Deffo!

'Owl says copies are flying off the ethereal shelves.'

'Goodness.  So what's it about?'

'Cast your mind back, Pooh, to 1665.'

'Sorry, Piglet, the 9pm watershed is my retrophilspector limit.'

'Oh, never mind.  Anyway, all of a sudden, great numbers of people were…you know, shuffling off….'

'Surrendering the lunch-pail.'

'And all that swilled in her, yes.'

'So why was that?'

'Hard to tell.  Owl says it was probably the sudden, desolating awareness of living in England in the middle of the seventeenth century.'

'Or any time.'

'Well quite.  So this posed a huge headache for the memorialists.'

'Who?'

'Engravers, Pooh. Enamellists.  Glazers. Monumental Masons.'

'Are those the extra tall folk who greet you by tugging their left earhole?'

'Commemorators, Pooh.  People who record where someone lived and when they lived and…you know…'

'Did the lunch-pail thing?'

'Yes.  They couldn't keep up with demand so they were reduced to crafting small squares to put up on the houses…just enough room to carve "Ee woz eer" or, for a couple, "X and Y 2gevva 4evva".'

'Ah, 2gevva 4evva.  Oh the days of the skinhead spray-paint. I used to love that song…'

'What song, Pooh?'

'"O the days of the skinhead spray-paint / O the ring of the piper's tune".'

'Pooh, I don't think--'

'Some Irishman pinched it, you know.  Gave it to a barmaid named Kerry.'

'Pooh, I--'

'Probably couldn't afford "2gevva--"'

'Anyway!  The book about the memorialists' plight is in high demand again.'

'What's it called?'

'Journal of the Plaque Year.'

'By?'

'Daniel Deffo.'

'Deffo?'

'Tigger says he must have had a seriously togetherly upbeat publicist.'

'Must have done.   Memorialist himself, was he?'

'Apparently not.  Started out mass-producing lemon-barley squash in Flanders, then ran into an Italian operatic tenor who'd got slung off a P & O liner at the mouth of the Ocarina.   Named him after his lemon-barley drink, set him up as first stand-in on the GoCompare adverts and made a fortune.'

'Goodness me.  What an enterprising personage.'

'Oh, yes.  He made sure he got himself vented in the discourse of the neighbourhood.'

'What?'

'That's from the Plaque book.'

'Is it all like that?'

'Pretty much, Owl says.  Plus a lot of to wits.'

'Must be why Owl likes it.'

'Not improbable.'

'Ah, that's another gem: "It's not improbable to be loved by any--"'

'You're breaking up, Pooh.'