continued

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continued

I don’t think I have previously ever mentioned the maid I have employed here at Lax Manors, Cherie Bombe, a delightful petit-foux who has been part of the staff here a full cinq minutes. Mlle Bombe not only tops up my various choses intraveneuse, she is also French mistress in the boarding school I run, Lax Towers, a single-storey yet rambling establishment here at the Lax compound.

I gave her a tinklez-foux on her phone du cel to enquriez of her whether she had any (as the French say) inklant of my important passez-mot or, as the French say, billet-foux.

‘Mam’zelle?’ I was now saying in my familiar cranky tones – indeed, my head was aching and my voice betrayed un pain croissant as a result – ‘It is mwah, Mrs Lax.’

‘Aa! Mme Lax! Comment-allez, ‘ow you say, vouz Madame!’ came the familiar squeal from the audiogrammatic speaquer.

‘I have an, ‘ow you say, problamportant,’ I respondezed. ‘I need to accessez-moi mon blogue, por to tellez les types insignificante les information pour correctez-les. Can you aides-moi?’ You know sometimes I find myself thinking in French, which I believe is the sign of an excellent speaker, however as in the example here it often comes out with some Flemish in it, because of a bad chest cold I caught a few winters back. Tish-boom! Oh dear I am sorry, I’ve never really shaken that sneeze, either.

Her reply was barely audible through the large jelly of bronchial to-do which now enjambemented my telephone. ‘Mme,’ she said, though it sounded not a little unlike that thing Young Rogers often says, ‘Meh’. ‘Non. I ‘ave not seen your precious cod. If I do see it, I will of course ‘ow you say bring it to you on a silvair tres avec une pepperminte au coin de la rue. In the meantime, I must apologise but I ‘ave a large class of schoolgirls to teachez-leurs. Fiche le con, Annabel, stop dipping Englantine’s pigtails dans l’inkwell! La! You desagréable girl, I will detentez-vous deux heures après l’ecole pour that dreadful be’aviour!’

I didn’t trust the foreigner, and suspected that, like Old Rogers, she probably knew far more than she was letting on. Nevertheless at this petit point I had nothing more to go on; indeed, I was no better than I had been at the beginning of the investigation.

Once again, I furrowed my brow and investigated the many rooms of my Lax intelligence, pausing only to giggle a little at the most amusing fact that so many times my surname gave the deceptive appearance of making so many positives into negatives. Ah! So many rooms and so many memories… so many rooms… so many memories…. My goodness, I was self-hypnotising! This would be good! Just like page 92 of my excellent if commercially unsuccessful Advice for Young People…! I drifted off into a deep, revealing sleep, to be continuedzzzzzzz.

the case of the missing password II

Usually when I lose things, Old Rogers has them. He’s a regular magpie, picking up shiny objects to eat for, he claims, the sparkle. Whether he had my blog password was a long shot, but I was ready to make it and, spying him on the horizon sniffing for truffles I aimed my musket and fired. Two hours later he reported to my drawing room, where I was putting the finishing touches to a rather fine nose-blown sketch of tits on a twig.

‘You shot for me, ma’am?’ he queried, pausing only to dab at a freshly blown-out eye socket with a hay-rag.

‘Yes Rogers,’ I murmured, barely stopping to rest my quill. ‘I wonder if you had any idea about my password.’

Though I did not turn, I had a very good notion that Rogers had simultaneously blanched while turning a shade of beetroot. ‘Ma’am?’ he gasped.

His disturbed demeanour suggested to me that Rogers most certainly knew something about this mystery.

‘That’s right, Rogers, my password! Password!’ I commanded, authoritatively.

‘Oh, password!’ he laughed, relaxing, something I hoped never to see in a servant, particularly Rogers. ‘I thought ye said arse word. And the arse word is a word I hope never to hear used in the presence of a lady. Because confidentially…’ here he dropped his tone to a whisper and leant down to my ear trumpet, ‘… the arse word is arse.’

He stood again, to attention this time. ‘As for your password, m’lady,’ he murmured, ‘I know nothing of such. I assumed you, ma’am, with your direct line to Him Upstairs, would have no need of any such magickery.’

The plot was thickening, much like the snot-ink I had been using for my tit pic. Clearly Old Rogers knew nothing; but who else was in my employ? It seemed appropriate to call on other people in my day-to-day life to help me with this mystery, but sadly their identity was also somewhat outside my memory sphere. I quickly grabbed a copy of my poorly-performing recent book Advice to Young People on Leaving Home to jog my recollection of who else there might be in my existence here at Lax Manors. What I saw amazed me... if you have a copy to hand, turn to page 57 and you’ll see what I mean!

back in black

Now, where was I? The fact is, I nodded off there for a short while, and only woke from off the loud sound of my own bones putrefying. That's normal - I have them replaced quite often these days, and I recommend it, it keeps you young. Just ask Keith Richards, his grandsons do it.

Opening my beady little eyes for the first time in some... goodness me... some months, I couldn't help noticing that while I was away standards had dropped considerably to the extent that they were now hiring out the Acropolis for weddings and Kim Kardashian (insert Kim Kardashian joke here - or is her name enough? I don't know who she is, or in fact, if she's a woman, or if her name is in fact spelt Kim Kar - ian). I knew I had to get down to the roneo machine and publish a new blog entry.

But can you imagine - goodness me and bless my clawhammer banjo - once I sat down in front of the typevision with all my irate thoughts correctly assembled... I realised I had no idea what my password was!

There's quite a tale in this one readers and of course it's a thrilling mystery too! Will Mrs Lax ever find her password? How will she delve into the dank corners of her own closed mind to find out what it might be? Should she have that stye seen to? There's a twist in this tale I don't mind telling you and there will also be handy tips for homemade wine! Stay on my wavelength!