Day 75

Dear Diary,

Well, I bet you slept a sleepless night and couldn’t get any shut-eye at all, on account of me announcing that The Widow Fartie Da Whistle had a Eppy Fanny while she were up a tree saving herself from being drowned in the flood, and this here Eppy Fanny were none other than a bunch of Water Buffaloes. Now right away, of course, I hear a lot of you whingeing and griping and huffing and puffing and saying wot the fuck do I mean by water buffaloes and why am I suddenly solving the crime with something wot weren’t even hinted at earlier. But let me just say here and now that, first of all, this here ain’t no who-dun-it and there ain’t no crime and if’n I wants to cheat and make things up as I go along it’s none o’yer fuckin’ business. So there.

Actually and come to think of it, I’ve just given wot I said a bit of thinking about and I guess there is a coupl’a crimes floating about wot I haven’t properly disposed of, namely the disappearing ill-gotten bingo winnings of Missus Milly Da Fardle and the dead people wots been sold to The Gnu-Fanny Deluxe Luxury Premium First-Class Hoity-Toity Cat Food Company, but I guess we won’t worry about either of them, at least for the time being, on account of it’s just like life, and in life everyone’s forever getting away with any shit they wants to. Unless, of course, a fat bloke wot ain’t gotta life looks at the wrong pictures on the Internet, but I suppose there’s a reason why he oughtn’a be doing that particular no-no, isn’t there, so I won’t try to make a joke about it cuz it ain’t funny. But back to where I was talking about. If I can remember wot the fuck it was.

Oh, yes. The Widow Fartie Da Whistle’s Eppy Fanny. Well, you might recall me telling you - (unless of course you spent the night nibbling on some of them funny mushrooms wot you found back in the woods) - about The Widow Fartie Da Whistle remembering a documentary wot she’d saw on television about a lot of English people wot lived in India back when they was the ones holding the mortgages. ‘Course, who was the ones with more servants than their neighbours don’t really matter none to us (at least not in my story), not unless you’re the type wot pretends not to see wot the others in the shower got that you don’t. However, The Water Buffaloes does concern us, as you’ll soon see. Wot you might not know (unless you’re one of the ones in the documentary, in which case you’re old enough that you don’t know anything at all any more), is that when folks back then went out on the river for picnics and to drown servants who’d forgot to wash their hands after’n what they weren’t supposed to be doing in front of their sahibs, they use to built these rafts big enough to fit a table for a hundert and thirty-five or so for luncheon. ‘Course, a raft like that were sorta heavy and they was forever sinking before the soufflé. But one day, after going down for the fifth and last time, one of the sahibs wot weren’t so drunk as the others, looked out at the river and sawed a dead water buffalo floating down the current. He said to himself, he said, “Jeeze Louise Sir Sebastien Pickapo (for that was his name), “Jeeze Louise Sir Sebastien Pickapo, and fuck my baby dumpling, will you look at that there water buffalo a’floating down the current, and ain’t it just bobbing back and forth pretty as you please and it’s not even paddling.” And being that he had eyes in front of his face and knew how to use ‘em, on account of he’d went to the right sort o’schools and knew how to use a slide-rule, he saw that all the water buffaloes wot were bobbing down the river was inflated all the way as far as possible, which meant they was about as round as you could get without blowing up into little pieces and spraying ook and slime bloody gore and green stuff from here to eternity. And this here Sir Sebastien Pickapo whipped out his slide-rule then and there and calculated some calculations wot he remembered calculating back before he wore a toupee and puttees to bed, and he come up with the theory that if’n you put a table on one o’them swole water buffaloes it’d float pretty as you please and you could play a rubber of bridge around it without ruining your gloves. “Hot Damn, Sir Sebastien Pickapo!” he said to hisself. “Hot damn and let me wear my granny’s gusset in the conservatoire!” He then got out his slide rule some more and figured out that if’n put a table wot would accommodate a hundert thirty-five for luncheon on top of it, the raft just might roll off’n the swole water buffalo and everyone’d drown quicker’n you could say “Hot Damn, Sir Sebastien Pickapo, we’s drowning!” Well, right then and there, Sir Sebastien Pickapo (which weren’t his real name but that’s none of your business) got really depresses and started in a’wondering how he might solve the dilemma of why one of them really big rafts wouldn’t stay put on one Ol’ swole dead water buffalo, not even the biggest one in the herd. And he wondered and fretted about this for a couple of days until, wouldn’t you know it, his ‘Ol Aiya, wot didn’t have no other name as far as he recollected and even fewer teeth, came up to him and said he weren’t no better’n a fool with a tub o’ghee in his ears. And he said, you is my ‘Ol ancient aiya but if’n you say that again I’ll be forced to beat you to death, and she said, you do that, Sir Sebastien Pickapo, and I’ll clean out your little botty with a blunderbuss. Well, the argument went back and forth and forth and back until eventually it were time for Sir Sebastien Pickapo’s nap and his ‘Ol ancient Aiya gave him his bath and tucked him into his little beddy-bye with the double-thick butter muslin mosquito net.

Needless to say, after his nap Sir Sebastien Pickapo weren’t so cranky and he were willing to listen to the error of his ways and to what his ‘Ol ancient Aiya had to say about making the raft not roll off’n the dead and bloated water buffalo every time you sat down to luncheon. However, before I tell you I think you should go off’n take a nap yourself, Dear Diary, on account of you’re interrupting me far too often and kicking me in the shins. Actually, being that I’m a bus and not a human, I don’t got no shins as much as wheels, but you know wot I mean. Anyway, after you sleep and are behaving yourself, I’ll let you in on the secret of wot the ‘Ol ancient Aiya told Sir Sebastien Pickapo, and this has a whole lot to do with how The Widow Fartie Da Whistle kept us all from drowning and saved the world. In the mean time, I’ll say so endeth my story until you learn how to behave yourself.