Tag: Lord Jeremy Coldsore

By Popular Demand: The Queen’s Not There Yet OY RODNEY REPRINT

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From December 21. 2017

All right, everybody, you asked for it: another installment of Oy, Rodney by Violet Crepuscular: Chapter CIV.

As Lady Margo tries to find out who is Queen of England at this time, Princess Didi visits Scurveyshire incognito to get the lay of the land. When she approaches the wading pool in the vicar’s back yard, Constable Chumley promptly arrests her. “Ye come alang wi’ me, lass,” he says, “ye’ll not be wilmin’ by yon brawnnick gulsen.”

“You fool, take your hands off the daughter of the Queen!” Her protests are to no avail, and she is deposited in the local lockup.

Meanwhile Lord Jeremy Coldsore, awaiting his marriage to Lady Margo, fobs off his creditors with a promise that the Queen herself will pay his bills. “Her Majesty is to be an honored guest at my wedding, and will spend the night in the Royal Suite of Coldsore Hall.” He does not mention that no one has spent the night in the Royal Suite of Coldsore Hall since 1603, when the Duke of Dobley went in one night and never came out.

Having convinced Lady Margo that he and the American adventurer Willis Twombley are one and the same and that it therefore doesn’t matter which one of them appears at the wedding as the groom, Lord Jeremy’s peace of mind is rattled by Twombley’s off-hand question: “Say, Germy, was you really jist a foundling left on the steps of this here hall? Margo says so.”

This is the first Lord Jeremy has ever heard of it. “I am sure the lady has me confused with someone else,” he replies.

“Someone else besides me?”

“Please, Sargon!” Twombley believes he is Sargon of Akkad. “Please concentrate on the arrangements for the wedding! I’m growing rather concerned about the vicar. Ever since recovering from his conniptions, he skips everywhere instead of walking, and makes cryptic remarks about some writhing tentacles he thinks he saw under the pool. I fear his mind may be unsettled.”

“Oh, he’ll be all right for the wedding,” Twombley says. “Anyhow, it’s your turn to go to Margo’s tonight for supper. Try to be cheerful, ol’ hoss! Soon as the Queen gets here, we’re goin’ to get hitched and all your troubles will be over.”

Given the prodigious length of the rest of the book, we are at liberty to doubt the accuracy of that prediction.

And we still don’t know who the dickens “Rodney” is.

That Woman in Moldy Knickers (‘Oy, Rodney’) REPRINT

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From May 30, 2021

We join Chapter CDXXVI of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, in progress. That means she hasn’t finish writing it. And she has left Chapter CDXXV blank to denote that nothing in particular happened. I hope she’s all right.

As the new chapter opens, we have Constable Chumley, Johnno the Merry Minstrel, and the American adventurer, Willis Twombley, who thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad, holding a secret meeting to decide what to do about Lord Jeremy Coldsore’s sudden infatuation with the ghostly Woman in Moldy Knickers. They have been arguing for two solid hours over what to use as a password to open the secret meeting. Nobody wants to fall back on “Our Secret Password”–much too easy for any villain to figure out and use against them.

Finally Johnno comes up with “Mghawlwhg.” “It’s perfect!” he crepusculates. “No one will know how to pronounce it.” But this hope is dashed when the constable pronounces it easily. It turns out he says that all the time.

“Boys, we ain’t getting nowhere without a password,” Twombley says. “If we don’t come up with somethin’, Ol’ Germy’s marriage to Lady Margo will jist go belly-up! And I’ve got a stake in that, bein’ as she still thinks Germy and me are the same buckaroo.”

Eventually they discover that Chumley can’t say “catsup bottle,” so that’s the word they’ll use. The constable accepts it philosophically: “Aye, thurrup’s a frizzin baggy,” he declares. One cannot but agree.

That brings them to wondering if it will do any good to point out to Lord Jeremy that the Woman in Moldy Knickers has been dead for going on 600 years.

“To heighten suspense,” Ms. Crepuscular confides in her readers, “we will take that up in the next exiting chapter!” When she gets around to writing it, of course.

Trouble in Scurveyshire REPRINT

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From February 24, 2018

 

Turn we unto Chapter CXXX of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney.

All is not well in Scurveyshire. The vicar is laid out with conniptions. Jasper the village idiot is in jail with Princess Didi, who, it turns out, is neither a princess nor any relation at all to Queen Victoria, but only an outcast from the nearby village of Plaguesby. Lady Margo Cargo, claiming a touch of leprosy, has gone into seclusion.

Worst of all, various people of questionable morality are whispering that “Black Rodney” has returned from the dead and is “at it again, puttin’ curses on the shire.” No one dares approach the wading pool in the vicar’s back yard.

Meanwhile, desperately trying to raise money to keep Coldsore Hall, Lord Jeremy Coldsore has opened a lemonade stand at the entrance to his palatial drive, selling it for five guineas a glass. As an economy measure, he has dismissed all his servants except for his footman, Sir Reginald Fumfer, who works for whatever food he can scrounge from the larder. Sir Reginald has descended to this lowly estate as a result of an unnamed spot of trouble out in India. Her Majesty’s Government have forbidden him to speak to anyone. But at least Lord Jeremy has enjoyed a brisk business so far.

“Say, Germy ol’ hoss, jist how much debt have you got?” asks his friend, the American adventurer Willis Twombley.

“Roughly one million pounds, old boy.”

“That’s a lot of lemonade!”

“I do what I can, Sargon.” Twombley still thinks he is Sargon of Akkad.

“Well, so do I, Germy. I jist shot another one of those creditors of yours. I put him in that closet in your billiard room. No one’ll ever find him there, as long as they don’t look in the closet.”

“That’s a great comfort to me,” says Lord Jeremy. He has given up trying to dissuade Twombley from murdering the creditors. It does no good.

Now arriving on the scene is a wandering spider collector, Miss Lizzie Snivel, a character left over from one of Ms. Crepuscular’s unpublished novels. “I could not bear to see her go to waste,” Violet confesses to her readers.

Lord Jeremy’s Love Triangle

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From February 11, 2018

This is supposedly Chapter CXXXI of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, but I couldn’t swear to it.

The wandering spider collector, Miss Lizzie Snivel, has taken to hanging around Lord Jeremy Coldsore’s driveway lemonade stand and frightening the customers by trying to give them spiders.

“Want me to shoot her for you, Germy?” asks Willis Twombley, the American adventurer. He has been methodically picking off Lord Jeremy’s creditors, one by one. The most recent victim, this morning, he has concealed in Coldsore Hall’s infamous Haunted Bedroom.

“Rather you didn’t, old boy.”

The problem here is that Miss Lizzie is dazzlingly beautiful, except for the unsightly ruin of her nose, where she was once bitten by an Australian Venomous Horror Spider named Jeff. She has fallen in love with Lord Jeremy and can’t bear to be away from him. He finds it very flattering.

The Japanese ambassador makes another cameo appearance here, but no one wants him.

“Lady Margo ain’t gonna like yer flirtin’ with that spider gal,” Twombley warns. “If’n she gits word of it, she might not marry us. There ain’t nothin’ as jealous as a woman with a wooden leg. Believe me, I know!”

“If only she wouldn’t keep trying to sneak into Coldsore Hall at night!” cries Jeremy. Against his will, her persistence is beginning to win her over. Unknown to everyone, Miss Lizzie has amassed a colossal fortune by collecting spiders. She has not yet mentioned this.

“Lady Margo been tryin’ to sneak in? What’s wrong with that?” wonders Twombley.

“Not Lady Margo, old boy! It’s that spider girl. She won’t take no for an answer.”

Meanwhile a loud brawl breaks out in the taproom of the Lying Tart that night between villagers who believe Black Rodney is a dangerous sorcerer returned from the dead to put curses on the shire, and those who are convinced he is a kind of catfish. Constable Chumley restores order with a speech that no one understands. It is not reproduced here. “I am afraid his language is not what it should be,” Ms. Crepuscular confides in her readers.

I Am Not Violet Crepuscular (‘Oy, Rodney’) REPRINT

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Just because Ms. Violet Crepuscular’s books are so hard to find doesn’t mean I’m writing them. I am not Violet Crepuscular. I have a beard; she doesn’t. I’ve never read a romance novel, except for her inimitable Oy, Rodney. That having been settled, we move on to

CHAPTER CL

Every trial in Scurveyshire is the Trial of the Century. This time the defendant is the merry poacher known as Mickle the Merry Poacher and the plaintiff is Lord Nodule, demanding justice. This is the first case to be tried by Lord Jeremy Coldsore as Justice of the Peace.

“I demand justice!” barks Lord Nodule. “This peon, this excrescence on the body politic, this walking bubo known has Mickle the Merry Poacher, has been poaching on my land for 15 years and I want him stopped! I demand he be punished by drowning!”

The first witness is Constable Chumley, the arresting officer. “Oh, aye,” he testifies, “Mickle been doddlin’ the cairns swofty-like aforementioned deedle.” He is dismissed from the witness stand as soon as possible.

Several of Mickle’s neighbors, and six of Lord Nodule’s tenants, testify that the Merry Poacher has never actually succeeded in poaching anything. “He couldn’t catch a cold,” swears the Widow Flibbert. But the defendant, when he is finally sworn in, insists he has been very successful indeed.

“Caught me a centaur, once’t!” he boasts. “Let’s see anyone top that!”

“What did you do with it?” Lord Jeremy wonders.

“Was gunner eat it, wasn’t I! Only then I found a note on my door from Black Rodney tellin’ me I had to let it go, so that’s what I done.” The crowd gasps.

“I object!” Lord Nodule roars. “Ask him about the badgers!”

“Badgers? Ain’t never caught no badger,” Mickle admits.

“My lord, there are no badgers in Scurveyshire!” interjects the shire’s game warden, Officer Foffle.

“Caught me a Elf once’t, too,” says Mickle.

The public defender, Mr. Potash, moves that all charges be dismissed. “My client is obviously mad, my lord.” He produces a notably ridiculous-looking gadget. “This absurd contraption is one of Mr. Mickle’s homemade snares. You can see it’s perfectly useless for any purpose whatsoever.” Mickle scowls at him.  “I call on you to find him Not Guilty by reason of demonstrable idiocy.”

“He still ought to be drowned,” grumbles Lord Nodule. “What’s this shire coming to, anyway?”

Lord Jeremy sees no alternative but to dismiss the charges. Lord Nodule glares at him.

“You haven’t heard the last of this, Coldsore!” he declares. “I shall be with you on your wedding night!” [Editor’s Note: I think that’s what Frankenstein’s monster said to his creator, Victor Frankenstein, in Mary Shelly’s classic horror novel. What was Ms. Crepuscular thinking when she penned that line?]

The chapter ends abruptly with a recipe for aphid jelly. I cannot bring myself to repeat it.

Boom, Boom! Doom Looms! (Oy, Rodney)

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Oy Rodney – Lee Duigon

Violet Crepuscular, The Queen of Suspense, has carried out her threat to spread toothpaste on her cold cuts and offer it to company (shades of Titus Andronicus).

Here we are, trying to get into Chapter DCCXXXII of her interminable classic romance, Oy, Rodney–and she has lost the thread of the story. She makes no apology for that.

“All I need, really, is another subplot,” she confides in the reader. “Prince Albert got lost in Scurveyshire once, and it took him three years to find his way out. But he did lose a whole year when Constable Chumley arrested him for vagrancy.”

The new subplot–ten years later–concerns Prince Albert’s plans for revenge against Scurveyshire. Lord Jeremy Coldsore is in Al’s cross-hairs. So is the inoffensive Mr. Pudding, whose only passion in life is newts.

“The thing is,” explains Ms. Crepuscular, “to make your romance romantic, because then what is romantic becomes romance.

“If I were Lord Jeremy, I’d watch my step!”

A week has been set aside for step-watching.

The Royal Wading Pool Inspector (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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Violet Crepuscular, “The Queen of Suspense,” introduces Chapter DCLXXIX of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney. Feel free to skip this if it’s too suspenseful.

“If you thought the vicar’s notorious backyard wading pool has stopped sucking unwary passers-by into its unknown depths,” she addresses her multitude of readers, “think again! Queen Victoria’s government–the queen herself has other things to do–has sent the Royal Backyard Wading Pool Inspector to take a closer look. It may be some executions are in order.”

We do not know the name of this inspector: he was sucked under the pool before he got a chance to introduce himself.

In his capacity of justice of the peace, Lord Jeremy Coldsore appeals to the vicar. “When are you going to let us empty that pool and get rid of it?” he demands. “Meow,” says the vicar. (Great line! I wish I’d written it.) He is currently under the impression that he’s a cat. No help there.

“They’re gonna send the army next,” opines the American adventurer, Willis Twombley, who thinks he is Sargon of Akkad. “And after that,” he adds, “the Babylonians will invade us.”

“Has it slipped everybody’s mind that Lady Margo and I are to be married?” cries Lord Jeremy. He is trying to hide the fact that it had completely slipped his mind. Lady Margo Cargo is not amused. She has just had her wooden leg polished for the ceremony.

“Be sure to be on hand next week,” writes Ms. Crepuscular, “for the exciting climax of this latest crisis!”

Promises, promises…

 

At Last! The Duel! (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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Introducing Chapter DXLVIII of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, author Violet Crepuscular declares “My readers are revolting!” (Ed.–I don’t know how to take this. Do you?) Apparently a cabal of readers in Scotland have formed a conspiracy against “the Queen of Suspense,” according to police in Egypt. Somebody’s gonna get locked up in the dungeon at Glamis Castle unless she comes across with the duel already.

The alert reader who has nothing better to do will remember that Lord Jeremy Coldsore has challenged himself to a duel to the death–ginsu knives at 25 paces. All of Scurveyshire turns out to watch. The sardines-in-toothpaste vendors have never had it so good.

“You sure you wanna go through with this, Germy, ol’ hoss?” asks the American adventurer, Willis Twombley, who thinks he is Sargon of Akkad.

“Fire!” cries the referee, Constable Chumley.

“We don’t have guns!” Lord Jeremy points out.

The crowd is getting ugly. The constable shudders. Jeremy steps off 25 paces, turns, and throws the knife. It sticks in Chumley’s helmet, having missed a vital spot. He runs 50 paces in the opposite direction and throws the other knife. It bursts an inflatable effigy of a Victorian celebrity who has demanded that his name be not mentioned here.

The mayor of Scurveyshire–really, it’s none of his business–declares the duel a draw. “We don’t have any more ginsu knives,” he explains. A large dog drags him out of sight.

Next week: More suspense, every bit as riveting as this week’s!

Ginsu Knives at Dawn (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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We are at the point in Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, where no one seems to know what chapter this is supposed to be. Let us call it Chapter DXLVI. If the number turns out to be wrong… who’ll notice?

“Today,” writes Ms. Crepuscular, “is the day you’ve all been waiting for!” (Speak for yourself, Vi.) “Yes! Today Lord Jeremy Coldsore will meet himself in a duel to the death with Ginsu knives!” She dismisses those who point out the anachronism. “I never accept criticism from pygmies!” she declares. “Let them flourinate!”

Meanwhile, the duel has hit a snag.

“How the blazes am I supposed to stand back-to-back with myself?” Lord Jeremy protests to the referee, one Merv Griffin (I just work here!). “You can try standing face-to-face,” Merv ululates. By now a crowd has gathered, but it is already breaking up. Someone has heard a rumor of free toothpaste crackers.

There’s also a problem with who gets the choice of weapons. The two Ginsu knives in the cookie tin look exactly alike. Jeremy cannot help suspecting there’s a cheat in it somewhere.

But you will have to tune in next week to find out!

(Editor’s Note: All in favor of bagging this whole “Queen of Suspense” thing, say “Rhinoceros.”

The Field of Honor (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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“I fell down and sprained my coccyx a few days ago,” Violet Crepuscular confides in her readers, “but did that hold back the creative processes? You should live so long!”

Thus turn we unto Chapter DXXXVIII of Ms. Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney.

Lord Jeremy Coldsore has let his impetuous nature get the better of him, and has challenged himself to a duel–with sabers! He has asked the American adventurer, Willis Twombley, to be his second.

“What’re you gonna do if you go and stab yourself?” Twombley asks. He thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad, but we can’t go into that just now.

“Tell Lady Margo that I died for love!” says Jeremy.

However, a snag has developed. It seems the only field in all of Scurveyshire suitable to be a dueling venue was once, and not so long ago, a cow pasture.

“This is ridiculous!” Jeremy fostulates. “I refuse to fight a duel in a field that used to be covered with cow-poop!”

Then he says, “Hah! Unless I’m very much mistaken, I’ve got him on the run!”

Twombley withdraws to The Lying Tart for a gin and hair tonic. There he finds Johnno the Merry Minstrel composing “Ye Olde Ballad of Lord Jeremy Coldsore’s Affaire of Honour.” News travels preternaturally fast in these rural communities.