Hobgoblins, Foul Fiends & Miss Pringle's Nuptials
When the news was about to be delivered to our headmistress Miss Sefton she was advised by Miss Pringle to take this news sitting down.
It was Tamsin who pointed out Miss Pringle had been with Denham Hall since it was given its charter by King George II in 1750 that would make Miss Pringle about 269 years old. It is Tamsin being silly again. Anyway don’t hold your breath it will be a few weeks before for the big day.
Oh here is a bit of interest; did you know it was on her deathbed Lady Caroline told her sobbing husband George to remarry, to which he replied, ‘Non, j'aurai des maîtresses’. That is French.
Gentle readers it had nothing to do with mattresses. No it is French for ‘No, I shall have mistresses!’ but it was common knowledge that George already had mistresses during his marriage and he had kept his wife Caroline informed about them.
Did you also know they had nine children or that he fell dead while he was going number….er well it is immaterial, but he died using the toilet due to a heart attack? Now that is not all that common?
Rebecca told us Briggs the caretaker, come handyman, come dogsbody or whatever, was in Watford at the weekend when he saw Miss Pringle walking up the High Street with a male specimen of the opposite species outside of Cineworld, you know just up the road from the Côte D’azure Cafe…….for heavens sake near the florist for those of you that are unfamiliar with Watford High Street.
Now Miss Pringle is a woman of taste and impeccable breeding and interested in stuff like Nocturnes, Sonatas, Etudes and stuff so when Rebecca told us this male person and Miss Pringle were looking at the opening times of the movie Battle Star Galactica something did not ring true. After further questioning of Briggs he said they had only paused then moved on arm in arm and entered the Côte D’azure Cafe.
Can you understand now how easy it is for Rebecca to put her own slant on the news when she did not have the full facts before her? This is how wars start for heaven’s sake.
As an aside I always thought Miss Pringle, like Miss Frenzi and Miss Sefton, were professional spinsters.
I should add due to her impending nuptials Miss Pringle has been put on light duties. The girls are always making up stories and Miss Pringle is the current victim with the full disclosure of her impending nuptial’s being made public and on full display to the world, well to Boadicea dorm anyway. Anyways back to the real world.
We were in the school chapel singing the second chorus of ‘He Who Would True Valour See’ when Tamsin who loved this psalm, particularly the bit about hobgoblins, foul fiends and pilgrins’ leaned over and whispered “did you notice Miss Pringle has a new dress on? 'Praps it’s for her new man?”
She went on to whisper that the words of this psalm made pure sense and it should replace our national anthem. Rather than our lovely Queen having to scatter her enemies and confound them of their knavish tricks and stuff, she would also have no need to leave the palace just to crush the rebellious Scots, and heavens knows who this Marshal Wade person is, so its hobgoblins and foul fiends for our Tamsin. She had a point.
Charlotte told me it was Myfanwy, that’s Myfanwy Evans that threw up into the sugar bowl at lunchtime would you believe; yuk that’s disgusting. Nurse Mayo took her to the doctor in the high street who found nothing wrong with her, so discreet inquiries were made to discover if she had been smoking furtively around the college. She hadn’t. It must have been something her mother had concocted for the family over the weekend. Anyway it was nothing to do with the college kitchen, thank heavens.
No, it’s just that quite a while ago a Cynthia someone or other, no hang on it was Waghorn, yes Cynthia Waghorn, a girl who has since left college, was caught having a quiet fag behind the chapel by Miss Frenzi.
Anyways that’s neither here nor there. I wanted to say the Evans family own a large parcel of land in the Brecon’s and I wondered if she had digested toadstools mistaking them for mushrooms, that’s Myfanwy, not her mother. Tamsin went one better, as she always does, and suggested being Welsh maybe it was caused by eating a tainted rabbit used in the traditional Welsh cooking and that maybe the rabbit was sick or something.
I pointed out people ate rabbits during the war but not anymore. It was after Tamsin repeated that rabbit was a traditional Welsh meal did I realise she was referring to Welsh rarebit, not Welsh rabbit.
I spent the next 10 minutes or so explaining Welsh rarebit is basically melted cheese on toast, but one can jazz it up a bit with savoury sauce and other ingredients and cheese has nothing to do with rabbits. I hoped that put this conversation to bed. It did.
A new girl started today, Symphony Sexton which I thought was a rather strange name. Miss Frenzi put her in the Victoria dorm. Incidentally some of you may remember Beecham’s wife was also named Symphony.
I realise I have no need to repeat this but for my new readers Beecham was the Campbell family’s long-serving retainer who recently passed away. His wife still lives in the grace and favour cottage near the gatehouse, but I assume most of you knew that anyway.
Off-topic and on a note of frivolity, Tamsin pointed out if Symphony Sexton’s middle name was Olivia her initials would be then be S.O.S. Tamsin’s thought patterns are very strange. Well Symphony Sexton’s middle name is not Olivia; I will find out what it is for you, assuming she has a middle name and I will keep you all informed. In passing, Tamsin’s first name, hang on could be her second name, is Victoria but she does not like people to know that.
I realise this is all just idle gossip but I will bring you up to date as to the goings-on at the castle. It appears Mrs Dalrymple has applied to do an on-line course of Remote Viewing.
Because she has had little or no success making contact with our ‘dear departed’ or troubled spirits knocking on the woodwork and throwing stuff about in Inveraray Castle Mrs Dalrymple has applied to do a credited on-line course of ‘Remote Viewing’.
She was spurred on following some minor success after discovering that it was a Mr Tidy (his real name) a person from the garage who she saw tossing his fag ends in her garden but as she told mother she realises it was not strictly ‘remote viewing’ as she actually saw this felon discarding his dog ends from her bedroom window thus it does not legally qualify as ‘remote’ viewing. Nevertheless she said she is going to run with it, whatever that means.
Father took an interest in Mrs Dalrymple’s remote viewing, inquiring of her if it is possible to get the future price of his cryptocurrency movements. Mrs Dalrymple told father remote viewing does not tell the future but investigates the present but if he would he like to know if Bulgaria or Lithuania has nuclear weapons stockpiled she can try remote viewing for him. What can I say?
Be that as it may, its all happening at Inveraray
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