Chasing fairies in a Victorian Manner

When Bessy was a mere puppy she had a fetish for being attached in some manner to the roofs of black cabs. I mention this because, as I left to see Felix at the bench this morning, I noticed a hedgehog caught in a tree by its suspenders reading a work of non-fiction in Hindi. I've come across a fellow blogger who may have an opinion on this.

Felix grew attached to his bench approximately fifteen years ago when I was just starting out at my new dental practice. He tells me he was the first person to sit on the bench when it was erected in memory of a Mr Billious Hensham. Mr Hensham, it turns out, was a vegetarian who drove a black cab. He never came to see me, either when he was alive or dead, which I put down to Bessy.

George was with his Victorian Manners book again when I arrived at the surgery. He tells me Victorian Manners were the inevitable response to the liberal mayhem that came before the Victorian era. Cookie said she has a friend who sews the edges of skirts at any time of the year - not just in Spring - and that in her opinion there's no reason why said edge should be liberal.

Which reminds me of the artist who pops in every month to show us paintings of spring chickens dressed as bankers in pin-striped suits. They also ride in black cabs. I asked him today if spring chickens during the Victorian era were considered dangerously liberal or fashionably conservative. He looked at me as if I had said something untoward.

The interesting thing about Cookie is that she provides me with ample opportunity to escape George's Victorian censure in a way that I find most eerie. I suspect there was a similar phenomenon at work when the fairy that cab-attached-Bessy was chasing, got away.