O-gape . . .

10 Forsythia Grove

Outer Hamlet

CORSETTSHIRE  ZY6 4GT

 

My Dear Ralph

Things are a little extreme (aha, an oxymoron I think dear) on the weather front here in Outer Hamlet this morning.  I would need a veritable pair of snow skis to get out to Colonel Mustang's for what would doubtless be a long session at the other end of a snow shovel.  The weather is most unseasonal.

Perhaps I will volunteer for said session when it becomes possible to see through the thicket of snow flakes by which I feel constantly surrounded!

Yesterday I received a telephone call - while engaged in a bout of cutting through the blackberries - from Letititia Nettcupp who, you will recall, is Pom-Pom's social worker over at Inner Hamlet hospital.  Said Letitia informed me that, owing to a rift in communication with the carnivorous Xanthe, Pom-Pom has asked her to communicate with me instead!  Oh dear.  I hope the carnivore does not get wind of this for quite some weeks . . .  It transpired that Pom-Pom is not now requiring active medical treatment and is blocking a bed needed by somebody in more acute need.  Letitia further informed me that the good-looking WOPA home, just down the road, is full and that he can't go there.  'Well.  What are his options then?' I asked (feebly perhaps).  She informed me that there was a vacancy in one residence going by the name of the 'Crow's Nest' in the distant town of Cold-Ridge-by-the-Beaver.  I don't know who comes up with these names pet, for neither prospect sounds all that comforting does it?  One is either isolated at the top of a very long, inaccessible, pole or left to freeze in an icy river.  I gathered up my forces and retorted to said Letitia that the proposed premises were many miles from where either Xanthe or myself reside.  Letitia stood her ground and said he had to go.  I then asked her to write to Xanthe (as Pom-Pom's blood relative) to confirm that - as soon as a bed came up in the WOPA - Pom-Pom would be transferred into it.  This she agreed to do.  Perhaps I should have been stronger somehow dear?  What do you think?  In any event, as things stand, Pom-Pom is off to the 'Crow's Nest' at their earliest convenience.

As soon as I had extricated myself from the brambles over at Colonel Mustang's, I hastened off to the Inner Hamlet 'Care of the Elderly' ward in which Pom-Pom is sojourning.  And I had a very nasty shock in there, for poor Pom-Pom did not look as if he was going to live long enough to reach any further destination (located in this world anyway).  His mouth was a dry black cavern and when I tried to speak to him - and offer comfort - he stretched his lips in an O-gape of horror and rasped, 'Go away.  Can't you see I'm dying?'  I think this sight may be with me until my own dying day dear and my eyes tear at the mere recounting of it.

Yours

Aunt Agatha