The Dick Big
Detective Agency
by Roger
Pattison
Part number:
Om24xvtwirlybitcircumference....(a)
(Translation: Dick Big in Shorts)
“I’m
not sure the shorts were a good idea, Dick”
said Barney the Stoat, swivelling his nose in
that endearing way he always had when he wanted
to make onlookers feel sick.
“Why do
you say that Barney? It’s bound to be hot in
Madame Codpiece-Scrubber’s Chinese Laundry.”
Dick looked around but Barney had disappeared in
the low hanging steam of the Turkish bath that
was the afore-mentioned lady’s Laundry.
“You
don’t have the Dick for it, legs.”
Barney did another swift swivel. “I mean,
you don’t have the...”
“I get
the idea Barney. But my mum said that my legs
would even look good on her ironing board.”
Dick groped through the steam and clutched
something soft.
“Ooooh!”
said whatever it was that was soft. “For a
chat-up line that was very brief” continued
the unpleasantly female Franco-Turkish-Chinese
accent with a touch of Killarney.
“Was that
you Barney?” whispered Dick into the solid
wall of smog.
“Was that
my Dick, what?” Barney thought for second.
“I mean ‘Was that my what, Dick?”
They looked up
at the Chinaman hanging from the ceiling.
“Madame!”
shouted Dick. “You have a Chinaman hanging
from the ceiling.”
“My, my;
you’re fast in the brain department too!”
said the disembodied voice of Madame Codpiece-Scrubber.
“But we know about the Chinaman hanging from
the ceiling. He thinks he’s a light bulb.
They all do. They take it in turns to hang from
the ceiling.”
“But this
will never do. Chinese light bulbs don’t
last five minutes. It’s completely against
Health and Safety regs” said Dick, thumbing
through the thirty-third volume of the
Regulations. “You must cut him down.”
“You fool!”
shouted the (thankfully invisible) Madame.
“You would have us work in the dark!”
“I
can’t even see the floor in here, Dick”
said Barney, “I’ll switch the light on.”
“Nooo!”
said the Chinaman, “I’m not that crazy!”
But it was too
late. Barney had switched him on. He didn’t
work.
Dick Big and
Barney mused for a second in the darkness.
“He’s
probably just run out of warranty” said Dick.
The word ‘Martian’ can be interpolated
freely in place of ‘Chinaman’, for
those of a racially hypersensitive disposition.
Unfortunately there are few Martians working in
Chinese laundries.
Come to think
of it, you don’t hear of many German,
Icelandic, Jewish, Jack Russell, Bertrand Russell,
Swiss, Roboid-Terminator-esque Laundries either.
But that doesn’t that these people are all
dirty.
Stay tuned to
this channel for more of the rivetingly boring
exploits of Dick Big and Barney the Stoat.
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