(From our City Correspondent, Hercules Montekitty, "on the floor")
In Tokyo the trading was briskly bullish, with surges. Scones rose by 12 points on last Christmas' nadir. Devil's Claw rallied. Bull Mastiff Flakes held their ground against Western Elegant Butterfly futures in a deadly embrace the like of which our yellow cousins had not witnessed since the near-legendary stand-off between Roy Rogers options and untradeables from Dromedary Blowtorches Inc.
In London the FTI sank to a new low under the weight of the bleak news from the Frankenkenheimerkenheimer Institute. Bears prowled. A fog of doom clouded the gloomy trading floors. Elk grazed the axminster-resplendent board rooms of Phipp, Phipp, Pipp, Phipps, Phipp, Pipps, Philps, Phisps, Phip & Phipps, Brokers in Ineligant Participles & Horsetrading-Morsels. A wall fell outwards. Herds of muscovy, driven westward by Siberian folk-music, perched, chattering in glassy peals, on the rosewood balustrades of Charpentier Wilson & McMontlemortle, Bogle, Blackmark & Mousetrouser-Rudd, Artificers in Chicanery and Poltroons to the Prince Regent.
In New York the Dow Jones sang in glee the old Aboriginal refrain, viz:
O sun dance in dry air O
I take thee Moist Beaver thee take I
O sun dance in dry air O
O Moist Beaver whose moccasins enter my wigwam
I clasp thee
I clasp thee
My buffalo horn I show thee
To my wigwam I take thee
O Moist Beaver O
O
O
O
Meanwhile Catamite shares sold furiously, in response to the sighting of Quentin Crisp in Central Park, Wednesday. Sailors whooped in glee. Midgets striking on Broadway eschewed their protest and capered gamely all along Times Square, calling 'a farthing for a fair lady, a nickel for a game old girl' in hideous a capella, frightening a school of wild ex-Police Horses swimming in Sinatra's Fountain. Babe Ruth twisted in his clay bed.
Delirious
Without wit de seignieur, in lux vomitaria, with foresight due to the afforsaid, presaid, gainsaid or unsaid mulignity and jounder, be it not proven nor untestability established heretofore, therefore, whyfore or wherefore unuttered, buttered or stuttered in chambers shuttered, unshuttered or loosely guttered where damp gussets flutter and broken priests mutter. Cf. Epsilon Nightshirts Ltd. vs Regina, 1974, where it was established that a nightcap placed on the head of an afghan hound, notwithstanding the state of consciousness, whether asleep, awake, hypnopompic or hypnogogic, of the said beast, could not be said to be or to be said or to be or not be said or not be or said not to be or to be said not to be said to be said to be, equivalent, ipso facto, to an afghan coat worn loosely over the bare shoulders of Elena Vostkolkovic, a Ukranian croupier on holiday in Brighton. Instructions to prepare malpulliance defrayed in essence ultimator jocular qua tipsi tipsi ipsi ip were issued from the bench, under which His Lordship Justice Bulkhead-Pfoffingworth Prantitaxi cowered, singing "The Dark-Haired Siren", now in a softly expiring moan, now in a faint bestial whine, mouthing the hackneyed lyric with pale and shapeless lips, from whose pendulous folds stretched skeins of glaucous saliva. A Naval dog team from HMS Jollyboy removed the gibbering judge, who went on to enjoy a long dotage at Flittering Canopies, a private retirement home for becalmed behemoths.
Lord Quantock Paffle of Malmesbury famously argued in 1898, with Dunsterbury his foundation, that (qua Regina v Charlie Cuttle's Circus, 1892), while a sailor may claim sanctuary within a palace ground in a national emergency, a clown in a sailor suit dancing a hornpipe on the dining-table of a Royal Equerry is guilty of trespass, impass and pretty-pass redounded with implicit pell-mell and quartermain. ('Lord Hilaire Quantock Paffle is a keen plantsman, currently much occupied with a new strain of Rhododendron Pithicaciana; he is also an ardent bicyclist, an authority on the history of the shoehorn, and, after a hard session "in the Alpine regions of judgement", is wont to indulge a passion for corporal punishment, and will remunerate generously healthy and clean females of the labouring class who can wield the birch or cane.' - Hiscock's Gallery of the Great & the Good.)
Balloon
Will Thrimby, a 33-year-old Truro taxidermist, appeared before Mr Justice Brimstone at Bodmin on Thursday, arraigned on a charge of misquandary. For the defence, Mr Pullover-Parsley entered a plea of Not Guilty but with gross bellweather in abeyance. The prosecuting brief, Hector Mantis-Lilyliver, resplendent in shimmering gown of ermine and passenger-pigeon, was indignant and had to be carried from the court in a sedan-chair by nubian wrestlers. This served only to hasten the onset of puberty, in flagrant defiance of the presence or otherwise of liberty-bodices or indeed neckerchiefs. And so say all of those. A camelopard lay shuddering in the steaming night.
Education Minister Backpedals on A-Level Regrades
Atrocious weather greeted Mountjoy-Blastifer and his man, Jeavons, as they strode forth last Sunday to the grouse-butts, to begin their silent vigil in memory of Sir Bunty Gillpiffle, doyen of 18th century periwig-graders, the anniversary of whose demise it indeed was. Alas, Mountjoy-Blastifer and Jeavons lasted barely 35 minutes, out on the moor. Drenched to the skin and half-frozen by the icy gale hurled out of the ashen sky of the North, the two men turned tail and fled, recalling the shame of '34, when the Old Repellents abandoned their positions in disarray before the relentless march of the Sussex Walloons. Had a lone piper sheltering beneath a blasted rowan rent the sodden air with a heart-breaking rendition of "The Blue Slopes of Glen Toberlochmirren", it would have come as no surprise to those gathered there, by the peaty burn, to the lee of Probert's Brig, beneath the sagging bulk of the baleful sky.
New Sesame Cracker Gets the Queen's Seal of Approval
Miss Amelia Judder, a Lady-in-Waiting to the Duchess of Palfrey, began a protest against the impending closure of Lunkerton, Jass & Quilp's Thrixton Thimble Manufactory late yesterday evening. Clad in Welsh national costume, the redoubtable Miss Judder scaled the old windmill at Flosser Dykes and, clinging to the raggy sail like an elaborately-attired bat, settled to the cause of her ordeal. For 12 hours the maiden hung there, her garments flapping in the biting East Anglian gale, before the Piddlemulch Fire Station's best were able to get her down and away. The Duke of Edinburgh, interviewed while insulting a troupe of Formosan bearded ladies, was unable to comment, though a Royal Sycophant advanced that 'I think there's a good chance of rain, which will necessitate the application of the corgis' "wellington & sou'-wester" suitings'. A wandering Sarawak Beaked Bear was aghast, and was observed to cover his eyes (the long claws sweeping across the small shorthaired forehead, as is the identifying trait of the Sarawak Beaked Bear in astonished mood) and lope off across the fens (not for nought is this lone pilgrim of the ursine tribe commonly dubbed "the mendicant" or "the troubadour bruin") with the wind moaning a sombre accompaniment and the huge sky a bleak oily sheet.
