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Peveral Murkin, Ermentrude Pinkley and Daff Maud Bunkum Remember What They’re About
Peveral Murkin and Ermentrude Pinkley and daff Maud Bunkum had by now got terrible terrible fat, inflating (for all practical purposes) and bloating (rather like garden slugs after they have been feasting all night on unmentionable lumpy bumpies in your favourite pony’s paddock) until they exceeded the dimensions of jam jars. They had grown this preposterously enormous from eating their way through the entire contents of Begonia Throttle’s excellent establishment, starting with the food and then systematically devouring the pantry (including the nasty bottom shelf), followed by (in descending order) tables and chairs and best bone china and (finally) silverware, before sprinkling salt and pepper on the doormat and dividing it equally amongst themselves. It was after enjoying the final morsels of the latter and washing them down with a Jeroboam of sweet elderberry tea, washing up liquid and a basin of ginger beer, that they quite lost track of their feet.
“Weren’t we supposed to be doing something this afternoon?” groaned one of the three to the others.
“Quite probably,” came the reply, “our lives are, after all, full of purpose and good works.”
“But can you remember what it was?” demanded the first (they were so very fat by now they couldn’t tell each other apart).
“Not in the least,” said one of the others.
“Even if we could,” interjected the one slightly larger than the others, “what difference would it make? If one takes in the bigger picture, would history even notice our epic task, or would it be simply be yet another unobserved and forgotten moment in a sea of missed opportunities?”
“That is hardly something for us to concern ourselves about,” interrupted the slightly shorter one, “being neither philosophers nor historians.”
“In any case,” interjected the other one, in a voice redolent of hopelessness and postmodernism, “haven’t we more immediate concerns?”
“Such as…?” one of the others (the impatient one with the bigger ears) demanded to know.
“Never mind all that,” interrupted the one with the most reasonable voice, “why don’t we simply return post haste to the lending library. Once there, if we sit in exactly the same comfortable chairs and do exactly the same things as we were doing before…”
“Weren’t we mostly sleeping?” interjected whichever one it was who had eaten slightly less than the others and, therefore, was already contemplating the dinner menu.
“Never mind about that,” squeaked the impatient one. “For your information and speaking personally, I most definitely was NOT sleeping, and I resent the innuendo. I happened to be on the verge of solving a highly complex mathematical equation)…”
“And I,” boomed the other, “was practicing a violin concerto.”
“You were doing no such thing,” screeched the one with the ear trumpet and the pet mite on a lead. “You wouldn’t know a violin from a mud puddle.”
“But if I did know, I would play it very well indeed. In fact, I am quite certain that both Mozart and Paganini composed their most dramatic concerti especially for me.”
This discussion was followed by a moment of silence, several extremely heavy sighs and (on the part of two of them) great honkings as various noses were blown into monogrammed paisley silk handkerchiefs (presented to them by an aged aunt to commemorate a long-forgotten battle in which her great great uncle had ignominiously met his end).
“My dear friends,” said the most sensible one in a very quiet voice, after a long pause, “aren’t we forgetting ourselves? We were speaking, were we not, about returning to the lending library and, once there, retracing our thoughts and activities of this morning.”
“And pray tell,” snapped the impatient one, “how, seeing as our feet have quite disappeared, are we supposed to get there?”
It was at that moment that Mrs. Begonia Throttle waddled out from behind her counter (looking very much like a duck, only much, much smaller and blacker; in fact, had it not been for her lively personality and feather beret, she might have been mistaken for a dung beetle). She proceeded to clear such tables as remained, a task she accomplished by blowing very hard until all the plates and cups and saucers and leftover cakes flew off in all directions. Each table then commenced to shake itself vigorously and bark loudly for several hours (or until Mrs. Begonia Throttle succeeded in whacking it sharply fifty times with yesterday’s newspaper). Then and only then did the tables calm down, after which they braced themselves in a most dignified manner for the ceremonial draping of their fresh table cloths. Miss Throttle, it must be said, has always been widely praised for the quality of her faux hand-embroidered linen, whose abilities included flying through the air (as might jellyfish, had they been made of onion skin), and then floating down again, all clean and pressed and fluffy. Of course, being Irish Linen, their progress would be accompanied by much bickering, backstabbing, going to funerals and set dancing, but eventually they would arrange themselves (in a dainty fashion) onto the table of their own choosing (and they were, indeed, extremely choosy indeed). The Selection of The Tables (as it was known) took several hours, or even days, as the individual cloths were known to take umbrage if the very best tables were occupied or otherwise engaged. Violent fights were common and would break out between tablecloths and the police would have to be sent for. For this reason, the tables were normally cleared and re-set in the middle of the night, long after the denizens of the bog were asleep in their beds and out of harm’s way. Not only was it less upsetting to customers, but since Mrs. Begonia Throttle was scrupulous about putting out the lamps the instant the sun went to bed (so as not too keep him awake), the café would be darker than the inside of a cow. Without the benefit of light, the tablecloths could no longer tell which table was which, and would have to settle for whatever they could find. It was, of course, highly unsatisfactory as far as they were concerned, but since they themselves had no matches with which to relight the lamps, there was little they could do (save for complaining at the top of their voices, which they did until it was dawn and they fell asleep).
It goes without saying that the linen was compensated in various ways during the daylight hours when the café was open. Many of Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s most loyal customers were either very very old or very very young. In either case, they tended to drool, spill or otherwise splash their tea and treacle about with great vigour (or, conversely, forgetfulness), which meant that the tablecloths were fed a diet of tea and biscuits and soup and bread and little cakes and marzipan more or less continuously from dawn ‘til dusk. It was indeed a saving grace as far as the linen was concerned, and the only reason the cloths never ran away.
But back to our tender narrative. After Peveral Murkin and Ermentrude Pinkley and daff Maud Bunkum had spent a good three hours trying to fit through the door and were in the process of eating one of the window frames, Mrs. Throttle (still unattached, as she had been since the spring of her youth, when she had mistaken her one and only true love for a tasty grub - which, in fact, he was, only it had not occurred to his betrothed how very tasty he was until the first night of the honeymoon), put down her magazine and yelled “’Ere”, in her best tea lady voice. “Make up your mind if you’re coming or going. I’ve got new cakes wot wants to be eaten, and if you’re standing in the door, customers can’t come in and oblige. And while we’re on about it, I’ve got better things to do than serving the likes of you.”
“As a matter of fact,” snapped Ermentrude Pinkley (who had grown a great deal smaller and, as a result, could see who she was), “you don’t.”
Mrs. Begonia Throttle stopped scuttling about and, nesting her chins on several of her forelegs, fell into a deep cogitation. When this proved insufficient, she tilted her head on to one side (much like a cat who had spied the cream) and beamed up at Peveral Murkin (who was a great deal taller than she, or, for that matter, than everyone else by a good length and a half). “As long as that’s settled,” she twittered, all honey and chocolate Hobnobs, may I get you anything else?”
“Yes, you may,” barked daff Maud Bunkum in her itty bitty voice, adding somewhat doubtfully, “I would like another pot of tea and a plate of salted sprats and three toads in a hole.”
“I don’t think much of that,” commented Peveral Murkin and Begonia Throttle, more or less simultaneously, ‘and neither will Professor Toad and his Missus.”
“Well,” conceded Daff Maud Bunkum, already confident that she had lost the argument, “they do have ever so many children (of all shapes and sizes), and it’s not as if they will miss the odd one or three. I dare say they are forever running away and getting into trouble, so we’re probably doing them a favour by taking the most obstreperous ones off their hands!”
Peveral Murkin suddenly sat up very straight, banging his head against the ceiling and putting a large dent in it. “It was about the sisters!” he announced triumphantly. “That was why we went to the lending library! To look up the sisters!”
Ermentrude Pinkley was about to issue a brisk denial, and had started to say, “I do not care how evil they are, I will not be a party to looking up their skirts,” when she was distracted by a rather large tray of bilberry tea cakes which had escaped from an unsympathetic hostess trolley (the one with the squeaky wheel), and was now flying round and round her head like a bowl of peas.
Peveral Murkin and Ermentrude Pinkley and daff Maud Bunkum had by now got terrible terrible fat, inflating (for all practical purposes) and bloating (rather like garden slugs after they have been feasting all night on unmentionable lumpy bumpies in your favourite pony’s paddock) until they exceeded the dimensions of jam jars. They had grown this preposterously enormous from eating their way through the entire contents of Begonia Throttle’s excellent establishment, starting with the food and then systematically devouring the pantry (including the nasty bottom shelf), followed by (in descending order) tables and chairs and best bone china and (finally) silverware, before sprinkling salt and pepper on the doormat and dividing it equally amongst themselves. It was after enjoying the final morsels of the latter and washing them down with a Jeroboam of sweet elderberry tea, washing up liquid and a basin of ginger beer, that they quite lost track of their feet.
“Weren’t we supposed to be doing something this afternoon?” groaned one of the three to the others.
“Quite probably,” came the reply, “our lives are, after all, full of purpose and good works.”
“But can you remember what it was?” demanded the first (they were so very fat by now they couldn’t tell each other apart).
“Not in the least,” said one of the others.
“Even if we could,” interjected the one slightly larger than the others, “what difference would it make? If one takes in the bigger picture, would history even notice our epic task, or would it be simply be yet another unobserved and forgotten moment in a sea of missed opportunities?”
“That is hardly something for us to concern ourselves about,” interrupted the slightly shorter one, “being neither philosophers nor historians.”
“In any case,” interjected the other one, in a voice redolent of hopelessness and postmodernism, “haven’t we more immediate concerns?”
“Such as…?” one of the others (the impatient one with the bigger ears) demanded to know.
“Never mind all that,” interrupted the one with the most reasonable voice, “why don’t we simply return post haste to the lending library. Once there, if we sit in exactly the same comfortable chairs and do exactly the same things as we were doing before…”
“Weren’t we mostly sleeping?” interjected whichever one it was who had eaten slightly less than the others and, therefore, was already contemplating the dinner menu.
“Never mind about that,” squeaked the impatient one. “For your information and speaking personally, I most definitely was NOT sleeping, and I resent the innuendo. I happened to be on the verge of solving a highly complex mathematical equation)…”
“And I,” boomed the other, “was practicing a violin concerto.”
“You were doing no such thing,” screeched the one with the ear trumpet and the pet mite on a lead. “You wouldn’t know a violin from a mud puddle.”
“But if I did know, I would play it very well indeed. In fact, I am quite certain that both Mozart and Paganini composed their most dramatic concerti especially for me.”
This discussion was followed by a moment of silence, several extremely heavy sighs and (on the part of two of them) great honkings as various noses were blown into monogrammed paisley silk handkerchiefs (presented to them by an aged aunt to commemorate a long-forgotten battle in which her great great uncle had ignominiously met his end).
“My dear friends,” said the most sensible one in a very quiet voice, after a long pause, “aren’t we forgetting ourselves? We were speaking, were we not, about returning to the lending library and, once there, retracing our thoughts and activities of this morning.”
“And pray tell,” snapped the impatient one, “how, seeing as our feet have quite disappeared, are we supposed to get there?”
It was at that moment that Mrs. Begonia Throttle waddled out from behind her counter (looking very much like a duck, only much, much smaller and blacker; in fact, had it not been for her lively personality and feather beret, she might have been mistaken for a dung beetle). She proceeded to clear such tables as remained, a task she accomplished by blowing very hard until all the plates and cups and saucers and leftover cakes flew off in all directions. Each table then commenced to shake itself vigorously and bark loudly for several hours (or until Mrs. Begonia Throttle succeeded in whacking it sharply fifty times with yesterday’s newspaper). Then and only then did the tables calm down, after which they braced themselves in a most dignified manner for the ceremonial draping of their fresh table cloths. Miss Throttle, it must be said, has always been widely praised for the quality of her faux hand-embroidered linen, whose abilities included flying through the air (as might jellyfish, had they been made of onion skin), and then floating down again, all clean and pressed and fluffy. Of course, being Irish Linen, their progress would be accompanied by much bickering, backstabbing, going to funerals and set dancing, but eventually they would arrange themselves (in a dainty fashion) onto the table of their own choosing (and they were, indeed, extremely choosy indeed). The Selection of The Tables (as it was known) took several hours, or even days, as the individual cloths were known to take umbrage if the very best tables were occupied or otherwise engaged. Violent fights were common and would break out between tablecloths and the police would have to be sent for. For this reason, the tables were normally cleared and re-set in the middle of the night, long after the denizens of the bog were asleep in their beds and out of harm’s way. Not only was it less upsetting to customers, but since Mrs. Begonia Throttle was scrupulous about putting out the lamps the instant the sun went to bed (so as not too keep him awake), the café would be darker than the inside of a cow. Without the benefit of light, the tablecloths could no longer tell which table was which, and would have to settle for whatever they could find. It was, of course, highly unsatisfactory as far as they were concerned, but since they themselves had no matches with which to relight the lamps, there was little they could do (save for complaining at the top of their voices, which they did until it was dawn and they fell asleep).
It goes without saying that the linen was compensated in various ways during the daylight hours when the café was open. Many of Mrs. Begonia Throttle’s most loyal customers were either very very old or very very young. In either case, they tended to drool, spill or otherwise splash their tea and treacle about with great vigour (or, conversely, forgetfulness), which meant that the tablecloths were fed a diet of tea and biscuits and soup and bread and little cakes and marzipan more or less continuously from dawn ‘til dusk. It was indeed a saving grace as far as the linen was concerned, and the only reason the cloths never ran away.
But back to our tender narrative. After Peveral Murkin and Ermentrude Pinkley and daff Maud Bunkum had spent a good three hours trying to fit through the door and were in the process of eating one of the window frames, Mrs. Throttle (still unattached, as she had been since the spring of her youth, when she had mistaken her one and only true love for a tasty grub - which, in fact, he was, only it had not occurred to his betrothed how very tasty he was until the first night of the honeymoon), put down her magazine and yelled “’Ere”, in her best tea lady voice. “Make up your mind if you’re coming or going. I’ve got new cakes wot wants to be eaten, and if you’re standing in the door, customers can’t come in and oblige. And while we’re on about it, I’ve got better things to do than serving the likes of you.”
“As a matter of fact,” snapped Ermentrude Pinkley (who had grown a great deal smaller and, as a result, could see who she was), “you don’t.”
Mrs. Begonia Throttle stopped scuttling about and, nesting her chins on several of her forelegs, fell into a deep cogitation. When this proved insufficient, she tilted her head on to one side (much like a cat who had spied the cream) and beamed up at Peveral Murkin (who was a great deal taller than she, or, for that matter, than everyone else by a good length and a half). “As long as that’s settled,” she twittered, all honey and chocolate Hobnobs, may I get you anything else?”
“Yes, you may,” barked daff Maud Bunkum in her itty bitty voice, adding somewhat doubtfully, “I would like another pot of tea and a plate of salted sprats and three toads in a hole.”
“I don’t think much of that,” commented Peveral Murkin and Begonia Throttle, more or less simultaneously, ‘and neither will Professor Toad and his Missus.”
“Well,” conceded Daff Maud Bunkum, already confident that she had lost the argument, “they do have ever so many children (of all shapes and sizes), and it’s not as if they will miss the odd one or three. I dare say they are forever running away and getting into trouble, so we’re probably doing them a favour by taking the most obstreperous ones off their hands!”
Peveral Murkin suddenly sat up very straight, banging his head against the ceiling and putting a large dent in it. “It was about the sisters!” he announced triumphantly. “That was why we went to the lending library! To look up the sisters!”
Ermentrude Pinkley was about to issue a brisk denial, and had started to say, “I do not care how evil they are, I will not be a party to looking up their skirts,” when she was distracted by a rather large tray of bilberry tea cakes which had escaped from an unsympathetic hostess trolley (the one with the squeaky wheel), and was now flying round and round her head like a bowl of peas.
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