Blunderwall

 

'So let me get this right, Pooh. This will make your fortune.'

'Our fortune, my little scratchings-to-be. The whole Wood's. No-one need worry again.'

'And you'll just send the headlines to --?'

'Oh the usual. The Daily Mither. The Soaraway Sun. That slightly posher tabloid.'

'The Daily Oh-Come-On-Adolf's-Not-So-Bad.'

'That's the one. Signed "Send 'em all back, even 'em what aren't 'im or 'er"-- just for credibility.'

'But without any accompanying story.'

'For pity's sake, Piglet--what need? The headlines are the story. Brevity is the solar flare and all that.'

'Let's hear them again, then.'

'Ahem. "You've Etihad Your Chips".'

'Right.'

'"Autumn Blight For Pep Gladioli".'

'I think it's Pep Guard--'

'No, Piglet, that's that tonic for the over-40s.'

'I think that was Phyllosan.'

'No, Piglet, that's the Philadelphia Public Hygiene Department.'

'Next, please.'

'"No Oasis On This Walk Of Shame." See, I've--'

'Yes. Them.'

'No, that was Herbert Morrison's band. Played nonstop during the Festival of Britain.'

'And the next.'

'Ah--best of all--"Not Only The Ball That Was Passed".'

'Sorry--should there be more to that one?'

'That's it.'

'That's it?'

'That's all.'

'That's all? But it doesn't mean anything.'

'Not to an ignopotamus like you, of course, but--'

'What's being passed? Could be a trophy on an open-top bus. A crowd attendance record. A jeroboam of champagne.'

'A gerbil, Piglet, have I taught you nothing? Look, it obviously means money, dosh, lettuce, bunce, filthy lukeskywalker, passed where it shouldn't be and getting smellier by the second.'

'But it doesn't--'

'What you fail to grasp, my footwear-in-waiting, is that all fine literature is a collaboration between writer and reader. The writer proffers the clue, the code--the matrix, if you will--'

'--I'd rather not--'

'--from which the reader teases out the meaning and feels the full glow of enlightenment possess their heart like the sun at eventide.'

'I think you'll find the sun's legged it by--'

'Enough! I'll leave you ensnared in the toils of literalism. I'll try them on Tigger. He'll certainly go a bundle--'

'How about "Manchester City Mired In Financial Scandal"?'

'Oh, Piglet, Piglet, you can't get away with scrunching words! No-one's admiring what they've done! You can't say "Ooh, I do 'mire your new houndstooth weskit" … "Werl, you've got to 'mire his tenacity".'

'No, Pooh, it's--oh, send them the Etihad one.'

'Actually, I've gone off that one now. Come to think of it, I'm not sure tabloids go for puns.'

'Ah, Pooh--You're My Blunderwall.' 

Sisters of The Serengeti

'Piglet, it can't fail.'

'I think it sort of already has.'

'Nonsense. Those BBC bods will jump at it.'

'In a windowless room, I hope.'

'I'd appreciate some support, my porcine buckawaynerooney.'

'Alright…tell me again.'

'Dear, oh dear. Right. Call The Midwife.'

'Yes.'

'All finished.'

'Well, not quite. I heard they're doing a short prequel series, followed - '

'Yes, yes, yes, but in its current formica. You know, streets of Poplar, postwar, the nuns and nurses of Heynonnynoh House.'

'Nonnatus.'

'Whatever that means.'

'Latin. Now we are nine.'

'Ooh, I'll be needing more than nine of 'em for my purposes.'

'Which are?'

'Translating Poplar to the Serengeti, where they will go about their birthing business under the curious, not to say predatory eyes of the local fauna.'

'Oh…right.'

'Yes indeed…so you'll have Sister Fantabulosa talking Doreen from Balls Pond Road through the discomfiting vagaries of Braxton Hicks contractions in the path of an oncoming cheetah.'

'Hence your title - '

'Maul the Midwife - precisement, to quote Hercule Potpourri.'

'And they will be? Those poor women?'

'No, no, no - or will they? That's the whole point, my troughligate pal. People will keep tuning in to find out. You know, like The Hungary Games. Folk kept following that on the off-chance of seeing some hapless Magyar spatter his goulash.'

'I don't think that was - '

'Besides, it'll set things up nicely for the sequel.'

'Sequel?'

'Cull The Midwife.'

'So it will happen.'

'Of course not. It'll all be done with that computer jiggery-pokery.'

'Ah, CG - '

'CeeBeeBee, exactly. I mean, I won't actually have Sister Pontefractotum being dragged into the scrub by a brunch-fixated lion - or will I?'

'I think it all rather departs from the spirit of the original.'

'Nonsense, Piglet. Dedicated toilers doing what they do in impossible conditions. Besides, the four-pawed nosh-meisters of the Serengeti will be a symbol.'

'Of?'

'Take your pick…indifferent local council, compassion-free Health Board. Figurative, you see. What poets call a metal-fork.'

'And what if it does go wrong? If one of the Poplar team actually does get - ?'

'Enter Sequel Two. Pall The Midwife. A 24/7 Serengeti-based squad of elite undertakers with a pack of hounds trained to sniff out cadavers ponging of Eau de Dettol. Motto: Where Beagles Dare. In they swoop in with no thought - '

'Ah. No thought. Sequel trois.'

'Sequel what?'

'Just thinking of Monsieur Poirot encore une fois.'

'I tried that once. Tasted awful, even with ballistic vinegar.'