COUGHING UP

Bloggiana may be in the trough of despond about Bubble and about the wave of animal deaths that swim back into her recollection upon finding Bubble's hamster ribcage gnawed to a bony architectural statement in the (wait for it) utility room; but that is nothing to how she feels when she finally opens the post this fine autumn morning and comes across firstly an outstanding fees note from her Unpaid Solicitor; and secondly, a letter from the South Trilby and West Northmoreland branch of the Pony Club reminding her that her mandatory donation towards the sponsored breast stroke-a-thon should now finally be forthcoming.

The Unpaid Solicitor has been silent for a while now. Bloggiana and I had come to dare to hope that he might have expired. Or found himself the subject of his own divorce and thus thoroughly under-snowed by turned tables. Or perhaps been slapped into stocks and egg-pounded to a small blob of omelette on the bottom of someone else's shoe. In our dreams (and particularly in Bloggiana's) the US would be walking along the pavements of a sunny day in, say, Harrogate. And suddenly find himself the entirely unjust victim of a police assault in which he would be clobbered around the head with an ASBO, then sent for a lifetime's detention to a windowless cell with a mid-pubescent teenage boy called Kevin.

Effing bollocks, says the Blog-one, when she opens the first and counts up the zeros at the bottom of the Totals column.

Must say, they're not wrong 'bout the outstanding bit, she adds. Then bites her lip almost in half as she realises she has injected humour into a subject which on her account at least is far from amusing.

Tiggy Pott-Hunter is the signatory to the second letter.

Dear Mrs Bloggiana, the letter goes.

Bloggiana must be inwardly rehearsing for the forthcoming tribute night for her accent has a distinctly Churchillian ring.

blahblah simply splendid efforts I think you will agree blahblahblahblah. blahblahblah Liliana Fox-Trotter and her quite exemplary stroke rate blahblahblah. blahblahblah remind you you were kind enough to offer most generous sponsorship blahblahblah. blahblahblah time you sent off your £100 cheque post haste.

Now many of you will be aware by now that Bloggiana is a little pre-disposed towards going off at the deep end. The incident when she told the vet he was the worst thing that had happened to his profession since Rolf Harris's mother announced she was pregnant, being a prime example of such.

And one or two of you will also have gathered that her approach towards finances is not always exactly completely logical. To wit: she will only ever buy sliced bread when it is on offer. But she will simply never buy smoked salmon when it is.

So you will not be surprised to learn therefore that while the Unpaid Solicitor's bill exceeds Tiggy Pott-Hunter's claim on her wallet by almost 2000fold, it is the latter that really throws Bloggiana into a (as Adolesco would describe it) well wicked blue raggedy-arsed temper init.

Sod the queen and king of fucking Europe, she says. We buried that wretched hamster yet? she adds. Time one thinks to have a little cremation service.

And then rising to her full Indignant of North Westmorland height, the Blog-woman seizes hold of the ribcage, wraps it in Tiggy Pott-Hunter's encomium (so to speak), takes both to the pot-bellied stove in the snug, kneels down, prays to the Lord God of all things Animate, dips into her pocket for the sherbet fountain she had bought specially for the purpose and sends all three firing up the chimney in a shower of fizzy lemon.