An Unexpected Diary Entry

I do not usually approve of such things as diary entries (in case one reads anything highly alarming or dubious), but I thought I should include one today. My father never approved of diaries, thinking them crass and obscene articles to be banished along with the egg whisk. This week has been a horror! My computing machine is on the blink, the hedgenet socket at the base of my tree 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 weeks stay – over a month ago. I have written her a letter, and this is the response I got this morning.

Dearest Bernard,
I am so glad you wrote, dear! Poor poor Folly! I’d had this nagging feeling that I had mislaid something. It was only when I read your letter that I realised it wasn’t the pinking shears, 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 that now she’d turned thirty, things would be easier. Tell me, has she grown much?
I eagerly await her return,
Warmest love and deepest apologies,

Bench (P.S. Any chance of borrowing fifty quid, old girl? I’ve got a soiree on the east side of the docks at midnight next tuesday. x

Well, I became a little exasperated with her at this point. Bench is a terribly selfish creature, she’s so absorbed in the Weasel Stretching Foundation that she doesn’t give a second thought to others – and that’s without mentioning her chosen line of late night work. 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 plants in the garden is asking for disaster. Only yesterday, she set fire to her own shoes then pushed them into a letterbox (a public one – so you can imagine I was wondering if my letter to Bench had been collected at all). Thus, 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 Michel Roux would be in awe of. Perhaps.