Day 37

Dear Diary,

I hafta admit I’ll be more’n happy to get back to the garage tonight. It’s been a long day of sitting around and waiting for Finian Da Fabricator to come out of The Bank of Wanger Nose with Missus Milly Da Fardle’s luggage. Around about now, I wouldn’t mind spending a few minutes or hours alone with Floozie Da Smelley’s pink American Convertible, if you know wot I mean. I’ve also gotta tell you my pencil is practically wore out. If Finian Da Fabricator’d hurry up and get back, I could borrow one from him. Either that or ask him to buy me one at Meetle Da Rancid’s Magazine Stall up the street. It’s getting increasingly difficult to write, Dear Diary, when I’ve only got but a tiny broken stub of lead left.

Miss Milly Da Fardle somehow managed to get herself new batteries for her mobile phone, plus she must’a bought about ten hours worth of time, cuz all she’s done since returning from the toilet is complain to the call centre about Finian Da Fabricator not rescuing her luggage full of bingo winnings. That and gossip back and forth with Miss Cabbage and Mrs. Emily Da Onion. Their voices are wearing me out. If only I was deaf, I could turn off my hearing aid.

For once in my life I’m gonna try to ignore ‘em, and fortunately I’ve still got enough pencil left to continue where I got interrupted a half hour ago. I’m pretty sure you haven’t forgot what I was talking about, Dear Diary, but just in case you have, I was revisiting the day when Miss Milly Da Fardle caught Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and Mister Doctor Bernie Da Gnu selling off the bodies wot comes into Misther Doctor Bernie Da Gnu’s ‘Wash ‘n’ Wake Funeral Parlour for a Beautiful Goodbye’ for cat food. Seeing as how they didn’t seem to mind in the least being blackmailed, she turned her attention to ogling the corpus delicious of the Misses Purdy, who, in case you’ve forgot, was three conjoined triplets. Only they preferred to be called Siamese Triplets, even though some considered the term offensive and un-PC (which means you mightn’t get elected to public office if you says it too loud and without a spin-doctor). Anyway, the Misses Purdy thought Siamese Triplets made ‘em sound more sophisticated and well travelled, so if it’s good enough for them wot are conjoined, I guess it’s good enough for me.

While Missus Milly Da Fardle was looking at wot was left of the Misses Purdy and trying as best she could to figure out which part went with what and whom, and admitting to herself that one of the sisters looked about twenty years younger than the others and could’a been quite attractive under different circumstances, it occurred to her she didn’t rightly know if they had proper individual Christian names such as normal folks do what’ve only got one body. She asked Misther Patchouli Da Fanny about this straight out, but he was so busy writing out a blackmail cheque to her and serving her tea and buttered brak that he didn’t hear her right, and asked what she was talking about. Right then and there she decided Misther Patchouli Da Fanny was even stupider’n a boiled trout, and asked Mister Doctor Bernie Da Gnu if he had an answer for her. He replied that, according to the death certificate he’d wrote out hisself, him being the coroner as well as owning most of the other businesses on the island, the Sisters Purdy was called Walpurga, Millpond, and Aardvark. “How’d they get them names?” Missus Milly Da Fardle wanted to know, on account of she thought they was uglier’n Miss Cabbage’s new dress she’d bought wholesale from the ‘From the Sweatshop to the High Street’ easy-buy online catalogue. “How’d they get them names?” asked Mister Doctor Bernie Da Gnu, like he hadn’t heard what she said or didn’t understand good English. “That’s what I asked, Mister Doctor Bernie Da Gnu,” she said, thinking to herself that he was almost as dumb as Misther Patchouli Da Fanny.

“Well, Missus Milly Da Fardle (but may I call you Susan on account of you’re blackmailing me which makes you practically a first cousin?),” said Mister Doctor Bernie Da Gnu after giving it some thought. “I had to write something down where it said ‘forenames’, and since nobody seemed to know what the Sisters Purdy were called, and being that they was beyond giving me instructions, I put down the first thing wot came to mind. It just so happened I was reading a story by Florescence Austen, Jane’s forgotten older sister (and a better writer, but being as she’d dumped out a dozen children or so, she didn’t have time to get famous and write a load of movies and appear on ‘Celebrity Dance Your Feet Off’ like Jane did). The story, wot was called ‘The Paribellum Sweetmeat’, had in it, by coincidence, a set of lovely Siamese triplets wot were after being married off to a Mr. Biggerstaff and his Uncle Mort. Well, just as I was about to write ‘unknown’ where it used to say ‘Christian Name’ in the old days when folks said wot they meant and didn‘t hafta pretend they weren’t better’n everybody else, I thought of Florescence Austen’s lovely book and her lovely conjoined Siamese Triplets. And who cared that the Misses Purdy never found anyone named Mr. Biggerstaff and his Uncle More to get married off to. If I wrote down Walpurga and Millpond and Aardvark, they’d be lying in their tins of cat food thinking about being lovely and getting married instead of ending up anchovy and cheese flavoured.”

“But which one is which?” Missus Milly Da Fardle demanded to know in her screechy voice.

Fortunately, about this time, before Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and Mister Doctor Bernie Da Gnu had to perform drastic surgery on Missus Milly Da Fardle to make her shut up and forget about the Misses Purdy, Howard Donald Da Fardle came in through the sliding door and said he’d brought the triple wide lorry in case they’d got the Misses Purdy ready to be took to The Gnu Fanny Deluxe Cat Food Company. Missus Milly Da Fardle dove into the entangled limbs and bits of the Misses Purdy so Howard Donald wouldn’t see her and wonder wot she was doing in the secret stainless steel body-stuffing laboratory before she was actually dead, and Mister Doctor Bernie Da Gnu, realising an opportunity when he saw it, said to take the corpus delicious right away. “Wot about the viewing?” asked Mister Patchouli Da Fanny, who’d not caught on to wot was happening. “Wot about the viewing?” repeated Missus Milly Da Fardle from within Millpond’s fragrant spot, and without waiting another second, Howard Donald Da Fardle fainted dead away.

There’s not much more to say about this particular incident, Dear Diary, just a lot of loose ends to clear up, on account of I’ve not yet got around to explaining about all the bingo winnings in Missus Milly Da Fardle’s discount bargain-basement luggage or about the special discount she gets from Floozie Da Smelley’s bargain tables at Cheap ‘n’ Cheerful Junk-By-The-Tonne or about the homemade banknotes she gets from Misther Patchouli Da Fanny whenever they’re so bad not even a blind man’ll accept ‘em. ‘Course, it goes without saying the Misses Purdy was put on display in a new dress Ms. Billy Bob Da Rubble’d made special for ‘em and all the biddies wot came to see her went away happy has little kids wot stole the sweets and got away with it, saying “isn’t her frock a treat it’s a shame she didn’t see fit to dress like that in real life and isn’t her hair lookin’ a treat.” All without taking a breath, which is their way of talking when they gets excited. My pencil just broke in two, so I’m gonna close, Dear Diary, and get back to you after I’m back in the garage. As I always find myself saying to you, so endeth another few minutes of life.