A Thrilling Denouement!

 

On the twenty-third day of Advent my 3-D tree gave to me...two fox cubs! Luckily, they are situated right next to their mother so they should stay out of trouble. Back to the cliff-hanger, then, of Mrs Glossop holding a porpoise hostage with a harpoon, a sentence the Lady Author thought she would never write, even if she was in charge of this story, which she isn't...

How do you solve a problem like Mrs Glossop? How do you catch a more than livid woman armed with a harpoon and pin her down? These are two of the questions racing through Juan the Turtle Dove’s head at this very minute. He searches frantically in the crowd for the three French hens but they are nowhere to be seen. He looks at Enrico, who glances back and shrugs his shoulders. Mrs Miggins, Mrs Pumphrey, Mrs Slocombe and Mrs Poo seem to have vanished, too, along with Kenneth the Phantomime.

‘Think of the children, Mrs Glossop!!’ shouts Juan, goodness knows why but he is in a state of panic and it’s the first thing that comes into his head.

Mrs Glossop peers into the crowd.

‘Children?’ she snorts. ‘I don’t have any children.’

‘All right,’ says Juan, thinking, this is good, I’ve made contact with the perpetrator in a hostage situation, ‘think of the bounty on the head of the Lord General Porpoise.’

Mrs Glossop, harpoon still poised to strike, looks suspiciously at the Lord General Porpoise’s head. ‘I see no coconut chocolate bar,’ she says.

(All right, all right – I know there’s already been one Bounty joke in this story but it was too tempting not to have another go. Of course, if the Lady Author was in charge, it would NEVER have happened, probably not even the first time…)

‘You know what I mean, Mrs Glossop,’ says Juan, holding her gaze and edging his way to the steps at the front of the stage. ‘I mean the reward we’ll get for bringing him in to the authorities. We’d share it with you, of course. Think what that amount of money could do for the good of your beloved Olden Glish.’

Mrs Glossop pauses and the tip of the harpoon moves slightly away from its jugular vein target. It’s true – the money would pay for a lot in the village: a new set of curtains and replacement tea urn for the village hall, for example. And the roof on the Treacle Well needs mending, and the Old Forge needs a serious de-coking. And…

‘No!’ she says, snapping back to her senses. ‘No amount of money will make up for what HE…’ and she pokes the Lord General Porpoise with her harpoon, ‘has done. It would be better if he was dispatched to the Great Beyond.’ (She means ‘dead’ and not the small town renowned for its carpet factories, just in case you are confused.)

At this point two things happen: firstly, the Lord General Porpoise whips off his hat and starts batting ineffectually at the harpoon whilst clicking and screeching hysterically at the top of his voice, and secondly, the stage is invaded by seven hens and a Phantomime who know, from experience, that the best weapon of attack is chaos and confusion.

The seven hens (three French, two Rhode Island red, one Maran and a large White Sussex) lunge at Mrs Glossop, wielding a huge Christmas-themed table cloth and a ball of Edam cheese.

‘This is for your own good, Mrs Glossop,’ shouts one of the hens, probably Mrs Miggins, as the unfortunate and suddenly confused Mrs Glossop flails underneath the tablecloth and is then rendered unconscious by a smart donk on the head with the Edam. The harpoon is commandeered by Mrs Poo, and the crowd breathes a sigh of relief.

The Phantomime, meanwhile, tackles the hysterical Lord General Porpoise. ‘You are SUCH a disappointment,’ he says, before smacking him sharply on the nose.

Well! Although the crowd of auditionees has very much enjoyed the dramatic, impromptu show, it has become very obvious that there will be no grand festival to celebrate the greatness of the Dauphin Dolphin who turns out to be the not-so-great Lord General Porpoise. There is a bit of muttering about wasted journeys, wasted time and wasted effort, but the dissent is soon quelled by the eight milk maids setting out their vast range of cheese-based snacks and the seven swimming swans making a late appearance fresh from their triumphant defence of their world synchronised swimming title in Finland, and performing their award-winning routine in a near-by fountain.

With attention moved away from the stage, Juan and Enrico fin-cuff the Lord General Porpoise and make a call to ‘Transport A-Go-Go – For All Your Removal Needs’ for them to come and collect the fish in a barrel (yes, I know a porpoise is a mammal not a fish, but I don’t want to spoil the whole shooting a fish in a barrel metaphor) to be taken to wherever you take porpoises with a bounty on their head these days.

‘I can’t believe you’ve concussed Mrs Glossop with an Edam,’ says Juan.

‘She’ll be alright,’ says Mrs Slocombe, who is in attendance as emergency field nurse. ‘We’ll take her back to Olden Glish and make sure she’s settled in The Rutting Deer before we head off home.’

‘And what about you?’ says Juan, turning to Kenneth the Phantomime, who is still standing in front of the Lord General Porpoise. ‘Do you want to ask your questions of the Porpoise before he is carted away to face justice for his crimes?’

Kenneth is tapping his foot impatiently on the stage and a fair amount of glitter is falling from his cloak.

‘I can’t believe I was taken in by him,’ he says.

‘Don’t be harsh on yourself,’ says Juan. ‘You wouldn’t be the first to fall for his smooth charm and eloquence. It’s easily done.’

‘He’s just all smoke and mirrors, isn’t he?’ says Kenneth. ‘All air and no substance.’

‘I can hear you, you know,’ says the Lord General Porpoise, who is dabbing at his tender nose with his hat.

‘Oh…just hush,’ says Kenneth. ‘I know what you’ve done and I don’t need to find the meaning of my life from someone like you.’

‘Bravo!’ says Mrs Miggins, appearing at Kenneth’s side and patting him on the arm.

‘Of course,’ says Kenneth, ‘I still don’t know what I am going to do with my December…’

‘Kenneth,’ says Mrs Miggins, gently, ‘it’s already the twenty-third. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and that’s when the Christmas Story ends anyway.’

Kenneth looks genuinely surprised. ‘Is it?’ he says. ‘Well, I never,’ he says. ‘That’s okay, then,’ he says. ‘Shall we go home now?’ he says.

‘Let’s,’ says Mrs Miggins.