Sentence The Fourhundredandfortysecond 

“Hail, Shining Morn,” cried a breezy Aunty Crist, carrying in a breakfast tray for her dear cousins, Daphne and Maude, this Sunday morning: “we are in the Nationals, again!” and she spread a selection of newspapers on the bed, before asking Daphne to “budge over and make room,” and squeezing herself into their bed: “naturally there is a lot about the mysterious disappearances of Pantagruel and young Gertie, but there seems to have been a botched Police raid on old Ranulph Ochan'toshan's house in Bowden! someone tipped them off about an orgy involving some very old men and very young children, and Ralphy got nabbed, but a Police van carrying the others has simply disappeared – vanished into thin air, as the papers say; though I would guess they're holed up locally: I mean you can't drive around in a marked police vehicle without someone spotting it – you know how alert we locals are to unusual cars and vans loitering about; Neighbourhood Watch has given all the old biddies something to justify their peeping and peering and nosing about into everyone else's business; I daresay if we didn't have rozzers in the family to keep us up to date, we'd probably be snooping through the net curtains ourselves!” and Daphne asked: “but what's happening in the country?” to which Crist replied: “well, the Tories are still in something of a tourbillion after the referendum – emphasis on the 'Dumb' if you ask me - that little School Sneak, Michael Gove, is

strutting about like a Peacock having stuck the knife into his Dear Friend, Boris Johnson, you know, the artfully-disshevelled-hair chappie, always was a bit of a Bully Boy, but got a taste of his own medicine – what's that old thing about revenge?” and both her cousins chimed in: “a dish best served cold,” and Crist nodded, “yes, that would be Gove's style, I suspect his veins are filled with anti-freeze, he's that passive-aggressive type, terribly, punctiliously polite, but looks at you as if you are a piece of shite, my guess is Boris did something unmentionable to him in a lavatory thirty years ago and he's just been biding his time to get his own back in the most public and destructive way possible, he always reminds me of Reginald Christie,” and when the ladies looked blank, she added:

“10 Rillington Place,” to which Maude asked, “wasn't that Dickie Attenborough?” which brought a stern look from her younger cousin, who corrected her: “just in the film, dear, Christie was himself in real life; oh and poor old Jeremy Corbyn is still being harried by those screeching harpies on his back-benches – I'd de-select the lot of them and be done with it, if I had a say, which, of course, I don't, but it's all so histrionic and obviously orchestrated by that dreadful sepia-soulled Mandy Mandelson – I never trusted him when he had that awful toothbrush 'tash, trying to look like poor old Graham Hill, which he had the good sense to dispose of before he stood for Parliament, but you know what they say: 'you can take the 'tash off a man, but you can't separate a man from his 'tash',” and the three ladies hooted with derision at the very idea; then Crist continued: “of course all this hullabaloo has put the mockers on an early exploration of The Eildon Hill Caves! sweet Isa has been keeping me up to date on that front – it seems that because the Boys in Blue are scouring the area for Pan and Gertie, and now also these escapees from custody, they have the whole area locked down; everyone is being kept at home and only allowed to have their shopping delivered, it seems the Girls in Blue are scooting up and down the hills with messages from the town and transporting folk to the Health Centre or Hospital appointments, there is a cordon sanitaire around Melrose, Gattonside, Darnick, Bowden. Newtown and St Boswells – even Tweedbank – so you can see how massive an operation it is; I think young Bruce Bruse is coming here later to question us all, even our Syrian Refugees! most of them are under 10 so what good that will do, I can't imagine: maybe they want advice on the push-factor that makes people escape from repressive regimes - bombed homes, death and destruction - so that their profilers can try to work out where the sodomites from Ralphy's place have gone; but my money is on somewhere local and well-hidden from passers-by; but hey, girls, it's time for The Archers Omnibus, so put the wireless on Maude, dear, and enjoy your cuppa before it gets cold!” and then dropped her bombshell: “oh, I almost forgot – the children have been studying MacBeth with Miss Laverock and have decided to put on the play in the Corn Exchange, and they want we three ossified Aunties to be The Three Witches!”