters Wellingffomething-ffomething Go For a Walk in The Country

It really was enough to make a somewhat elderly evil sister grumble up her sleeve. (SPLOP SPLOP SPLOP). Being fairly rocketed across the dirtiest, muddiest path (if one could rightly call it a path!) she had ever encountered, forever with her poor nose rammed into the most horrible puddles, on top of which to be constantly reminded of her failings and inadequacies by her stouter (enormously fat, really), more resilient sister! And if that was not bad enough, then that selfsame sister would insist on humming loudly and out of tune. (SPLOP SPLOP SPLOP).

“I do wish you would slow down, Muffin dear,” spluttered Wambledy-Jane, so upset she had failed to notice a length of something resembling muddy twine protruding from her right nostril, while at the same time trying to be polite.

(SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE) “Do buck up, darling Wambledy-Jane (pant pant) (SPLOOGE SPLOP),” scolded her elder sister, much out of breath and more than a little offended. “You know perfectly well, (pant pant) there is absolutely nothing I can do when SHE gets into one of her moods.”

“Oh, please, dearest Muffin, may we not attempt to flee, to detach ourselves from the tyrant and throw ourselves into the sea? I honestly cannot take much more of this,” gasped Wambledy-Jane, snorting loudly (at which point the long, stringy thing disappeared up her nose with a loud SLURP).

“And how (pant pant),” demanded Muffin in her shrillest tones, “pray tell (pant pant splutter splutter) are we supposed to do that? Do you really think she might fail to notice?”

“(Glub schluch pant sploch gurgle) At least ask her (pant pant) to slow down a little so I can catch up,” gargled Wambledy-Jane, by now completely out of breath and at her wit’s end. “You are her favourite. If she will listen to anyone, it will be to you.”

“Listen (pant pant sclub fwaap) to me?” Muffin screamed, her voice going up at least three octaves. “Listen to me? Have you failed to notice, my carbuncle of a twit sister, our relative positions? In case you have forgotten, SHE is the force. Not you. Not I. SHE. SHE is The Immensely Large One! Since when…” at which moment in time an exceedingly impressive mouthful of noxious, odorous mud and slime (exactly the same dimensions as her mouth, with an additional amount added on for spillage) leapt from the swamp and took refuge in her in the back of her throat. Muffin was caused to cough somewhat violently (and with such violence she was unable even to utter an unkind remark), after which she was forced to retreat into a furious and atypical silence. This was immediately followed by a second bout of coughing which climaxed in the forceful ejection of several acres of slop, a family of mudskippers and an entire schoolroom of tadpoles. Scarlet of face and possessed by the furies, all she could do was screech at her trembling sister, “SHE OWNS US!”

“Oh! Piffle! Don’t be so melodramatic, my darling Muffin,” replied Wambledy-Jane in an uncharacteristic show of bravado. “You are really the most boring older sister one could possibly possess, more boring and tiresome even than Her (murphf murphf pant pant gag splutter) (SPLOP SPLP SPLOOGE SPWAP). I am exhausted listening to you, simply exhausted (Splutter pant gag pant pant)! And it is all rot! Nobody owns us! NOBODY OWNS ANYBODY! OW!!!”

“What is wrong with you now,” her elder sister demanded to know, pulling herself up to her full height and (somewhat decrepit) magnificence and thrusting out her bosom at a haughty angle. “Stop complaining or it will be no dinner for you!”

“I’b godda wock stug ib by node…”

“For goodness sake, blow it out at once. If SHE notices, you will be on the receiving end of a short sharp slap against the mud scraper the minute we get home!” Muffin turned (as far as was possible) and glared at her younger sister. “Do get on with it”, she said, “and with, if you don’t mind (she added under her breath) “your mouth firmly shut.”

Wambledy-Jane leaned against a small plant and blew her nose as violently as possible, inspiring the rock (quite the most unpleasant looking scrag end of shale as has been invented) to fly out of her left nostril and ricochet off a small tuffet, before finally coming to rest in a cluster of small, carefully tended plants.

Chapter Nineteen

Directory of Humor Blogs

Oinka The Pig

Behind the personage, appellation and brand of Oinka The Pig lay one of life’s supreme ironicals. While for many her origins were enshrouded by mystery, others found no difficulty whatsoever in admitting that she was not in actual fact a proper pig at all. Rather, she was a frog. And a very pretty frog, too, notwithstanding the very large mushroom sprouting from the top of her head, much like a hideous, iridescent hippopotamus bottom. She herself (if indeed she was a she or if she was even an ‘is’) maintained that her decorative head adornment only appeared to sprout from her cranium. “Such a circumstance,” she might or might not have said, depending upon the truth of the matter, “is fraught with consternation and ethical considerations.” In other words, from the point of view of lesser mortals, a mushroom sprouting from her head would have been unseemly in its daring and uncomfortable in its wearing, not to mention unhygienic in other matters. “It is,” she claimed (or not), “a lovely conceit balanced on top of my bun. Rather like an onion. Or a banana,”

No one recalled how Oinka The Pig acquired her lovely name. It was generally agreed (at least by those who made it their business to know a great deal about everything) that she had not been born to it, but even that consensus led nowhere, for it always came down to the fact that no one, not even the wisest and oldest of the denizens, could remember her having been born at all. She simply appeared one day, as if from the mists of time, and from then on sang her indelible stylings (accompanying herself on her little wooden zither) every day at precisely thirty-four minutes past one in the afternoon. And that was the be-all and end-all of civilised behaviour!

Right from the get go, the arrangement had seemed highly satisfactory to all parties. After all, there had never been a noon alarum in Miss Havering’s Bog, at least not since Bart-The-Snipe lost his watch in a game of Beggar My Neighbour. And since Oinka The Pig was nothing if not supremely reliable, she proved a most delightful substitute. Within two days, the Deputy Mayoress For Life, Mrs. DaFarge, declared in an Official Document (complete with Seals and Sealing Wax and Acres of Silk Ribbon) that Oinka The Pig (the name already inscribed upon the document from a previous, long-forgotten declaration) was both “indispensable” and “A National Treasure”. It was naturally assumed that her name really was ‘Oinka The Pig”, and within a nonce, in the minds of the denizens, the name was fused indelibly with her person. Oinka The Pig she was, and even though she had never been properly introduced as such, Oinka The Pig she remained. As far as the world was concerned the name felt completely and utterly right; if it was wrong, it was too late to do anything about it, so it was best to consider it the best of all possible names, and certainly better than any alternatives.

It was indeed unfortunate that few of the denizens had stopped to consider who she might really be (that is, if indeed she was), the unpleasant truth being that rumour and scandal mongering, as far as the great unwashed were concerned, made the world go round. To them the (alleged) personal peccadilloes, binge drinking, fashion disasters and lairy footie boyfriends of Oinka The Pig gave them a reason to live, especially after being embellished by that slavering society columnist, Miss Nudilla Drudge (famous for having succeeded at nothing, before fulfilling her lifelong ambition to be employed by Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s Sleazy Tabloid Empire as a Gutter Journalist). For these stonky unwashed, the Daily Escapades of Oinka The Pig were almost as important as being able to buy the latest shoes and handbags at The Mall On The Bog (Proprietress, Mrs. Begonia Throttle). At the other end of the social spectrum, those individuals slightly more educated and inclined towards quality entertainments and the more gentile pastimes, such as playing Bridge and supping on bonbons made from dark chocolate with truffled centres, feared that if Oinka The Pig was not whom (or what) she appeared to be, then she must be someone (or something) else. And that was a prospect too frightening to consider. As Mrs. Muriel Purience-Boulogne, Treasurer of The Subcommittee for The Betterment of Morals and Decorum, confided to her confidents over tea and dainty biscuits at Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s Tea Cosy, “When one thinks this person might possibly be… an outsider, or an illegal alien… or even a member of an alternative religion…”

“Or even a member of The Miss Havering’s Bog Women’s Wednesday Night Bingo, Ballroom Dancing and Foreign-Owned Football Clubs’ Supporters’ Association, at the Community Centre,” chimed in Missus Ridglet-Grassworm, who was never one to be left out of an conversation when her opinion was certain to enrich her companions. “One of them dared to come (uninvited, of course) to one of my garden picnics, and had the nerve to say ‘whatEVER’ when I enquired whom she might be,” This she added as an afterthought, poking her long nose into her vinaigrette and inhaling deeply, as though to vanquish a evil odour.

It may have been the hat (or was it a banana or a barnacle or a mushroom?) that confused them. Or, more likely, it may have been that no one had bothered to scrutinise Oinka The Pig properly. Personal scruples and manners were given a high priority in the bog, albeit not for the ‘wrong sort’. For the wrong sort, those given to lively habits and a low moral content, had no scruples at all, and inflicted as they were with the terrible ennui of the vacant-minded, rejoiced in anti-social behaviour by creating their own world via text messaging. And when they were not doing that, they could be found filming their mothers’ unmentionable moments on their mobile phones).

For those of the acceptable classes, not prone to ASBOs, it was considered an unforgivable display of les mauvaises manières to become too familiar with the inner worlds of mobile phones, or, as they liked to put it, anyone of a discouraging class. “Do not be common” was the most oft-used instruction issued to one’s sons and daughters whenever they happened to be awake and show a lively interest in their surroundings. Which end of the social spectrum was right and which was wrong? The Reader alone may judge, for it is not for The Chronicler to offer an opinion.

So embroiled were the denizens of Miss Havering’s Bog in class warfare that they noticed very little. Indeed, had they not been so blinkered to the world around them they might have noticed in Oinka The Pig a certain resemblance to members of a very large (sprawling, really) and unprominent clan, one inhabiting the bog since the first spurt of slurry oozed through the southern wall from the cows’ most westerly field. This clan had built its shanties, using only the cheapest materials, along the western end of this selfsame southernmost boundary wall. A meandering and not terribly attractive bog pool ran through their little community, emitting a particularly pungent pong from the foul species of “exotic” (that is to say ‘illegal’) waterweeds floating about here and there in a spurious manner. And although few if any of the more respectable denizens had ever visited this detestable colony (and those exceptions inevitably claimed to be performing good works, such as visiting the poor and hopeless, and gifting them with cast-off inner garments and scrapings from the bottoms of disused refrigerators), most felt entitled to condemn the nature of the ‘evil’ flora they had heard so much about but had not seen. “Why,” they would scold, “such large, scraggy leaves are not at all suitable locations from which to view even the meanest regatta!”

This lowly and really very ugly community was the home of a certain Grinder The Splat, born Greville Merydewe Frogge on the fifteen of January in an inauspicious year. He had also been known, during a short-lived career as an accountant, as Fang The Shredder, but that was before he had discovered his true calling, that of an undertaker, music promoter and founder of a business called, somewhat obliquely, “HIBBLE”.

Oinka The Pig (or Salmonella Marie, as she was called by her mother, Prudence Delphine) was Grinder The Splat’s favourite daughter. As far as he was concerned, his little Oinky-Boiky could do no wrong, not even when she was in one of her monthly moods. From the time she had been an egg-with-eyes-staring-out-of-it-in-a-pile-of-goo, Baby Salmonella Marie (“My Little Slugbuttons”) had cherished the dream of becoming a darling of the paparazzi, a very famous slutty thing. And indeed she had actually possessed the talent and drive to make The Big Time – concerts in the bog stadia, television specials, fundraising events, movie premiers, all manner of red carpet dos and magazine covers (she really was extremely fetching in her pink, Lurex leotard and black patent leather spike-heeled boots). Baby Salmonella Marie was even featured on more than an embarrassing number of occasions on page three of “The Sump”, a bargain basement publication (and most profitable venture of Mrs. Begonias Throttle’s Media Empire), catering to earwigs and other trough-feeders, which credited her with at least two dozen irresistibly lurid scandals each and every hour.

Filthy Lucre rolled in by the barrelful, making The Next Best Slutty Thing an exceptionally rich, young, and altogether drop-dead gorgeous green spotted Reality TV Super Star. Quite naturally, suitors of all shapes and sizes instantly appeared on her doorstep (or at least on a nearby bit of floating bog scum) and arduously plote their troths. Her very notoriety ensured both her irresistibility as a mate (temporary, semi-temporary, or even permanent so long as her current breast implants remained bulgy and succulent), and this steady stream of slavering studdly slugmuffins did everything in their powers (mostly selling their ‘confessions’ to The Sump and its sister publications, The Sore and Scalding) to prove they were detestably worthy of sharing in her good fortune and publicity (and to love her forever, or at least until next Tuesday). The fact that Salmonella Marie smelled like the bottom-dredgings of the bog pond in which she lived made little difference, and she was even more alluring when a noted impresario hired her as second lead singer in his new, manufactured girl group, The Full Knickers. It was a brilliant move, for her celebrity alone ensured a succession of platinum selling singles and millions of illegal downloads.

But then, just as it seemed she was destined for a second (or even third) fifteen minutes of fame, dawned the horrible day when The Full Knickers burst open at the leisure centre in front of a sell out crowd. The lead singer, Mort The Dangle (whom everyone had mistaken for a comely lass named Madonnica) was eaten by an unnamed substance, along with Salmonella Marie’s first cousin once removed, “Bull” (a hefty wench who sang basso profundo) and all of their mates. In one fell swoop, the terrible retribution promised on Miss Havering’s Bog by the disgusting Guppy The Plover was remembered, and although the horrible doings at the leisure centre were unconnected (it was not yet the promised time and Guppy The Plover was nothing if not punctual), the little frog’s confidence was shaken. Better, she thought, to live a long life safe from the glare of publicity. To that end, she immediately sacked her publicist and eighteen bodyguards, and departed the limelight, shortly thereafter to divest herself of the pinkly lurex and spikey booties and don the cabbagy mushroom which would set free her true identity. “At last,” she proclaimed, “I am me!”

Adopting the slogan, “I Am Oinka The Pig” with the assistance of Mrs. LaFarge’s Official Document, Salmonella Marie decided to continue her vocal exercises (in the event she might one day change her mind and desire to be rescued once again from ignominy and be translated unto glory). These vocalisations were to be the centrepiece of each and every day, for she was nothing if not an extreme disciplinarian. “I shall lubricate my uvula at thirty-four minutes past one in the afternoon, and shall never miss a day.” It was then that the otherworldly scales, arpeggios and gargles became an indelible part of the bog’s delirious cacophony. Within a nonce, the denizens grew used to them, ceased complaining about the ear infections they gave them and grew dependent upon the raucous insufferability. “It give us something to live for,” they sang every year on the anniversary of the first vocal stylings. “It has liberated us and made us unconquerable!”

Free We Is, O! Free We Is!
So very very free,
It is The Noise Wot Rots Our Toes
And makes us pee and pee.

There was a time so long ago
When silence gnawed our goiters,
We gnashed our teeth
And screamed and screeched
And sold off all our doiters.

(chorus)

Free We Is, O! Free We Is!
So very very free,
It is The Noise Wot Rots Our Toes
And makes us pee and pee.

The enemy wi’out our walls
They is so very fearsome.
They eats our rice and kills our mice
And sez they’re touchy feely.
But O! Hélas! They owns the land
And butchers us quite freely.

(chorus)

Free We Is, O! Free We Is!
So very very free,
It is The Noise Wot Rots Our Toes
And makes us pee and pee.

A bottom is a wondrous thing,
It does so very much.
You sits on it and makes it blast
If only to annoy.
The evil sisters suck us dry
And pays us not a pence.
But if we aims our butts at them
We’ll blast ‘em through the fence.

(chorus)

Free We Is, O! Free We Is!
So very very free,
It is The Noise Wot Rots Our Toes
And makes us pee and pee.

Miss Oinka Pig is our ideal,
A very pretty lass.
She teaches things we ought to know,
Because she’s got no class.
She’s not afraid, our Oinka girl
To get down in a rumble.
And if the sisters threaten her
She’ll beat them black and gumble.

(chorus)

Free We Is, O! Free We Is!
So very very free,
It is The Noise Wot Rots Our Toes
And makes us pee and pee.
(Oh! Sweet Oinka, how we loves yooooo!)

Like so many bog anthems, it went on for an uncountable number of verses (estimated by those with heads for numbers and extra time on their hands as twelve hundred sixty-two), and was fulsome in its praise and in exalting the virtues of Oinka The Pig. On a good day, when the weather was fine and there was but a slight fluttering breeze to blow away undesirable midges and unfortunate tendencies among the elderly, the song took a full three and a half hours and fifteen minutes to sing properly, providing teatime did not intervene. Given that there were at the very least seventeen obligatory teatimes in Miss Havering’s Bog, each requiring a hasty retreat by all concerned to Begonia Throttle’s Tea Cosy for a refreshing repast, few members of the leisure centre’s ‘Joyful Joyful Oinka Adoramus’ choral interpreters had ever bothered to learn the final hundred or so verses.

Now, however, all was silence. For the first time in her life, Tiny Rumpus Libbedy Spider understood how vacant and frightening a place the bog was without the protective stylings of Oinka The Pig. “Dearest Oinka,” she prayed, “why hast thou forsaken us?” It was a very black day indeed. If only she had been able to bring her lovely mother and siblings to her new home, the situation might have been bearable. As it was, she was on the brink of despair, a precipice not visited since the day she had emerged from the pink and yellow nursery egg, with its frills and lacy decorative features, which she couldn’t remember very well, but to which she had become rather attached. Her situation was exacerbated even further by an extremely irritating humming sound coming from the other side of a neighbouring tufty hillock, a sound interrupted every few seconds by a violent splooging. “If you don’t stop this very instant,” she screamed, “I shall go around the bend!”

The irritating hummmmmm continued, ignoring the Tiny Spiderling completely. Hummmmmm hummmmmm hiccough SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE hummmmmm hummmmmm. At which point, a somewhat ancient and tremulous voice, out of breath and exceedingly cranky, muttered a discordant, “Oh! Bother!”

Copyright 2007 JA Weeks

Chapter Eighteen

Directory of Humor Blogs

The Hundred and One Worries of Tiny Libbedy Spider

One of the great advantages of being a teeny tiny spider (as opposed to having been born, say, an elephant, in which case one would be a somewhat huge creature who could not even find a decent pair of shoes in the high street) was that one was, well, possessed of absolutely perfect, miniscule dimensions. In fact, only red velvet mites were smaller and yet still visible, but they were so very minute they were forced to make their living as hats and fashion accessories for chic lady maggots, and were seen only at weddings and ladies’ days at the races. A teeny tiny person who is a perfect size (such as Rumpus Libbedy Spider) can literally go anywhere she wants, completely unseen if she chooses, and can have a great deal of fun spying on larger, more cumbersome creatures and, in general, getting into all sorts of mischief. On the other hand, being a teeny tiny spider does have its disadvantages as well (albeit only a few). One must be extremely careful when very very small that one is never mistaken for a Miniature Boiled Baby Chicken with Parsley Sauce or a Lesser Roly Poly Pudding. It is also important, if one happens to be a Rumpus Libbedy Spiderling (or something similar), that one remembers to locate one’s mother as soon as possible (never scolding her too severely for getting lost) and above all that one avoids being trod upon by Oinka The Pig.

Fortunately for tiny Libbedy she was nothing if not supremely confident. To her, advantages far outweighed any possible disadvantages (or, as she liked to point out, “has Oinka The Pig ever actually trod upon anyone?”). She was fully aware of the fact that, without really trying and with neither a booklet of instructions nor several architects’ blueprints, she had single-handedly built the most beautiful house the world had ever seen. Furthermore, hadn’t she of her own volition become fully proficient in the arts of semi-edible cookery and spotlessly scalded laundry? Hadn’t she become an expert practitioner in the science of air guitar? And on top of all these accomplishments, was she not (in spite of the quality and quantity of the competition) the cutest and most fetching tiny spiderling in the whole of Miss Havering’s Bog? “I’m cuter than a snooter’s hooter, only with better taste,” she liked to maintain, and no one dared contradict her.

Now, if only she could keep her mind focussed on the task ahead, and that was to bring her mother Olivia and all her brothers and sisters safely to her beautiful new home.

Naturally, the first thing to do was to sit very quietly (not eating anything that crunched or squeaked, such as ice cream or devilled blancmange or anchovy paste wrapped in lettuce) and encourage her senses to instruct her as to everything that was going on around her. The floodwaters from Owld Misther Bucket had pretty much subsided, fortunately without wreaking much if any havoc (and wasn’t it a blessing that so many of the bog’s denizens were so accomplished in such skills as flying at a moment’s notice or swimming faster than the most virulent tidal tide?). A few flower stalks were bendy or broken, but that was only to be expected, and the flowers themselves didn’t really mind. After all, as far as they were concerned they could grow new stalks any hour of the day or night and at a moment’s notice. Stalks were such trivial and useless appendages, worth nothing much at all and certainly not enough to bother about. Besides, it was only the poorer class of plant that sustained the most unsightly and permanent damage; the ‘quality’ could (and did) lift their skirts above their heads and run to higher ground. While such a talent had shown itself to be less than attractive during the most virulent of Atlantic gales, at such times the fashion-police tended to be far too occupied with their own survival to notice (not that they didn’t write about it later in their weekly columns, but nobody who mattered really cared about their opinions).

Looking around, Tiny Rumpus Libbedy Spider thought to herself that the countryside looked neither worse nor better than on an average day. “Anyway,” she whispered to herself, so softly as to not be overheard by even the most curious of dandelions, “who really cares about the flowers? All they do is grow like weeds and trip one up and get in the way.” After which she added, “not you, of course, Miss-Plant-that-became-Misther-House. You are fairly perfect, more or less as faithful and obedient as a pet potted grub (in fact, you are practically an insect), and I shall love you forever.”

While she was looking around and surveying the aftermath of the torrent, Tiny Libbedy Spider was surprised to find that the location of her new house was on high ground, well above the reach of spring floods, yet shielded in such a way by rocks and high clumps of gorse as to be safe from The Wind. That in itself was an enormous relief (especially since Libbedy had not been thinking about such practical matters when building the house), because The Wind was forever on the prowl and loved nothing better than to catch bog denizens’ little homes in its fingers and throw them over the western boundary walls and into the sea.

Libbedy was also pleased that her home was awkward to reach by all but miniscule winged creatures (or acrobats). There were no paths or stairs leading up to it, and since it was located in such a cramped and obscure pinpoint of land, she was fairly certain she would be not be bothered by the nocturnal excavations of shrews or badgers or hedgehogs or the noses of foxes as they snuffled (in that particularly annoying way of theirs) in one’s ear, or by any other largish and inconvenient creatures. Above all, there was the house’s proximity to both the quaking end of the deepest bog hole and to the shiny (and quite monumental) protuberance, supposedly dating from some Neolithic age. Libbedy recalled having read about it in school, and also remembered the uncomfortable and boring field trips, during which her shoes were inevitably ruined and her skin would break out in red splotches from The Bog Faeries’ spittle. How mean those Bog Faeries were, obsessed with their hair (which was green and always falling out) and with keeping all the best views for themselves. Hence, their fury whenever anybody else took picnic hampers (or binoculars) to the protuberances. The stupid creatures could not tell the difference between picnickers (or schoolchildren) and property developers, even though they were well-known for their Academies for Up and Coming Real Estate Agents (“Greed and Avarice is Sweet and Nice, Without Which You Will Stink Like Mice”). “I do wish the wind would blow THEM into the sea for once, instead of us” was a common lament heard over and over at bingo in the community centre and over hot scones and cups of tea at Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s Tea Cosy.

The one thing (or at least one of the things) which had fascinated Tiny Libbedy about the Neolithic Protuberances (Protuberancæ) was the single surviving hieroglyphic, a strangely decorative “H” standing rampant at one end of a monstrous grille and surrounded by a two ferociously predatory griffins. The entire effect was unpleasantly aggressive and looked as decrepit and aged as it was meant to.

After standing and staring at the surrounding countryside and allowing various and sundry thoughts to zig and zag through her brainpan for a considerable time (in reality the best part of the afternoon), Tiny Rumpus Libbedy Spider decided that, in spite of everything, her ears had failed to pick up anything out of the ordinary. No cries for help, no calls from her mother, only the familiar chirps and rustles and buzzes she had taken for granted every day of her life. In fact, she was surrounded by good comfortable, comforting sounds. Nothing was out of place. Everything was the picture of tranquillity.

To be on the safe side (for she had a slightly suspicious nature, typical of her kind) she spent the ensuing hour on the alert, scanning the bog, the surrounding walls, and all the mighty rocks. From what she could see from the top of her little hill, everything appeared quiet. “Just as it should be,” she whispered silently into the breeze, “but never at this time of the afternoon, and never on this side of the bog.” For, in spite of her youth (less than a the age of a common hiccough, if truth be told), Libbedy Spider had travelled a great deal, all the way from the east boundary wall to the west and back again. Not only that but many of her uncles and aunties had at one time or other been scattered by the winds. To put it bluntly, she had family everywhere, and being a socially minded little person she believed it her duty and joy to visit every single member as often as possible. As a consequence, when it came to the ins and outs of Miss Havering’s Bog, no one was more knowledgeable than she. “Everything is just as it should be,” she repeated, “but earlier in the day. At noon and not a minute later. And not here, but in the far eastern reaches, out near the bamboo shoots and carnivorous lilies and the multicoloured bugs who play steel drums and dance the night away.” She idly snatched a floating willow mitelet from the air, where it had been drinking its afternoon cup of cocoa and playing the banjo, and ate it. “The question is,” she mused, “ why?”

“Of course,” she conjectured, amazed at her perceptivity, “it might also be that I, being young and free and beautiful and fabulously talented, have become far too knowing for my own good. If I were given to watching daytime television or reading celebrity magazines or romantic novels, I might also be tempted to surrender myself to a world where, at this time of day, all was restful and serene, with husbands at work, children at school or at play, and housewives enjoying a few minutes of tranquillity in an otherwise hectic day. But,” she snorted, “that is piffle and anyone with a brain bigger than a gnat’s bottom knows it!” What was true was that everything was as it should be in an ordinary bog on an ordinary day. But the thing was, there was nothing ordinary about Miss Havering’s Bog. There never had been, not ever; not even for a minute.

For a start, Miss Havering’s Bog was endowed with an enlightened social fabric and an enlightened educational system. It was peopled by a nice little population and everyone living there had nice little lives. And every afternoon at thirty-four minutes past one o’clock (sharp) the nice little Victorian Gothic Clock Tower in the centre of the nice little market square echoed with the fortissimo song stylings of the infamous Oinka The Pig. The question was, where were these song stylings today? Whether or not one actually believed in the existence of Oinka The Pig (and Tiny Libbedy Spider, who was a loyal friend, refused to speculate on the subject), the fact remained that Oinka had been a fixture in the bog for a very long time. Every day at precisely thirty-four minutes past one in the afternoon. Without fail. And without the daily annoyance of her song stylings (which had to be heard to be believed), Miss Havering’s Bog was in danger of becoming, well, just another bog. And becoming just another ordinary bog was something no denizen wanted, least of all someone as winsome and frolicsome as Tiny Rumpus Libbedy Spider. It simply would not do to become ordinary and boring and tedious. Ordinary and boring and tedious led to expendability, and expendability was (according to the denizens of Miss Havering’s Bog) the first step on the road to mattering so little that you might as well be dead.

All of this worried Libbedy Spider a great deal, for it meant she had a problem on her hands which was much more urgent than finding her beautiful mother and sisters and brothers and bringing them to her new house.

“I’ve got to stop the end of the world before it moves into the bog and claims it for one of its own!” thundered rumpus Libbedy Spider. “I’ve got to find dear, sweet Oinka The Pig (whether or not she exists) and persuade her to sing again!”