Hello ordinary people. I’m here yet again I bring you the benefit of my Lordly wisdom. For example, there are a lot more murders in bakeries than we ever get to hear about. A classic case in point occurred last week. I had met a charming young lady one lunchtime in my local tavern, and I was entertaining her with my life story. After half an hour, a point at which I was recalling the exciting moment of my umbilical chord being cut, she suddenly stood up and announced that she had to leave this instant and go to the ...err..(she hesitated here)...the bakery next door.
I’ll tell you something strange happened. I know. I waited four hours for her to return but she didn’t come back, so I went round to the bakery and asked what had happened. “What happened to the girl who came in here four hours ago?” I asked probingly. “Lovely girl. About 5’ 2”. Black hair. Doesn’t say much. A good listener. Listened to me for half an hour without even attempting to speak herself. Transfixed she was, by my charm. You can’t have missed her”. All of them in the shop said they hadn’t seen the girl.
Now this got me suspicious. How could ALL of them not seen her? There could be only one explanation. I challenged them outright. I said that they’d murdered my potential wife. Of course they denied it. They said I was being ridiculous. Ridiculous am I? I’ll give them ridiculous. When the four of them are up in front of a black capped judge at the end of a murder trial I’ll challenge them to find some ridicule.
No, they’d murdered her in cold blood and I knew it. I don’t know why they always say “in cold blood”. I can see how you could murder someone in ‘blood’ - drowned them in a bath full it or something, but I fail to see the relevance of the blood being cold. Perhaps cold blood is more coagulated which might drown the poor blighter quicker. But what if you don’t have any blood, be it cold, cool, warm, piping hot, or otherwise at hand? You can hardly pop down the abattoir and ask for about 20 gallons of blood - people would be suspicious. They’d say “Hmm. that’s a lot of blood. About a bath full. I do hope he’s not intending to murder someone by drowning them in it”. No. You’d have to buy it in small quantities - perhaps a pint or two at a time and pretend you were making some black pudding - and build up a bath full over a period of a few months. It’s preparation like this that separates the master criminal from the common herd.
You may be wondering from earlier on when I said I was telling the tale of my umbilical chord being cut. Of course I can’t remember the actual moment myself, I was merely reciting from the diary made of my early life. My mother made a diary chronicling my entire nine month gestation period. You may think such a diary would be boring. And you’d be right. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything more tedious. My mother lacked imagination you see. I’ll show you a few examples.
7th June.
Looked a bit fatter.
8 June.
Fatter still
9 June
Baby kicked. A little bit more fat today
10 June
Even fatter.
You may have noticed something of a theme running through the entries. It builds up to an exciting ending though.
29th June
Very fat. Baby popped out. Husband fainted.
The shock had been too much for my father. At the exact moment I was born someone told him the devastating news that Surrey were 29-4. The diary of my early moments was actually written by a journalist from The Times, doing what is apparently known as a ‘fly on the wall documentary’. He recorded the early part of my life in great detail, right up to the age of one hour, when he realised he was in the wrong room and he was meant to be covering a member of the Royalty next door.
I always tell people that I could have been a member of the Royalty you know, I was just born into the wrong family. Had I been born just 10 feet to the left I would be in line for the throne. There are some people who say we shouldn’t have a Royal family, but they are a dying breed. Dying mainly through being hung as traitors. But think of all the things we would not have if we didn’t have royalty. I’ve got a splendid front door which is painted Royal blue. Now if we didn’t have royalty then we wouldn’t have ‘Royal’ blue paint so my front door would just be bare wood like the commoner’s houses. I would be ostracised from the social circles in which I live for being a commoner.
Coins are another thing. Currently all our coins have the totally lifelike portrait of our own Queen Victoria embossed onto one side. Without that, our coins would be flat on one side and very easy to forge which could result in the country being flooded with forged coins, leading to a crippled economy and the ultimate collapse of the Empire. That’s the Empire as in the collection of the commonwealth states, not the Empire Ballroom in the High Street which should remain structurally sound irrespective of how many forged coins flood the country.
I think there comes a time in a man’s life when he has to ask himself an important question. It doesn’t matter what it is, just as long as it’s important. I asked myself “Do I want to spend the rest of my life squandering my inheritance or do I want to Join the Navy and travel the seas?” The answer was no. I didn’t want to do either of those things. I want to stay at home all day sucking sherbet lemons and playing with my pet ants.
Ants are fascinating creatures you know. I’ve got to know them so well that they will quite happily eat out of my hand and playfully run over my body while I’m in bed. There are hundreds in my room and I’ve given them all names. People are amazed when I tell them this. They say “how can you remember the names of hundreds of ants?”
“It’s easy” I say. “They’re all called Trevor”.
Ants really are lovely little things. I’m surprised more people don’t keep them as pets. They’re very cheap to run and have such cute and happy smiling faces. Well I think they’ve smiling. Being so small it’s hard to check.
I tried to check once, under a microscope, but it must have been faulty as all I could see, rather than a conclusive anty expression, was a mushy blob. I don’t understand as I put Trevor in the slide just as it said in the instructions.
I think that my ants, being brought up in a loving environment, are much better than other ants and so I have put an advertisement in the paper offering some of my very best ants as ‘stud’ ants. I was hoping that hundreds of other ant lovers would arrive at my doorstep with pet ants in tiny ant carrying cases willing to pay for some thoroughbred offspring, but sadly no-one has turned up yet.
Do you know what the collective noun for a group of ants is? No, neither do I, but I’m going to pressure the Royal Society for Deciding the Collective Nouns of Things to officially start called a group of ants a ‘Trevor’.
That is my ambition in life. Some may say that it’s not much of an ambition compared to those who want to discover undiscovered countries or fly to the moon in a balloon, but it’s a start.
I could have been an explorer you know. I could have discovered a few undiscovered countries, but I didn’t know where to look. I can’t get very far on my push-bike and I don’t suspect there are all that many undiscovered countries in the Maidenhead area anyway.
I may not have discovered any countries, but what I have discovered is something very fascinating. Apparently, if you were to take out your intestines and other internal organs and lay them out end to end, then you would probably die. I didn’t know that. I’ve been researching things like that in the library. Someone told me that you can learn a lot from books but I’m not so sure. I got this book out. It was called ‘1001 facts that you already know’. It didn’t teach me anything.
An unusual thing happened the other day. I was coming back from the library and if I was to try and tell you about the amazing objects and sights that I saw in the sky then you wouldn’t believe me, so I won’t bother.
In the end I was so shaken by this experience that I had to drop in on my friend Derrick. Derrick’s not a stranger to the unexplained you see. He claims his house is haunted. I once asked him who haunted his house. “Ghosts” he replied. It’s wisdom like that that’s got Derrick where his is today.
“Nice weather” Derrick said during a lull in our conversation.
“What was that” I replied three hours later. “What was that about the weather?”
“Oh it’s not Important”
“Not important!” I said “Not important! I’ll think you’ll find that weather’s very important indeed”.
If it wasn’t for the weather all the hot and cold bits of the world would be out of place. Just imagine if it was really hot here in England. Remaining decently clothed would be unbearable due to the heat.
It’s only right that god should makes places like Africa hot because the people there are poor and don’t have proper clothes. But if there was no weather then crops would fail and millions and millions of people around the world would starve to death. The world could be gripped by global famine and you think it’s not important”.
And with that I left. I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as someone who treats human life so lightly. It’s people like that who are probably the type who commit murder in bakeries, which I think is where I came in. So, having proved my point, I’ll leave it at that.
Lord James West-Lothian
Editor’s comment - A fine point, eloquently put.
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