Join Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson as they investigate the strange affair of the Dartymuir Dog…

The cab skittered and rattled over the uneven streets canting at crazy angles as it cornered with injudicious speed. Bearson grasped the cissy strap and hung on for dear life, while the smaller, lighter Homes was thrown about the vehicle like thistledown in the wind. 

Arriving at the station with time to spare, Homes paid off the cabbie while Bearson dashed to the ticket office. By the time the somewhat corpulent bear arrived puffing at the platform, Homes awaited with his pocket watch in one trotter and a large bag emblazoned with the logo of Mrs Miggs’ excellent meat pie emporium in the other. Mrs Miggs’ pies are undoubtedly the best in the city – even if it is unwise in the extreme to enquire what ‘meat’ precisely one is ingesting. 

Espying the hurrying Bearson, Homes strode forward.

“How fared you old chap?”

“Excellent well Homes. I have procured for us a first class compartment until Dumpshire City, where we have to change to a small local line for the last ten miles. On that train I could only procure tickets for a first class carriage.”

Homes clapped Bearson on the shoulder. “Excellent fellow. And now, if my ears do not deceive me, our train approaches….”

Of course his ears did not deceive him and the Pride of the Westcountry huffed into view with her smoke stack belching out a black miasma as her iron wheels clattered on the track. She braked to the beginnings of an ungainly halt and gave vent to an ear-splitting whistle. 

Bearson watched the carriage numbers as the train slowed to a screeching, rumbling stop. 

“We are coach C. Compartment 26. I wonder how far we shall have to walk.”

“Not far Bearson, old chap.” Homes was reassuring – for a reason as it turned out, as the final resting place of the smoke-belching monster put the door to compartment C26 right beside them.

Bearson smiled a wry and reluctant smile. “How do you do that, Homes? Even without knowing what carriage we are to board, you always manage to be standing in precisely the correct place on the platform.”

Homes climbed onto the step and used the weight of his small body to swing open the carriage door. As he disappeared into the compartment he threw a comment over his shoulder.

“Elementary my dear Bearson.”

Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson will continue their investigation into The Affair of the Dartymuir Dog next week…

Jane Jago

Prunella teaches you how to cook like a toff!

You know a bad day is about to get worse when you are in the kitchen quietly chugging the cooking brandy and the Hon. Rodney invades your space with a fatuous smile running down his pinkly chubby chops. He looks at you with the Fundador in your fist and his smile fades, leaving behind only the vague mulishness of a public school boy with a secret. You attempt a smile and he perks up instantly.
“I say, old girl, I’ve bought one of those outdoor kitchen thingies. Thought it was about time yrs truly helped out with the old commissariat.”
This is the point where your heart attempts to drop out of your bottom, and a headache beyond even the power of brandy from the bottle leaps into action behind your eyes. But there is worse to come. Because the urge to burn food in the garden is not to be denied. Sadly, this is not the time to for the normally effective spousal veto, and nor will it avail you to offer to meet him halfway. He will have spent what amounts to the national debt of a small Slav republic on a metal monstrosity, and he Will use it – say what you will.
My advice is to get out a couple of heavy-bottomed tumblers and propose a toast in his best single malt. He’ll be so relieved that you are being ‘sensible’ that he won’t even grumble about you glugging back about a hundred quid’s worth of whisky in one swallow.
When the awful thing arrives, and is installed (almost inevitably by a bunch of young men with man buns and body ink and names like Bullfinch and Labrador) your deluded spouse will immediately decide to throw a party. No amount of reasoned argument will persuade him to have a practice run first. And nor will he even consider reading the instruction book (which runs to 3000 pages of very fine type badly printed).
At this point you have two courses of action open to you.
Plan A. Leave the stupid overgrown adolescent to sink in his own ordure.
Plan B. Make your own stratagem to save his face.
I, personally, lean towards the second. Having an indebted spouse is infinitely more satisfying (ultimately) than the short pleasure of watching him sink in a midden (even if it is of his own making) until the sewage closes over his prematurely balding cranium.
And what is plan B?
It’s pretty simple. Obtain, without grumble, whatever meat your deluded spouse proposes cremating and also offer to be responsible for such irrelevances as bread and salads. He will be thrilled with his wonderful wife, so much so that daily depredations to his whisky will be overlooked smilingly.
But now the crafty bit. Also purchase suitable numbers of boned chicken thighs and some bags of those skinny chips our colonial cousins call fries. Set the chicken to marinade in olive oil, garlic, herbs, and cooking brandy. When the Hon. Rodney throws the first offerings to the gods of ineptitude onto the hot coals, slide trays of chicken into the oven (after liberally daubing with someone or other’s proprietary barbecue sauce). When the flames in the ‘outdoor kitchen’ are at their highest throw the chips into the deep fryer.
They should be about ready when your red-faced and embarrassed spouse appears in the kitchen. In desperate straits.
Pat him kindly and bring out the chicken.
Help him to carry chicken and chips to the buffet table. Then help yourself to a very large whisky….

Look out for more tips on how to cook like a toff next week!

Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…

***** ***** *****

Jane Jago

In an effort to educate the nominally literate and inform those with sufficient humility to understand their own lack of comprehension, Esme offers the correct definition of misunderstood words…

Pronunciation 

1. (noun – pronunciation note: prone nun station) Narrow bed in convent. Example: the pronunciations were hard and lumpy and provided only with threadbare blankets.

2. (noun – pronunciation note: pro nuncio shun) Faction extremely favourable towards the representatives of papal authority and equally unfavourable to anyone disagreeing with their beliefs. Example: it would have gone hard with Father Esau had not a large band of pronunciations rushed to his rescue armed with cudgels and biblical insults. 

If you have any words whose meaning escapes you, Esme Crockford is always happy to share her lexicographical knowledge and penetrating insight into the English language.

Telling an entire story in just one hundred words…

Alejandro had lived all his life in north west Columbia, so when he arrived at a top British university, as well as being incredibly proud and excited he also had some trepidation about making the move.
In the event, he settled in, made friends, did well on his course and became a very successful student.

But at the end of his first year he told his tutors he wouldn’t be coming back.

“It’s seasons,” he explained. “Back home we have the same temperatures all year around. I just can’t get used to it changing so much. Does my head in.”

E.M. Swift-Hook

Ponies and Progeny or the graceless art of equine management as envisaged by the pen of Jane Jago and inspired by the genius of Norman Thelwell (1923-2004)

Today we consider the art of winning an argument with your mount…

***** ***** *****

May Day and the maypole is erected on the green
And all the local school kids will dance and eat ice-cream
They wind the ribbons clockwise, then dance them widdershins
Plaiting and unplaiting as the dancers skip and spin

The grownups take their pictures or maybe video
And drink warm ale outside the pub until its time to go
And maybe there’s an ‘obby ‘oss or maybe a green man
Or maybe morris dancers shake for pennies in their can

But no one goes a-Maying in the wild woods anymore
And no one brings home white-thorn to hang above the door
And girls no longer go by night yearning to be misled
To find a man to marry them, to try before they wed

“Here we come gathering nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May.
Here we come gathering nuts in May,
So early in the morning…”

E.M. Swift-Hook

Join Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson as they investigate the strange affair of the Dartymuir Dog…

‘Mister Homes. Please come quickly. There’s murder afoot on Dartymuir. Signed Inspector E. E. Yore.’

Bearson had to admit the words meant little to him, but he was satisfied by the change in his best little chum from amoral turpitude to intellectual rigour. 

Homes showed his teeth in a feral grin.

“You’d be more interested if you read the Thunderer instead of your dreadful publication full of bones and innards.”

He passed Bearson a copy of the newspaper which he had folded to display a headline and and a short article about a series of strange happenings in the wilds of Dartymuir. The headline read ‘Dogged by the Dartymuir Dog’. According to the somewhat sensationalised account, one of the oldest families in the shire was being persecuted to the extent that its scions lived in fear of their lives. That, combined with the Inspector’s telegraph message, certainly seemed enough to pique the interest of the formerly torpid pig.

“Are we off to Dartymuir, Homes?”

“Oh yes. I think so. Consult your Bradshaw’s for train times and have Mrs Cangar pack some hunny sandwiches. I don’t think we will be home for tea.”

Bearson ascertained train times. “There is a fast train leaving at three thirty, but we will scarcely make that one. Or a stopper which departs at five.”

Homes nodded, and Bearson went off to negotiate with their formidable housekeeper. When he returned, coated and booted, Homes was busily ferreting in an old steamer trunk beside the bay window.

“Aha,” he exclaimed, “got you you little blackguard.”

He emerged triumphantly with a large brass whistle on a lanyard, which he hung about his neck.

“Are you not ready yet Bearson old chap?”

“Very nearly Homes.”

“Good man. Do not by any means neglect to bring your service revolver with you.”

Bearson tapped the pocket of his Ulster. “It’s right here, old thing.”

A knock on the door heralded the arrival of their cab.

As they claimed aboard, Homes passed the driver a shilling. “There’s half a crown in it for you if we make the three-thirty train to Dumplingshire.”

The jarvey whipped up his pony and they were off.

Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson will continue their investigation into The Affair of the Dartymuir Dog next week…

Jane Jago

I was biting my time as dust fell
And my bloody dire rear it was hell
I had swallowed some dollop 
Which I hope picked a wallop
But waiting was making me smell
Alongside me was my escape goat
A man who grasps time by the stoat
He has wobbly knees
And old-timer’s disease
And his hearbuds are down by his throat
As I wrote this verse I could have sworn 
That you wouldn’t find any eggcorns
But it’s quite up to you
If you see one or two
Said the maiden alone and full on

Jane Jago

Why all the fuss about the first day of May? 

It’s the 122nd day of 366, and is steeped in the history of labour relations. But of course, that doesn’t interest you lot a bit, now does it?

Oh no, you airheads want the ‘Obby ‘Oss, the Morris Dancers, children whose mothers have confiscated their phones clomping gracelessly around the Maypole, some prim child all tricked out as The May Queen, and strange songs with incomprehensible lyrics, and so on. You really do worry me…

Before you abuse me as a miserable old bag with no sense of tradition, perhaps you might consider taking a closer look at the May Day traditions that charm you so.

The ‘Obby ‘Oss is probably a leftover from the Beltane Sacrifices of pre Christian faiths, thus symbolising the poor animal (or human) being led to the slaughter.

Morris Dancing, whatever its weird origins, is a generally harmless excuse for men to go from pub to pub in the hope of free beer. Though I would dispute any suggestion it’s entertainment.

The Maypole Dance, on the other side of the coin, is a fertility ritual – do I really need to tell you what the Maypole represents? – and, as such, extremely unsuitable for children. 

Ditto the May Queen who is either a fertility symbol or maybe the one chosen to be shagged by the lecherous old bloke representative of the fertility god or, even more worryingly, The Maiden who would be sacrificed to ensure a good harvest. (Think on all this very carefully before you engage in a fistfight with twenty other yummy mummies in order that little Susquehanna can wear the diadem.)

Need I continue?

In conclusion, get your heads out of whatever orifices you currently have them in and think about International Labour Day. Think about how much all you miserable bloody so and so’s owe to the trade union movement instead of knocking it for just one day.

Now buzz off. You are making my brandy curdle.

*throws dog ends and dried cow turds at departing readership*