An Unexpected Diary Entry

I do not usually approve of such things as diary entries (in case one reads anything highly alarming or rude), but I thought I should include one today. My father never approved of diaries, thinking them crass and obscene items to be banished along with the egg whisk. This week has been a horror! My laptop is playing up, the socket at the base of the tree I use has blown a piffle-fuse, I’ve had raging Piddock Flu, and it seems my sister, Bench (above), has forgotten to come and collect her daughter who arrived for a week – over a month ago. I have written her a letter, and I’m posting the response I got this morning.

Dearest Bernard,
I am so glad you wrote, dear! Poor Folly! I’d had this nagging feeling that I had mislaid something. It was only when I read your letter that I realised that it wasn’t the pinking shears I’d lost, but my own darling child. Do send her back, dear, and I am so sorry to have been such an imposition.
You know it’s been a trial for me since she was born, and I honestly thought now she’d turned thirty that things would get easier. Tell me, has she grown much?
I await her return eagerly,
Warmest love and deepest apologies,

Bench

Well, I became a little exasperated of her at this point. Bench is a terribly selfish creature, and gets so absorbed in the Weasel Stretching Foundation that she doesn’t give a second thought to others. But I’m not entirely unsympathetic. Folly (pictured) is a treasure, but she’s dreadfully thick for a girl her age, and playing with traps and poisonous spiders in the garden is asking for disaster. Only yesterday, she set fire to her own shoes then pushed them into a letterbox (the public one – so you can imagine I’m wondering if my letter to Bench has been collected at all) Well, I can’t do much more about it this evening, so we’ll have a pleasant dinner before I take the spiders out for a last wee. I’ve got an adder or two left in the freezer and some chicory that needs polishing off so I’ll create something Marco Pierre White would be in awe of. Perhaps.