Candice and her Emergency

 

 

   

                                   Candice and her Emergency or Magpies and Super Glue 

There is not a lot happening this week at Denham Hall or I would not recount this event as I concluded it was somewhat of a personal nature. It was during the first lesson of the morning, the science lesson when Candice put up her hand and asked if she could leave the classroom. 

Mr Crisis inquired as to the urgency. She said she needed to visit the toilet with utmost urgency, and she emphasised she was not about to waste time going into any descriptive details about her affliction. She added she was not going to discuss with Mr Crisis, Mr Briggs the handyman or any other males of the opposite species of her personal problems… thank you very much. 

You guessed it; Candice’s affliction was due to the runs. Tamsin had given Candice a prawn that she had omitted to tell her she had found on the floor in the concert hall after a dance with the Watford Grammar school boys. 

She had wrapped the Prawn up in her hankie and placed it in her purse and forgotten about it. If I remember correctly this happened once before but it was an Oyster, not a prawn that was the offender. Being good-hearted, unknowingly she had given the diseased prawn to Candice. Thus, the reason for the sudden onset of the ‘Pol Pots’ or the ‘Trots.’ The prawn had been in her purse for over a week. 

I despair, I really do! 

Anyways the good news for my gentle readers was Tamsin was made to apologise to Candice by Miss Sefton at callout at morning assembly in front of the whole school, a couple of days later. 

We were talking of ages and stuff and Zanthe told us she was “firteen and free mumfs” so being a couple of “mumfs” off fifteen I am a lot older than her. 

Oh, I must tell you this story. Well, it’s not a story really because it is true, you will not believe this but before I left Argyll Castle to study at Denham Hall college, I used to feed a family of Magpies. Well, I don’t know if they were like a regular family of Magpies, but they usually flew in together and I used to feed them mincemeat.

You might remember the time a magpie flew off with Mothers wedding ring when she removed it while trying to remove some super-glue off her fingers, but we managed to rescue it from the magpie’s nest in one of the castle’s turrets. 

I suppose I was about 14 years old at the time, and I was on summer holidays at home. I was reading a book near the rear entrance gate to the Castle when an adult magpie arrived and sat on the low veranda near the door and stared at me. I noticed it was carrying something in its beak. 

It was no more than a foot from me when it leant forward, and it dropped a gold wedding ring at my feet. I picked it up and realised it was a gold ring with two small diamonds and the letter R engraved on the inside. This time it did not wait to be fed, but after dropping the ring it at once flew off.

I found mother in the drawing room and told her what the magpie had brought me suggesting it was a gift in payment for feeding it. Well, it made sense. Mother agreed and said but we must find out to whom the ring belongs. 

Mother said she would deal with finding the owner, and that was the end of the story or so I thought. 

I was at college when she started making inquiries as to the owner of the ring. She was not having much luck and I suggested the magpie could have found the ring miles away. So, she began advertising in the Oban Times and the Argyllshire Advertiser. 

She had described the ring having two stones but omitted to mention the letter R engraved inside the ring so whoever claimed the ring would have been aware of what the letter R meant. But nothing, no claimants. I suggested to mother we could have the letter R ground off and I could use it……. sometime, like in the future. I reminded her of the saying ‘Finders Keepers,’ reminding her we had done our best finding the owner.

Now this is the part you are not going to believe. 

A few weeks later Mrs Dalrymple who had been invited over for tea was discussing the story about a man she had met several years after husband’s death and she was being pestered by this gentleman who had the hots for her, and he was insistent. He had even bought her a wedding ring in anticipation. 

But Mrs Dalrymple had no intention of marrying again, but he was not about to take no for an answer. It all came to a head one evening when they had a flaming row with her admirer and she had tossed his ring, well she had forgotten exactly where, but it must have been quite close to Argyll Castle. You see Mrs Dalrymple had not been at the castle when the ring the magpie had found was being discussed. 

Mother should have had a clue it might have been Mrs Dalrymple’s ring, and I told her so. The clue being the letter R, which was the first letter R of Rhonda, Mrs Dalrymple Christian name. We tried returning her wedding ring which she suggested I should keep as she has no intention of getting married again. I won’t argue with that. 

The following weekend Tamsin was staying with us at Argyll Castle, her father’s dance combo was playing at a Donald Peers tribute at the Women’s institute in Oban. Mother was complaining bitterly about Tamsin and of her piano playing; I prefer to use the word racket. The Bechstein was a getting a particularly heavy workout. There was no need for her to play Chopin’s Étude number er whatever it was at a fortissimo level; it was only recently Mother had the piano tuned. 

Dinnertime was a welcome interlude to interrupt Tamsin’s piano recital. I suggested to Mother we adopt Tamsin; she appears to spend more time at our place than hers. We were going to Inveraray after lunch.