Dandruff Hits The Turtleneck

  Chapter Seven

  A Dollop of Larkspur

  The Reverend Colin Wheatsheaf delicately peels an orange, longingly examines every single segment, caresses the smooth fleshy texture and pops in the scented memories. The bitterness, the pips, the juice and stringy bits…this is life. His ten-year-old cat, Desmond, gives him a baffled, unsettled look and decides it is time to murder something in the overgrown garden. Fresh coffee is percolating and our holy man is vibrating as a new day beams down on St. Disinfectant’s. It is almost impossible to believe that it is less than six minutes ago when Colin caught sight of his face in the back of a kitchen ladle, shrieked like a hysterical hyena and thought life wasn’t worth living. A spot of flower arranging, a lukewarm shower, a mouthful of something resembling a croissant and he’s back. Later this very day he is in charge of the service for a much-loved pillar of the society, Mr Hedley Antcliffe, a former professional spin bowler and renowned fishmonger, who sadly passed away during the week. Credit where credit is due, Hedley’s soused herring was second to none, and once he got started on the underestimation of cod cheeks in the family home, you couldn’t stop him.

  Alas, due to a tragic accident involving his electric violin and a home-made vat of fourteen percent Scrumpy, Hedley, clean bowled, as it were, at the ripe old age of ninety-five, accepts his lifetime promotion in three hours’ time and the family business mantle, including plastic parsley window dressing, gets handed down to his eldest son, Cyrus.

  The remaining Antcliffe family thought it a good idea to present the Reverend Colin Wheatsheaf with one of Hedley’s old diaries to help him prepare his farewell sermon speech. After what seems an eternity, Colin’s coffee has finally dripped through his twenty-year-old percolator and he settles down at his kitchen table to peruse the old man’s memoirs…

  August 1st, 1972:

  Have you ever noticed how the coat hangers in the spare room wardrobe resemble very thin triangular cats?

  March 23rd, 1976:

  I was thinking today of my old childhood sweetheart, Madeira Plunge. How I used to love playing marbles in the safari park while she entertained us all with impressions of a goat formation dance troupe.

  June 14th, 1981:

  Really wanted to go to the cinema today, but am unusually low on funds. Instead, took custard flan from the fridge and placed my table lamp six inches from the surface. Turned off all other lights in the living room, and stared at the flan for two hours, then switched lights back on. It felt just like I had been on a moonwalk.

  December 16th, 1986:

  Very unlike me to be bored. To rectify, offered to neutralize the odours in next door’s horse box with a homemade concoction of my own based on sherbet and Florrie’s hairspray. In a last ditch attempt to shake off lethargy, dropped my lump hammer onto a small pot of raspberry yoghurt.

  The Reverend Colin Wheatsheaf wiped a tear from his eye, scratched his head in total bewilderment and decided he had better go and have a lie down for an hour…