It is Valentine’s Day, dear listener, and so on this special day, we explain the true meaning of the event, and share once more the delights of the little village of St Botolph-in-the-Wolds, where ‘imbecile’ is not an insult, but a mark of respect and high social status.
Below we offer three – yes, THREE – snippets on the theme of love, including a brand new Mr Bubbles story in the middle, and a sliver of Bottles the lurcher with which to finish. Astonishing, yes? If you learned how we did it, we would have to kill you. If we could be bothered…
PRELUDE: MR BUBBLES IN LOVE
A short, heart-warming tale of romance
No one was actually dead. The police and ambulance crews had dragged the badly-injured walking party well away from the scene of crime, and were in the process of counting limbs, many of which were still attached. Thick spatters of blood, now congealing under the midday sun, decorated the hedgerows; someone’s ear hung off a yew tree. It had a nice ear-ring in it – the ear, not the tree.
“It’s a public footpath,” said Sandra, frowning as she fished a torn woolly hat out of the horse trough. The hat, almost bitten through, had an animal welfare badge on it. Sandra wondered if that was what writers called irony.
Mr Bubbles moved his weight uneasily from hoof to hoof.
“They looked at my turnip.” A pitch-black fire danced in the pony’s great eyes.
“They were passing by! They’re on a walking tour.” She noticed two policewoman trying to construct temporary stretchers out of runner-bean poles. “Well, they were on a walking tour.”
The pony glared at the nearest conscious rambler, and rolled a large, mottled root vegetable lovingly back into the shade of the barn. He sighed, admiring the plump curves of the vegetable’s sides, the almost coy blush of purple near the top…
“MY turnip,” muttered Mr Bubbles.
MAIN MOVEMENT: THE CARROT WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD
A new tale of equine eccentricities
Sandra’s cousin Mary had come to stay once more, and the farmhouse above St Botolph’s was a cheerful hive of activity. Except with no bees, or honey, or waxy cells from which small, blind grubs were waiting to emerge. So nothing like a hive, really. Sandra’s mother was unconscious under the large pine table, a consequence of confusing cough sweets with sheep tranquillisers, but the two teenagers had plenty to keep them occupied…
“Right, I think I’ve got it,” said Mary, putting down his utterly useless child-safe scissors, borrowed from St Botolph’s Mixed Infants, “A Roman Emperor fell out with a Christian priest over theology, and had the chap beaten to death and beheaded, as a warning to people who disagreed with Rome’s policies on ecumenical matters.
“Also, before he died, the priest wrote a letter to a lot of people’s daughters, saying that he might not be able to go for that drink after all, but it was nothing personal. And that’s how we ended up with Valentine’s Day.”
“Exactly,” said Sandra, trying to remove a bottle of glue from one of the less competent sheep which were milling round the farmhouse kitchen. “And so we send heart-shaped cards to those we love on February the Fourteenth each year. That one simple act completely makes up for the three hundred and sixty four days when we didn’t pay enough attention to them, do anything useful, or remember to iron the cat.”
“Like going to confession just after hacking seventeen people to death with a chainsaw, and saying five Hail Marys to make up for it?”
Sandra nodded. “The organised Church is a bit of a mystery, if you ask me.”
Her cousin stood up and brushed glitter off his pleated skirt. “These tights have had it. This glue goes everywhere – and it smells a bit, too.”
“Mrs Gayamurthi makes it from fish-heads.”
“Lovely.” Mary wiped his hands on a passing sheep. “Still, I’m done.” He held up a piece of red cardboard which resembled the results of a drunken, short-sighted junior surgeon conducting a major operation after three consecutive shifts on call. More a wholesale evisceration than an organ of love.
“I thought Deborah Buntling still hated you?”
“She does,” said Mary. “That’s why I’ve made a jolly rotten job of it. Maybe this year she won’t go on so much about me borrowing her lipstick.”
“You don’t wear lipstick.”
“No, but I use it to write threatening messages to the Latin Master at college. It makes him feel wanted.”
“That’s nice.” Sandra abandoned her own card, meant for her mother. Mother would have to make do with out-of-date chocolates from the village shop.
A sudden crash and a spray of broken glass announced that Mr Bubbles, Sandra’s beloved but slightly psychotic pony, had rammed his large head through the kitchen window again.
Sandra sighed. “Hello, boy. No, you don’t need to start complaining. We’re finished here, and have all afternoon to join you on a risky, ill-conceived adventure across the moors, seeking out unutterably evil abominations and barely managing to survive.”
“Bored with that,” said Mr Bubbles. “Want carrots.”
“I have sugar cubes,” Mary offered.
The pony gave him a look which strongly suggested the presentation of a sugar cube might result in a hoof in the face.
“Or we could look for some carrots,” said Mary hastily.
And so the three chums set off down to the little village of St Botolph-in-the-Wolds, often described as ‘picturesque’ by people who liked Hieronymous Bosch and Goya’s Disasters of War.
All was remarkable quiet on the few functional streets of the quaint hamlet. This year’s Valentine’s Day Bake-Off between the Womens’ Institute and the Esoteric Order of Dagon had been cancelled, due to an unexpected outbreak of yellow jack, whilst the highly feral Girl Guides were raiding elsewhere that day.
“They’ve gone to pillage the towns on the coast, topping up their Brasso supplies,” Sandra explained. “And to throw stones at herring gulls. I think the ducks on the village pond put them up to that part.”
A nearby duck stubbed out its cigarette and tried to assume a nonchalant air. No one was fooled..
Only Mr Quilling, the Village Pervert, had made any public attempt to celebrate the unjust murder of an over-religious Roman, but the ornate display he’d constructed in his front garden was neither nice nor clever. Probably its only direct relevance to affairs of the heart was that it might induce a coronary in anyone less broad-minded (or indifferent) than the locals.
Mary stared, then looked away. “I shall never eat broccoli again, that’s for sure.”
“Carrots,” said Mr Bubbles.
Alas, the village shops were not forthcoming – the root vegetable in question was in short supply that day. The sort of short supply that means when you ask ‘Can I buy a carrot, please?’, the answer is distinctly in the negative. The general store had none, though this was hardly unusual – its owner concentrated more on the ‘general’ aspect than the ‘store’ part. The Post Office had just sold out, and Mrs Gayamurthi’s could only offer large Indian radishes.
“We could paint it orange, boy,” said Sandra, stroking her pony’s black mane.
Mr Bubbles tried the end of one, and spat the chunk out through the shop’s open door, stunning a passing pedestrian. “Not the same.”
Mary gave his cousin a sidelong glance. “Look, Mr Bubbles, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but how about we go up to Grimspire Water, and see if we can set fire to some hideous, gelatinous monstrosity. That might cheer you up.”
“Carrots.”
In the face of the pony’s obstinacy, their search continued, but even the Mobile Library, which had an unusually large vegetable section, was unable to loan them a single root. Sandra and Mary sat down on the old gibbet-stone which stood by the north road. Legend had it that long ago, possibly in the early fourteenth century, the villagers had built the foundations for an exciting new means of execution, and then couldn’t arsed to finish it off. Subsequent felons had been consigned to Gibbet Hill, which – rather confusingly – was a large hole in the ground, not far from Buttersmite Fell. The people of St Botolph’s didn’t believe in unnecessary effort.
“I suppose,” said Sandra, “That there’s nothing for it. We’ll have to ask Old Aggie. If anyone has any carrots left in the entire area, it’s her. She’ll have a clamp of them from last Autumn.”
It was a dire situation. Old Aggie was a perfectly pleasant woman, but she also collected potatoes in the shape of Queen Victoria, and insisted that all visitors examine her entire collection before they were offered a sit-down or a mug of gin. As Old Aggie had three extensive cellars packed full of the things, the experience could take hours.
“Look, boy,” said Sandra, as they trudged their the way up to Aggie’s farm. She pointed towards a tall stand of gloomy, putty-coloured trees not a hundred yards away. “Those shadows on the edge of Whateley Wood! Perhaps they represent some insidious, creeping evil that we should face right away. I could go and get my pump-action Remington, and-”
“Carrots.”
Mr Bubbles was known for his intractable moods, but Sandra couldn’t work out whey he was so particularly obsessed with carrots today, especially as he must have know they were hard to get. In fact, he probably knew that they would have to end up at Old Aggie’s, so what was going on?
“He’s not ill, is he?” asked Mary as they came in sight of Aggie’s farm, which would have had to be rebuilt and knocked down again before it could achieve the status of a ruin. Much of it consisted of cellars covered with sheets of corrugated iron and the more lethal types of asbestos (still widely used in St Botolph’s, due to the natural immunity which the villagers had developed).
“Don’t suppose so.” Sandra re-tied her long blonde hair, and checked to see if she had any money in her purse. “Maybe we can get away with the two-hour tour this time,” she said, eyeing one of the few standing structures. “I’ll go and–”
“In there,” said the pony, nudging her shoulder with his velvety muzzle. He pointed one hoof at a large ramshackle shed, just on the edge of the potato fields.
She shrugged. “If you say, boy, but I would have thought…”
There was no point in arguing with him. Sandra and Mary walked over to the shed, and eased back one of the double doors, peering into the gloom…
“Gosh!” said Mary.
There, on the shed floor, lay an astonishing range of mummified legs, withered arms, skeletal fragments, oozing tentacles, and confiscated occult paraphernalia, plus half a vampire and something extremely warped with no head – and no body. Forbidden books of knowledge, such as that vile and obscene tract The Book of the Deaf, lay next to the twisted parts of a police car and a set of amulets for protection against depressed ferrets. Many of the items – organic and inorganic – had very large teeth-marks in them. All had been trodden on quite a bit.
The presence of these horrors was perhaps not so important as the fact that the whole lot had been arranged on the trampled dirt in the unmistakable shape of a huge heart.
“We did all these, you and me,” said the pony. “Knackered the lot of them.”
If the exact sight before her was indescribable, the smell certainly wasn’t – but Sandra had a clue that her best friend was making a most unusual gesture. The single red rose the pony had tossed into the middle of the appalling mementos pretty much gave it away.
“We did,” she murmured. “And it was jolly hard work, but we always had each other’s backs.” She smiled, and leaned against the warm, powerful body. “It’s… it’s a lovely surprise,” she managed to say.
“Happy Dead Unwise Priest’s Day,” said Mr Bubbles.
Mary, too, was smiling, if a little puzzled. Quite what was the point of the author putting him in this narrative? He didn’t really seem to have any useful role at all. His discontented musing was soon ended, though, by the deep, determined voice of equine hungers.
“Still want carrots. Go look in field.”
Ah yes, that was why he was here. The grunt work. Valentine had a lot to answer for. Sighing, he picked up a spade and headed out into the mud…
CODA: BOTTLES THE LURCHER IN LOVE
A canine finds true romance
“What’s your dog doing with that stuffed draft-excluder?” asked Sandra, trying hard not to watch the excited behaviour next to the living room door.
“Nothing,” Mary reddened, and wonder if he could find a bucket of cold water very quickly.
“Woof!” said Bottles.
THE END
This programme was brought to you in conjunction with the Bloody Valentine Bad Love Event on FB today, organised and hosted by writer Anita Stewart:
http://afstewartblog.blogspot.com/
There are also some giveaways here until the end of the day (not mine, because I’m too busy and disorganised):