Escape To The Country

12

Escape To The Country

September 16 Not. At last the time had come, and John and I escaped to the country, to his dear little cottage! Well with the threat that Bean Minor (and Trelawney, one presumed) would be over to see us very soon. Heretofore we had been very pleased that the Ovendens’ place was quite near. Now… Oh well. As John said, we could always pack ’em back off again!

    Meanwhile there were all the joys of the cottage to be rediscovered…

    Well notably that nice big bed of his. (How had the luckless moving men got it up the stairs?) That part was more than all right. More than!

    Then he thought, stretching and grinning, that perhaps he’d better pick up the clothes he’d chucked on the floor in his over-eagerness and, um, drink? What was the time? Oh. Yard-arm not actually in sight, yet! Well nice cup of tea, darling? Mm, lovely, I agreed, shirking my rôle as Official Girlfriend and not getting up and bustling downstairs to buckle on a bally apron in the bally kitchen.

    So he got up, picked up the clothes, chucked them at his bedroom chair, draped himself in his nice navy silk dressing-gown (he owned several but this one had received the Nod, so he’d brought it down with us) and went downstairs…

    “Hell and DAMNATION!”

    Ooh, help! “What’s up? I called cautiously.

    Short silence. Then he shouted from the foot of the stairs: “Mrs B. brought some milk over like I asked but she forgot to turn the bloody electricity on, and it and all the extra stuff she’s shoved in the fridge have gone off!”

    Ooh, help. Mrs Blake, he meant: she lives locally and does housekeeping for him as and when. Well in a way it served the woman bally well right for favouring him with all those unsolicited casseroles. –It isn’t that she’s got a crush, she’s possessed (as by Demons) by the mothering instinct, and is convinced he needs Looking After. Which I’ll grant he did when he had his broken leg, but hardly otherwise, he is an adult; and one would have thought that the endless succession of over-lipsticked bimbos he’s had in and out of this cottage over the last two decades would have suggested something to her. No well, obliging as she is, and really a very pleasant woman, Mrs B. does lack a brain.

    Funnily enough I didn’t immediately leap into Mothering Mode or Wifely Mode (is there any diff.’?), I just stayed right where I was and yelled: “Chuck the lot out!” (Cough. Or alternatively shut the dashed fridge door and forget about it all.)

    A certain amount of crashing and banging and possibly muttering ensued, but I ignored it all. Well start as one means to go on, is my motto.

    Eventually he called from the bottom of the stairs: “I say, Mel! Have you any idea where the dashed woman might have stowed the rubbish bags?”

    Well their council is fairly easy-going about rubbish, but if one just dumps it all in the poubelle, French-style, one ends up with a very stinky aforesaid, and so most of the local inhabitants do shove it in plastic bags—doubtless non-biodegradable, but however—before they dump the lot in the bin.

    Um, let me see… Yes, I did have a vague recollection of Bean Minor and me putting stuff in his bin… Oh yes, Bean Minor, aged almost twelve at the time, took it upon himself to put the bin out at the gate for the binmen. Where he got that one from God only knows. Er—assiduous reading of ancient Biggles epics? Don’t think the dashing Squadron Leader would have known a bin if he fell over it, would he? Um, Mum’s complaints about poor Mr Prosser in re the rubbish from the flats? Don’t think so: it would have been in one auditory organ and out the other, and in any case it’s different, one isn’t in charge of one’s own dustbin. Um… Oh yes! Egg putting the bins out for his mum! Evidently Mr O. is very bad at remembering and of course Egg’s older brother, Horrible Hearty Henry, is useless. And the local binmen act as if they’re doing the world a favour (according to Mrs O.) by coming all the way out to the stables anyway. Yes, that’d be it. The manly thing to do.

    “Mel?”

    Now surprisingly enough I was getting rather sick of this bellowing from one floor to another, so I ignored the plaintive woodnotes wild this time.

    “Mel?”

    Ditto.

    So he came upstairs rather flushed and said: “Oh, you’re not in the bathroom. Didn’t you hear me?”

    “Yes, but I was rather sick of shouting, John,” I replied somewhat pointedly.

    “Oh. Sorry.”

    “Your voice is louder than mine,” I added.

    “Y— Uh—didn’t think. Um, well do you have any idea where the bloody woman might have hidden the rubbish bags?”

    “Put it like this. Six years back Bean Minor and I found some in the cupboard under the stairs. I know no more.”

    “Oh. Well there certainly don’t seem to be any in the kitch— Hell’s teeth, my rods are in that cupboard!” And he shot off again.

    Er… rods? I did some translating in my head, having vaguely associated the word with curtains…

    Omigod! Fishing rods! I sat bolt upright in sheer horror.

    More crashing ensued from downstairs so presumably he was doing something, but it didn’t really penetrate. I knew he rode horses, far too fast, but fishing with rods? Ye gods. Right down there next to golf in the Mélisande F.-B. catalogue of Totally Unnecessary, Redundant, Boring and Absurd Male Preoccupations is where fishing with rods goes.

    When he finally reappeared with not merely a couple of mugs but a pot of tea, a sugar bowl, and two rather nice china mugs on his Royal Corgis tin tray (this highly artistic decoration being his idea of a joke, bless him) I said: “Do you mean to tell me that you do fishing with rods?”

    “Y—uh—fly fishing, Mel darling. Of course. The rods are okay, thank God, but I must remember to lock that cupboard in future.”

    Fly fishing… Translation, translation… Oh! My God, the nadir or possibly, depending on one’s spatial orientation, so to speak, the zenith of Silly! That’s the one where they stand thigh-deep in a frozen stream whirling the dashed rod and its accompanying kilometre of line round their heads in order to catch a bally fish that’s down there in the water, not up in the air. Laughing its head off at them—quite. Five hours later this results in no dinner and a very bad mood indeed. Oncle Patrice used to do that, until he caught an appalling cold one year and Tante Élisabeth stopped him. I mean, sitting in a boat optimistically dangling the thing over the side while the boat goes up and down in a sickening manner is bally daft enough, but fly fishing?

    “Are you mad?” I croaked.

    “What?” he replied blankly.

    “That isn’t fishing, it’s an insane game.”

    “Uh—”

    “Go on: tell me how many times you’ve managed to catch an actual fish within five hours!”

    “I— Well sometimes one doesn’t have any luck,” he muttered feebly.

    I produced a rude noise.

    “It’s, um, a very old traditional sport,” he offered feebly.

    “Sport! In the unlikely event that you do manage to catch one, all it can be called is fish torturing! And don’t tell me it provides food! If everyone did fishing with rods for food the entire human race would have died out millennia ago! It’s totally inefficient!”

    “Ineff—” He gave up and just looked at me limply.

    “Drink your tea,” I ordered. “And just don’t come to me for sympathy when you get an appalling cold from standing thigh-deep in a frozen stream for five hours!”

    “Well how would you catch trout?” he replied crossly, not drinking his tea.

    I’d use the tried-and-true Louis-Marie method, of course. Also practised by his equally ancient but equally enterprising chums from the neighbourhood. Which according to the cross Oncle Patrice explains why all the waterways near the Château LeBec are denuded of fish.

    “Sling a bally great net across the stream and wait until they swim into it.”

    “That’s not—” He broke off.

    “In case you were going to say ‘Not sporting’ or ‘Not cricket’, please don’t,” I said politely.

    He sighed. “Okay, you’re not a fisher.”

    Eh? Was that an English word? Shouldn’t it be fisherwoman? Nobly I let it pass.

    I sipped my tea. Well as English black tea went it wasn’t bad. Not too strong. Admittedly a slice or two of lemon would have improved it but where would that have come from in the depths of rural Angleterre?

    John also sipped tea. After a few moments he said: “You’d eat them, of course.”

    There were a few Ifs in there, old chum, weren’t there?

    “I’ve eaten the ones old Louis-Marie gets for Marthe at the château, certainly,” I conceded. “Truite aux amandes is nice.”

    “Uh—which is Louis-Marie, again?”

    “The gardener.”

    Short pause.

    “I get it. Gardener and part-time poacher,” John decided drily.

    “No, of course not, silly! Marthe wouldn’t let him cook them!”

September 20 Not. Continuing straight on: He stared at me blankly.

    “In any case I think she usually fries them in butter, she doesn’t poach them.”

    “Mel—” He broke off and thrust his hand through his hair.

    “What?”

    “Darling, we’re talking at cross-purposes. I meant poaching in the sense of— Damn. Hang on.” He rushed out.

    I just shrugged and drank tea.

    He rushed back. “Le braconnage!” he panted.

    Ye-es… “Louis-Marie certainly does that,” I allowed.

    “Quite. The English word for it is poaching. Er—well it is the same spelling as the culinary term… Truly! Not a leg-pull, darling.”

    “So when you said he was a poacher you meant a braconneur,” I concluded.

    “Uh-huh. –Sorry: ’tis mad. Gets dafter the more one thinks about it, really,” he admitted, grinning.

    Like rather a lot of English stuff—quite. Not to say male stuff. Fly fishing? Ye gods!

    “I suppose,” I said, having finished my tea, “you don’t do golf as well, do you?”

    There was a strange silence…

    Oh, no! Oh, John!

    “Feet of clay, I’m afraid, Mel,” he said, shaking his head. “Well not addicted to it, y’know. But I have a round now and then.”

    Oh, God.

    “You could lear—”

    “John, I cannot hit little balls with great long sticks.”

    “But— Well didn’t you tell me you played croquet at the château?”

    “We did eventually have a croquet lawn, yes. I wouldn’t call it playing. Missing the ball nine times out of— No, to be fair, fourteen times out of fifteen. But swinging away at it is jolly therapeutic, especially when one’s just heard that Someone is going to be sent off to parts unknown by the MOD for an unspecified length of—”

    “Got it,” he said on a glum note. “It won’t happen again, I promise.”

    Well it had better not, ’cos actually I don’t think I could stand it, John. But all I said was: “I suppose that shop in your village won’t have lemons, will it?”

    “The greengrocer? Don’t see why not.”

    No? Given the prevalence of Giant English Vegetable Marrows that time Bean Minor and I ventured down there— I didn’t say so and tried to breathe evenly.

    “Pop down now? Nice little walk?” he suggested happily.

    Why not? it would while away the time till lunchtime nicely. Oh—

    “Um, yes, we’d better, John, ’cos if Mrs Blake’s milk’s gone off we’ll need to buy some and we’d better get something for dinner as well. And breakfast, I s’pose.”

    “You’re right. Tho she has given us a loaf of bread. But everything else was in the fridge. Except for a bowl of tomatoes.”

    “Again?”

    “What?”

    “Um, that time Bean Minor and I were looking after you when you broke your leg she’d left you a huge bowl of tomatoes. –As well as the casseroles. Before she and the family took off for their holiday.”

    “That’s right, there were lashings of tomatoes. Jolly good, tomatoes always come in handy!”

    Well they were okay when Bean Minor made a lovely vinaigrette for them, but… And come to think of it John fancied them fried with bacon, but I had now taken a resolution not to keep feeding him on bacon and eggs, even tho I do know how to cook them, because they’re full of saturated fats and salt. But what else could one fry up quickly in a pan?

    “Can you cook steak, John?” I ventured.

    “Yes, but that so-called butcher in the village rarely has anything decent in that line. Tiny lamb cutlets or skinned pieces of chicken for the affluent upper-middle retirees infesting the place are more his level, I’m afraid.”

    Bother.

    “Walk down and check it out anyway?” he suggested cheerily.

    Er… But I agreed. Well there was nowhere else to shop.

    It had been quite fine when we arrived but now it was distinctly overcast, so we donned what John referred to as “great big waterproof Mackintoshes”, tho actually his is a Burberry, and off we went…

    Naturally one goes to the ancient village shop for one’s basics: its very new rival, the “Olde Village Emporium”, no kidding, charges at least five times as much and doesn’t in fact stock what ordinary human beings consider basics. Milk, bread, marmalade, for instance. Pressed ham? Okay, why not? Also marg—no John, not butter, you don’t need saturated fats at your age, never mind how much weight you lost dodging behind boulders in the savage hills. Mousetrap cheese? Well perhaps he was envisaging croques. Their shelves of “coffee” featured every size and shape of Nescafé container one could possibly imagine and some that one couldn’t. Okay, the Olde Village Emporium it would have to be.

    “Don’t ask for moutarde de Dijon, John!” I hissed.

    “But—”

    “One has to say ‘Deed-jong mustard’.”

    He choked.

    We retreated with the mustard, a bottle of olive oil, some Italian-roast ground coffee, and a box of “fruit jellies”: some sort of strange English sweets that John was sure I’d like.

    Then we tried the greengrocer. His shopfront was adorned with a display of GIANT vegetable marrows! Still? Again? Unbelievable!

    “Vegetable marrows. Forget the French name,” said John. “Rather watery things, tasteless, really.”

    Of COURSE they were! They were never meant to grow to that size!

    “Repulsive. Only the English would do that to a courge. Don’t look.” And I headed inside…

    The green beans were twice the size a bean should be and we were not wasting money on them, John.

    “Oh. Right-ho, then. Um… Carrots? No? They’re supposed to be very good for you.”

    “Well… Have you got any wine vinegar?”

    “Don’t think so; why?”

    “Because in order to produce a salade de carottes râpées one needs vinegar as well as olive oil and moutarde de—”

    “Okay, we’ll buy some carrots here and nip back to the deadly dinky emporium, that’s easy! Now: nice lettuce?”

    Here? Yes, well. Even his English eye had to concede they looked a bit tired.

    The plums looked nice but were not ripe, the peaches ditto. Well—oranges? At least they wouldn’t require cooking. So we ended up with potatoes, carrots, oranges and lemons. And went back and bought some good wine vinegar from the “deadly dinky emporium”, great name for it! And on second thoughts popped back to the grocer’s and got ice cream for pud, his idea, it wouldn’t have occurred naturally to me.

    The butcher’s shop was as predicted but John claimed to be able to grill lamb chops. Okay, on his head be it.

    By this time it really did look like rain, so we headed home rather hurriedly.

    In the kitchen we dumped the bags on the table and John went to the window and peered out at the garden.

    “Is it raining?”

    “Not quite… Mrs Blake did mention that one of her sons, forget which, has been doing a bit of gardening. Replanting the vegetable patch, I think. Didn’t Tommy find some nice beans there, that time I was laid up with the damn’ leg?”

    Nice? “Well fresh ones. So big we had to chop them to get them into the pot.”

    “Er—yes,” he said, eying me dubiously. “Well uh, might be some greens out there: I really think you ought to have some greens, darling. Hang on, I’ll check.” And he hurried out.

    Me? He was the one who needed feeding up on decent food, not me. And, just by the by, I was going to have to ring Bean Minor about the salade de carottes râpées because altho I did know what the component parts of a vinaigrette were, I had no idea how much of what one put in. So to speak.

    I had just decided to put the lemons on the kitchen bench near the electric kettle so as we wouldn’t forget to have lemon in our tea, when he yelled: “MEL!”

    Help, now what?’

    So I shot outside. Where on earth was he? The back garden was a forest of greenery.

    “DOWN HERE!”

    I fought my way through it—were those beans, growing up those tall poles? Oh, good grief!

    “Have an English vegetable marrow or two, darling,” he said, grinning weakly.

    The place was overrun with gigantic, horribly flourishing marrows! Giant marrows amidst their giant leaves.

    I was rendered speechless, not at all usual for me.

    “I don’t know what the Hell we’re going to do with them all,” he admitted.

    Gulp. No, quite.

    “Er… donate them to the greengrocer?” he ventured weakly.

    Our eyes met and we both broke down in gales of hysterical laughter.

    … “Mrs Blake’s offspring must be potty,” he concluded, as the rain came down in earnest and we rushed back indoors.

    Yes. Well potty and English. Mon Dieu.

September 23 Not. Mrs Ovenden rang me up next day at a tactfully late hour of the morning, apparently because she’d overheard Bean Minor telling me how to make a vinaigrette. She was in one of her housewifely periods, not one of her vague, fabric-arty fits, and interrogated me about what we were eating. Could I cook such and s— No? Well my dear, one didn’t want to think in clichés but the savage beast did need feeding, you know! And had I heard of slow cookers? No? Crock pots? –That was another name for them. No well, they were absolutely marvellous, no trouble at all, you just cut everything up and dropped it in and left it to cook all day! It made the loveliest casseroles! Mrs Terry (her cleaning lady) had warmly recommended them and Ian had bought her one last Christmas and it made all the difference! It was so easy even Ian and Alan could use it, and really the meat tasted as if you’d slaved over it for hours! And you didn’t need to bother with all that rubbish of browning it first, at all! –Not brown the meat first? Marthe would have had ten thousand fits! Crumbs.

    And she urged me to get a pen and write it down, both names, and here was an easy recipe, and you mustn’t buy an expensive cut of meat like rump steak, it would disintegrate, a cheap stewing steak was what you needed—I didn’t point out that this was Greek to me, I didn’t know English names for cuts of meat—and you could chop some potatoes and pop them in with it and call it an Irish stew, or add some red wine and herbs and the men would be totally taken in! Cheerful laugh.

    … Er, yes. I looked dubiously at the recipe. Presumably one peeled the carrots first. And the onions, of course. But how small should one do them? However, I hurriedly thanked her and she advised me to get John to drive me over to the nearest town and go to such-and-such shop, they were sure to have them.

    Yes well or failing that one could always fall back on Mr Lamont’s go-to, and try Harrods, I supposed. …Help.

    “Who was that?” asked John cheerfully, coming in from a foray in the garden with a handful of large English green beans. We’d had some with those lamb cutlets last night. Same like Bean Minor and I had had years back. Oh well, they did taste fresh.

    “Egg’s mum.”

    “Margot Ovenden? What did she want?”

    “Um, to make sure I’m not starving you, I think,” I admitted glumly. “She told me all about, um funny pots that have two names… I’ve never heard of them. She says you can leave them on all day and they cook the stuff. Like a casserole, I s’pose.”

    “Oh?” He came and looked at the piece of paper.

    “I mean, one doesn’t have to do anything except chop the stuff and put it in. But she didn’t say anything about whether it goes in the oven or on top of the stove or what temperature or anything!”

    “Lor’. Not going into a vague fit, is she?”

    “No, she was horribly bright and on the ball. What’s the other English one? Something about beans, talking of which.”

    “Uh—oh! Full of beans,” he said, grinning. “Er… Ah! Got it. I think it must be one of those newfangled electric things, darling. Doesn’t need a stove, one just plugs it in. Er—and presumably turns it to the right setting.”

    Ugh, me and electric things don’t get on too well.

    “I suppose we’d better get one,” he said, grinning. “Well—nip over to the town?”

    That’d be romantic. Oh well, that’s Life.

    So we went. The shop had some, yes, but wouldn’t we prefer the very latest— As neither of us had ever heard the term “air fryer” before this didn’t persuade us, oddly enough. So we bought the slow cooker/crock pot, the salesman assuring us it had a—gulp—instruction booklet, and retreated to the supermarket in quest of cheap stewing steak which wouldn’t disintegrate.

    John bought some nice porterhouse steak anyway, he’d sear it in the pan, jolly good, but the other stuff flummoxed us. So he asked a lady who was also choosing meat and looked as if she’d know, that crocheted hat, the workmanlike black polyester slacks and the giant shopping carrier were a fair indication, and sure enough, she did and was very happy to advise us and tell us what she cooked in her slow cooker! Gosh, chicken as well? And lasagna? Golly. But look out, the American recipes were terrible, they always used horrible tinned soup, full of salt and preservatives! We agreed that we wouldn’t use any American recipes and thanked her fervently. And she wished us good luck, mentioning by the by that her Len really fancied a nice curry and it was easy as nothing, too.

    John had providently brought the piece of paper so then we bought things like onions and celery that were in the recipe. And went off to the local wine shop, which was quite decent, unquote. Well in English terms it probably was, and yes, if he wanted to chuck half a bottle of a Côtes du Rhône into a slow cooker slash crock pot, why not? And the other half wouldn’t go to waste, very funny, John! But I couldn’t help laughing nonetheless. And so we took it all home…

    “I don’t know what happened to lunchtime,” he admitted, looking at his watch. “I think it’s too late to embark on this, darling, so, er, fridge?”

    And we stuffed it all in the fridge, liberated one of the several bottles of the aforesaid C. du R. he’d acquired, made a hasty couple of “cheese doorsteps”, his expression, and retired upstairs with the lot.

    The phone rang at an inconvenient moment, of course, but we managed to ignore it. If it was important they’d call again. And if it was the MOD they could get stuffed (his). Jolly good!

    Next day that left us face-to-face with a load of meat and vegetables that wouldn’t keep fresh forever and a brand-new slow cooker slash crock pot, didn’t it? John read through the instructions very carefully… At about this point something very cross that Tante Louise had once said in re men and written instructions came back vaguely to me… Oh dear. That was right: she’d bought something electrical, I forget what, and Once Albert had got hold of the piece of paper that came with it. Resulting in a two-hour wait and being stood over for every minute that she— Quite. Whereas her idea had been to simply plug the thing in. Oh help.

    Well I was eventually allowed to chop stuff up but by the time it was all in the thing and it was putatively on, it was well past lunchtime.

September 25 Not. Mrs O. rang again later that that afternoon for a progress report and laughed like a drain at my bitter description of the instructions-reading. Adding: “They’re all like that, my dear! You’ll learn! –Oh, and if he asks you to walk round with him at golf, look out.”

    “What?” I fumbled.

    “I’m sure there’s a French expression for it, too, they won’t be any different over there! Just make sure he doesn’t do more than nine holes, that’s quite boring enough!”

    What?

   And with a merry laugh and a “Good luck, Mel, dear!” she rang off.

    What? Nine… Walk… Oh help.

    Well gee, the very next day, after a very satisfactory morning and reiterated congratulations on the success of the slow-cooker stew (more like self-congratulations—however), he thought—airily—that I might like to be dropped over at the stables: catch up with the Junior Drones, eh?

    “And?”

    Some verbal feet shuffling was followed by the intel that that phone call last evening (and also the earlier call we’d ignored) had been from Old So-and-So, hadn’t caught up with him for ages, and he’d suggested a round of golf. Tho of course if I’d like to walk round with them? –Eagerly.

    “How many holes are you going to do?”

    Old So-and-So had suggested nine—well he was getting on a bit, y’know.

    It was clearly a message from Fate, wasn’t it? “I’ll walk round with you, John.”

    Oh dear, his face lit up as I’d given him a huge present.

    So we had nine holes of golf with the woffly-moustached, woffly-voiced and wobbly-legged Old So-and-So. At first an attempt was made by both—the aged pal not seeming precisely uneager—to Teach Mel To Play Golf. Yes well. Tho I’m not denying they both enjoyed the apparent necessity of putting the arms firmly round the party of the second part in order to demonstrate the correct Swing.

    After that they gave me up as a bad job and I was allowed to just walk round with them…

    I draw a veil.

    Well I couldn’t say that Mrs O. hadn’t warned me, could I?

    But if that was what it was going to take, then that was what it was going to take. No way were we going to end up as one of those couples who lead completely separate lives, and yes, the awful example of Tante Élisabeth and Oncle Patrice did spring forcibly to mind.

September 27 Not. Next day I went over to the stables and told the Junior Drones all about it. Much hilarity ensued, tho I fancied that Carrie-Ann was looking at me with considerable sympathy.

    And since it was now the time of day for which Egg had scheduled an official Junior Drones meeting, Mireille and Colas joining us via Zoom, we had to have it.

    According to the minutes faithfully circulated by the Hon. Sec. it went like this:

MINUTES of Extraordinary GENERAL MEETING of the JUNIOR DRONES, Aug. 2022

Present: Egg. (A.) Ovenden, Hon. Chairperson; Flossie (J.) Nightingale, Hon. Sec.; Bean (M.) Fullarton-Browne, Crumpet (L.) Lamont, Hon. Mems.; Sister Bean (M.) Fullarton Browne, A. Johns, C.-A. Fletcher, M. LeBec (via Zoom), Aux. Hon. Mems.; Bean Minor (T.) Fullarton-Browne, Chela; C. (N.) LeBec, Aux. Chela (via Zoom).

Apologies: Mr. C. Lamont, Sir Flossie (C.) Nightingale.

    The Minutes of the previous meeting were read and condemned to the customary chorus of Boos and the Hon. Sec. was formally thanked.

Order of Business:

(1) Proposal for full Hon. Membership of Chela Bean Minor Fullarton-Browne. The proposal was moved by Crumpet Lamont. Seconded: A. Johns (disallowed on the grounds of Auxiliariness); further seconded: Sister Bean Fullarton-Browne (disallowed, ditto). Seconded: Hon Sec. The proposal was put to the vote. Carried unanimously.

(2) Proposal for Auxiliary Hon. Membership of Aux. Chela C. LeBec. The proposal was moved by Crumpet Lamont. Interjection (Bean Fullarton-Browne): Point of Order, Mr Chairperson! The Crumpet can’t have two proposals! A certain rumpus then arose and the meeting was called to Order. The Hon. Chairperson then decreed that any Hon. Mem. could put forward any number of proposals either together or separately or indeed, manually, or, as it were, once a year. (Interjections from the floor: “Get off!” “Boo!” “Take him away!” “Rhubarb!” “Off with his head!” “A la lanterne!”)

    The proposal being on the floor, a seconder was called for. Seconded: Sister Bean Fullarton-Browne (disallowed, see above.) A move from the floor was made to propose a vote of thanks to the said Sister Bean and the Hon. Chairperson called the meeting to Order. The Hon. Sec. then seconded the motion and it was put to the vote. Carried unanimously. The aforesaid C. LeBec then requesting a translation, a short break was taken in order to forestall a certain measure of mayhem.

    The meeting then resumed.

(3) Proposal for Auxiliary Hon. Membership of Teddy (E.) Trelawney. The aspirant was called into the meeting. Certain small missiles were thrown and the meeting was called to Order. The said aspirant was requested to state why he should become an Auxiliary Hon. Member of the Junior Drones. The reply being that he had been at Marbledown and actually he didn’t see why he shouldn’t be a full member, you chaps, a thoughtful silence fell, broken only by the landing of several small missiles. Hon. Mems. were then asked if they had any questions for the aspirant.

Question by Hon. Mem. Crumpet Lamont: Did you play any dashed games, like cricket, f’r instance? Answer: Yes.

Hon. Mem. Crumpet Lamont: I rest my case.

Hon. Chairperson: Crumpy, you haven’t stated a case, old man. –Order!

Hon. Mem. Bean Fullarton-Browne: Yes he has, Egg, I mean Mr Chairperson, his case is that the fellow played bally cricket.

Aspirant: But I never played rugger and I hated rowing and nobody can claim I was a Swot!

New Hon. Mem. Bean Minor Fullarton-Browne: That’s true.

Aux. Hon. Mem. Sister Bean Fullarton-Browne: There you are: I vote we let him join.

Hon. Chairperson: Order! Sister Bean, strictly speaking you haven’t got a vote. –Order!

    The meeting having thus been called to Order, the Hon. Chairperson asked for a formal proposer and seconder. Proposed: Hon. Mem. Bean Fullarton-Browne. Seconded: Hon. Mem. Crumpet Lamont. Carried unanimously. New Aux. Hon. Mem. C. LeBec (en français): Mais ce n’est pas logique, ça! The New Aux. Hon. Mem. was called to Order and it was explained in two languages that that was the Point.

(4) Proposal by Hon. Mem. Crumpet Lamont that all future meetings should include Cream Teas. Seconded: Bean Minor Fullarton-Browne. Extempore chorus of Boos, apparently on the grounds that the seconder was (a) too new, (b) too big for his boots and (c) where were the cream teas to come from? The proposal was then thrown open for discussion.

    The consensus was that jolly good idea tho it was, the proposal was invalid, given that no Junior D. was putting up the opposable-digited appendix to cook scones, buns, or &c. for it; nor, indeed, were said Mems. capable of such. The Hon. Chairperson called for Order, to a chorus of Boos, Rhubarbs, &c.

    The Hon. Chairperson then calling for a vote, the proposal was again moved by Hon. Mem. Crumpet Lamont. Seconded: Bean Fullarton-Browne. The proposal was put to the vote. The Nos had it.

(5) Proposal by Hon. Mem. Bean Fullarton-Browne that in that case this meeting should adjourn for a jolly good Cream Tea at the Cosy Cottage Café. This facility is a simple, old-fashioned establishment known to exist within a convenient distance of the venue. The proposal was carried by unanimous acclaim from the floor. The Chairperson then apologised to those Hon. Mems. participating in the meeting via Zoom. This apology was greeted by a gale of giggles (Aux. Hon. Mem. M. LeBec) and a French expression of derision (new Aux. Hon. Mem. C. LeBec). An informal proposal to scrag the latter the minute the Hon. Mems. got their mitts on him was carried by unanimous acclaim.

    The Meeting then adjourned to the Cosy Cottage Café, after the Hon. Sec. had ascertained that sadly those were all C’s, not K’s, to an unnecessary chorus of “Boo!” “Sit down!” “Rhubarb, rhubarb” and &c.

    Date of next meeting: to be determined.

 

September 29 Not. I hadn’t been wrong about that expression on Carrie-Ann’s face earlier, because after the yummy cream tea she managed to get me aside and said: “It’s not that easy being a couple, is it? I mean, equality is all very well, but one has to… adapt, I suppose.”

    “Jolly good word for it,” I admitted. “Um, has the Egg said anything to you about when he means to chuck in the stables and get back to London and start doing the hospitality stuff?”

    “Not exactly. I mean, he’s not as bad as some, but you know what they are. They work it out in their heads and then spring it on you, Mum says, and I’m discovering she’s not wrong. I think he might be going to wait until Oncle Albert’s building’s ready.”

    Mm. I’d thought it might be something like that. “Well Oncle Albert won’t put him straight in as manager, you know. He needs to get some solid experience under his belt. And if one of the cousins does manager to start with, Egg might get elbowed out.”

    She made a face. “Yes. I’ve tried telling him that.”

    “And?” I croaked.

    “Bearing it steadily in mind,” she said with a sigh.

    Yes well: cliché or not, I was beginning to discover that they are, indeed, all like that.

Next chapter:

https://theeggandfriendscomethrough-anovel.blogspot.com/2026/04/plans-of-mice-and-men.html