Bench Of The Week

Today is Friday, and it’s time to celebrate ‘Bench Of The Week’, so, for those among you who may have missed earlier stories – here is Aunt Bench.

Aunt Bench is one of my elder sisters, and lives in East Bung, with her only daughter, Folly. Bench has never quite recovered from a vexatious birth experience, as Folly was delivered by tractor pulling. Even this day, the trauma has left Bench with an overwhelming addiction to licking fly papers, and we frequently find her slumped by the pantry cupboards, with several sheets adorning her thin body, in a state of delirium.

Folly is now thirty years of age, but I fear Bench will always be duty bound to leave her under the beady eye of Mrs Coddy (who in my opinion is the SS branch of neighbourhood watch). Bench enjoys several hobbies, including staring at people in public, beard shows, barking classes, quilling and looking at the letter ‘o’. It’s quite a marvel when she combines them all in a single hour.

As a young child, she was a skilled competitor in our local dance competitions, and would frequently astonish judges with her own interpretation of the St Vitus Dance, a regional favourite and an invention of an ancestor of ours. Her fears and phobias include brown windsor soup, question marks, woad, and Folly, her daughter. She has favoured the more delicate beard, in contrast to our other bearded relatives, Aunt Vom and Aunt Turgid, who do not like thinning scissors. Bench favours the feminine look, which also compels her to wear sleeves as she does not care to display her Navy tattoos in public.

As a member of the RSPB, she fosters abandoned wrens, which she allows to nest freely in her hair. The bun allows them warmth, shelter, and some morsel of security. When on a bus into town, or in the vet to get her jabs, you could be forgiven for thinking she’s innocently adjusting a hairpin, when actually she is often posting in a mealworm that she’s stealthily taken from her handbag to feed her adopted brood. Bench is also a member of The Human and Crow Vocal Collective, she has made wonderful efforts to learn their language. She is frequently observed on neighbouring television aerials ‘kaaarking’ her head off, stealing chip papers from bins and rampaging across car parks to rip off windscreen seals with her ‘pretend’ beak.

A fascinating, odd, troubled soul. Many a time I could cheerfully take a plank of wood to her, but that’s family. Well, it’s mine, at any rate. But although, like Bagpuss, she is a baggy, and bit loose at the seams, we love Bench.