Geoffrey had returned from being away. 'Away' was an illicit visit to his elderly cousins-twice- removed, who are 'self-isolating' in their second home on a rock somewhere off the St Kilda archipelago and needed some groceries dropping off.
'Sorry I didn't tell you where I was going Tuppy, but I thought best you didn't know cos you'd only have blabbed to snitches like the Fulmars or someone and I'd have been reported to the authorities.'
He was sitting on the mantelpiece eating a four-fish-finger sandwich (his third since his return). I was so glad to see him I'd even made the sandwiches myself.
'Sandwich all right Geoffrey?'
'Reem thanks,' he said through a belch, wiping tartare sauce from his chin with the large red-spotted handkerchief he'd used to carry the groceries. 'Nobody's ever ready to die. You just have to get on with it when it happens. There's not a lot else one can do, short of finding the elixir - ,' he belched again, 'Pardon me, the elixir of eternal life.'
'Remember how we used to worry about smoking Black Bogey and eating too many biscuits and fatty foods? We thought we were living on the edge if we had a bacon sandwich. Halcyon days Geoffrey. Now look at us. Scared to leave our own four walls.'
'I believe Val Nark's offering free online 'Meditations on Mortality' in podcast form. I saw a notice nailed to the gate-post by the post-box as I flew in, and I asked Razor Bill about it when he arrived to collect the mail.'
'Free? That's not like the Narks. They're always such money-grabbers.'
'Entrepreneurs Tuppy. Up and coming go-getters. Trying to get by during straitened times. But on this occasion what they're offering is free, or, free at the point of delivery as Val puts it. She does the podcast from the healing yurt with all her products carefully price-labelled and arranged in full view. Her own-made artisan pine-scented earwax candles, antiseptic creams, herbal cough linctus, masks woven from nettle fibres and so forth. And there are adverts for eco-funerals at intervals during the sesh.'
'That's nice. What part does Dave play in all this?'
'He sets up the camera of course. You know how he does his wildlife vids.. I reckon not many people watch anyway. Nobody really wants to meditate on their own mortality. They'd rather take their minds off it by getting blind drunk, or binge-eating Hobnobs while watching The Chase. Mind you that's much the same thing.'
'So here we are, dancing our merry way along life's razor edge, as usual. How are we going to get through this one Geoffrey? Must we return to the Old Ways, and fetch the opium from the medical chest?'
'No Tuppy. I think we must indeed return to the Old Ways, but by that I mean the Old Religion rather than opium. We need to find the key to eternal life Tuppy. If there isn't an elixir (and I'm not saying there's not) then there must be a key. And if anyone can find it, it's us!'
next time - we set out to find the key to eternal life, and Tuppence and his band release a charity single produced by Gob Beldof .
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