Nicola Barker - Burley Cross Postbox Theft

Jesus wept!

Like I says to her the other week (during that incident I reported to you involving Miss Sissy Logan), ‘I’m not petty enough to want to hinder a couple of harebrained, local women from swimming in this Private Fishing Lake just for the sheer hell of it! The implications are wider — much wider! The implications start when tourists and local youth observe you at it and then get to thinking it’s fine and dandy to do the same thing theyselves! The net result is chaos. Chaos!’

It’s a Private Fishing Lake, now, Mr Brogan, not a public swimming baths, and their heedless behaviour is completely unacceptable. It’s out of line! Intolerable! I don’t care as how long they’ve been swimming in it or what their nutty reverend instructed them to do! There’s a new reverend now, anyways — I can’t see the likes of him encouraging a troop of saggy, middle-aged females to set about ‘purging’ theyselves (or whatever it is they think they’re about) in a freezing, bloody Private Fishing Lake at all hours!

Like I says to Sissy Logan: ‘What happens if one of you idiotic women has an accident? Eh?! What happens if one of yous gets into trouble and drowns? Am I expected to take the rap for that?’

‘But I’ve read all the signs, Mr Tooth,’ she answers (quick as a flash), ‘so I’m perfectly capable of taking responsibility for myself!’

At which point Ms Brooks interrupts our discourse: ‘Signs?’ she says, peering around her, all vague like. ‘Are there signs…?’

‘Of course there are signs!’ I yells (she was standing directly in front of one!). ‘Of course there are bloody signs! What the hell do you think that is? Eh?’ I points to the sign.

‘Oh,’ she says, turning to look at the thing, blinking with surprise, ‘That’s a sign, is it?’

That’s a sign, is it?!?

I don’t know as which is worse, Mr Brogan: her stupidity, her lawlessness, or her sarcasm (the lowest form of wit, they say — and quite rightly so)!

Of course she thinks she’s a cut above — she thinks she’s a damn sight better than all the rest of us lot put together, that one! Heedless , she is. Uppity. Quiet-spoken, but a real smart mouth on her (if you actually stop and listen to the drivel what’s coming out of it). Always very polite, though.

Is it any wonder she’s been stuck a spinster all these long years? Living in that tiny cottage with that giant, galumphing sister of hers?

Never bothers making anything of herself. Have you noticed? Dresses like a refugee — like one of them Vietnamese Boat People! Hair like a bird’s nest. Not so much as a scrap of make-up on her! People say as it’s ‘bohemian’ or ‘artistic’ (or some similar kind of clap-trap). I say as it’s peculiar! It’s unnatural! I’ve never come across a woman so unattractive! Never ! You might as well make love to a boy as to that! Can’t abide the thing! Can’t abide her!

And I know people think as she wouldn’t say boo to a goose (Oh yes — that’s how she likes to put it about the place), but I’ve seen her dark side, Mr Brogan. I’ve seen her pushy side. Because not only is she persisting in trespassing on my lake — a Private Fishing Lake — but she then has the barefaced gall to tell me as how I ought to be running the damn thing!

I sees her yesterday and she’s floundering around in the middle of the water, pulling something along behind her on a rope! I’m squinting over the lake for upwards of half an hour, trying to see what the hell she’s up to now. I’m standing there, absolutely fuming — mad as a bull — waiting for her to come back to shore again so’s I can give her a piece of my mind! Freezing my blooming b****cks off (if you don’t mind my saying so)! God only knows how she didn’t get struck down with hypothermia — and if she did it’d be my fault, I shouldn’t wonder!

(Would it be my fault? Will you get back to me on that?)

By the time the ignorant creature is pulling her scraggy personage out of the water (although I won’t deny as she has a fine pair of legs on her — a very fine pair), I’m at my wits’ end, Mr Brogan!

I’ve gone and rammed the tip of my rifle into the soil so deep (with pure frustration!) that I’ve clogged the damn thing up! Compacted, it is! It took a full ten minutes to dig it all out with a corkscrew when I finally got back to the workshop (an’ it’s still not back to as how it should be, neither!).

‘Look as what you’ve made me do to my rifle, you ignorant besom!’ I says, furious, pointing the rifle at her (just to show the woman what I’ve done, mind).

‘Oh dear,’ she pants (still short of breath from all her exertions). ‘You’ll need to be more careful next time, won’t you?’

Need to be more careful !!

I says, ‘I wouldn’t need to be anything at all if you wasn’t trespassing on my Private Fishing Lake, Miss Brooks!’

She directs me one of them vague looks of hers. ‘But you should always try to be careful with expensive pieces of equipment, Mr Tooth,’ she says.

‘I wouldn’t need to be careful if you wasn’t trespassing on my Private Fishing Lake, Miss Brooks!’ I repeats.

‘Oh, but I think you would,’ she chides me, pulling off her swimming cap. ‘A sensible person should always do their best to try and preserve the useful life of functional objects, Mr Tooth.’

I was stunned by this, Mr Brogan — dumbstruck! Was the impudent chit of a woman calling me unsensible, now?!

‘Are you calling me unsensible, Miss Brooks?’ I yells. ‘Good heavens, no!’ she says, shocked. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Mr Tooth!’

‘Because if you don’t mind my saying so, Miss Brooks,’ says I, ‘the only unsensible person as I can see around here right now is the one who’s splashing around, for upwards of half an hour — not a week afore Christmas — in the middle of my Private Fishing Lake!’

(Ho! Had her bang to rights, there, Mr Brogan!)

‘Yes, I did stay in the water for a little longer than I might ideally have liked,’ she acknowledges, then begins unwinding this length of rope from around her waist.

‘Where’d you get that rope?’ I demand.

‘Why?’ she asks, struggling with the knot (on account of her fingers being half-froze, I suppose).

‘Are you in need of some, Mr Tooth?’

Am I in need of some?!

‘I think as I already had some exactly like it,’ says I, ‘which was stole off my rowing boat on Friday last!’ (I already sent you a letter about this incident, Mr Brogan — dated 12/12/06. My rowing boat had its rope stole and was left floating in the middle of the lake, remember? Took me all of three days to retrieve the damn thing.)

‘How utterly maddening for you!’ she says, then adds, ‘Would you mind awfully just giving me a moment’s privacy so that I can fetch my towel and dry myself off properly?’ Give her a moment’s privacy?!

‘I’ll grant you exactly as much privacy,’ says I, ‘as you have accorded my Private Fishing Lake, Miss Brooks!’

(Ha! None , in other words, Mr Brogan!)

She stands there for a second or two, frowning slightly, as if calculating something: ‘That would be approximately twenty-three and a half hours per day,’ she says, ‘which will do me very nicely, thank you, Mr Tooth.’

Eh?!

She then stares at me, all expectant like.

‘Confound your cock-eyed logic, woman!’ I explodes, at which point that pesky duck of hers comes waddling its way out of the water (a giant wretch, it is — size of a swan, ugly as the back end of a chimp) and commences acting in such a manner as I’d call ‘intimidatory’ (hissing, flapping its wings and suchlike).