'FART FART FART OWF DE AUTOBAN. FART FART FART OWF DE AUTOBAN. FART FART FART OWF.....'
'No, he's not cured yet. Put him back in, and give him an extra knee rug,' I shouted to Geoffrey, through the hole in the wall. I shouted because I was on the settee, with my feet up, picking my nose and reading the letters page of the 'Daily Bugle', and Geoffrey was Outside, by the Ersatz Sweat Lodge, which we'd built by the Old Midden, from a kit we'd bought from Val Nark's eco-health-shop.
'Right-oh.'
'And turn the dial up to 'red'.'
'Okey-doke.'
'And make sure you close the door properly this time. We don't want any heat to leak out, like it did before.' Not to mention his tiresome singing, I thought to myself. But I didn't say it out loud. Which is unusual for me.
'Like it did before, when it was YOUR turn to close it by the way. Anything else?'
'Pick up a barrel of best brandy, three pounds of baccy, some tea-bags and a bag of jellybabies when you're passing the tunnels. Oh, and a pint of milk. Make that two. And a tin of Campbell's meatballs - I feel like having something different for tea. I'm going to curry them.'
Anyway. As you'll have gathered, if you've been following things recently, Tuppence has been suffering from an intractable fever and pickled onion flavr Monster Munch addiction after his stay in gaol; on the advice of Val Nark we built an Ersatz sweat lodge for him to stay in till he's cured.
So far there's been no change in his condition, except that he keeps singing any Kraftwerk song which includes the word FAHRT, phonetically, in a heavy and terrible German accent.
We're not sure how long the cure is supposed to take - there was nothing in the instructions and Val was a bit vague time-scale-wise. 'Just till he's better, for God's sake!" she barked. "Now go away and use your common sense. I WOULD say consult your 'higher selves' using hazel rod divining twigs, but I know you've not got those. Higher selves, that is, not the twigs. The twigs are available to buy in my shop, prices starting from £10.99 per individual twig. You two idiots, with your persistently oafish refusal to address your vile processed meat, alcohol, salty snax and baccy predilections will probably remain on the basest, crudest and most repulsive level for the rest of your unnatural lives. Anyway I've sixty pallets of flapjacks to ship to North America and I need to focus.'
'Level? Level of what?'
'Spiritual development, of course. An ability to commune with your higher selves. Me and Dave do that all the time, of course, what with us being vegan and having an eco-business and living in yurts and all. But you two never, ever will. Be able to, that is. Now sod off and let me get on.'
Oh dear. Higher selves though? I was intrigued...
'Just get me the Monster Munches and I'll be right as rain,' a thin voice wailed as Geoffrey secured the flaps and thumped the pegs into the ground with a mallet. 'I'm bored in here. I know it's meant to be hot and dark and sweaty and it's all for my own good but I'm fed up now - please let me out. And if you don't let me out, rest assured that I'll wreak a horrible revenge...you know I will....'
Next time....Tuppence finally gets out of the sweat lodge, and Geoffrey and I run away from him and his wrath, on the pretext of setting off to find our higher selves.....
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