Secret Service: EPISODE 90

10 Forsythia Grove

Outer Hamlet

CORSETTSHIRE  ZY6 4GT

 

My Dear Ralph

I have just spent quite some minutes trapped inside the toilet at the local WiFi outlet.  It is unlike me to panic, as you know dear, but the lock simply wouldn't - despite several hefty tugs - slide back into the 'open' position!  Naturally, I stood in the stall, cogitating, and it seemed to me that I was either going to have to shout (loudly) for help or actually climb up over the sides, throwing my bags before me!  In the end, I stood on the closed toilet lid and aimed a Tae Kwondo-style kick at the lock's knob slider.  It opened, thank heavens, and I am once more supping upon a Hot Chocolate in my seat in the sun.  Hopefully, the rest of the day will not be quite so stimulating!

Over at the Hoppe Valley Hotel yesterday morning, the temperatures at 8am resembled those found in a Deep Freeze style of environment.  And I was greeted by the news - delivered up by the head gardener Twinkle - that Sir Hoppe has acquired a Python Tower Ladder so that we might embark upon the annual pruning of the Jasminum nudiflorum (currently obscuring nearly all of the hotel's second floor windows).   This ladder has four extensible legs and my own opinion, dear, is that said mechanism is not at all safe - particularly in the absence of some kind of secure basket at the apex!  Twinkle and I had quite a conversation about who was going to get up there first and we, both of us, had quite significant personal objections.  He is currently on medication for his tennis elbow and this apparently makes him liable to dropping objects held in the hand.  And I seem to be having bouts of dizzy spells quite possibly related to a life of quite prostrating loneliness.  Certainly I do not wish to spend my remaining years, in splinters, over at No Return District General Hospital - especially with no-one coming to see me! 

I did, however, eventually agree to climb up a more normal type of extensible ladder and - with one hand clinging on to the rungs - deployed my secateurs in the removal of several thousand shoots of the afore-mentioned climbing plant.  The advice given never to look down is certainly sound, believe you me, especially when one is eyeball to eyeball with the roof guttering and one or two pigeons' nests.  In fact, it was at this particular moment that Sir Hoppe rounded the corner of the building and - his eyes alighting on the (assembled) Python Tower Ladder - he immediately frisked to the top.  I gazed down at him from my perch, while he swayed in the crows' nest of his own piece of equipment, and then I made some remark or other to the effect that the male of the species was obviously designed to swing about at height!   Well pet, he beamed up at me and announced that, 'In fact, dear lady, this is because us males tend to be rather dim and can't actually imagine outselves splattered all over the forecourt.'  I did rather snigger at this as, of course, he is most certainly correct!

Yours, both feet planted firmly on terra firma

Aunt Agatha