Sunday 30 September 2012

Secret Service: EPISODE 75

10 Forsythia Grove
Outer Hamlet
CORSETTSHIRE  ZY4 6GT
 
My Dear Ralph
I notice you are off the scene again pet?  I wonder what kind of derring-do you are engaged in this time?  It certainly makes me feel nostalgic for my former days of intrigue in our embassy in Moscow!  In fact, I am so used to masquerading as one type of person while, in reality, being a sort of character amalgam, that I may have taken my rather eccentric auntie persona to somewhat of an extreme - even in the present day.  But it has been useful dear, during the Cold War, to be under-estimated - particularly when one has had one's eye on papers littering another's desk or, indeed, their waste memo baskets! 
In the course of my search for something useful to do during the day - not to mention my ongoing quest for someone to marry - I came across the Corsettshire Recycling Company.  This encampment is located on the edge of the woods in further Niblet, some 10km distant.  It was quite difficult to find at first pet, as one has to motor up a muddy track following only an occasional hand-painted sign.  However, once I arrived in the timber yard, I was made most welcome by one or two Beatnik-style characters and I have agreed to sign up for one morning a week.  I do think though pet, that their office is in need of somewhat of a revamp.  I found it hard to decipher the volunteer application form as it was partially obliterated by mud and fingerprints.  And my enquiries about Health and Safety were met by a scruffy-looking envelope being thrust into my hands, the contents of which seemed mostly concerned with the provision of day care facilities in the adjacent village.  I did mention this dear, and was told I had to look on the other side of all the pages - excess paper consumption naturally being of great relevance to this organization.  I did study the pages on the reverse of the child care resume and someone had certainly been most thorough in their listing of the injuries that could befall one in the Corsettshire Recycling Company!  There were so many horrible possibilities that the chance of thinking of them all, resembles that of trying to remember the hundreds of potential prizes passing one on a conveyor belt during one of those memory competitions on the television set!  The potential hazards I remember, include: embedding a nail (rusty) in the sole of one's foot; being run over by a large lorry; being mashed against a wall by a fork-lift truck; falling into the compost toilet; slicing off a finger while using a cutting tool; injuring one's back lifting some heavy piece of timber; having racks of said timber fall on you, and being consumed in a conflagration involving both the timber and the timber-framed warehouse used for storage.  This is by no means an exhaustive list!
However, not wanting to appear ungrateful of my warm welcome and refreshing cup of tea, I duly signed on the dotted line and was led off to the pallet dismantling section.  I don't know dear.   There must surely be a better way of dismantling these items, other than levering them apart with a crowbar?  Is it really impossible to use an electromagnet?  I must admit I was totally hopeless at working out the best ergonomic method for removing a rusty nail from a plank.  I think there may have been a certain amount of sniggering emanating from my more muscular workmate as he took in my struggles with a claw hammer!  I did, eventually, manage to visualize the right way to use this implement and proudly deposited any number of long, bent, nails into a plastic bucket.  Another tricky moment arrived in the form of a request to carry these 8-metre-long pieces of plank into the warehouse.  And I must admit, dear, that my strengths do really lie in the carriage and use of much smaller, metal,
pieces of hardware.  However, I finally decided that the best method of attack was to lift up one end of a plank and walk my shoulder along it until the point of balance was reached -and then totter off towards the appropriate entrance.  Now, I may have mentioned this before,  but the wearing of high heels and a short skirt are all very well for the purposes of seduction, but all wrong for prising off nails and carrying wood over rough terrain!  I think someone in the yard did mention this, but I am so attached to my apparel that I think I may have said that I'd mistakenly left my steel-capped boots back at Forsythia Grove.  And, in any case, I said I was far better balanced in my normal attire than in any boring brown get-up with flat heels!  I do think I may not have been correct in this assumption pet because, during the course of becoming mired in a pothole, the plank swung in a large arc and smashed through the glass of a customer's rather plush-looking vehicle.  I think it may have been an Audi.  I certainly did see a number of interlocking circles, but that may all have been attributable to a sort of post-incident dizzy swirl.
I will leave you to imagine exactly what happened next dear but I, myself, am currently at home munching on a fresh cream cake and imbibing a little pick-me-up.
Yours
Aunt Agatha

Sunday 23 September 2012

Just a little note . . .

10 Forsythia Grove
Outer Hamlet
CORSETTSHIRE ZY6 4GT
 
 
This is just a little note pet as, subsequent to my musings yesterday, I retired to my 'greenhouse' bed last night with words of a less usual character rehearsing themselves in my mind.  I hope you won't mind a small departure from witty repartee/agonized hospital musings, for here they are:
 
 
POTS ON SILL
 
What are we all doing up here - breathing -
on the window sill?  In cool air, on white paint
with vapour wet on the glass.  Someone in pink
attends to us - picks off dead leaves, shortens
our stems, returns slugs to the lawn.  Her hair
is in our faces, our breath lavishes its scent.
Somehow she is astonished by us; she keeps
coming back, coming back, to touch the fresh
green of us, water the life in our roots.  We think
it is a warm enough place.  She thinks we are
a miracle.
 
There you are dear.  Peculiar in that I have not written a single stanza for nearly a year.  Some apparition or other has to be touching/have much meaning for words to connect up like this.  (Cough.  I must be embarrassed by it a little, for this is not my usual way or place.)
I did, in fact, telephone Edith this morning and request her to research the location of a deserted - and unheated - greenhouse.  For I have somehow developed a wish to find somewhere to grow:  Callistemons, Camellias, Citrus, Lemon Verbenas, Desert Cacti, Sedums and the like.  How do these
inclinations find us?  Life is mysterious.
And yet, I suspect dear, that you are inhabiting the darkness of some inn somewhere, slurping Guinness from a foaming glass, and waiting for the football to commence at 2pm? And further from a house plant one cannot possibly be . . .
Yours
Aunt Agatha
 
 


Saturday 22 September 2012

On the face of it . . .

10 Forsythia Grove
Outer Hamlet
CORSETTSHIRE ZY6 4GT
 
My Dear Ralph
I am feeling an unusual - not to say unprecedented - degree of happiness today.  I am not sure why except, perhaps, that I am throwing certain disagreeable aspects of my past to the rear of me.  Such a delightful state of mind cannot, surely, be attributed entirely to today's blue sky and the general ambience of sunshine?
I am seated, anyway, at one Beetroot Inn just along the road from my own establishment.  This watering hole, albeit on the somewhat rough and ready side, does at least have a substantial working surface on which to spread my papers.  Of course, the presence of scrapping dogs - wrestling near the dart board - does distract one's train of thought somewhat, but at least I myself am feeling comparatively sentient.
I spent yesterday afternoon, dear, hauling my tender perennials in from the garden and on to my broad bedroom window ledge.  And these items are now respiring peacefully in the autumnal sunshine.  In fact, we are all breathing together, in one group, at bedtime and during the night.  Molecules from two scented geraniums and a Lemon Verbena - do try tea made from the leaves of the latter pet - are perfuming the air and the whole ensemble makes for a most heart-warming sight.  As does the spectacle of Cuthbert, my teddy bear, reclining his furry form over my new tartan-covered hot water bottle at rest on the armchair.  There is nothing, in my opinion, to quite match a sleeping space decked out in lilac, green and pink for conjuring up an atmosphere of grace.  How you can nod off in your own environment dear - with any number of Airfix model aeroplanes suspended in the airspace above your pallet bed - I find it very hard to imagine!  And as for the drab browns and greys they are bedecked in, these are not hues likely to imbue one's dreams with a sense of beauty and peace!
Meanwhile, I spent some time wandering around the architectural reclamation yard at Great Deverington the other day.  I was very taken by the Butler sinks, stone troughs, metal work love seats, oak pergolas, and such-like on display there.  I even saw a large, stone, Inca head and this would lend a sense of gravitas to any large green space.  I do feel like heaving a slight sigh here pet as none of these items would fit in my own tiny yard and - even more to the point - I don't have the funds available to purchase them with.   Never mind.  I do wonder sometimes at how we all arrive at this sense of what makes an objet d'art beautiful to the eye?  Whatever it is, there must be some general level of agreement regarding the aesthetic attractions of curve, colour, and line or we would not be drooling over them in yards such as Staddle Stones for the Connoisseur.
Reality does frequently strike home, doesn't it though dear?  I was just in the process of scraping a thin layer of margarine over an equally thin slice of toast, when a radio programme about the use of abortifacients in China caught my ear.  One never chooses to hear stories of this kind and, given an early enough opportunity, I think one would turn them off.  However, I was heavily engaged in bread crust-slicing activities and so ended up hearing a particularly harrowing story about some poor intending mother who was forced to have a chemically-induced abortion of her 6-month-old foetus.  She said she felt the child struggling for life inside her and, once born, it uttered just a few cries before dying.  Dear me pet.  Life is certainly not kind and just is it?   I should like to tell this Chinese woman how her experience wrung my heart this lunch-time over here.  I don't know if that can be managed can it?
Not that Pom-Pom's experiences over in No Return District General Hospital are much better.  I did turn up recently and everything looked okay on the face of it.  He was in bed (in a six-bedded bay) looking clean and comfortable and with his catheter bag hung over the side.  He seemed less tired than he'd sounded when we'd spoken earlier, on his mobile phone, and wasn't slurring his words.  And, it seemed, from the state of his plate, that he'd just munched, albeit toothless, on half a sandwich and the inside of a custard tart.  I then plugged in his electric razor, and phone, to charge and sat down to read to him, and chat, for an hour or so.  I would certainly be interested in how many frail elderly people escape from such premises alive?  For it seems that you enter the centre of a web - and that the more drips and tubes you gather - and the less often you sit out of bed - the less likely it is that you will ever emerge (alive).  In fact, one positive aspect about hospital care in so-called 'undeveloped' lands is that relatives are allowed, and apparently encouraged, to sleep under the bed and help with administering basic care such as the washing and feeding of their loved ones.  One can go too overboard with infection control and hygiene in these vast places pet.  In fact, the basic problem is that they are TOO VAST - and TOO FAR OFF - to be much good to the health and happiness of the unfortunate patient!  Oh well dear.  I expect you are tiring of my rants concerning those in 'the clutches' on this sunny day!
Yours
Aunt Agatha 


Thursday 20 September 2012

The pleasures and the passions . . .

10 Forsythia Grove
Outer Hamlet
CORSETTSHIRE  ZY6 4GT
 
My Dear Ralph
I have rather been cogitating on the meaning of my life pet (particularly in the aftermath of a weekend notable only for a distinct absence of the pleasures and the passions).  And I am not sure that there is much meaning left!  Now that I am approaching my middle years, it seems to me that one's friends are rather more inclined to discuss their arthritis than their love affairs!  I can understand this in a way - especially given an over-long contemplation of my own increasing girth in the ceiling mirror - but I still seem to have my eyes focused on the occasional scrumptious posterior walking down the Grove.  And I must admit, dear, my thoughts often do dwell on romps upon the carpet, replete with wine, and one or two bags of peanuts!  Never mind.  I am sure there is some frightful individual - at large on the streets somewhere - who I have yet to meet!
This morning I motored off to the Extinct Mammal Conservation Society with a view to distributing posters advertizing my forthcoming talk on the subject of 'MI6 Memoirs.'  It was most pleasant to see dear Portia and Montie again and I was pleased to accept an offering of fresh runner beans in return for an hour or two's service on their computers.  However, I did notice that I am still temperamentally unsuited to using said devices - particularly when it comes to data insertion on a spreadsheet which has literally one hundred cell headings running along the top of the page - and it might also help if I purchased a pair of elderly person's spectacles for reading with!
I also telephoned the Corsettshire Children's Visiting Service to enquire after acquiring a delinquent to take out on diverse outings from time to time.  I think I must be feeling lonely dear, because I am not altogether sure I would have hit upon this idea if it had proved possible to acquire a companion of commensurate intellect and values to myself!  (Of course, you might say that there are plenty of people about who can hit the bottle and roll around on the carpet - but it is also necessary for said individual to be able to hold a conversation, have an interest in preparing foreign cuisine, and not be permanently attached to a snooker cue.)  Anyway, I spoke to a very nice lady who will be sending me an information pack and was able to hold forth, at length, on the subject of local children's homes.  Oh dear pet.  I am not sure I want to acquire a child who has expert abilities in the hot-wiring of motor cars, the theft of hard drives (oh God, my memoirs) and could be injecting smack and inhaling glue on my very own premises!  And what will I do with my guns?  I know they are locked away in a strong metal cabinet but the acquisition of laser cutting devices, from some internet outlet or other, will not be beyond the ingenuity of some enterprising young hoodlum!  I must admit, I also wondered what to do about declaring my former occupation to the Corsettshire Social Services.  They might well have reservations of their own about the sort of lady who was once an MI6 assassin and still frequently practises on the shooting range over at Inner Hamlet!  I wonder if the children would like to come out there?  We have recently been practising with the Glock range of handguns which might be rather on the heavy side for children, but I might be allocated somebody quite robust.  You never can tell, can you pet?  We will have to wait and see!
I am enjoying our epistolary relationship dear.  I feel positively more cheerful already!  I hope your own activities are flourishing, although perhaps I need slightly less information about the ingestion of street substances and esoteric sexual practices!
Yours
Aunt Agatha

Sunday 16 September 2012

Lady of the night . . .

10 Forsythia Grove
Outer Hamlet 
CORSETTSHIRE  ZY6 4GT

 My Dear Ralph
Terrible tidings pet!  The Banger 0.9L is practically deceased!  I received the news subsequent to its departure for that rather annoying annual inspection: the MOT.  Items called the 'rear radius arms' have expired and apparently one cannot continue motoring without their replacement - replacement, I might add, which will cost practically all my remaining funds.  I have naturally examined all my options and they include: walking to Colonel Mustang's, bicycling to Colonel Mustang's, and replacing the Banger 0.9L with a similarly suspect vehicle, costing virtually zero to purchase.  Winter will soon be upon us pet and I think bicycling will, at the very least, involve acquiring a waterproof outfit, a helmet, and a fluorescent waistcoat.  Also, how would one be able to carry necessary equipment?  I have in mind such items as steel-capped boots, shears, loppers and a long-handled brush cutter!  At present, my best bet seems to be consideration of a role as 'Lady of the Night' - but would anyone want me - bearing in mind (hard to mention as it is) my age, French pleat and plum nail extensions?  The only slight glimmer of hope featured while I was purchasing provisions at Economy Fare just now, when I happened to bump into Kismet and her son Samuel.  And she has offered to loan me her bicycle!  I am not altogether sure how much assistance this item will prove to be as Samuel was most insistent on the subject of lack of brakes and an absence of gears.  However, it is only a few kilometers to Colonel Mustang's and the bicycle does have a basket!  Surely I can do this dear?  After all, the road does appear to be mostly on the flat - especially when one considers the vista from behind the windscreen of the Banger 0.9L.
If I seem slightly incoherent this evening pet, it is because I have been consuming an alcoholic repast subsequent to my deliberations.  With stress levels rising to a red and critical point, I sallied forth to purchase a bottle of the cheapest possible bottle of plonk at Economy Fare.  However, I discovered, upon my return to Forsythia Grove, that the type of cork used to seal the bottle would not then re-fit into said bottle once removed.  I think it may be made of plastic dear.  In fact, rather than use cling film to cover the open end, I first resorted to shaving the edges off it with my Stanley knife - and then to quaffing the lot!
The subject of bottles does, actually, remind me of my time spent trying to contact our agents in Moscow (back in the decade of 'Flower Power' in our own country).  Our KGB-trained double agents had an astonishing penchant for the usage of esoteric signals - strategically placed on window sills and door lintels.  One would endeavour to plan a rendezvous, only to discover one was following a trail of ginger beer bottle tops and rusty nails and such-like!  And, of course, one could not deploy the use of even the most remote of dead letter boxes because we were on the very training territory of the KGB agents themselves.  And what they didn't know about suitable such sites could be written on a mini microdot!  I remember one perfectly frightful day.  We were due to meet up with some intending defector or other and sauntered past the meeting place - as planned - both of us munching on a Mars bar.  Our contact was there, loitering on the arranged stretch of pavement but, unfortunately, the KGB had sprinkled the soles of his shoes with radio-active dust that same morning!  Well, of course, all we could hear as we, and they, passed in opposite directions - at practically the same moment - was the most extreme sound of crackling from their Geiger counter!
Yours
Aunt Agatha

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Secret Service: EPISODE 70

10 Forsythia Grove
Outer Hamlet
CORSETTSHIRE  ZY6 4GT
I have been slung out of No Return District General Hospital pet!  I fear I remonstrated with a rather burly-looking type when she demanded I retire to my electrical bed at 7pm after the hot cocoa round.  I am not a toddler dear and I believe I am able to decide, solo, when to outfit myself in my hospital gown and slide between the sheets.  (I was removed from Mr Macavity's premises - by ambulance transport - at such a rate that I unfortunately left dear Cuthbert, my teddy bear, nestling between my candy-stripe pillow cases.)  Anyway, all this means that I was unable to visit Pom-Pom because, after removing my tracheostomy tubing with a distinct degree of brusqueness,  I was wheeled towards the exit and the taxi rank!
I have had a few, rather raspy, conversations with Pom-Pom since this as, luckily, he had the foresight to take his mobile telephone into hospital with him and appears to be equipped with it at all times.  Times have certainly changed on this front.  Even five years ago, friends and relatives mostly communicated with patients via the phone on the ward reception desk.  And what a terrible distancing effect this had!  I clearly recall the feeling I had that any relative/friend I cared about was now buried in the fog because I couldn't see them or hear their voice.
Two of my conversations with Pom-Pom over the past couple of days have been somewhat anguished.  They related to the fact that the nurses had disappeared in the middle of turning him, that he couldn't catch their eye, and had thus been left in the same position for a long time without being able to reach the buzzer.  When your mind's eye extends to visualizing the helplessness and lack of control a frail individual in their eighties must be experiencing, even the mere account of it becomes harrowing.  After all, you cannot just pop round to the local cottage hospital to give them their buzzer - because they are 30 minutes drive away (or two hours on the bus).  Nor can you phone up because you have been adjured not to by the very person whose interests need protecting!
Anyway, this morning, I thought I'd engage in an altogether more therapeutic set of activities.  First of all I motored over to the local branch of the Giant Garden Outlet Centre for what felt like a one tonne bag of alpine grit.  I can certainly understand why I don't buy this stuff very often dear for, quite apart from the actual weight of it, the car park over at this emporium is on a camber.  Any attempts to manoeuvre the flat-bed plant trolley close to the car passenger seat are thwarted by the rolling of this trolley in all directions - usually perilously close to the shining flank of the car parked alongside!  So, now that I have got it, I am looking forward to using it on the alpine plants - and herbs - for which it is intended.
Having been advised by the doctors over at No Return District General Hospital to take things easy for a while after my throat was stitched up (I don't know whether the above set of activities would be quite what they had in mind.  What do you think dear?) I then cast about for another easy indoor activity I could accomplish.  And my eye lit upon my 'Emerald Feather' asparagus 'fern' (it looks like a fern but isn't one).  This item has required re-potting for quite some time as its topmost roots seem to have risen above the potting compost.  I don't know if you have ever seen one of these plants have you Ralph?  They come with a fearsome set of downwards-pointing hooks and, at the least provocation, shower you with a profusion of dusty, golden, needlets!  Wear a mask pet, should you ever get a specimen for your own (rather spartan-looking) premises.  It will be a lure for the women in your life, who will appreciate a level of  apparent green softness in the immediate vicinity of the boudoir.  While I am thinking of it, perhaps the time has now come to get rid of your pallet bed and find something a little more decorous?  Tell me if I am interfering, won't you dear?
My last challenge relates to my intended purchase of a  Maidenhair fern and a winter Cyclamen.  I say 'challenge' because, during the course of the past several decades, I have bumped off any number of these house plants.  It has been most confusing when, after just a few weeks of devoted care and attention, they have simply drooped and died.  And, just recently, I have resorted to looking them both up in a text book.  The first-named plant usually snuffs it owing, apparently, to becoming dust dry and then doused in  excessive quantities of water!  And the latter plant cannot, it turns out, bear a heated room or being watered from the top!  So if you feel tempted to snap either of these items up in an autumn sale, do first SEE ME! 
Yours
Aunt Agatha 

Sunday 9 September 2012

Heimlich manoeuvre . . .

No Return District General Hospital
BRIGHT LITTON SOMEWHERE
 
 
I am penning this note, with great difficulty, from my hospital bed dear.  (It is certainly not very easy to write - and definitely impossible to speak - with a plastic tracheostomy tube installed in one's windpipe.))  I don't know if the nursing staff have managed to contact you on the picket line yet?  In case they have not, I will supply you with the barest of details regarding this morning's misfortune with my bowl of Swiss cereal.  I don't know quite how it happened pet but, at around 8am, I managed to inhale a whole dessert spoonful of said cereal together with a quantity of milk.  Up until this point in my life history, I had always thought citizens who, for example, caught a fishbone in their throats were  a) somewhat careless and b) exaggerating the difficulties they had in taking in air with such an item installed in their larynxes.  But not now.  After some minutes coughing and gasping in my breakfast recliner chair, I realized that I was in a somewhat dire position and that it might be necessary to acquire some assistance of the fairly immediate variety.  Now you know how renowned I am for my lightning-quick faculties, don't you dear?  Well I scooped up my Stanley knife (still luckily littering my desk after the imbroglio with the kitchen flooring) and a biro pen and loped downstairs - tears streaming down my cheeks - to the front door. As you know, my residence is luckily situated in close proximity to Macavity's newsagent, which opens at 6.30am, and it is to there that I repaired for assistance.  I could see that Mr Macavity grasped the position in an instant because - before I could pantomime a throat-slitting session with the aid of the Stanley knife - he rushed up behind me and embarked upon the Heimlich manoeuvre!  I don't know whether you have heard of this method of removing tracheal obstructions pet?  Well the idea is that you stand behind the person with the obstruction, pass your arms on either side of their waist, clasp your hands into a fist, and do a reverse punch into the solar plexus!  It is a violent remedy which, so I have heard, often works.  But, unfortunately, it didn't have the desired effect on me dear.  In fact, I instantly collapsed to the floor - with my knife and biro winging across the airspace before me.  It was lucky indeed that Mr Macavity's nephew, Henry, also happened to be on the premises.  I don't know if I have ever told you about his interest in the modelling of balsa wood aeroplanes?  Young men of his ilk seem to have an almost-instantaneous grasp of the niceties of the Lego kit, Meccano, Origami, and so on and so forth - and he scooped up my surgical equipment in a manner I am bound to describe as positively gleeful.  I did manage to indicate the area of my throat least well supplied with blood vessels before he got stuck in, so-to-speak, and the plastic biro sheath - minus the pen itself - worked as an excellent straw through which to inhale air!  I really did have the most miraculous escape dear and will - in future - take the utmost care with my morning's imbibition of breakfast cereal.  In the meantime, I hope Chumley is faring well in his own attempt to catch his own live breakfast on the claw!
Really, the only positive aspect of the situation is that at least I am now situated in close proximity to dear Pom-Pom - also in the clutches of No Return District General Hospital - and will not have to motor tens of miles to see him or spend an exorbitant sum of money to acquire a ticket in the 'Orange' car park!
Yours (breathing with some difficulty)
Aunt Agatha  


Saturday 8 September 2012

Levering off the kickboards . . .

10 Forsythia Grove
Outer Hamlet
CORSETTSHIRE  ZY6 4GT
 
My Dear Ralph
Thank you for your communique informing me that you are off to a political rally in the metropolis.  Do try not to get shot, bombed, or knifed, won't you dear?  I know I managed to dig out that last bullet you had embedded in your thigh, but next time we might not be so lucky!
I myself have been engaged in sawing up a giant piece of hardboard for the purpose of attaching it to the kitchen plankwork.  It really is too bad when the employees of the local timber yard insist on selling you a piece of this stuff in the standard size only - and refuse to slice it into smaller pieces.   They were quite immune to my entreaties pet, and the atmosphere only lightened when we were all engaged upon trying to stuff this hardware into the Banger 0.9L.  I think it may have been a mistake to turn up accoutred in my magenta mini skirt and long string of necklace beads - particularly when it transpired that I was going to have to clamber into the vehicle with said workmen immediately to the rear (so-to-speak) in order to work out how to release the back seat catches.  I don't know dear.  I think I may have detected a certain amount of sniggering emanating from the posterior of the situation.  I did endeavour to turn around and glare but, unfortunately, my necklace caught on a boot ceiling hook and some thousands of beads were then viewed bouncing across the car park!  (I was feeling too cross to collect them up; I am content to wait until I can amass the funds to withdraw my pearls from the pawn shop!)  Also, my stockings have the most frightful - and totally irreparable - hole in them, owing to the difficulty I had in extracting myself from the boot, once practically immersed in it.  However, I did succeed in purchasing a set of brand new blades for my Stanley knife and a packet of about 1,000 annular ring shank nails (20mm in length).  I do hope these are not too long?  It would be rather perturbing to accidentally puncture a gas main secreted under the kitchen planking!
My next step was to saw the hardboard into four pieces and, all I can say, is that someone should have told me that a junior hacksaw might not be equal to the task!  I am still perspiring now - some ten hours later.  And none of this would have happened if those gentlemen from the yard could have been prevailed upon to saw it up themselves!  In the absence of their help, and in the absence of sufficient hard space on which to place it, I was forced to lay it prone on the carpet - and, even then, it kept up strong efforts to roll back all over me.  I now have a few bread slice marks in the pile from where the saw cut a little too deeply!  In fact dear, I feel in some need of a tranquillizer as cutting it up was only the first step of many!
Having been informed that it was necessary to lay this board damp, I decided to embark upon the task of hosing it down in the garden.  And my garden, as you may recall dear, is particularly small - so small that it was rather difficult to control the hose.  Well poor Chumley was ejected over the garden fence, on the end of a particularly strong jet, and I have not seen him since!  I hope he has not been washed down some subterranean drain or other.  Anyway, while the board was soaking out of doors, I decided to lever off the kickboards!  It is lucky that I am a former operative - trained never to give up however trying the circumstances - because someone appears to have used screws with a type of head unknown to any form of screwdriver in a normal citizen's possession.  (I do hope you are not sniggering at this pet because, believe me, I am at least as normal as many of the citizens around here - and I am thinking of that chap with the mauve eye patch and a chipmunk secreted in his waistcoat.  I keep bumping into him in the precinct.)  In the end, I felt forced into resorting to shooting them off with one of my hand guns!
Finally however, and with a deep thrill of joy, I am pleased to relay the fact that said hardboard is now nailed in situ on the planking.  And I now only have to acquire the vinyl floor covering.  My only small matter of concern is that I have still not sighted Chumley!
Yours
Aunt Agatha

Wednesday 5 September 2012

White flowers . . .

10 Forsythia Grove
Outer Hamlet
CORSETTSHIRE  ZY6 4GT
 
 
I am surrounded by a large number of  cackling individuals pet - all imbibing coffee and nibbling on fudge - and it is a little difficult to concentrate!  I have edged my lemonade some way apart from the melee and hope to be able to focus on what I am doing.
I braced myself to go and visit dear Pom-Pom in No Return District Hospital on Sunday evening.  Luckily, it was still daylight when the Banger 0.9L and I approached this megalopolis and I was able to discern a sign denoting the way to an 'Orange' car park.  I tipped what seemed like an extortionate sum of money into a talking machine and then sallied forth to find a way into the interior.  I think they need someone in the car park to lead visitors into the building because, I must say, it was altogether tempting to just get back inside the Banger and motor off again!  Eventually, however, I did locate an open brown door and in I trotted.  I must say that one of the first things I saw was actually a poem, painted large upon a board, and this was a cheering thing.  The wispy pink words - so true and human - looked small in comparison with the size of my surroundings, but I think words like these should be mounted at the entrance of every ward, in case of feeling engulfed by concrete and parted from the sky.  I did see a colour-coded wall map upon a wall and it transpired that, if I followed a purple, floor-painted, line I should eventually reach the Medical Assessment Ward - where Pom-Pom was supposed to be sojourning.  I felt small and insignificant and perhaps this is my own, relentlessly advancing, age with its parade of jowls and wrinkles?  Even an operative becomes decrepit and my days of rippling muscles and sleek black attire are fast becoming etchings in my memory banks.
When I first clapped eyes upon my friend, I saw that he was attired in one of those white, flapping, hospital gown which open at the back, when one is standing, to reveal an individual's collapsing buttocks.  Fortunately, however, Pom-Pom was sat down in a wheelchair, carrier bags packed, at the side of his bed.  He was about to be transported to a different ward on the other side of the hospital and a porter had just arrived to take him.  This young man set off and I followed behind the pair of them, breathless and bewildered, with the bags.  It rapidly became apparent that we were engaged in a long trek through what felt like miles of corridor and up and down large, bed accommodating, lifts.  The porter was friendly however and told me that it had taken him about a month to understand all the passageways and corridors when he first started!  'Jonquil' ward turned out to be an orthopaedic ward and it was bemusing to wheel past a whole parade of patients all bed-bound and on traction!  'Surely this isn't right?' I said to the admitting nurse.  'Oh I'm sorry,' she said, 'There aren't any medical beds at the minute.'  Pom-Pom was simply mute and I don't think it would be possible for anyone - even a healthy, upright, adult - to feel much in command of this situation.
So poor Pom-Pom was unloaded into a bed and I got to unload his gear into a bedside locker with about 25 compartments in it.  It was hard to turn this cumbersome item round as its wheels seemed to be embedded in the material used for flooring.  When I proffered him his watch, he said, 'Take it home will you?  It needs a battery.'  I said, 'You know I can't.  The carnivorous Xanthe will think I'm usurping her daughterly prerogative.'  An argument then ensued with Pom-Pom finally asserting, 'I'VE ASKED YOU TO DO IT AND IT IS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYBODY ELSE.'  I took the watch and left a note stuck to the top of the locker.  It read: 'I have taken your father's watch home to get a battery for it and I will bring it back.'  Dreadful.  Pom-Pom seemed too tired to engage in further conversation, so I simply kissed him on the cheek and trekked back to the car park along the purple painted line.  I don't think I can write any more about this subject at the moment dear.  It is too exhausting.
On a more refreshing note, Penelope (Colonel Mustang's wife) has asked me to engage in some bulb planting in the troughs outside her rather splendid-looking country home, and I gather this is in preparation for her Spring social and bridge parties.  So far, I have suggested that the largest stone trough should contain about x20 white bedding hyacinths (scented as you know dear) interspersed between the white saxifrages.  And I think x20 of the white crocus 'Jeanne d'Arc' can go between the silver thymes in the smaller trough.  I have, further, been eyeing up a border currently containing a row of Lavendula 'Munstead' and I think there is sufficient space here to intersperse some fringed (or lily-flowered) white tulips.  I can hardly wait to get on with it or, indeed, to see the hoped-for cascade of whiteness next April or so!
Sorry dear.  I know you find the whole subject of horticulture to be especially tedious.  If you want to tell me more about your intended painting of a whole army of toy soldiers in your next epistle, do feel free!
Yours
Aunt Agatha 

Saturday 1 September 2012

Furry leaves . . .

10 Forsythia Grove
Outer Hamlet
CORSETTSHIRE  ZY6 4GT
My Dear Ralph
Just a little note on my progress in the horticultural sphere over at Colonel Mustang's.  I forgot to mention that the colonel had asked me to label up all the specimen trees in his 6-acre plot.  And this has not turned out to be quite as simple as I had anticipated because one quite forgets that said labels are going to get washed off in the rain, bleached in the sun, and peeled off in the frost.  My current plan is to use adhesive vinyl tape stuck to plastic tags which have a hole punched into one end (to thread garden wire through).  And to this end, I have strung up one or two of these labels on the washing line to see how they will weather the forthcoming seasons.  Actually pet, it has not proved to be all that easy to identify the trees in question, owing to the fact that many of the leaves do look quite similar!  However, I do believe I have sighted a Foxglove tree (huge furry leaves), an Oriental Plane and a Sweet Gum - and one must hope that most visitors to the garden will not be able to do much better themselves!
I have also been having a go at pruning the roses, which look like they may have been untouched by human hand for quite some decades.  And, really, having spent quite some hours sequestered in large thickets - replete with some thousands of thorns - I have come to the conclusion that said shrubs require their pruner to be equipped in the equivalent of chain mail if they are to emerge unscathed from the experience.  I personally have only come across rambling roses which have rambled for tens of metres up trees, like this, in a couple of other gardens.  Poised beneath them with a pair of sharpened loppers - not to mention a large-toothed saw - I feel that a certain degree of courage is required to make decisions concerning the thinning of stems, however aged or deceased they may appear to be.  I can say this with quite some confidence dear - having clipped off several dried out sections which came away with quite a quantity of live foliage attached. 
Anyway pet, whilst buried amongst the roses so-to-speak, my eye was caught by the large approaching figure of Stella Starr - the famous raconteuse who recently featured, as you may recall, in the TV serial, 'Scurrilous Soliloquys.'  Having been told, some days earlier, that this individual's sojourn on the premises was 'top secret' and not to whisper a word of it to anyone, I decided to be discreet in any conversational overtures that might occur.  So repressing the urge to call, 'Cooee, are you the famous Stella Starr?' I carried on nonchalantly chopping my way through the roses as she progressed down the path towards me.  I think I may actually have taken this a bit too far because, when she said 'Hello, what's your name?' I sort of grunted 'Agatha' and affected an air of complete disinterest.  I think she might have felt a little discouraged by this dear because, after a few awkward seconds of mutual study, she carried on down the path to the swimming pool (hopefully no dead ducks to be seen floating on the water).  And the worst of it all dear, is that I completely forgot to mention my memoirs!
Yours
Aunt Agatha