Sentence The Sixhundredandsixth

  And, sure enough, the day also brought The Fabulous Four, who, with the addition of Auntie Maude, made up The Famous Five, Edinburgh's first and most supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Out and Abouters who flaunted their Queer Dykeness around the town long before the Festival – and more

particularly, The Fringe – brought sexual deviance out of the closet and paraded it up and down The High Street, into St Giles itself, and at receptions hosted by the Lord Provost in the City Chambers; but The Famous Five were best known for their screaming matches on The Mound on Sunday afternoons when they harangued and were harangued themselves by proclaimers that they must Repent, For The End is Nigh and preachers like Pastor Jack Glass, an unreconstructed but certainly

not underfired Presbyterian follower of John Knox and Ian Paisley who assured them of eternal damnation and a hereafter of Fire and Brimstone in Purgatory where, no doubt, he sits counting the hours, days and years until he can pierce their eyes with red-hot needles and will shove white-hot pokers up their jacksies, the most appropriate punishment for Women who dare to love other Women and therefore presumably break the 10th Commandment by committing Adultery, with their

neighbours' wives! oh, Tuffy Ladywood, Cecilia Connaught, Grizzel Baillie and Lettice Pumpherston will probably be boiled in oil along with Maude Lyttleton for all the sins which are noted against their names in St Peter's Golden Book; my. my. Glass's God was certainly Wrathful and Vengeful and had it in for Lezzies big-time – you would think that there must be far worse things in this world, but not according to the Fundamentalists; so it was nice to see the warm and solicitous welcome they received in the kitchen from the Syrian mums, both delighted to meet their glamorous and funny friends, for the kitchen was soon filled with giggles and hoots of laughter from all sides; though we have still not heard anything from Daphne and Maude, who were also supposed to be coming down by train today, although, knowing them, they might well be rattling along in a North-bound train heading for Inverness instead of coming down the new Borders railway, we shall just have to be patient, for so far, they have never not turned up where they are expected, but nor do they always arrive when they are expected, and are definitely not yet in their senectitude – so we Keep Calm and Carry On Regardless! certainly, I tried phoning them, but both of their mobiles went straight to voicemail, probably either packed at the bottom of their cases or, even more likely, left behind in their Embra flat – I don't think they have worked out yet that mobile means what it says on the tin!