It's 9:05 a.m., July 13th, 1893, at the busy office of a popular tabloid, The Ardis Snoop, located on Pendulum Boulevard between Mowlam & Tweak, Indignities Graveside (the budget undertakers) and Stay Dead Cemetery. Minnie, a new girl in town, has just recently taken a job in the typing pool at The Ardis Snoop. She's quite the beauty and, while the other typists don't dislike her, so far they've found her somewhat standoffish.Katarina Tweak (yes, you're right, her husband is the Tweak of Indignities) is the head typist, and the head gossip too, if the truth be told. Gossip is the primary stock in trade of The Ardis Snoop, of course, but through Katarina's connection, the girls in the typing pool have access to some of the juiciest morsels not fit for print in The Ardis Snoop, for, as you might suspect if you think about it, undertaking in a relatively small town can be somewhat periodic. And when there is no corpus mortuus to keep them occupied, Mr. Mowlam and Mr. Tweak are wont to hoist an ale or two and boast of their exploits, as men will.
Being a single man and rather dashing, Mr. Mowlam has quite a few exploits about which to boast, if you care to know, and a pint of ale invariably generates an outpouring of detail so vivid that even Mr. Tweak is made to blush. It's not embarrassment that makes him blush, though, for he's not the least bit conservative about these things. What makes him blush is anticipation, for when he goes home to Mrs. Tweak at the end of the workday, the two of them will enjoy an aperitif, and then a satisfying evening meal, followed by a full-bodied Jerez de la Frontera sherry. And then, as they climb the stairs to the boudoir, Katarina will ask quite innocently (hah! as if!), "And how was Mr. Mowlam today?"
Yes, Katarina has anticipations of her own! By now she knows quite well of Mr. Mowlam's promiscuity. In fact, she and Mr. Tweak have nicknamed Mr. Mowlam--oh, my! I'm almost embarrassed to say it for it's quite bawdy!--they call him The Plunger! Katarina will tease from the lips of Mr. Tweak every juicy detail of The Plunger's shameless exploits. It's become a bedtime ritual for the two of them, and I leave it to your imagination what happens next!
In the morning when Katarina takes her place as head of the typing pool at The Ardis Snoop, she has quite a smug smile on her face, and not just because she has gossip to share! But, of course, the gossip is what the girls in the typing pool are anticipating.
Unfortunately for them, so is their eagle-eyed boss, Mr. Halsbury Mushtaq. Anticipating gossip, I mean. Not that he wants to hear it. He doesn't! In fact, he doesn't allow talking at all among the girls in the typing pool, at least not during the workday, which is as far as his cast-iron authority extends.
But the girls in the typing pool certainly do not want to wait all day for their gossip! Hence the development of another ritual in Katarina's busy day: the passing-around of the business card. Katarina surreptitiously takes one of her husband's business cards from her pocketbook, as she has done just now, and she inscribes the back of the card--as discreetly as possible, of course!--with the day's juiciest morsel of gossip. Today's morsel happens to be extraordinarily juicy, as it is about Mr. Mowlam and the new girl.
(WordCount 62339-40: ardis snoop
18338-39: pendulum boulevard
786-87: stay dead
41136-37: Halsbury Mushtaq
41101-08: mowlam tweak indignities graveside minnies receptacle plumbed plunger)
