By AJP Hedgerow-Corduroy
Organic Compost
ONE reads the most extraordinary things in the newspapers. This morning I had to hide The Gentlemen's Trumpet from my wife Forsythia because of an item about the anti-depressant drug clomipramine.
Apparently, users suffer, if that is the word, an orgasm every time they yawn.
Gardenia does not get out much these days following the notorious incident involving the curate and a bicycle pump during the village fete some years ago. Since then she has been more than a little browned off.
Coupled with this she has been finding a life a little boring of late. One cannot be sure whether Forsythia actually knows what an orgasm is, but you can imagine a chap's predicament.
Think about it for a moment. Consider the consequences of a fellow sauntering in and discussing with his clomipramined wife the merits of Silmos Lolly's golf swing, or Humphrey Pumphrey's new sonnet on the field vole, or the draw for Cholmondeley Bottom's under- 15 girls' annual snooker tournament, or the winning poker hand you had last evening.
Suddenly the old girl's mouth would open, the eyes would bulge like a strangled trout and - forgive the indelicacy - bwooooagh! It would kill her.
What would happen if the vicar popped his head round the door, as is his wont, and offered to discuss next Sunday's hymn sheet?
Bwoooooagh!
Indeed, imagine being in church and the vicar getting up on his hind legs to preach. Two seconds into his address and bwooooagh!
Inevitably, bores will realise their attractiveness to ladies. People will try to be boring. Spinoza will instantly become en vogue. How ghastly!
Please, no-one offer to discuss with me the merits of Tottenham Wonderloaf or Bolton Hottentots. I'll be bored stiff. A soupcon of sal volatile instanta if you please, steward.
One can only hope that our own dear Queen Mother does not suffer from depression. The mind boggles at the consequences of what may occur at the Clarence House front door should, say, Mr Terry Venables, glance in.
Best to err on safety's side here and not discuss with the dear lady Gorringe's latest consignment of rubberwear. Or Frank Bough.
PS: Those who insist that Gorringe's closed in the 1950s had better take it up with Silmos. And avoid the clomipramine.
PPS: If there are any ladies with time to kill. I would be most happy to discuss with them the memory problems currently being encountered with the Apple Macintosh electric computing machines. Pass the clomipramine ... bwooagh!
Flowery Talk
THIS is not intended to be a fresh diatribe about the merits, or otherwise, of the anti-depressant drug clomipramine. But sometimes one cannot help but be amazed by the boring lives some people lead.
This fact was brutally brought home to me this morning as I perambulated, as is my wont, through the leafy streets of suburbia. A woman in furry slippers was on her doorstep discussing her shrubbery with a neighbour.
"Yes," she said, depositing cigarette ash over (I think) a mahonia, "that's the hydrangea we nearly lost."
The other woman, far from displaying the normal signs of ennui that this statement would invoke in most people of sound mind, actually brightened at this intelligence.
"Oh," she replied animatedly, "is it really?" The rest of this repartee was lost as I hurried on my way to the Composting Convention.
I mention this only because I like to consider myself a student of the trivia of life and middle-class ladies of a certain age frequently prove themselves to be a fertile hunting ground. One is considerably helped in this task by the fact that these dames often seek out my company, normally on railway stations.
Only yesterday a Margaret Rutherford lookalike with a sit-up-and-beg bicycle approached me on the platform and inquired where I thought the guards van might stop. She was apparently concerned over whether she could gain a speedy ingress to the conveyance. I gave her my best guess and she replied: "Oh thank you. (pause) It looks as if it might rain."
I made a polite, but perfunctory reply before scuttling off. I drew the conclusion that, rather like the saviour of the hydrangeas, she didn't get out much.
I do not claim to be the most interesting of men, but I honestly couldn't say whether any of the hydrangeas in my garden are dead or alive. And as for pointing one out to a neighbour ... well, I mean, honestly.
Just think, conversations like this are performed daily throughout the country.
Silmos Lolly reckons that eavesdropping isn't what it was. But what does he know?
Nature Notes
By AJP Hedgerow-Corduroy
With the advent of the warmer weather the flimblebells are now in full bloom and the gagarines may be seen suckling their young among the crimpumple blossom.
Chirruping pinnets may be observed in the hedgerows and the chitternocks are active in the variegated blims
Although the grupple is now past its best, the common house grint is beginning its arduous task of hibbling the dipley leaves.
We are now only days away from the joys of sumpydimpling. Care should be taken, however, not to gaggle them before brompus.
In the vegetable garden, crippets should be individually brimped, although a birrip may be permitted on odd dates only.
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