Some fourteen years ago I began my blogging career with a short post to 'The Chronicles of electrofried', the fore-runner to the blog you're now reading. It took forever to download. Whilst it seems hard to comprehend a world of dial-up connectivity and bleeping land-lines, back in those heady days of the nascent internet that was what you got for your money.
As its name suggests, The Chronicles featured the on-going saga of the electrofrieds, an eccentric English family occupying a faded country estate in the rural backwater of Little Wittering. It was a silly thing but I rather enjoyed writing it, and much to my surprise, a few people actually enjoyed reading it too.
In common with many others I now have a little time on my hands, so I thought it might be an opportune moment to take up the story once more. But first may I reintroduce the dramatis personae...
Cook
A rotund, florid-faced woman of uncertain vintage, Cook staffs the electrofried kitchen. Her quarters lie in the attic, accessed via the steep back-stairs. This presents something of a challenge following her nightly libation of cheap cooking sherry.
Cook's recipes are legendary in the electrofried household. Favourites include 'Roadkill Surprise', 'Turnip Twizzlers' and 'Brown', the generic name bestowed on a wide range of indeterminate dishes from starters to puddings and all stations in-between.
Fetlock the Butler
A Slovenian emigree, Fetlock has been attached to the family for many years. Sadly, his command of the English language remains tenuous at best, not helped by his constant reference to an out-of-print 1930s Slovenian tourist dictionary.
Comments such as, 'Please direct me to your nearest public lavatory. I am in urgent need of relief,' do not go down well with the simple folk of Little Wittering.
Fetlock is the 'ying' to Cook's, 'yang', his bony, skeletal form flitting silently between the shadows in the House of electrofried.
Teenygoth
Clad from head to toe in black, the youngest scion of the electrofried loins is a constant thorn in my side.
Darling Teenygoth is blessed with a piercing sarcasm inherited from her grandmother, the late yet ever present Black Dowager. She employs it to good effect in passing withering judgement on her poor father at regular intervals
Teenygoth's room remains strictly off-limits. We're led to believe she's constructing a homage to Tracy Emin's, 'My Bed' in there.
The Black Dowager
Mother dearest inhabits the darkest recesses of the Tower from whence she issues apocalyptic prophecies of doom and destruction. Deceased for many years, The Black Dowager flatly refuses to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Her obdurate musings are invariably accompanied by a deep fug of blue smoke coughed up courtesy of Players No. 10, a cigarette steeped richly in 1970s tar and phlegm. Goodness knows where she gets the wretched things from but I have a strong suspicion Cook may be implicated somewhere along the line.
mrs electrofried
My long-suffering wife is an active member of the Little Wittering Women's Institute where she hosts a regular DJ slot under the happy banner of 'Loud, Proud and Lemon Drizzled'. Her latest mash-up of old favourites, 'Jerusalem' and 'Pump up the Volume' has gone down a storm on the fast-emerging 'tea'n'scones' scene.
Skilled in all manner of domestic craft she's an occasional contributor to 'X-treme Quilting', the on-line magazine of choice for ladies of a certain age.
electrofried(mr)
Yours truly likes to think of himself as a lithe, handsome and witty sophisticate. Sadly, this is a palpable untruth.
My ongoing attempts to pass myself off as a member of the aristocracy invariably fall flat on their monocled face despite my having taken to wearing a smoking jacket, spats and a top-hat as my customary attire.
I come from a long line of failed entrepreneurs whose combined efforts have seen the family fortune denuded over successive generations, leaving us reduced to eking out a miserable existence in what little is left of the electrofried country seat.
Which is where we rejoin the story...
It's been a funny old Spring in Little Wittering. In common with the rest of the country we enter lock-down on 23rd March, an occasion marked in the village by the ceremonial closure of the old plague-gates.
The Black Dowager makes one of her rare public appearances, sporting not one but two Players No.10, dangling jauntily from her nicotine-stained dentures. Fortunately, her customary eschatological proclamations are largely ignored by the gathered peasantry who favor instead a mass exodus to Mrs Patel's corner-shop in search of super-strength lager and other sundry essentials.
A plan hatched
Come the evening the mood is gloomy as we gather in the dining-room to give thanks for Cook's dish of the day. It's green and slightly frothy, the result I discover subsequently of an unfortunate incident with the washing-up liquid immediately prior to plating.
I'm too preoccupied to notice anything amiss until young Teenygoth starts to foam at the mouth.
'Not again!' exclaims mrs electrofried.
'Yes, Ma'am ... bubble and squeak.' replies Cook, taking this as a sign of approbation.
'Yuk!!!!' cries Teenygoth, bringing dinner to a premature but welcome end by retching into the leftover Christmas serviette thoughtfully provided by Fetlock.
I sit back in my chair, at a loss to know what to do next. The closure of the village and the resultant financial melt-down threaten to engulf what little remains of our meagre country living. And then I rise, triumphant, to my feet.
'I've got it!' I shout and begin to outline a cunning plan to fend off the impending fiscal disaster...
Firing up the charabanc
I should know better than to entrust Cook and Fetlock with the shopping.
They emerge early next morning suitably attired in Personal Protective Equipment. Cook dons a set of crinolines rescued from the upper reaches of the attic. They've last seen action in celebrations to mark the relief of Mafeking and their starched, voluminous circumference make social distancing a doddle.
Fetlock, meanwhile, has fashioned one half of Cook's discarded brassiere into a make-shift face mask. I lack the stomach to enquire further of its stuffing. He takes the wheel of the family charabanc whilst poor Cook is exiled to the roof, her plumped up crinolines rendering access to the comfort of the interior seats impracticable.
With a dyspepsic parp of the horn they're on their way through the unlocked plague-gates in search of potential profiteering riches in the market town beyond.
The prodigals return
Two hours later Fetlock and Cook are back. Beaming from ear to ear they unload their precious cargo from the charabanc and bring it through to the kitchen.
To say it's a disappointment is somewhat of an under-statement. It's a truly epic disappointment of 'Jack and the Beanstalk' proportions, only without the magic beans. To give you a flavour of things, their black-market booty includes a set of novelty fish knives, several crates of out-of-date strawberry custard, a loose box of children's wellingtons (size 4, all left-footed) and a musical toilet roll-holder.
At least there's a little alcohol to dull the pain, even if it is sherry. And then I inspect the label on the familiar dark green bottle. 'Cruft's Original'. My suspicions are confirmed when I unfasten the top and pour out a finger. It's cheap rubbing alcohol, cut with malt vinegar.
I bury my head in my hands. How could they!!!
A turn for the better
It's Fetlock who brings the good news. He and Cook spend the evening closeted upstairs in the attic re-purposing Cook's voluminous lingerie drawer.
Whilst the prospects of converting much, if any, of their black-market booty into ill-gotten gains, trade is already brisk on the newly launched, 'Facemasks'r'Us' web-site.
All may not be lost!!
