Count de Tisza's drabblingness; Redivivus 4 February 2017 ;

[count tiszula]

27: DISAGREEMENT

So as soon as I had woke up, I had went to the store and the kid had was stocking the pepper so I had bought three 12oz drums and I had drove back and as I had unpacked it the plaintiff had came out of the bedroom and she's like "ATISHOO!" all over my face and we had had a disagreement, yawner.

So she's like hay you mother [sound dips] and I'm like shut up you [sound dips] and she had punched me in the face and she's like "You had had to be one crazy of a [sound dips]" and I had put her in a headlock and then I had punched her in self-defence, and judge, I hadn't punched her more than like a couple three times when she had called 911. And that had was all there had was to it, judge. I had just disagreed with her ass, had was all.

[Vetinari]

I missed an unearthly sequel??? Fabulous!

How your mind wanders, quite bizarre and yet oddly compelling. And the stories are too.

[Demosthenes]

Wow. I missed most of this stuff somehow. Unforgivable! Let one and all come to marvel at the genius contained within.

"Well, Raito; oops, I mean Nanahara-san."

I was laughing out loud for this! I think Tatsuya Fujiwara has a new movie coming up called "Kaiji." It's been a decade since Battle Royal came out, but seriously, that guy is ageless.

[count tiszula]

Only 9 months' hiatus. How did that happen? Well, thanks to Vetinari and to Chanel for giving me ideas for a bit of office fOD...

28 ASSIGNMENT

"There are only three of them out there today," said Bethany from her desk by the window, which she had been craning her neck out of for some ten minutes, staring out at the sunny square.

Charlotte was silent, opening a drawer in the red-leather-topped partners' desk at which she sat, and extracting a dusty file. The dust was a grimy blackish colour, having accumulated in the drawer for about half a century before it was revived for her own purposes. She turned the pages, sending showers of dust spinning into the light.

"One lot are filming a hansom cab sequence in Stone Buildings," added Bethany, "there's a single historian doing a piece to camera in the Undercroft, and down by the archway, a lot of Pre-Raphaelite-looking young men are running madly through a Victorian market scene; best of a bad lot really".

"Are you any good at assignments?" asked Charlotte, peering at the greyish page, "You know, with or without goodwill." She gave a huge wet sniff, as the dust made her nose run liquidly.

"I should wait till Woolly gets in; he'll know. Strewth, where is that dust coming from? It's tickling my nose something chronic. I'm going to start sneezing any minute now."

"I had a look in my drawers. No-one's used them since before the War; the letter on top is dated 1939!"

"HiTSCHAAAAAH!" said Bethany. She stared keenly out of the window. "Now look what you've made me HiTSCHAAAAH!" Silhouetted in the morning sun, her sneezy spray was lit up, mingling with the motes of dust in a shiny cloud of moving particles.

"Bless you!" Woolly entered apparently at a run. He stared fxedly at Bethany for some time, as if waiting for something, before flinging himself into the Edwardian wooden swivel chair, balanced on a huge black metal spring, that faced Charlotte across the partners' desk. He closed his eyes and groaned. "I must never stay in Henekey's till closing time again!"

"I'll make your tea in a moment, if.." said Charlotte" you help me with this assignment; just...."

"With or without goodwill." interrupted Woolly. "Sling it over then". She threw it expertly at him. It revolved in mid-air, shedding dust in all directions, and hit him mercillessly in the chest. He brushed the dust off his pinstriped waistcoat, and opened his eyes.

"Without." he said after a brief examination.

"But surely it....." She seemed unable to speak further.

"They're not going to stop selling cheese, now are they?"

"But they're Haaaah!........HAAAAH!.....HA-RASHOOOOOOHHH!! HA-RASHOOOOH! HARCHOOOOO! selling the factory." Three intermingling clouds of silver and grey built above the desk.

"Bless you, my girl. I repeat, they're not going to stop selling cheese."

"HitSCHAAAAH", added Bethany.

"Or are you claiming they are, Beth?"

"HiTSCHAAAH! I cad go add bake your tea dow, if you....HitSCHAAAAH! like"

[count tiszula]

29 PURPLE

Purple and blue hermaphrodite, arise

And of your own volition, let your nose

Its own peculiar orbit circumcise

With lust for the release its twitching shows.

When first a tickle yet your will defies

Dost thou with fumbled hankie aim thy blows,

Using each moment, that nature belies,

To treat thy deepest longings as thy foes.

Or dost instead a stratagem devise

To let thy streaming eyes grow lachrymose?

Drink deep, or touch not the unwilling sighs.

Let every part long, be it chest or toes.

ATISHOO! Prince, thou now hast bought the prize,

And every sneeze doth almost make thee wise.

[count tiszula]

30 JUNE

After that pretty dodgy business I got mixed up in which ended with Sandy Arbuthnot's epiphany as an Islamist candidate for the Caliphate, I decided to take a little leave with him at his place in Scotland, before the push that we knew was coming in France on the Somme. June was an ideal time to be at Strathloonie; the spring rain was not over, and though an odd day of streaming sun could not be avoided, the absence of the commoner type of shooter and fisher gave a restful air to the heather.

Sandy and I sat one day on the ancient bench where the Arbuthnots had always been sacrificed and their hearts eaten.

"Tell me, Sandy, are you actually shrinking in height as your exploits grow greater?"

"Och, Hannay, what matter such matters, if I can shun the company of women and stride through the heather in the disguise of a Sudanese tribesman. But dash it, my cousin Mary arrives today. I must go and drag up; and then, it's awa' chasing the deer, do you know?" And straightway, he melted into the background and I found myself alone in the silence.

But then, from a distance I heard a voice singing "Cherry Ripe". Could it be some angel in womanly form? Frankly, I didn't care; my own tastes have never gone in that direction, or whatever Hamlet says. I was dropping off for forty winks when I heard something else.

"Cherry Ripe, cherry ripe, ripe I...., I...aaaah....aaah ....ASHOOOOOOOH!"

It was the loveliest sneeze I had ever heard. I longed to see the angel who had produced it, and just then, a figure strode out of the kitchen garden and approached me. She had the slim grace of a boy and all the delicacy of a yearling colt, as they used to say at Blauwwildebeestefontein. Instead of the feminine fiddliness of modern ladies' clothing, she wore a flying suit of black leather , and her hair was concealed beneath a flying cap, so that only her quite spectacular bottom revealed her sex, like a fine mezzo playing Cherubino in white breeches. And one other thing...

"Haah....haaah.....HAAAAAH-SHOOOOOOH!" Her round face, deformed by her sneeziness, shot forward. "Oh, I'b terribly sorry" she ventured.

And so that was my first meeting with Mary, with whom I may avow I was in love before I ever saw her, despite her choice of songs to sing secretly in the sunny glens.

NOTE. This is a straight copy of Buchan, and connoisseurs of copyright law may be interested in the following. The Hannay novels were written before 1923, and for some obscure reason that means they have possibly never had copyrght in the US. In civilised countries, however, copyright lasts for 70 years after author's death, and as Buchan died on 11 Feb 1940 [falling over in his gubernatorial-general bathroom in Canada], had I managed to get it posted before 11 Feb of this year, his estate could have sued me in the Uk and other normal territories, but on the Internet with its insistence on Californian law, they would have had no case....

[Vetinari]

"HiTSCHAAAAAH!" said Bethany. She stared keenly out of the window. "Now look what you've made me HiTSCHAAAAH!" Silhouetted in the morning sun, her sneezy spray was lit up, mingling with the motes of dust in a shiny cloud of moving particles.

Yum!

Ah such rich delight. As ever that wonderful mix of brilliant irreverence and obscure deliciousness.

More, more!

[count tiszula]

31 CALCULATING

The summer sun shone its pellucid rays suddenly through the gap that had been left open in the sash windows of the Upper Classics Sixth formroom and struck Amaryllis in the light blue eye. An almost painful sensation unveiled itself in her upper left nostril, and wouldn't go away. She considered it for a time.

"I'm going to sneeze in forty-two seconds' time" she announced to her best friend Wallop, the only other classic present.

"Mmm" replied the other, her own turned up nose in an eighteenth-century Juvenal.

There was silence. "Aaaaah", said Ammo. "Nearly time to start fumbling for my hankie; about half a minute."

Wallop opened another leatherbound volume and smoothed it open. She lifted her eyes and regarded her friend's pristine face. The eyes had begun to glisten, the nose had wrinkled up and the freckled nostrils had expanded; the mouth had dropped so far open that it appeared a sneeze was just about to occur. Yet unhurriedly, Ammo put her hand down to the edge of her skirt and pulled it up, inserting her fingers into her blue knickers. "Twenty Haaah- seconds!"

Wallop picked up her fountain pen, the one charged with green ink in its chamber, and uncapped it. Ammo's mouth was now jammed open and she had stopped breathing altogether. Her mobile nostrils flared out, then collapsed again. She fumbled unhurriedly around in her knickers, eventually locating a lacy hankie she had placed there that morning.

"Aaaaah! Aaaaaah! HAAAAAH-ITSCHOOOOOOH!" She removed the hankie from her knickers and raised it, just fast enough for it to catch the last syllable of her sneeze at the exact point where the arc of her nose intersected with the tangent of her rising hand.

"How was that?" she gasped.

Wallop looked at the book. "Not bad. On 2 May at 8.55 you sneezed once with thirty-three seconds of inevitability, but apart from that the longest buildup this term has not exceeded half a minute!"

[Vetinari]

It's just as well I haven't had a recent operation or back problem that makes laughing painful because nearly everything you post at the moment is very funny to me and this is no exception. Goodness knows where you come up with these ideas. How wonderful it would be to be able to ramble through your mind. Such a treasure and so filled with oasthouses.

[count tiszula]

A now belated 70th anniversary commemoration

32 FALL

Late in the afternoon of the Fall of Paris, on the 14 June 1940, in the chaos of the Fall of France, Rick stood on the platform of the Gare du Midi, beside the last train to Marseilles, amongst the crowds panic-strickenly seeking some way of escaping the German troops, his eyes keenly scanning the barrier for any sign of Ilse. The low June sun sent its heated beams through the interstices of the elaborate ironwork. His glance did not pick up Sam, who now appeared at his side and handed him a letter.

"I bin to her hotel, Mister Richard, but she's gone. They had this for you."

Rick tore open the envelope and read.

"Dear Rick

By the time you read this, I shall be gone . Please, don't ask me to explain. Something has come out of my past that I could never have foreseen. I love you, Rick, and let us just say, we'll always have..."

Rick's lidded, bloodshot eyes,[ were they really brown?], seemed to be filming over with a liquid; and he realised that the low evening sun was getting in his eyes, and tickling his nose, so that he...he....

His narrow-lipped mouth forced itself open, and Heh-HERRRRRRASHAAAAAH! a huge masculine sneeze burst out of his twisted lips. The writng on the letter , flooded with silvery spray, dissolved into illegibility, just as his dreams evanesced into unreality.

"Come on, Mister Richard,"said Sam. "let's get you on to this train."

"Here's looking at you, kid." mumbled Rick

[count tiszula]

Here is a homage, or possibly an hommage, slightly late of course, to the equally late Eric Rohmer. His films can only be recommended to all because, not only is Claire's Knee about the only arty film which deals with a fetish, but nearly all his films involve flocks of scantily clad young people talking French to each other while looking attractive, and yet IT'S ALL ART! In fact, an extension of this conte, entitled Claire's Sneeze, will probably follow.

Oh, and it also celebrates my .birthday

33 CRY

"S'il te plait, Jerome, can you take me into Aniseed before the storm not breaks," said Claire, her little turned-up nose crinkling up in the hayfevery breeze.

"Ben, volontiers," I replied. "But you do realise that when it does rain, huge amounts of pollen will be driven down by the downpour. It might even...uh..cause that you sneeze."

"Allons-y," returned she. "I really like sneezing. Did I not, would I spend the summer on the lakeside playing beach volley-ball in my tiny bikini, with no place for a hankie?"

We climbed into the motor launch, my hand of course supporting her mobile bottom, bursting from her bikini palely. Off we went towards Aniseed. Claire seemed distraite. She sat with her knee up against her face, eyes full of unshed tears. In an outrageous example of the pathetic fallacy of which Rohmer should have been ashamed, lightning struck and the heavens opened. We were passing a small island, and I pulled in to its shore as the rain struck us with all its might. I dragged Claire, already soaking, on to the shore and we sat in the shade of a tilleul, its broad leaves sheltering us.

Claire was quivering with the cold, and I suddenly realised that her tears were falling, mingling with the splashes of rain wetting her cheeks. Her shivering nostrils were turning red at an alarming rate, colour apparently spreading at a visible speed along the edges and suffusing into the round flesh above. A delicate drop of quicksilver fluid was forming at the entrance to one pinkish opening. Her knee was still clasped to her face, and she rubbed her nose against it as if to rid it of an unbearable burden. Her ragged breath seemed to promise a final opportunity for her to sneeze all over me.

"Qu'as-tu, Claire?"

" I ab fide. It is nothing but a touch of cold of the hays." She burst into a huge, uncontrollable fit of sobbing. "Chui desolee. I thought I was goigg to sdeeze." Her sobs redoubled. I moved closer.

"Mais, cherie, what is the matter?"

"Oh, very well. It is Jules. He says he will dot take be to the Adiseed Ball." I thought about what Laura had told me. As a good French gentleman it was clearly my duty to take advantage of Claire and submit her to all my fetishy desires.

"That is not all, my little Claire." I put my arm round her and turned her wet face toward me, allowing a couple of fingers to stray ticklingly around her flaring nostrils. "I have heard that he intends to take Laura to the Aniseed Ball instead."

Claire's scantily clad body shook with sanglots et soupirs. Her great blue eyes were streaming and reddening with her sobs. I felt like Neron in Racine; "J'aimais jusqu'a ses pleurs que je faisais couler." The alexandrine, I reflected, fell into an iambic pentameter in English; "I even loved the tears I made to flow."

As I held her chin close to mine, an almost forgotten desire at once was at hand. Claire's head reared back, rapidly working nostrils swelling to huge , liquid pools, her choked breathing resolved, and she sneezed a powerful allergic sneeze.

"Huh-huh-HHAH-ISHCHOOOOOOH! Hah- ISCHOOOOOOOOOH! Oh pardodde-....hah...hah...-boi hah ISHCHAAAAH!"

The uncontrollable triple bathed my waiting cheek with a perfect wet benison of spray, competing with the splashing caused by the rain and mingled with the more powerful kiss of a handful of more solid silver.

"Ce n'est rien, cherie,ce n'est rien." gasped I.

[Vetinari]

Oh!

Now that's hot!

Oh and...

An aniseed ball?

[TheCakeIsAlive]

Hmmm... any drabble that uses Iambic pentameter is awesome in my opinion.

I've very much enjoyed reading this.

[snuffle-bunny]

Wow!!!

I love this!

[count tiszula]

In view of the unusual interest I sought out the scene on which this is based, and it is on YouTube as Claire's Knee 10/11 [1970] by marcolopolis555.

It really is a fantastic crying scene quite apart from the knee stuff, and I had forgotten that for us it is even better, as she fumbles for a hankie and he lends her his! Perhaps I should rejig my version. Also he talks about it endlessly in French....clearly another fetishy thing.....

[count tiszula]

Some months ago a lot of people were pressing for a fanfic about a certain popular singer....

34 RELIEF

The summer sun crept through the curtains and caressed Justin's face, waking him gently. As usual, he was jetlagged, and unwilling to get up even though the clock showed it was approaching noon. He had a strange memory of having arrived at the hotel late the previous night and seeing a vision of an English historic country house, before that pretty English tour manager had dragged him up to his room half asleep, undressed him and put him to bed. Yet the room he was in was more like a standard plastic and plywood old hotel than anything olde worlde.

Rubbing his nose, he flopped out of bed and strutted to the window, dragging the curtains aside. Yes, there were endless green lawns dotted with bits of tasteful statuary, and the shadows of tall, machicolated brick walls. The strong and unexpected sunlight tickled his nose and he couldn't help himself; he just had to sneeze.

"HAAAAAH Iiiishoooo! " Despite the wonderful relief that he always enjoyed, his sneezes annoyed him. Even though his voice had dropped about half an octave in the last year, his sneezes were still so high-pitched that anyone would have taken them for a girl's; especially that uncontrollable inhalation at the beginning. He had started trying not to sneeze in public because of it, with little success.

A glance at the bedside card revealed the somewhat astonishing intelligence that the hotel did not do room service, though breakfast was apparently "always available" in the Churchill bar. Sighing, he found a pair of underpants and gave himself a minimal brushup. He wondered whether to cover his teeth with a dimming agent, as in Europe they had been known to dazzle those suddenly exposed to them; but couldn't be bothered.

The bar was virtually empty, with a few clonelike businessmen starting an early lunch at their formica tables. Still tired, he flopped on to the nearest perch and examined the laminated menu.

"Justin!" Lalage, the tour manager, ran into the place and sat opposite him. " There you are; just in time for lunch. I'm starving." She proceeded to hail a waiter and order them two steak and kidney puddings with all the trimmings, while keeping up a monologue about how she had chosen the hotel for its easy access to both London , the airport and Brighton. "Shall we have a bottle of Beauj not so Nouv?", she added. It's OK, you can have it with a meal now."

He flashed her his perfect North American smile. "Don't worry; I got used to all these strange laws years ago at home in Canada; where we act French and drink domestic Champagne..." She poured him a gleaming glass of Brouilly, with beaded bubbles winking at the brim, and the sun shining through the ruby liquid. He raised it to his lips and breathed in the heady bouquet. He sipped the rich liquid and let in run over his tongue. Was it the fumes that wafted into his nose, or some strange allergy to alcohol, or to congeners, or just the sunlight , that made his nose tickle again? He tried to suppress it; he didn't want to sneeze like a girl in front of Lalage, and he could feel it was going to be really messy. He didn't have a hankie. He held his breath. But it was no good.

"Hi-RAAAASH-aaah!" It was far more violent than his usual sneezes, and he could feel his upper lip covered with viscous liquid. But he wasn't embarrassed. That sneeze had boomed out of this heaving chest with a deep, masculine sound that echoed through the plywood room like a lion's roar. He felt he could once again sneeze openly and proudly; he also felt that he was just about to do so. What a relief! He took a huge breath and...

"HAAAAAAH-RRRRRASSSSHHHH-CHOOOOOOH!"

[Vetinari]

A dimming agent? Oh but then you wouldn't be able to provoke photic sneezes merely by beaming at people.

But what a lovely coming of age story with photicness and messiness and everything. Yum.

[count tiszula]

My 4000th post! Er, would never have thought....only the great and admired seemed....humble poster like myself.....fewer than two a day....unworthy. Ahem, well, you get the picture. And now, a little thing I like to call...

35 BREATH

DR ALICE: But there are of course all sorts of different types of breath. One of the most obvious is when we sneeze. Some of you may remember from an earlier series of mine that I tried to measure the velocity with which molecules and other generally messy things were expelled from my nose when I sneezed, but sadly , although I placed 5mg of pepper in each nostril in accordance with the accepted scientific authority, S Doo B Ch in NEJM 1993, my breath remained unsneezy at all times.

Strangely, however, after the broadcast of that episode, I received a huge amount of mail from fans, all of them saying how much they would enjoy it if they could see me sneeze, and offering many and various methods which they recommended as being the best way of inducing a sneeze, as they all rather quaintly put it. So, strictly in order to demonstrate the scientific and anatomical significance of this form of aberrant breath, I am now going to experiment with a method for which I am grateful to a Mr C de Tisza of Kent; funny, that name almost sounds like when I sneeze; whereby I take a plastic tag from a new pair of socks, which I have here, bisect it with this scalpel, and place the narrow end in my nostril, thus.

Now, my informant tells me that there are two possibilities at this point; either to move the clothes tag generally around the nostril, first slowly then more...but actually I have to say that the merest movement of the plastic is incredibly tickly, although at present it does not engender the characteristic feeling that we get before sneezing, what I might coin the term "sneeziness" to describe. My eyes, as you can see, are misting over with tears, impeding my reading of the autocue, and from what I can see of the monitor, my nostrils are flaring involuntarily out and in again.

And the funny thing is that, although I have not achieved this state of sneeziness, I can feel the upper parts of my nostrils filling with what I take to be mucus, and indeed I am getting a strange sensation down in my diaphragm, which I assume is the forerunner of the convulsive downward movement that would cause me to take an involuntary breath. So perhaps there is something for the anatomist to remark here. But as yet I am not going to sneeze, so what is it, we mu.....we mu....HUH....we must ask, which rea....heah......HEEEEEE-TCHOOOOOOO!..I....I......HAAAAAH-TISHOOOOO! I bust apologise, it just crept up on be and although I iditially tried to hold theb id I just cou....TSHOOOOOO! HiTSCHOOOOOOOO!

I'be so sorry, it looks as if I've just sneezed all over the cabera lens . And now I really do feel very sneezy, in fact I ...Huh...huh.....AAAAAAAA-TISHOOOOOOH! Sorry...cad't seeb to stop, and I can feel the mucus running down my upper lip add all over everywhere. Well, at least this experiment in the more arcane aspects of the TCHSHOOOOOOO! breath has been

successful. A bit too HAAAAAH- RRROOOOCHOOOOOH! HHHHEEEEEH-TCHISHAAAAAAH! bloody successful, really...

[Vetinari]

A bit too HAAAAAH- RRROOOOCHOOOOOH! HHHHEEEEEH-TCHISHAAAAAAH! bloody successful, really...

Oh well ... some of us would beg to differ I think. Those sock tags are being elusive. I fear they may no longer be in use. Must search some more .... I know I dropped them round here somewhere!

And congratulations on 4,000 fascinating posts.

[Balmora]

I cannot believe to comprehend your writing talent. You're range and ability to induce nasal laughter is Olympian. Note my attempt to coverse like yourself - nay, I cannot do it!

[count tiszula]

36 MISERABLE

This was supposed to be with the other ones, but I can't make it go there....

The latest Scandonoir entrancing British Metroliterati is "Borgen". Apparently it has been shown in the US, but I haven't seen any fanfics here yet ; so here we go.

Birgitte is the Prime Minister, Gasper is her spindoctor; Katrine is the TV journalist he is intermittently having an affair with. Yes, it's "The West Wing " with added gloom.

MISERABLE

Gasper was miserable. He hadn't smiled since his father's funeral. It was as if he were bowed down by an unspeakable secret, thought Katrine. She was miserable too. Those dark, Scandinavian birchwoods were blowing their tickly pollen out straight into her perfect oval nostrils, and the only relief she got was the occasional fit of alluringly. enormous, wet sneezes. For God's sake, everyone was bleeding miserable; it was Scand- aaah- aaaah. TCHOOOOOH!

Gasper stirred from his male nap. There was Katrine, bent over in the aftermath of her huge sneeze, the spray from which was still hanging in the air lit by the midday sun, which was due to last until 1.25. Her large, pale buttocks were still wobbling with the force, uncannily mimicking her nostrils when they trembled roundly with ecstasy at the approach of a sneeze.

"Aaaah- ATISHOOOOH!" She pulled herself upright, sniffing and wiping an errant tear from her cheek.

"By the way, young maiden, I have for you a really wondrous assignment. You must interview the Prime Minister in her official residence at Drottningsborg." He stared longingly at her beautiful nose. Rising from a perfectly pale face topped with long, fair hair, it burst into a form that resembled her homeland's favourite structure, the ski-slope, beneath which, without any show, lurked two large yet undemonstrative round, yet lengthy nostrils, whose every quiver was visible to any observer.

" But Huh....HAHTISHOOO! Surely, assa top leftie, she can't use her official residence? She has to live with her children in a normal middle class suburb."

"Well, yes, but she's moved out because she has to divorce her husband. She found out he'd accepted a cup of tea from a pupil who later became a banker. And don't say "middle class". Most of our audience is in Britain, and for them middle class is bad and unleftie!"

Birgitte was miserable. The beetling brows of Drottningsborg emerged from the baleful birchwoods to loom coldly over the Baltic, or Bight, or wherever alliteratively the biggest waves bashed the beastliest bay. Why did her husband keep falling from his former top leftie grace? Why was she stuck in the only non-fascist part of the castle with a mad butler?

Katrine's perfect breast beat madly as she drove up to the dark, machicolated castle. She had three hours before the crew arrived, and she just hoped she could go that long without sneezing. Normally, she enjoyed a really big, messy sneeze, not just for the pleasure but because she liked the reaction she got from other people. But somehow it was different with Birgitte. Except of course, and she would have smiled at the irony had she not been so miserable, that she was longing to see Birgitte sneeze. Birgitte who she had thought nothing of last year when she was just a minority party leader in a long floral dress, had now become a mature and powerful woman with a long, distinguished nose,[ so unlike her own turned-up and occasionally freckled tickly monster], clad always in her severe, dark, well-cut suit and revolving bow tie. What a fantastic sneeze she would uh....uh..TishOOOOO! Katrine's double spray, as so often, bathed her steering-wheel, which, using the Scandinavian passive, basked in it.

While the old bell still jangled, an elderly man in a gold-laced uniform and powdered wig opened the door. " For her excellency?" They passed into a hall so encrusted with rococo gold that Katrine actually gasped, but she was led past the stairs to a concealed door under them and down stone flags to a vast, antiquated kitchen, at the end of whose huge wooden kneading-trough sat Birgitte, looking miserable.

"Have some Madeira, mesdames?" The lackey shimmered in with a silver salver charged with decanters and of course a large cake

"Aardvarksen, just stop trying to serve me." remarked Birgitte. "I sacked you three days ago."

"It is not appropriate that the Prime Minister of Her Majesty should not be properly served ." He stalked out.

Birgitte unexpectedly burst into tears, her long nose quivering "I knew that, assa top leftie, I shouldn't live here. I sacked all the staff, but Aardvarksen won't go away. And I sacked all the security as well [there being no terrorist threat] so I can't get anyone to throw him out ."

Katrine took a quick gulp of the Madeira ; her nose was tickling . "But why are you living here, equal woman? Surely you should be caring for your children while your husband has been thrown out.?"

"Well, I still have to break off my audiences with Queen Daisy to do the school run, in the approved manner, but I agree, I don't quite understand it. Just look at this headline.."

" PRIME MINISTER'S HUSBAND FAILS TO BE TOP LEFTIE" read Katrine. She fumbled for her hankie and, wiping it briefly over her gorgeous nostrils, handed it to Birgitte, who had started crying again.

"He didn't let our daughter kill a baby deer when he took her stalking! What a sexist he is! He let her shoot and strangle pheasant. but only our son could be smeared with fawn's blood and umbles." She sobbed alluringly.

Aardvarksen staggered in again with an even huger silver charger. "As requested by your stalking son, madam, venison pizza." Expertly he set it down, sliced two segments and served the ladies. From his tailcoat pocket he drew a peppermill ..which any Italian waiter would have died for. Before Katrine could protest he had drenched the air in front of her with a cloud of tickliness, which flew into her waiting nose. At once she knew it was inevitable. Her pale Scandinavian skin mantled with an almost healthy blush of anticipatory shame at the prospect of a huge, messy sneeze in front of her powerful PM. She knew that any attempt to stifle was bootless, so powerful yet girly was her sneeze going to be. Then she realised that the hankie she was fumbling for in her ticket pocket was already in Birgitte's sleeve. It was coming.

"Huh- Raaasher!" Katrine's half-closed eyes sprang open to see Birgitte's lengthy nose in a spasm of ecstasy. All her prime ministerial dignity had vanished with a single sneeze; wait a moment , a "A RRRASHTRAAAH!" double that bent her body over the pinewood kneading=trough and dispatched a cloud of droplets that bathed Katrine across the long wooden planks.

Katrine reverted to her rare use of the vernacular for a scene-closer. Blushing furiously, "Tak!" she gasped.

[gryffin]

I know I'm somewhere between three and six years late, Count, but these drabbles are simply incredible. Mr Darcy's stifle is a miracle of loveliness, and Justin Bieber's quaint sneeze-and-alcohol-fuelled coming-of-age (not to mention the very notion of you writing a drabble on Justin Bieber) is one of the prettiest, and most prettily executed, ideas I have seen on this esteemed Forum to this day. This without mentioning the Randolph, the iambic pentameters, etc.

How many of your prompts are still awaiting their due drabblement?

[count tiszula]

Fourth try at responding; thanks so much, Gryffy. By a miracle, we must have been rereading these at exactly the same moment; my greatest impression is how hopeless I am at American dialogue, save perhaps the Thin Man one. Some endure; Claire's knee, Fight, even the Dr Who one. Darcy's whip I had used before, but there was so much interest that I did it again.

there, I managed to post but not to add to it, so I give up for now

[count tiszula]

I don't think we've seen. or heard enough from Ammo and  Wallop, so.....

37 CHOCOLATE

Ammo had an important LaX match in the afternoon, so after lunch she and Wallop went off to the Chocolate Box to buy sustaining supplies. These turned out to be in Ammo's case a bar of liqueur chocolates containing Benedictine, while Wallop, her leather-bound notebook in her handbag in case there were any sneezes from Ammo to record, having only ten bob a week allowance, bought a bag of pear drops [the chocolate costing three and nine].  She knew that pear drops are often quite sneezy for the susceptible, and hoped for the best.

Ammo changed into her games outfit ,  her exiguous shorts as ever getting tighter over her soft buttocks, and the pair embarked on the trip to the LaX field.  Ammo was wolfing down the chocolate comme sil n'y avait pas de demain, as they used to say, while Wallop was sucking on her pear drops with equal relish, offering one to Ammo with only a brief frisson of expectation. Ammo, a very decent and pleasant girl when all is said and done, apart perhaps from her obsession with the details of her sneezes, offered Wallop a row of her chocolate bar.

"I don't know, Ammo, for some reason chocolate seems to make me sneeze".

"yOU, sneeze; I'd like to see that !" replied Ammo, and as it happens, she was telling the truth; "We'd better start a new page in your book."

The row of chocolates would scarcely fit in Wallop's mouth, and soon , for whatever reason, she felt a lovely warm tickle  thrilling her oddly shaped freckly nostrils;she got out her notebook and opened it at a new page, and "Aaaaah" she said, "Aaaaah-TISHOOOOOH"   She sniffed, "Aaatchoooh!"  She got out her fat blue fountain pen to record her own sneezes

"Let me do that,  Charlotte," said Ammo;  "that was quite lovely".

[count tiszula]

Sorry about the double post; another mystery, and that I've forgotten how to alter the thread title; so we are for now stuck in 2012; well, could be worse.  Other characters  we haven't andheard enough from include Mad Ray and I, so it is time for

38 VIOLENT

After that odd business where Jack " the Hankie" McTavish accidentally fell into the river with a bullet in his brain,, Mad Ray's only asked  me if I fancied a ruby, so we've got back in the Jag and it's off to Brick Lane.  We've parked outside  "The Eel Vindaloo", out favourite, and in we've gone. We've been greeted by the boss, Abu Hassan al-Goldsteini, who is a great mate of Big Reg.  , and pays him a monKey every month so no accidents never happen.

So we've got the best table in the house and before you an say  "oy, Abu, you dozy  Bengali" he's only served us our samosas and given   us a lecture on the four sauces in the whirly silver  thing  Ray won't Use.

So we've ordered two eel vindaloos, a cucumber raita and four pints of tea to start with; not hot enough, but makes you feel you've got a bit of a frock on the lord anyway.  So  Abu's just giving us a second helping of the liquor, bright green as always, and the door's banged and it's only Big Reg!