Day 40

Dear Diary,

Poor ol’ Miss Milly Da Fardle’s in a right sheep’s quandary. On one hand she’s stuffing all the mattresses in her concrete bunker bungalow with money she’s raking in from The Gnu Fanny Deluxe Cat Food Company. I figure she gets about three euro for every tin of cat food wots been flavoured by all them ‘nearest and dearest dearly departeds’ wot’d paid good money (or, in the case of Patchouli Da Fanny’s relatives, money wot ain’t worth the price of the bulk-bought toilet paper it’s prints on) to have their bodies stuffed and painted-up and hairdressed and eternal-rested in the ready-dug holes wot’ve been dug in The Cut-Price Saints Bliffet and Salmagundi Pay-By-The-Month Cemetery and Creamery. You might not know where it is, on account of it not being on the touron maps, but if you look real hard, you’ll find it in the vacant lot behind Mister Doctor Bernie Da Gnu’s Special Prized Collectibles Market. Behind the rusty corrugated fence. Until a coupl’a years ago, it used to be the island’s favourite illegal dumping site, but then Mister Doctor Bernie Da Gnu found this more politically correct use for it and now the Save The World types are as happy as the politicians wot used to get pestered and demonstrated against. ‘Course, he still tops up all the holes with toxic waste, on account of something’s gotta fill up the spaces where the bodies should be going, but aren’t. Between you and me, Dear Diary, everybody and their uncles knows about what’s going on, but nobody says anything. Once something like this gets out, the politicians might find out where the island is and try to improve it, and the first thing you know all the biddies’ll be packed off to a old people’s home in Bratislava and a whole lot of golf courses’ll be built for Rich American tourons. Not even Misther Patchouli Da Fanny or Mister Doctor Bernie Da Gnu want that, and they’re in favour of anything that’ll bring ‘em shitloads of money. I guess they figure that once politicians and, even worse, civil servants, get involved they’ll put in a real bank, which’d spell trouble for all the locals wot are used to the ways of The Bank of Old Wanger Nose. Old Wanger Nose sorts likes Patchouli Da Fanny funny money, on account of he can sell it off at a premium to countries no one’s ever heard of and make fat profits outta the starving masses. That suits everyone on the island. Could be without it they couldn’a afford to run a community bus, and then where would all the biddies be when they wanted to go for bingo or to Beryl’s Hair Parlour for Old women?

But back to Missus Milly Da Fardle, which is where I was when I started out a few minutes ago. As I was about to say, she’s been crowing to beat the band about the sixteen cheap plastic conservatories she’s built on her house on account of she’s ‘careful with the housekeeping’. ‘Course, everyone (especially Miss Cabbage and Mrs. Emily Da Onion) can’t help but remark on how much they looks like carbuncles, but unless your house burns down around you and burns to death your granddaughter, nobody’ll say nothing nice about anybody around here. Personally I’d prefer to have my conservatories laughed at than have my granddaughter burnt up like a marshmallow, but then again, even though I’m only a bus, I’ve gotta heart, which is more’n I can say for most of the biddies, Missus Drain being the one exception.

As I also was about to say, Missus Milly Da Fardle is in a quandary, and it has to do with wot some folks might call a ‘Conflict of Interests’ (they don’t call it that here, but nobody uses word of more’n one syllable). It seems her favourite Lithuanian sister-in-law, Bettinka Spalinka Da Fardle, widow of her brother Breezy Barry Da Fardle, up and choked on a radish yesterday and was laid out in the secret stainless steel body-stuffing laboratory in Misther Doctor Bernie Da Gnu’s ‘Wash ‘n’ Wake Funeral Parlour for a Beautiful Goodbye’ just as though it was anybody Missus Milly Da Fardle didn’t care about. For your information, Dear Diary, Ol’ Breezy Barry Da Fardle met Bettinka Spalinka (before she’d thought to add Da Fardle on to her name) when he was being transported around the continent by Golden Twilight Years Tours. By coincidence, both of ‘em was first cousins on all three sides of Parvl Da Snood, Pergulla Da Splatta’s illegal Lithuanian chef at her authentically quaint peasanty all-you-can-eat restaurant, The Golden Twilight Years All-You-Can-Eat Restaurant and The Best Flush Toilets In Eastern Europe. ‘Course, they didn’t know this when they first ‘did it’ behind the sweatshops where the souvenir T-shirts was made and where she worked, which is why they had to get married. ‘Doing it’ in a pile of new unsold T-shirts was frowned up when single folks were the ones doing the ‘doing’. From wot I heard, it were a marriage made in Heaven, which must be the first for someone from the island. Probably had something to do with her being a passionate Lithuanian and knowing how to cook something besides boiled and soggy roasted and chipped potatoes morning noon and night. She fatten him right up with her special chicken paprika recipe and paraded around in tiny T-shirts wot couldn’a contain the size double ‘Z’ boobles she were so proud of. Made him a happy man, she did. It’s a shame he died after a couple of days from exhaustion and a surfeit of chicken paprika. ‘Course he might’a lived a month or so longer if they’d stopped ‘doing it’ long enough to cook the chicken before shovelling it into his mouth. You never can tell when passion is involved.

Phooey. Dear Diary, I was just about getting to the point where I talked about Missus Milly Da Fardle’s quandary, but it seems there’s some sort of ruction goin’ on and I hear ol’ Finian Da Fabricator’s name being screamed and yelled and took in vain. I’ll put my pencil away and find out wot’s going on. In the mean time, I’ll say, so endeth a few more minutes.