Flibbertigibbet

“You couldn’t keep your big trap shut, could you, George.”

“Helen come on, it just slipped out.”

“I told you in the strictest of confidence.”

“Well, technically, you didn’t say don’t tell anyone.”

“What part of keep it to yourself did you not understand?”

“I thought that because you told me two weeks ago, it wasn’t confidential anymore.”

“There are no statutes of limitations on secrets, George! Now, everyone at work knows, our neighbours know, the postman knows; and what’s worse, is that the vicar knows!”

“What’s the postman got to do with anything?”

“He drinks at our pub! I’ll be the laughingstock of the sherry club. It’s just too much for someone with my disposition to take, George.”

“I think you’re overreacting, Helen. Your anxiety will get out of hand. Is it really that bad?”

“Is it that…? Have you no sense of perception? I’ve worked tirelessly to present myself as a high-standing member of our small and tight-knit community. Up until recently, I was even thinking of running for president of the jam and marmalade organising committee for the yearly church fete. Your loose lips have sunk that ambition, leaving a sticky mess for me to clean up, like the problem with the stained-glass window at the vicarage.”

“What can I say, Helen? I thought you’d welcome other opinions on how to solve your little conundrum.”

“Little conundrum? A little conundrum is trying to figure out what to bake for the church bazaar. Don’t you realise, George? I could get run out of town!”

“You’re being a bit over-dramatic, Helen. Look, if it means anything. I’m sorry. I was just trying to help you out.”

“That’s another unwritten social rule broken.”

“What is?”

“You ruin an apology with unnecessary excuses trying to justify what you have done.”

“Okay, then, I’m just sorry.”

“You’re always sorry, George.”

“Oh Helen, I just can’t win with you.”

“What you can’t, George, is help yourself. Remember the time we met that lovely couple at the pub recently moved down from Grimsby? We had such a great laugh with them, you thought he was your new best mate, so the next day you went round to their house uninvited and without letting them know you were coming, remember?”

“Sort of.”

“Yeah, wipe that from memory, why don’t you. When you got no answer at the front door, what did you do? You went sneaking around to the side of the house, peeking in all the open windows, and saw more than you bargained for, didn’t you.”

“Honestly, Helen. I had no idea they were into bondage. If I had known, I’d have called ahead.”

“That sounded like you wanted to join in.”

“It did, didn’t it.”

“Rather than recognising it as a private matter, you decided to blab what you saw to the whole pub on the following Friday night - right in front of that lovely couple who had come in for a quiet drink. What was it you called them?”

“Mr and Mrs Butt Plug.”

“Yes, you all had a good cheap laugh at their expense with that one. That’s bullying, George.”

“I was just teasing them. It was what Billy Big Mouth said that made them run out of there red-faced.”

“Yes, Billy Big Mouth Madigan. The village prude. Let fire and brimstone rain down upon your immoral heads, were his exact words. “An exit hole is not to be bunged, he added. Two days later, the vicar’s sermon expounded the joys of safe sex between couples and how God invented the Missionary position. I don’t know about you, George, but when I go to church, I don’t expect a lesson in the birds and the bees.”

“Did God invent the missionary?”

“The person, probably. The position? No. I take that back. Faith created the person. You’ve gotta love those born-agains. The most ardent crusaders of belief Christianity has ever known.”

“Like the Knights Templar?”

“But less deadly and less chastity.”

“In my opinion, Helen. The vicar is always going off on a tangent based on conversations he overhears in the village pub.”

“He drinks far too much for a man of the cloth and listens much too intently to hearsay spewed from Flibbertigibbets like you.”

“Flibbertigibbets, Helen?”

“Yes, Flibbertigibbets, George. Chattering, irresponsible, gossipy, scatterbrained people that can’t keep their gobs shut. Heaven knows what the vicar has in store for me this Sunday in what he calls, God’s Panopticon. The all-seeing, all-hearing house of the all-mighty.”

“I could have a word with him, Helen.”

“I don’t think God wants to listen to you, George.”

“No, I meant the vicar. I could have a word with him.”

“I think you’ve already had enough words with too many people, George. Mr and Mrs Butt Plug… Goodness me, what is their real surname, again?”

“It’s a Bavarian name, I think. Ploog, that’s it… At least that’s what they told me. The word in the pub is that they’re in witness protection.”

“Really? They move here to Bullyhole Bottom from Grimsby for protection and then they meet you, the Town Crier. Well, I’ve seen a For Sale sign outside their house today. They probably feel like taking their chances back home, rather than get destroyed by your jaw rattling. And who’d blame them? Being referred to as Mr and Mrs Butt Plug from Bullyhole Bottom is far more damaging to their character than whatever fate awaits them back in Grimsby.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that. It merits no sympathy any longer.”

“I can’t help it if I like to talk about people.”

“You’re turning into a social pariah, George, and sooner than later, your wagging tongue will get bitten off by your fast-moving teeth. As I can recall, you’ve always been quick to blab. Like that time our old neighbour got the pub landlord’s wife pregnant. I thought you’d had the snip, Roy, you said. Doesn’t take two plus two to add up to millions of someone else’s sperm swimming upstream.”

“It had to be said. Everyone was whispering it, anyway.”

“Whisper is the key word there, George. Not a vociferous announcement to a crowded pub. Poor Nellie was so overcome with embarrassment, she lied and said she’d frozen some of Roy’s tadpoles without him knowing. He was so gullible that he believed it.”

“Was a beautiful baby, though, hey, Helen?”

“Born with brown eyes.”

“So?”

“Roy and Nellie both have blue eyes, so having a baby born with brown eyes is a question raiser.”

“No, no. I read somewhere that DNA can change between generations, and if that happens, blue-eyed parents can have brown-eyed children.”

“It wasn’t the eye colour that raised Roy’s suspicions, George. It was the dark, curly hair and the beautiful olive complexion the child was born with. Seeing as Roy and Nellie have ginger hair and pasty-white Celtic complexions, it wasn’t difficult to draw conclusions.”

“People in the pub thought Roy had killed her after she disappeared at the same time Signor Garibaldi - two doors down - unexpectedly moved back to Italy.”

“That’s what you thoughtlessly surmised, before broadcasting it at a community meeting, after Roy had checked himself into a sanitarium to recover from his broken heart.”

“I was just playing armchair detective. That’s all.”

“George, detectives interview people, they gather evidence, and they take time to draw a conclusion before accusing someone of a crime. Your armchair mentality just banged your meeting come-to-order gavel like you were the judge, jury, and executioner. What was it you said? Oh yeah, you said, This meeting of the church fete planning group commences with a minute’s silence in honour of the passing of a beloved member of our community, who’s husband has banged himself up in the nuthouse.

“I can’t help it if I got sanitarium and sanitorium mixed up.”

“You, are what’s clearly mixed up, George.”

“I can’t help it. It’s my war wound.”

“Getting hit on the head by a firework on bonfire night last month, does not constitute a war wound.”

“It was mayhem out there at the Primary School fireworks display and it hurt a lot, Helen! Let’s see you take a direct hit on your forehead with a sparkler.”

“I believe your pride was hurt more, because the poor ten-year-old that you swore at until you were blue in the face, needed substantial counselling after that. His mother later told me the doctors called it the equivalent to shell shock.”

“Well, he shouldn’t have been throwing them around like an idiot.”

“He’s ten, George. All ten-year-olds are idiots. It’s part of growing up.”

“Well, I don’t regret one word I said to him.”

“It’s that same attitude and obstinate ignorance that got you thirty days community service.”

 “The judge was biased. He knew them.”

“Yes, you kept yelling that as they dragged you away from court with another thirty days for contempt. Unfair, you screamed. Nepotism in a small community is what George Orwell warned us about. You’re all fascists! It was that last bit that added the extra thirty days to your litter collecting.”

“Wasn’t all bad, though. The village never looked cleaner than it did on my watch as refuse monitor.”

“Your watch – as you so call it, was a punishment. It was not a call of duty.”

“I’m proud of my contribution to keeping our village tidy.”

“You didn’t have to get a police record first. There is such a thing as volunteering.”

“In hindsight, I suppose, yes.”

“Everything is in hindsight with you, George. I should’ve done this; I should’ve done that. I didn’t realise… I wasn’t expecting that… I’m sorry… You’re just one big walking excuse.”

“…I can’t help it.”

“There! Just when I thought I’d covered it all, you add one more. You certainly couldn’t stop yourself relaying to the whole village about my little incident, could you.”

“The vicar said he was insured, so I confessed for you.”

“What you confessed on my behalf, was that in an attempt to help clean the chapels’ stained-glass window, a glass panel was knocked loose to the ground, causing it to smash beyond repair. I told you the details because I needed advice on replacing it, but you insisted on fixing it with a piece from a similar design you saw at a local charity shop.”

“And I did fix it.”

“Imagine the vicar’s surprise when he opened up the chapel to see a glass panel taped to the breezy opening depicting a horned goat.”

“It was the same colour and shape.”

“Did you take in the rest of the artwork? Don’t answer that, It’s a rhetorical question. Just explain to me how you didn’t notice that the surrounding stained-glass panels depicted a nativity scene of the birth of Jesus?”

“It was abstract.”

“It was stained glass with Mary and Joseph in the barn surrounded by other animals – all directing their attention at a baby in a manger. What possessed you to stick a horned goat’s head on Jesus’s shoulders sticking its tongue out, looking like it was bleating.”

“It was supposed to be temporary. I didn’t think anyone would notice.”

“At Christmas time, George? Every December, the vicar places an outside floodlight beaming at that window, so parishioners can look up at it while they sit in their pews and be reminded of the reason they are celebrating this time of year.”

“He needed to know. I was just trying to take the blame for you.”

“By naming me as the culprit? How noble, George. Never mind that the goat is a symbol for the devil. Poor Emily Blunthorne fainted at the sight, thinking the anti-Christ had arrived like the Grinch that stole Christmas. In a panic, the vicar rushed outside to move the light, got temporarily blinded by the beam, staggered back and fell into Mrs Evergreen’s prize rose bush, destroying them all whilst being stabbed with a multitude of thorns. He had to have a tetanus shot to stave off infection.”

“Stupid place to put a spotlight, anyway.”

“It pains me to say this, George, but there will be consequences for breaking so many unwritten social rules.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for starters, the vicar has banned you from all church activities - bar Sunday services. All social gatherings must have a majority vote to let you attend, and because they’re tired of your tattle-tailing, they’ve issued a gag order on you. You are not to be left alone in the pub on weekends and New Year’s Eve will be celebrated without you attending anyone’s parties. Last but not least, the Ploogs have left a note kindly requesting you return the furry handcuffs and leather whip they lent you.”

“Shush, Helen. I don’t want anyone to know about those.”

“Too late, George. They posted the note on the vicarage bulletin board for all to see.”

“Oh, Helen.”

“Yes, George, it’s about time that you became the butt plug of all jokes.”

“Helen?”

“Sorry, George. I just couldn’t resist...”