It's the great Wetherspoons real ale festival - and my favorite pub-chain has 50 different brews up for grabs and spread across its various branches, Consequently, having finished my driving lesson for the day - and requiring a quiet spot in which to set up my traveling office and knock out a little bit of suitably inspired prose - I have come to rest in the 'Alfred Herring', Palmers Green. Only it is anything but quiet - in addition to the usual betting-shop escapees a, drunks (I do include myself - I'm not that hypercritical) and assorted crazies (the same proviso applies) the place seems packed to the rafters with the populace of the various offices that nestle above (and sometimes, alongside) the rather dowdy local shops : brain-dead 'nail technicians' and 'stylists' giggle over nothing in particular and jostle for territory with a 'deception' of estate-agents (real-estate agents, for those State-side) here and an 'apology' of financial advisers, there (I've no idea what you lot across 'The Pond' call them - but I imagine you have 'em there). As for 'yours truly' I shall momentarily be embarking on extending and embellishing a chapter that I have provisionally named 'Sparrows in the Window and Bats in the Attic' and in which I am currently working through a scene in which our hapless heroine in her baggy institutional stripy pyjamas is put to the test - or rather her mental health is...Well just what should she choose to do- should she accept the gift of a soft pink-furred teddy bear, a terry-toweling nappy, flounced hospital-issue plastic pants (knickers) in exchange for the life of her little birdie companion...or refuse and effectively place herself in an even greater perfection of seclusion...It's a diabolical little quandary - and the biting sting of the implacable psychiatrist's leather belt across her bare behind, as always, is there to spur her co-operation, which ever path she might choose. Considering, then, the pivotal role played by a simple soft toy (and I can give no more away at this stage) and a pair of plastic pants, it is all the more coincidental that only this morning I blundered upon the the little bit of art presented above; I came across it on an old backup CD while searching for something completely unconnected and have no idea of its origin. It's a lovely little image though, whatever its origin - near perfectly evocative of our little mind-controlled trollop.
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