‘Oy, Rodney’ Gets Mushy REPRINT

From January 21, 2018

I am tempted to pass over Chapters CXX and CXXI of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney because they are intolerably mushy. Ms. Crepuscular acknowledges that. “You may find these next two chapters intolerably mushy,” she warns.

Lady Margo Cargo, the richest widow in Scurveyshire, is prepared to marry Lord Jeremy Coldsore and the American adventurer, Willis Twombley, who thinks he is Sargon of Akkad. Twombley has convinced her that he and Lord Jeremy are one and the same person.  But the wedding was disrupted and has not yet been rescheduled: Lady Margo thinks she might have a touch of leprosy.

“It’s only wind, you silly old bat,” says her crusty old butler, Crusty.

Then the mush creeps in as Lord Jeremy renews his wooing, this time in person.

“Madam, as soon as the vicar gets over his conniptions, we must be wed,” says Jeremy. They are having rock-hard biscuits baked by Lady Margo’s lunatic aunt. In the opulent comfort of Lady Margo’s parlor, her pet crayfish, Oswin, sulks in his aquarium.

“I love you so much, I could plotz,” says Jeremy. “Your ears are like prize cabbages.”

“Eh?” Those ears do not always function as they should.

“Your hair–” a wig, actually–“is as soft as yogurt,” Jeremy continues. This goes on for the whole two chapters.

Meanwhile, the whole village is startled out of sleep one midnight by horrible groans and shrieks issuing from under the wading pool in the vicar’s back yard. A crowd of peasants armed with scythes and torches descends upon the scene, but then goes home because no one dares lift up the pool and look under it. Constable Chumley reassures them: “‘Tis only yair fickling rawstie,” he explains. This gives them something to think about for the rest of the night.