Today is the day that Thomas G. Putty (my manager and a very good friend), Mr Giles (a former trapeze artist and a very good friend) and myself decided to find our very best foghorns from amongst our dressers and chests and go and find people who LAZE ABOUT ALL day on park benches and wake them up.
Just yesterday night I was walking along, carrying a basket of cupcakes and a bag of plumbing fixtures THAT I HAD FOUND when I failed to notice a large twig on the ground and I rolled my ankle somewhat.
In need of a bench immediately in order to take the weight off of my piqued astragalus I called out to a man IN A DRESS with a can of shaving mouse tied to his forearm if he would mind vacating his bench in order to aid in my recuperation.
Would you believe it; he was asleep and he did not wake up.
Once my lovely housekeeper, Mrs Janet Fettiplace, made Abdul Bamband sit in a bath full of angry crayfish for over twelve minutes because he had NOT WOKEN UP when he was asked to.
I accidentally pressed my foghorn too early and disturbed a praying nun. She said Jesus would forgive me since she was also in the mood to disturb people who sleep upon benches and that was the end of that.
I promised I would bake her a sponge although in ALL HONESTY I have no real intention to do any such thing and if anything I will ask Fat Mike (a benefactor of stray, moribund dogs and a very good friend) to buy one since he still owes me that loaf of bread.
I fancy the nun had a camera under her theological garments.
Thomas G. Putty made some sterling progress and woke up at least five, if not six, people within the space of seventeen-and-a-half minutes. One of these POEPLE WAS ACTUALLY Philip Norchester-Phillips (a man who has never worn a pair of shoes he has not, himself, fabricated and a man who was a friend some ten years ago before he took to littering).
He was asleep on the bench because his wife had thrown him out after he had accidentally stuck her hands together with glue or a similar product.
He claims he knows nothing of this and believes IT TO BE A MAN who looks nearly identical to himself.
This is extremely worrying if found true and I hope this IMPOSTER dares not show himself at the Humphrey Regis Memorial Lido tonight because there is nothing I fear more than the foldable deckchair being glued in order that it be no longer foldable OR EVEN that the oven glove be stuck to the pig’s tail with this abhorrent adhesive.
The pig is actually a man pig. It was to be called Stan Philpott but we are not sure this is a true pig’s name anymore. I quite like Benjamin Dallythwaite and Thomas G. Putty for one agrees with me.
He says if we decide not to call it Benjamin Dallythwaite we should indeed find a man or a fox or a bird of prey who does go by this name and introduce them into the show, possibly in the role of the SINGING FIREMAN which we have discussed once or twice.
Mrs Janet Fettiplace has made the entire audience some of her famous yoghurt although I am not sure why she has done this. She said that there had been recent LOCAL HEALTH SCARES and yoghurt would naturally be the answer as it always was.
I suggested that she had been at the sherry again and she dropped McGurk in some cassoulet that she had bubbling upon the stove and asked how yoghurt was going to fix that. I think she may have defeated her own argument.
McGurk managed to escape from the cassoulet and, by way of revenge, he found a pigeon and dropped it IN A TIN of blue paint.
Tonight I will travel to the show in the contemporary equivalent of a Hansom cab as Thomas G. Putty is taking the car and FILLING it with boxes which I believe to be containing portable handheld garment steamers. He says, does Thomas, that this will create an ATMOSPHERE OF FOG and terror.
I explained that we are responsible for a show of comedy and goodwill but he says that this does not matter and that fog is actually something for every occasion.
A young lady of Siberian origin who happened to be listening in on our conversation said she thought this to be a correct assumption regarding fog and so I will go along with it this time.
Yours, through all of the fog and the laughter
BC
Barry Carrot and his Foldable Deckchair 