Slurry With A Fringe On Top

What Ho Proles!

If you can read this, then you really are one of the pure people with access to my ‘all blest secrets’.

Well, how’s that for an opening? A compliment wrapped in a bit of Lear. And not half as cryptic as it’s meant to sound. My Man informs me that he’s enabled some mysterious doodad on this blog to ensure that my compromising details are not cast out to any old chum sitting astride the blogosphere. My Man’s a good sort, I suppose, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable telling you some of the things I gab about, if it weren’t for his diligent work ensuring that we keep this ‘in the family’, so to speak. ‘Mater’ is certainly the lexical unit of the day.

Herein, you will find the final episode of the remarkable little saga that has been occupying my week. As you may remember, after some tough negotiations, this morning, along with YT and My Man, we were on our way to see Siegfried Randolph-Kelly. He’s an old friend from Oxford, and possibly the only man to unite a mature study of Nietzsche with a childhood devotion to Blue Peter. Should you not remember him, simply think of a Shropshire farmer, handy with a spade, no good around badgers.

We found him, just before tea, racing his tractor across one of his fields in some extreme-sport version of muck spreading. As My Man went and parked the Bentley away from the farmyard smells, I waved Siggy into the paddock, as it were. He brought the tractor to a halt and the spray of Shropshire’s finest effluent came slip-slopping to a stop.

‘You delivered the money?’ he asked, a little too gloomily for my liking. If you remember, My Man had taken a beating on this fellow’s behalf and I thought Siggy should sound a mite happier about it than he did. I told him as much, as well as the full lowdown on the morning’s tiswas.

‘Oh, that’s what happens when you Tories involve yourself with gangsters,’ confessed one extremely poor spirited ubermensch sans spade. ‘You want to watch the people you associate with, J.P., or you’ll earn yourself a reputation as a troublemaker.’ He wiped his hands on his rustic smock and then absently began to pick his teeth with what I can only describe as a quiet air of melancholic nonchalance.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ I asked. ‘Is this what happens when a committed Nietzschean spends his days spreading manure?’

‘I prefer to call it dung,’ he said.

‘And I say that’s a pat answer.’

He shrugged, never having been the sort of fellow to enjoy a good pun. ‘What’s wrong is that I feel terrible about what I’ve done. I never realized it before, J.P., but old Friedrich was wrong. We can’t escape our compassionate souls.’

‘Remember what you’re saying, Siggy,’ I warned him. ‘Remember I’m a Tory!’

‘Surely Tories have compassion,’ he said, very matter of fact.

I felt my face redden as if he had physically slapped me. ‘Do you realize what you’re saying, Siggy? Beware of that kind of thinking. That way only madness lies. Madness and pamphleteering for the Lib Dems.’

‘But it’s true,’ he said. ‘We can’t escape our compassionate souls.’

‘Pah! to your compassionate soul,’ I spat. ‘You’re rambling mad, man! Mad!’

He threw his muddied hand up to the horizon. ‘I suppose you call that rambling.’

I followed the line of his brown fingernails. Across the lower field, beyond a hedge separating Siggy’s estate from that of his neighbour, the first touch of smoking was besmirching the clear October sky.

‘No,’ I said in all innocence. ‘I call that a bit of smoke.’

‘Arson,’ came the reply with another forlorn look. ‘I thought I could act with a will unclouded by Christian compassion,’ explained Siggy. ‘But I guess Biddy Baxter still has a hold on my soul. Which is why I feel so dashed rotten at what I’ve done, you see… That’s what the money was for. I was going to give Greasy Smith a bit of his own medicine. He stole my field. I paid men to burn down his house. I acted rashly, J.P. Rash, rash, rash…’

Remembering my Hamlet, I said: ‘Well, this is not the day for rash and bloody deeds, and all is not lost. We might still rectify the situation.’

I leapt up into the tractor’s cabin and gunned the engine out of neutral.

‘What are you doing?’ shouted Siggy, through a cloud of diesel smoke. He jumped up beside me as I moved off and I nearly lost him as the heavy trailer slew the tractor around.

‘We’re going to put out a fire,’ I said as I notched the gear into second.

He looked to the sky where smoke stood like a black column out of Greek fable. ‘We’re too late,’ screamed Siggy, now more like Siegfried in Wagnerian pose, which, as you might imagine, only encouraged me to add more weight to the throttle. ‘We need water,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got a hosepipe in the barn. We can pump it up from the pond.’

‘Spare me your ponds, Siggy, old boy!’ I roared, gritting my teeth as we bounced across the lower field and ramed through the fence that separated the tilled soil from Greasy Smith’s immaculately smooth lawn. ‘I’m a Tory with a tractor!’

Swinging the tractor around the garden furniture was harder than I’d anticipated and I took out at least two ornamental bronzes with the full drum of liquid effluent that kept dragging us back. But rather than disconnect the trailer, I pressed on with more throttle, the tractor’s tires reponding by cutting ever deeper swathes through the plush turf.

‘What are you doing?’ shouted Siggy, a note of desperation in his voice. We turned a corner and bounced onto a patio where the flames were licking out from the window of a small extension. The fire had yet to catch hold of the main arm of the house and I could see that all was not lost.

Swinging the tractor around, I backed the trailer until it was facing the expensive extension and pulled the lever that set the effluent flying.

Never has a foam, liquid, or man-made fire retardant consumed flames quite like Siggy’s slurry. The damn stuff should be bottled and kept on oil rigs. Bullets of fire-eating goodness had coated the house in less time than would take a fireman to unfurl his hose. Ten minutes later, as I listened to the approaching sirens of still distant engines, the door at the end of the house opened and a large paunch of man came waddling out, his face covered in a mixture of soot and manure.

‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ he demanded of me and then seeing Siggy, he froze where he stood. ‘Not you again!’

‘We saw your fire,’ I explained. ‘You friendly neighbourhood muck spreader leapt to the occasion, vanquished the flames, and saved your property.’ I smiled one of my special canvassing smiles. ‘I’d normally make a quip here about being up a particular creek but this time you seem to be in possession of a paddle so large it might be called a spade.’

He looked at the muck coated veranda, the manure daubed walls, and the place where the fire had stopped advancing towards the main house.

‘Mr. Randolph-Kelly? You did this?’

Siggy, for all his sins, blushed, and even Greasy Smith looked a little torn by emotions.

By the time My Man and I departed this evening, I’d enjoyed a copious meal and a fine bottle of plonk as the guest of two of Shropshire’s newest and firmest friends. I left them in the local tavern, where Siggy was explaining to Smith the legal requirements of a good badgering spade.

I knew that all was well with the world and I couldn’t wait to get home, in the old study, and type up the events as I remember them.

As recommended in the comments to my last piece of drivel, I mentioned to My Man that he might try some theatrical make-up on his black eyes, but I think he’s proud of them in a perverse fashion. Besides, there are many things I expect of My Man but accepting a recommendation for him to apply blusher is not one of them.

Tomorrow, I’m promising myself a quieter day. At this pace, I could be worn thin before the next General Election.

Toodle pip pip.