Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Come Out

 

On the First Day of Advent my 3-D tree gave to me...a hedgehog with a toadstool! But enough of that. Let's crack on, shall we? 

I present to you 'The Much Malarkey Manor Christmas Story 2025!' Who knows what's going to happen? Least of all the Lady Author...ahem...

…the intercom entry system for ‘E.G.G.S – Elegant Girls’ Guidance Service’ – buzzes, and Mrs Slocombe, who is rostered on Reception this morning due to a sprained ankle following an altercation with a boot scraper in the shape of a hedgehog, picks up the ‘phone.

‘Good afternoon, this is E.G.G.S, Mrs Slocombe speaking, how may I help you?’

There is a brief silence followed by what sounds like an out-of-control flag flapping in a high wind. Mrs Slocombe casts her beady chicken eye out of the Reception window. (Not literally, that would be gross.) It is raining a bit, this is true, but there is barely an accompanying breeze.

‘Can I help you?’ she repeats.

‘Betty? Is that you, Betty?’ responds a voice of the male persuasion.

‘Yes, this is she, Mrs Betty Slocombe, your Executive Receptionist and Personal Assistant,’ says Mrs Slocombe. There is something eerily familiar about the voice but she can’t quite place the owner. I’ve probably overdone the paracetamol and codeine, she thinks. They’re a heady mixture when combined with an espresso coffee and too many fig rolls.

The voice persists. ‘Mrs Slocombe – Betty - I need to see you. You, and Mrs Miggins, Mrs Pumphrey and Mrs Poo. It’s a matter of grave urgency…oh, damn and blast this infernal cloak…’

The light of comprehension flashes, somewhat alarmingly, in Mrs Slocombe’s brain. She sighs. ‘Kenneth the Phantomime,’ she says.

‘Well, yes,’ says Kenneth, for yea verily, ‘tis him, our favourite Christmas Story almost-villain. (Hurrah, I hear you all shout!) ‘Who else did you think it was?’

Aah, the cocky certainty of a true egomaniac, thinks Mrs Slocombe. ‘Come on up, Kenneth,’ she says, pressing the release button on the door. ‘We’re on the top floor. Penthouse suite. You might want to use the lift, save any accidents on the stairs involving your cloak.’

Mrs Slocombe hears the front door to the building being pulled open and the sound of mild cursing as Kenneth the Phantomime enters the building. Pressing another button on the Reception desk, Mrs Slocombe says, ‘Houston, we have a problem.’

A few moments later, Mrs Miggins appears in Reception. Today she is wearing smart-but-casual and it is making her feel itchy. ‘What sort of problem?’ she says. ‘I can’t be doing with any problems at this moment. I have client arriving in twenty minutes.’

‘It’s him,’ says Mrs Slocombe.

‘Him who?’ says Mrs Miggins.

‘That Kenneth chap,’ says Mrs Slocombe. ‘Fig roll? I shouldn’t eat any more, they’re messing with my pain killers.’ She sticks out her foot in case Mrs Miggins needs reminding of the ankle sprain.

‘No thanks,’ says Mrs Miggins, wrinkling her beak. ‘What does he want? Kenneth?’

‘I think we’re about to find out,’ says Mrs Slocombe, as Kenneth the Phantomime bursts through the door to the E.G.G.S, trips over his clearly far too voluminous cloak and lands smack on his face at the feet of Mrs Miggins.

‘*?!!+@*’ he says. ‘And double *?!!+@*.’

‘Please, Mr Phantomime!’ says Mrs Miggins, covering Mrs Slocombe’s ears. ‘There are ladies present.’

‘What’s all the noise?’ says Mrs Pumphrey, appearing through a door just off the Reception area. ‘I’m trying to align my chi which is particularly difficult at the moment on account of the Grand Trine combination between Pisces, Cancer and Scorpio. All that water emotion, you know. It plays HAVOC!’

And then she notices the heap of Phantomime on the floor. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she says. ‘That’ll explain the Knight of Swords in this morning’s Tarot reading.’

The Phantomime scrabbles to his feet and counts the hens before him.

‘Where’s Mrs Poo? Is she here?’ he says.

‘She’s out,’ says Mrs Slocombe, consulting the appointment diary. ‘With a client. Engaging with Nature’s natural endorphins and something to do with fungus.’

Kenneth staggers to one of the Reception chairs and slumps heavily into it. ‘This is terrible,’ he says. ‘Never mind your Grand Trine chi issues, Mrs Pumphrey. I am having the most hideous of existential crises and I didn’t know where else to turn. I only found the E.G.G.S because I saw one of your adverts on Chick-Tok.’

Mrs Miggins is already rolling her eyes and tapping her foot impatiently on the floor. Mrs Pumphrey takes the seat next to Kenneth and pats his arm. ‘What’s the matter? What ails thee, fine Sir?’ she says going a bit olde-worlde for no apparent reason.

Kenneth looks into her kind eyes and wipes his own tear-stained face with his cloak. ‘I’ve went to Much Malarkey Manor this morning,’ he says. ‘It was closed. Empty. There was no-one there.’

‘That’s right,’ says Mrs Pumphrey. ‘That’s because we are all here. At work. We’ll be home later this evening.’

‘But where is she? Whatshername? The writer woman?’ says the Phantomime. ‘It’s almost 1^st December. She should be there, shouldn’t she? Busy at her laptop, putting the final touches to the script for this year’s Much Malarkey Manor Christmas Story?’

Mrs Pumphrey glances at Mrs Slocombe and then Mrs Miggins and suddenly everyone seems rather reluctant to talk. Fortunately, at that very moment, Mrs Poo arrives, all brisk of feather and ridged of wattle.

‘What an invigorating session!’ she announces, throwing her rucksack on the floor and shaking off her fleece-lined gilet. ‘I don’t know about these clients of ours but I’M getting a HUGE amount of benefit from yomping through the woods on a regular basis…’

And then, ‘What’s HE doing here?’ she says, pointing an accusing wing at the Phantomime.

‘Well,’ says Mrs Slocombe, cautiously, ‘he wants to know about this year’s Much Malarkey Christmas Story. He went to the Manor this morning, you see, to enquire after the Lady Author and…’

‘There isn’t going to be one,’ says Mrs Poo.

‘What?’ says Kenneth.

‘There…isn’t…going…to…be…a…Much…Malarkey…Manor…Christmas…Story…this…year,’ says Mrs Poo as if she is talking to a small, idiot goose.

Kenneth leaps to his feet in horror. And promptly faints.

‘Ye gods,’ sighs Mrs Miggins. ‘Pop him in the staff room, Mrs Poo. I’ll sort him out when I’ve finished with my client.’

‘Okie dokie!’ says a cheerful and pumped-full-of-endorphins and fungi Mrs Poo. She grabs the Phantomime by his legs and pulls him with ease through Reception and along the corridor to the staff room. Because that’s the kind of strength you develop when you spend a lot of your time yomping in Nature.