Well! Guess who turned up at Stormy's funeral? Stormy! yes, he wandered in half-way through the cage fighter's dismal reading of Stop All the Clocks, and asked whose funeral it was.
'Yours,' I said. 'Oh wait...'
Turns out the bones that were found inside the wicker man *weren't his after all*. SO WHOSE ARE THEY?
The problem is, we don't have 'police' or 'coroners' or 'procurators fiscal' hereabouts. No. We attend to everything ourselves. If you recall (and if you don't, it doesn't much matter), we solve many of our local difficulties by simply chucking them 'over the top', i.e. off the cliffs and on to the jagged rocks and boiling seas below. Where often-times (excuse the egregious use of 'often-times') there can be found a hungry Orca, with jaws a-gape, bored out of its mind, and only too pleased to snap up a juicy morsel. We also hold an annual vote to decide who is the year's 'most unpopular' person, and whoever it is gets dead-legged on a midnight clifftop ramble, and hey presto! it's a happier, simpler world hereabouts.
'But you were seen climbing up the wicker man,' said the T-G.
'Maybe I was, T-G. But I climbed back down again. It wasn't that hard. I roped myself up and everything, I'm not TOTALLY thick. I went up to have a look for the clipper that was due to sail past on its way from Portugal to Massachusetts with a holdful of best Madeira. I thought I'd get a better view from the head, and so I did. I waved my storm lantern and guided it nicely on to the reef, where it foundered perfectly. Since then me and the rats have been shifting the Madeira from the clipper to the Tunnels. We could've done with a hand by the way.'
'We thought you were a goner Stormy. We thought we'd never sup another pint of Purple Peril again,' said Geoffrey.
'And I thought I'd never get another gig again,' said Tuppence. 'When are you opening up?'
'I've got the social distancing worked out and I've extended the bar area outside by rigging up a few yards of tarpaulin. We should be on for Friday night, given a following wind. I've got ten gallon drums of hand sanitiser and - '
'Never mind all that!' snapped the T-G. 'What about the crew of the foundered clipper? I take it you didn't allow them to drown?'
'And what about us?' growled Stormy's relatives. 'We ain't turned up here for nuffink. We thort there'd at least be a funeral tea with 'am sandwiches and a bottle or two of stout. Plus the reading of the Will of course, leading to us probably inheriting the Puff Inn and selling it on to a property developer and then going on a fancy holiday with the proceeds and being set for life. Not that we were expecting anything or had thought it all through on the way here or that. We're just saying.'
Next time - everyone goes to a socially-distanced 'welcome back' night at the Puff Inn. Including Stormy's relatives and the crew from the foundered clipper. Tuppence powers up the Moog and does a selection of E.L.P. classics before someone cuts the electric cable and causes a power outage. There is a massive fight in the darkness caused by a shortage of cheese and onion crisps and general over-ingestion of alcoholic comestibles. Nobody knows who is hitting who and nobody much cares. Meanwhile, the unidentified pile of burnt bones still lie in what was supposed to be Stormy's coffin...
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