Sentence The Twohundredandfirst
In addition to being the Neighbourhood Watcher in Ramsay Garden, The Widow MacCaroon, whose name at birth had been Rozelle Renton, younger daughter of Lord Justice Renton who will be remembered as the longest serving Master of the Court of Pleas, in which he gave his famous Judgement on the Action between Montague's Edinburgh Cakes and Lees of Portobello Mallows in which he sternly rebuked Learned Counsel for both Parties with the comment: “The Court of Pleas is a Court of Law, this is no place for, so do not expect to find, abstract matters such as Justice dispensed herein”; Rozelle, herself, was a flighty flapper during the 'Roaring Twenties' who danced
'The Black Bottom' to the music of Mickey MacCaroon's Melody Makers (yes, you're right, Mickey MacCaroon from White Craig) and when she became pregnant, a marriage between Rozelle and Mickey was found to have been duly registered with the Court of Pleas twelve months before her due date, so her daughter Pansy was unequivocally legitimate and as lively and robust a toddler as was to
be seen in Ramsay Garden; for Rozelle had been born in the apartment in which she still lives – she had known no other, except while accompanying Mickey's Band on their extensive Tours, and leaving Baby Pansy with a nanny and her own mother – and it was while exploring the dangerous heights of the Castle Rock and unseen by her then Nanny (Arabella Caramella who was fluttering her eye-lashes at a Sergeant of Artillery on the Castle Esplanade, heedless of her charge) that little Pansy tumbled and rolled all the way down to the Nor' Loch, and though her injuries were miraculously
slight, little Pansy seemed to lose some of her spirit of adventure and she became a virtual prisoner and a recluse; a series of Nannies and Governesses battled to cram some basic education into her head, but though she learned to read and write, the only subject which interested her was the Railway which ran day and night beneath her bedroom window; she knew all the engines by ear, she could identify the footplate crew by the way the steam whistle howled as the locomotive barrelled out of the tunnel and screeched into Waverley Station and when she was older, she spent most of her days down there, on the platforms, concourse, waiting rooms and shunting yards of the great station, befriended
by railwaymen of every ilk and class, from the Firemen of LNER to the grand fugleman himself, the bowler-hatted (except on receiving Crowned Heads and Potentates, when his Topper gleamed) Station Master MacMurdoch himself; she was well known by regular passengers travelling to and from Abergavenny and Aberdeen, Bolton and Berlin, Cheltenham and Constantinople, Dingwall and Daventry, Eccles and Ecclefechan, Frinton and Framlington, Glasgow and Grimsby, Heiton and Heckmondswyke, Jarrow and Johnstone, Kirriemuir and King's Lynn, Liverpool and Lyme Regis, Maidstone and Macclesfield, Northampton and Norwich, Orpington and Ostend, Paris and Preston, Queensborough and Queen's Bower, Rotherhithe and Rome, Stoke Poges and St Petersburg, Teviothead and Trieste, Unthank and Utrecht, Vauxhall and Vienna, West Bromwich and Weardale, Xing-xing-xia and Xai Xai, Ypres and Yeovil, Zagreb and Zurich; her book of Railway Engine Numbers was well thumbed and most of the names and numbers crossed out, her Autograph Books, packed with signatures of Statesmen, Religious Leaders, Music Hall Stars, Floozies, Flimflams and Flunkies, Princes and Pimps, Messiahs and Murderers, soon filled a shelf in her Grandfather's Library; she became famous in novels and movies, was interviewed by Damon Runyan and J B Priestley, appeared in Newsreels, her face adorned advertisements for Custard Powder and Corn Plasters, Pickles and Pantie-girdles, recruitment posters for Girl Guides and Boy Scouts (different uniforms and hairstyles were enough to do the trick); Business Magnates and Civic Dignitaries
clamoured to touch her hand, The Ali Pasha sought out a lock of her hair which he had encased in Amber and wore as an Amulet against everything from Diarrhoea to Bunions, Epilepsy to Dandruff, while a passing Pope begged to be permitted to wash her feet (and was observed to suck three of them) and so her days passed until the tragic accident to which it seemed her life had led her inexorably: at 11.45am on the 24th of October 1938, when her parents were coming home after an exhausting tour of the Social Clubs in the Kingdom of Fife, and young Pansy had taken up her usual Train-spotting Position close to the usual brabble of loungers and dawdlers, hanging out by the Buffers and the Ticket-Collectors of Platform 1 and she knew that the Laird of Glenbogie, a MacBeth Class locomotive was drawing the train her parents rode in and Pansy was excitedly chatting to Wee Tam, a little crippled boy from The Cowgate she had taken under her wing, so to speak, always kitted out with a manpack, containing his jeely piece and a pencil, and they heard the Laird Whistle – it was a low Booming Hooooooot – as it drew out of the tunnel from Haymarket and cleaved the very air in it's flight towards Platform 1 when, who could have predicted, a kitten, venturing too far from a close off the Royal Mile, had tumbled as had Pansy all those years before, and landed on the rails, and as the train was pulling deep alongside platform 1, over-excited passengers were already flinging their doors open against the express instructions above every door, and even Mickey MacCaroon was swinging out from the first door of Coach 1, and Pansy saw the little kitten place her two front paws on the nearest rail and the wheel coming ever close, and Pansy leapt to snatch up the kitten, and Mickey seeing her leap, hurled himself after her, and Wee Tam shrieked as the rails sang and the brakes screeched and the driver pulled a long warning note on the whistle and the Porters ran to the aid of Pansy as she and Mickey were dragged beneath the wheels and crushed and torn to their terrible deaths and the kitten jumped up onto the platform and sat on the knee of Wee Tam and hundreds of passengers and staff and the grand Station Master himself, stood in silent tribute to their
own favourite and every man in the station took off his cap or hat and they stood, heads bowed in prayer, and even to this very day, at 11.45am on the 24th of October, Waverley Station comes to a standstill in a silent vigil for Poor Pansy MacCaroon and her fearless father who both laid down their lives that day and the living descendants of Pansy the Cat, named after the young girl, and still regarded almost as sacred animals, line up to miaow their own salute, and in her apartment, high on the crags of the Castle Rock, in the apartment where both she and Pansy, her beloved daughter, were born, The Widow MacCaroon sits, the oldest woman in Scotland, under the pretext of 'Watching' for 'ne'er dae weels' venturing into the neighbourhood, and though she notes the safe return of Teri (with or without dubious company) or the late return of Major Gilbert (with traces of lipstick on his collar or elsewhere, of a shade his dear departed Sister Myrtle never would have worn in her life) it is the shades she awaits and silently prays for, of her handsome husband and darling daughter, for she will never rest till they come to take her from Ramsay Garden to the sunlit meadows and dappled glades of 'Somewhere, Nowhere.' and she can be re-united with them for Eternity!
In addition to being the Neighbourhood Watcher in Ramsay Garden, The Widow MacCaroon, whose name at birth had been Rozelle Renton, younger daughter of Lord Justice Renton who will be remembered as the longest serving Master of the Court of Pleas, in which he gave his famous Judgement on the Action between Montague's Edinburgh Cakes and Lees of Portobello Mallows in which he sternly rebuked Learned Counsel for both Parties with the comment: “The Court of Pleas is a Court of Law, this is no place for, so do not expect to find, abstract matters such as Justice dispensed herein”; Rozelle, herself, was a flighty flapper during the 'Roaring Twenties' who danced
'The Black Bottom' to the music of Mickey MacCaroon's Melody Makers (yes, you're right, Mickey MacCaroon from White Craig) and when she became pregnant, a marriage between Rozelle and Mickey was found to have been duly registered with the Court of Pleas twelve months before her due date, so her daughter Pansy was unequivocally legitimate and as lively and robust a toddler as was to
be seen in Ramsay Garden; for Rozelle had been born in the apartment in which she still lives – she had known no other, except while accompanying Mickey's Band on their extensive Tours, and leaving Baby Pansy with a nanny and her own mother – and it was while exploring the dangerous heights of the Castle Rock and unseen by her then Nanny (Arabella Caramella who was fluttering her eye-lashes at a Sergeant of Artillery on the Castle Esplanade, heedless of her charge) that little Pansy tumbled and rolled all the way down to the Nor' Loch, and though her injuries were miraculously
slight, little Pansy seemed to lose some of her spirit of adventure and she became a virtual prisoner and a recluse; a series of Nannies and Governesses battled to cram some basic education into her head, but though she learned to read and write, the only subject which interested her was the Railway which ran day and night beneath her bedroom window; she knew all the engines by ear, she could identify the footplate crew by the way the steam whistle howled as the locomotive barrelled out of the tunnel and screeched into Waverley Station and when she was older, she spent most of her days down there, on the platforms, concourse, waiting rooms and shunting yards of the great station, befriended
by railwaymen of every ilk and class, from the Firemen of LNER to the grand fugleman himself, the bowler-hatted (except on receiving Crowned Heads and Potentates, when his Topper gleamed) Station Master MacMurdoch himself; she was well known by regular passengers travelling to and from Abergavenny and Aberdeen, Bolton and Berlin, Cheltenham and Constantinople, Dingwall and Daventry, Eccles and Ecclefechan, Frinton and Framlington, Glasgow and Grimsby, Heiton and Heckmondswyke, Jarrow and Johnstone, Kirriemuir and King's Lynn, Liverpool and Lyme Regis, Maidstone and Macclesfield, Northampton and Norwich, Orpington and Ostend, Paris and Preston, Queensborough and Queen's Bower, Rotherhithe and Rome, Stoke Poges and St Petersburg, Teviothead and Trieste, Unthank and Utrecht, Vauxhall and Vienna, West Bromwich and Weardale, Xing-xing-xia and Xai Xai, Ypres and Yeovil, Zagreb and Zurich; her book of Railway Engine Numbers was well thumbed and most of the names and numbers crossed out, her Autograph Books, packed with signatures of Statesmen, Religious Leaders, Music Hall Stars, Floozies, Flimflams and Flunkies, Princes and Pimps, Messiahs and Murderers, soon filled a shelf in her Grandfather's Library; she became famous in novels and movies, was interviewed by Damon Runyan and J B Priestley, appeared in Newsreels, her face adorned advertisements for Custard Powder and Corn Plasters, Pickles and Pantie-girdles, recruitment posters for Girl Guides and Boy Scouts (different uniforms and hairstyles were enough to do the trick); Business Magnates and Civic Dignitaries
clamoured to touch her hand, The Ali Pasha sought out a lock of her hair which he had encased in Amber and wore as an Amulet against everything from Diarrhoea to Bunions, Epilepsy to Dandruff, while a passing Pope begged to be permitted to wash her feet (and was observed to suck three of them) and so her days passed until the tragic accident to which it seemed her life had led her inexorably: at 11.45am on the 24th of October 1938, when her parents were coming home after an exhausting tour of the Social Clubs in the Kingdom of Fife, and young Pansy had taken up her usual Train-spotting Position close to the usual brabble of loungers and dawdlers, hanging out by the Buffers and the Ticket-Collectors of Platform 1 and she knew that the Laird of Glenbogie, a MacBeth Class locomotive was drawing the train her parents rode in and Pansy was excitedly chatting to Wee Tam, a little crippled boy from The Cowgate she had taken under her wing, so to speak, always kitted out with a manpack, containing his jeely piece and a pencil, and they heard the Laird Whistle – it was a low Booming Hooooooot – as it drew out of the tunnel from Haymarket and cleaved the very air in it's flight towards Platform 1 when, who could have predicted, a kitten, venturing too far from a close off the Royal Mile, had tumbled as had Pansy all those years before, and landed on the rails, and as the train was pulling deep alongside platform 1, over-excited passengers were already flinging their doors open against the express instructions above every door, and even Mickey MacCaroon was swinging out from the first door of Coach 1, and Pansy saw the little kitten place her two front paws on the nearest rail and the wheel coming ever close, and Pansy leapt to snatch up the kitten, and Mickey seeing her leap, hurled himself after her, and Wee Tam shrieked as the rails sang and the brakes screeched and the driver pulled a long warning note on the whistle and the Porters ran to the aid of Pansy as she and Mickey were dragged beneath the wheels and crushed and torn to their terrible deaths and the kitten jumped up onto the platform and sat on the knee of Wee Tam and hundreds of passengers and staff and the grand Station Master himself, stood in silent tribute to their
own favourite and every man in the station took off his cap or hat and they stood, heads bowed in prayer, and even to this very day, at 11.45am on the 24th of October, Waverley Station comes to a standstill in a silent vigil for Poor Pansy MacCaroon and her fearless father who both laid down their lives that day and the living descendants of Pansy the Cat, named after the young girl, and still regarded almost as sacred animals, line up to miaow their own salute, and in her apartment, high on the crags of the Castle Rock, in the apartment where both she and Pansy, her beloved daughter, were born, The Widow MacCaroon sits, the oldest woman in Scotland, under the pretext of 'Watching' for 'ne'er dae weels' venturing into the neighbourhood, and though she notes the safe return of Teri (with or without dubious company) or the late return of Major Gilbert (with traces of lipstick on his collar or elsewhere, of a shade his dear departed Sister Myrtle never would have worn in her life) it is the shades she awaits and silently prays for, of her handsome husband and darling daughter, for she will never rest till they come to take her from Ramsay Garden to the sunlit meadows and dappled glades of 'Somewhere, Nowhere.' and she can be re-united with them for Eternity!
Comments
Post a Comment