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The Strange Case of...

Posted by: poetscientistdrinker (---.rdg.ac.uk)

Date: December 06, 2002 12:44PM

<HTML>B-Movie Madness in <h2>The Strange Case of Gertrude Jekyll</h2> (I'll go and hide)...

Mr Uttertosh the lawyer had some buggered accountants, partially as a result of too many late nights in the Sixties sitting with a family-sized tub of acid in front of a B-movie, but mostly because he hired them after their Enron account was terminated. He was non-descript at best, but this was probably due to an infestation of Grammarsites, which even regular applications of Zymox Medicated Rinse failed to shift. It chanced that during one of these rambles with which I infest the web, that Uttertosh and his friend Garfield were entering a passage in London.

"Did you ever remark upon that door?", asked Garfield. "It is connected in my mind with the day I had some particularly nice lasagne."

"Indeed?", enquired Mr Uttertosh. "Weren't you supposed to tell me some strange story?"

"No. I was supposed to take the piss out of Odie. But seeing as you asked... behind that door is a Secret Garden."

"Not that bloody whimsical Victorian bollocks again!", Mr Uttertosh ejaculated.

"I'd clean that up if I were you. No, it is far more interesting than that. Behind that door is a garden designed to terrify all who enter it."

"Dairmund Gavin been in there, has he?"

"No - he designed that terrible one with those little hills for that nursery rhyme. Paid for by some bloke called Charlie. I told Jack he'd only hurt himself going up Charlie's hummocks."

"But who was the mysterious designer?"

"A lady by the name of Mrs Jekyll. Gertrude is her first name. She had a theory that gardens could be split into their good and evil halves. Unfortunately she became addicted to Hyde and seek*, except she made the mistake of hiding in a Triffid".

"A triffid?"

"A sort of Venus Flytrap with ambition."

"Oh. And have you visited this garden?" asked Uttertosh.

"Only once," said Garfield. "I found it to be a little shop of horrors."

"Were you alone?"

"No, there was Audrey Too."

"And did anybody see you?"

"Only a psychic drink."

"Surely it wasn't," he said, before pausing for a dramatic fanfare. "A kir royalian witness?"

"The same."

"And do you know much about this mysterious woman?"

"She enjoyed Gilbert and Sullivan. Especially their light opera plant slasher - Biollante. Very fond of her ents, she was. And she had gentlemen visit her all the time."

"Tobanga?"

"Yes, I believe he inhabited this garden for a while before his film career took off. Very few pests, apparently. Although last year they had an attack of the killer..."

"Tomatoes? Were there tomatoes?

"No, not the right soil to grow vegetables. Not sure why - I have a feeling Jekyll just couldn't get on with chemicals."

"Gosh."

"Anyway, we must get a move on. Before that bloody Beatrix Potter character turns up. you know - that short Yorkshire one?"

"Alan Titchmouse?"

"The same..."

And with that they went to torment somebody called 'Jon'...

*appalling bad pun lifted from Stevenson - so no blaming me!</HTML>

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