Day 33

Dear Diary,

Well, ol’ Finian Da Fabricator’s disappeared into The Bank of Old Wanger Nose, and since the tractor-jam trapping Old Wanger Nose’s black limousine in the middle of the street doesn’t look like it’s gonna shift any time soon, and what with all the biddies in the back having dozed off, I’m gonna bring you up to date, Dear Diary, on a coupl’a things I started to tell you about before. Forgive me if I leave out the odd detail or improve on things which were so boring they might’a put you to death, but with a life as exciting as mine, that’s only to be expected.

You remembering my telling you about the day Missus Milly Da Fardle stuck her nose into the secret stainless steel body-stuffing laboratory in back of Misther Doctor Bernie Da Gnu’s ‘Wash ‘n’ Wake Funeral Parlour for a Beautiful Goodbye’? And how she’d admired how much better Miss Luella Da Bunkle looked, naked and dead and sagging all over the place on the slab, than she had in her former life as a dinner lady taking ready-cooked meals for €15 per plate to all the retired biddies on the island, whether they wanted them or not? I’d just got to the point where Missus Milly Da Fardle was thinking about covering up Miss Louella Da Bunkle’s more unsightly bits, so as not to offend the Lord more’n absolutely necessary, when she heard Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and Misther Doctor Bernie Da Gnu approaching the secret body-stuffing room and talking in the sort of important, hushed voices reserved for private business and gossip and doing others out of their life-savings. Well, as I said, she hid behind the convenient screen wot looked to be standing there waiting for her, and took out the tiny portable tape recorder wot she keeps for such occasions. And wot do you know but Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and Misther Doctor Bernie Da Gnu goes straight to the enormous refrigerator at the back and wheels out wot looks at first glance like a walrus with purple frizzied up hair at the top end. And I’ll tell you right then and there Missus Milly Da Fardle nearly dropped her teeth, on account of she recognised the walrus immediately. It was none other than Missus Milly Da Fardle’s first cousin, Miss Merideller Da Mento, on that trolley, when, according to the advertising poster out front of the funeral parlour, she was supposed to be packed into her luxury inlaid pretend oak coffin up in the second largest chapel of repose, right next door to the biddies’ easy-access incontinence room, and being prayed over that very minute by Father Brady O’ Flanaghan Murnaghan from the Church of The Immaculate Septum, down on the bottom side of the island where it’s mostly bogs and old biddies with mould growin’ out from under their toenails. I say ‘packed into’ her coffin, on account of she was, as they say, a very large woman and the family didn’t want to fork out for more’n a very small coffin, figuring, what the Hell, she wasn’t gonna need extra space for dancing or carrying on where she was going. However, from wot Missus Milly Da Fardle saw, she instantly knew that they should’a saved even more money and bought a shoebox instead, on account of the only thing getting stuck into the ground was gonna be the used clothes the family’d bought special from Mrs. Bertie Da Linnit’s ‘Wear It Again and Again and Again’ used clothing charity shop for Miss Merideller Da Mento to wear for all eternity, but only without her plus-size body to fill ‘em. But never mind. Wot I say, Dear Diary, is at least the clothes weren’t gonna be thrown out again and were gonna find some peace for the first time in their lives, as well as having plastic flowers struck on top of ‘em from time to time, as well as little decent respect. That’s not shown very often to used-up clothes (or to us buses for that matter), which is crying shame and a scandal. But that’s only my personal opinion.

Anyway, Missus Milly Da Fardle listened and listened to wot the two men were scheming between them, and even put on her long-range glasses so she could see clearer than mud, which was her natural state of affairs. Nothing much happened for a few minutes, excepting she noticed one of the men, Misther Patchouli Da Fanny (may God shrink his wanger down to the size of a peanut so Floozie Da Smelley’ll think he’s undergone on of them sex-change operations and’ll want to be called Rayleen Da Plenty-Fanny and’ll embarrass her to death in front of all her customers at the Cheap and Cheerful Junk-by-the-Tonne), was absentmindedly stroking Miss Merideller Da Mento where she’d never been stroked when she was alive. Just when Missus Milly Da Fardle’s blood started in boiling, two other men came striding into the secret stainless steel body-stuffing laboratory through a door she hadn’t noticed before. They was carrying with ‘em a black plastic zip-up bag with ‘The Gnu Fanny Deluxe Cat Food Company’ stencilled down the front. And it was then the scales fell from Miss Milly Da Fardle’s eyes, just like they did with St. Paul before she changed his name in the Bible, only for a different reason, and she knew in her heart that the meat going into the tiny and elegant little tins of Gnu Fanny brand of Deluxe Cat Food was coming straight from the secret stainless steel body-stuffing laboratory at Misther Doctor Bernie Da Gnu’s ‘Wash ‘n’ Wake Funeral Parlour for a Beautiful Goodbye’. Missus Milly Da Fardle watched in horror as the two strangers (who were not so much strangers as her own second oldest son, Howard Donald Da Fardle and Thelma O’Leary’s illegitimate half-brother Hyacinth-David O’Leary-O’Murphy) dumped old Miss Merideller Da Mento into the black plastic bag without so much as a ‘how do you do’ and lugged her out in back, where they had a special-purpose van waiting. Missus Milly Da Fardle remembered seeing the van pulled up behind Misther Doctor Bernie Da Gnu’s ‘Wash ‘n’ Wake Funeral Parlour for a Beautiful Goodbye’ every time there was a funeral, which was practically five times a day, on account of dying being the only popular form of entertainment on the island, and recalled wondering why ‘Gnu Fanny Deluxe Cat Food Company Special Refrigerated Meat Van’ was painted on the side, over where Floribunda Da Paisley’s Floral Arrangements and Hire-It-By-The-Week Cold Storage used to be advertised. Those scales still clinging to her eyeballs crashed to the ground in double-time, and right away Missus Milly Da Fardle started in cackling to beat the band. Naturally, she caught the attention of both Misther Doctor Bernie Da Gnu and Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and they knew by the sound of the cackle they were in the shithouse without a paddle.

Sorry to interrupt myself at a time like this, Dear Diary, but there’s activity in the middle of the tractor-jam, which has woke the biddies and reminded ‘em their bladders is over-flowing. I’ve gotta hide my pencil quick before they see it and ask what I’ve been writing about. I’ll be back as soon as I can. In the mean time, I’ll close by saying, so endeth a couple of hours that was interrupted prematurely.