In Which The Hon. Murgatroid Gets Naked

What Ho Proles!

Mrs. Prendergast stands six feet and a single inch in her stockinged feet. I know this as a fact because the first thing she did when she came into the house was to kick off her shoes and throw them into the far corner of the room. She still stood an inch or two taller than My Man who, if I’m honest about it, appeared not a little afraid of the woman I'd ask him to bring up to Murgatroid Hall.

‘Come on, deary! Clothes off!’ she demanded in that fine Dorset accent of hers.

‘Shouldn’t we make small talk first?’ I asked, unhappy to be disrobing in front of staff.

My Man shrugged and disappeared out through the door to the snooker and billiards room where Mrs. Predergast had set up her equipment.

‘No need to be shy, Mr. Murgatroid,’ she said now we were alone and from her bag she proceeded to remove a series of bottles all of which contained oils of varying hues and viscosities. I knew I had no option and quickly disrobed before I clambered up on the bench that Mrs. Predergast had so thoughtfully brought with her.

I should explain, before I go any further, that Ms. Predergast is the closest thing we have to a masseuse in C--- N--- and by masseuse I don’t mean one of those ladies of irregular income and even less regular moralities. No, Mrs. Predergast claims to be a professional in the field of bone and sinew manipulation. I don’t doubt that she’s a professional; I just doubt the nature of her expertise.

After yesterdays’ unexpected jog, I woke up this morning unable to move. Muscles had turned to hardened lumps of gristle in the night. The first thing I thought of was the Momentary Academic’s suggestion that I should hire a masseuse. Without a moment’s delay, I despatched My Man off to town with a fifty pound note and the promise of another if a masseuse could get to me before ten o’clock.

‘Oh, I can feel it, deary,’ she said as soon as she put her huge hands on my back. ‘All that tension. Tsk... Have you been exercising?’

‘Only a little light sprinting for my life,’ I assured her. ‘I was being chased by a pack of hounds.’

‘You should have let them catch you,’ she answered as she began to pile punches into my lower lumbar region. ‘Easier to sort out a few dog bites than some of these lesions around your spine. We’re talking months of sessions here, deary. Won’t be cheap to sort you out.’ She again clicked her teeth, which I couldn’t be sure were real, and I had the distinct impression she was taking a look around the place. ‘Not that you clearly can’t afford it,’ she added, ‘only you shouldn’t let yourself get into this state in the first place. It’ll take me an hour just to get the tension out of your shoulders. You are a tense man, aren’t you Mr. Murgatroid?’

‘In the right circumstances,’ I replied as she ran her knuckles up and down my spine. A handful of billiard balls from the rack behind her couldn’t have been any harder.

‘Well, I better get to work,’ she said, as though what she’d already been doing was a mere limbering up. She then applied a hand to my upper right shoulder and quickly removed my arm from its socket. ‘Don’t worry,’ she tutted as I let out a scream. ‘I’ll put it back when I’m finished.’

I lay there, slowly being reduced to muscle groups and anatomical details, all fastidiously described to me as they were butchered under hands trained by Shaolin monks to break open boulders.

That was two hours ago. The sensation has finally returned to my fingertips and I find myself able to type and to report that I feel a little better. Limber isn’t quite the right word as it doesn’t covey the right degree of flexibility I now enjoy in every limb. Now I come to think about it, ‘enjoy’ isn’t the right word either. Mrs. Priggs tells me that when I walk, I now look like the scarecrow from 'The Wizard of Oz'.

I’m now going to sit in a draft as I go and continue to write my Memoirs. I hope to get some cold in my joints in the belief it might stiffen me up. We men of the English aristocracy are not meant to be so limber. It makes me feel positively Californian.

Again, dudes…