Sentence The Fiftyseventh
It was Pru Montelimart who telephoned and roused Theresa Somerville from the utterly unconscious sleep of the truly exhausted; she tried to find the alarm clock, but everything was a muddle, a tangle, and confusion, for she was surrounded in the circular bed in Maude's old flat by the Famous Four (rump of the Five, now reduced in numbers by the honeymoon of Maude, their missing Member) but eventually found her mobile, tucked – surely uncomfortably – into Lettice's oxter – and answered it to be overwhelmed by Pru's outburst – it must be remembered that Pru is highly emotional; she is the mother of eleven daughters, whose story was once splashed across the pages of The Sunday Post, her short account of her uneventful life until she married Giacomo Montelimart, an itinerant juggler and fire-eater who was a nine-day-wonder at the Festival a couple of decades ago and became Professor of Circus Skills at Heriot-Watt at the time when Universities were casting desperately around to find new ways of putting bums in lecture halls; they lived in a basement flat in the New Town, and Pru had, over the six years of the marriage, three pregnancies – the first produced the five oldest girls (Cola, Lola, Pola, Nola and Rola), the second resulted in the next five girls (Bara, Dara, Hara, Kara and Mara) and the third, and last, gave her Sweet, little Joan, known throughout the extended family as The Bairn as she is the youngest so far – and unless the Brevitys do something, she may be the last: well, Pru said, one of your readers just called me to say that you referred in your latest post to Daphne's mother, Lady Chantelle marrying Sir Duncan, but in a previous one you'd named Daphne's father as Sir Donald, it seems there's quite a furore among your readers, trying to fathom out the relationships and someone says you've got muddled over Daphne's family – but really, it was all so very simple, and so Teri promised to clear the matter up for her two or three loyal followers: and she grabbed her laptop, which had been used as a pillow by Cecilia, and typed: Sir Duncan Dumbiedykes was the elder of the two sons of Sir Daniel Dumbiedykes, the famous Scottish Vexillologist, whose studies of flags of all places, purposes, and meanings, is the acknowledged Bible for any New Nation, requiring it's own, unique, National Standard (why, he is descended from the designer of Scotland's own Lion Rampant, no less) born just five minutes before Donald; he married first Caramella Clintmains, and had a son, Gregor– who was to become Daphne's cousin; on the untimely death of Caramella, resulting from her fall from a tree while attempting to rescue Simba – the ginger tom – he went into mourning, and, on his return from that state some weeks later, met and married Lady Chantelle Lillico, the amateur golfer; unfortunately, on their honeymoon in South Africa, Sir Duncan was eaten by a lion; his grieving widow returned disconsolate to Dumbiedykes Hall where she was consoled by the younger twin, now Sir Donald and after a proper period of mourning and courtship, they married and their union brought forth Daphne, who – Deo Gratia – is still with us, and her twin brother Duncan-Donald, named after both of Chantelle's Dumbiedykes husbands – indeed, it was he, who founded the company which bore a reference to his own name, namely Duncan's Doughnuts, which promised great success and fortunes until it was most heinously sued by an American corporation with a vaguely similar name (though spelt quite differently) and slightly similar product; now, it is a truth universally acknowledged and that all honest lawyers were united on, that Duncan-Donald had Right on his side, but, that in the face of Might, Right doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of triumphing, and so it was – the Americans hired the slimiest, foulest, most lubricious member of the Scottish Bar (one Martin Elginbrod, leading expert on the Roman, French, Scottish and American Laws of Torts and Intellectual Property – his family motto is “We Claim All and We'll Prove It” - whose name is still whispered with trembling lips and tremulous voice in the lower reaches of Dumbiedykes Hall, and is included in Roget's Thesaurus as an alternative word for Philadelphia lawyer) and sure enough, their Big Bucks trampled over poor, honourable Duncan-Donald, and squashed him into the mire – that he died of a broken heart, in a secure unit, believing himself to be the Messiah nailed to his cross – for thus he stood and walked and talked, arms flung wide for the few years left to him – as clear a victim of Jerusalem Syndrome as any seen by Professor Iscariot, Clinical Psychologist and advisor to the service at Carstairs, who even wrote a book – a classic of it's kind, and available at all good Bargain Bookshops – on the life and times of the fragile psyche of Duncan-Donald Dumbiedykes, entitled Unquiet Thoughts; Teri read this aloud to the Four, who all seemed quite nonplussed at the idea that anyone should need to bet told in such detail what they, aside from Maude, Daphne's best and oldest friends, believed that anyone even slightly familiar with one of Edinburgh and Scotland's oldest and most illustrious family dynasties – seeming to imply that anyone who wasn't, really wasn't worth knowing – would know all of this already, it being the sort of thing which every Scottish child absorbs with her (or, indeed, his mother's milk) along with the relationships within The Broons, or the friendships centred on Oor Wullie will be completely au fait before going to Primary School, as much a part of everyone's heritage as Edinburgh Rock, Arbroath Smokies, Hawick Balls and Kirriemuir Gingerbread; nevertheless, Teri then called Pru back and over the squabbling of eleven teenage girls managed to read it again, this time to her cousin, who, Teri thought, rather wearily, said that she supposed it would fill in the gaps for anyone who didn't already have them filled, but that she was trying to make eleven packed lunches for the girls school boxes tomorrow, seeming to imply that she would never have had the time to write so much about nothing very important for, as she finally said, I don't suppose it really matters to them anyway, does it?
It was Pru Montelimart who telephoned and roused Theresa Somerville from the utterly unconscious sleep of the truly exhausted; she tried to find the alarm clock, but everything was a muddle, a tangle, and confusion, for she was surrounded in the circular bed in Maude's old flat by the Famous Four (rump of the Five, now reduced in numbers by the honeymoon of Maude, their missing Member) but eventually found her mobile, tucked – surely uncomfortably – into Lettice's oxter – and answered it to be overwhelmed by Pru's outburst – it must be remembered that Pru is highly emotional; she is the mother of eleven daughters, whose story was once splashed across the pages of The Sunday Post, her short account of her uneventful life until she married Giacomo Montelimart, an itinerant juggler and fire-eater who was a nine-day-wonder at the Festival a couple of decades ago and became Professor of Circus Skills at Heriot-Watt at the time when Universities were casting desperately around to find new ways of putting bums in lecture halls; they lived in a basement flat in the New Town, and Pru had, over the six years of the marriage, three pregnancies – the first produced the five oldest girls (Cola, Lola, Pola, Nola and Rola), the second resulted in the next five girls (Bara, Dara, Hara, Kara and Mara) and the third, and last, gave her Sweet, little Joan, known throughout the extended family as The Bairn as she is the youngest so far – and unless the Brevitys do something, she may be the last: well, Pru said, one of your readers just called me to say that you referred in your latest post to Daphne's mother, Lady Chantelle marrying Sir Duncan, but in a previous one you'd named Daphne's father as Sir Donald, it seems there's quite a furore among your readers, trying to fathom out the relationships and someone says you've got muddled over Daphne's family – but really, it was all so very simple, and so Teri promised to clear the matter up for her two or three loyal followers: and she grabbed her laptop, which had been used as a pillow by Cecilia, and typed: Sir Duncan Dumbiedykes was the elder of the two sons of Sir Daniel Dumbiedykes, the famous Scottish Vexillologist, whose studies of flags of all places, purposes, and meanings, is the acknowledged Bible for any New Nation, requiring it's own, unique, National Standard (why, he is descended from the designer of Scotland's own Lion Rampant, no less) born just five minutes before Donald; he married first Caramella Clintmains, and had a son, Gregor– who was to become Daphne's cousin; on the untimely death of Caramella, resulting from her fall from a tree while attempting to rescue Simba – the ginger tom – he went into mourning, and, on his return from that state some weeks later, met and married Lady Chantelle Lillico, the amateur golfer; unfortunately, on their honeymoon in South Africa, Sir Duncan was eaten by a lion; his grieving widow returned disconsolate to Dumbiedykes Hall where she was consoled by the younger twin, now Sir Donald and after a proper period of mourning and courtship, they married and their union brought forth Daphne, who – Deo Gratia – is still with us, and her twin brother Duncan-Donald, named after both of Chantelle's Dumbiedykes husbands – indeed, it was he, who founded the company which bore a reference to his own name, namely Duncan's Doughnuts, which promised great success and fortunes until it was most heinously sued by an American corporation with a vaguely similar name (though spelt quite differently) and slightly similar product; now, it is a truth universally acknowledged and that all honest lawyers were united on, that Duncan-Donald had Right on his side, but, that in the face of Might, Right doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of triumphing, and so it was – the Americans hired the slimiest, foulest, most lubricious member of the Scottish Bar (one Martin Elginbrod, leading expert on the Roman, French, Scottish and American Laws of Torts and Intellectual Property – his family motto is “We Claim All and We'll Prove It” - whose name is still whispered with trembling lips and tremulous voice in the lower reaches of Dumbiedykes Hall, and is included in Roget's Thesaurus as an alternative word for Philadelphia lawyer) and sure enough, their Big Bucks trampled over poor, honourable Duncan-Donald, and squashed him into the mire – that he died of a broken heart, in a secure unit, believing himself to be the Messiah nailed to his cross – for thus he stood and walked and talked, arms flung wide for the few years left to him – as clear a victim of Jerusalem Syndrome as any seen by Professor Iscariot, Clinical Psychologist and advisor to the service at Carstairs, who even wrote a book – a classic of it's kind, and available at all good Bargain Bookshops – on the life and times of the fragile psyche of Duncan-Donald Dumbiedykes, entitled Unquiet Thoughts; Teri read this aloud to the Four, who all seemed quite nonplussed at the idea that anyone should need to bet told in such detail what they, aside from Maude, Daphne's best and oldest friends, believed that anyone even slightly familiar with one of Edinburgh and Scotland's oldest and most illustrious family dynasties – seeming to imply that anyone who wasn't, really wasn't worth knowing – would know all of this already, it being the sort of thing which every Scottish child absorbs with her (or, indeed, his mother's milk) along with the relationships within The Broons, or the friendships centred on Oor Wullie will be completely au fait before going to Primary School, as much a part of everyone's heritage as Edinburgh Rock, Arbroath Smokies, Hawick Balls and Kirriemuir Gingerbread; nevertheless, Teri then called Pru back and over the squabbling of eleven teenage girls managed to read it again, this time to her cousin, who, Teri thought, rather wearily, said that she supposed it would fill in the gaps for anyone who didn't already have them filled, but that she was trying to make eleven packed lunches for the girls school boxes tomorrow, seeming to imply that she would never have had the time to write so much about nothing very important for, as she finally said, I don't suppose it really matters to them anyway, does it?
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