Curse

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As well as being a Baaamy boozer, Fred is also a football coach for the local under eighteen team, “I had to stop the game and call young Johnny over, I told him that win or lose we play at a team, to curse and swear at the other side was not acceptable and to call the referee an idiot and then threaten to punch him was disgraceful, then I said to him ‘go over there and repeat everything I’ve just said to your gobby grandfather’ ”.

“The other day I was chatting to Tracy”, said Arthur, “she teaches the tiny tots at the toddler school and during playtime five-year-old Milly was sitting in a pedal car and having difficulty making it move, then suddenly the frustrated child started swearing, Tracy told her she shouldn’t curse and anyway, she didn’t know what those words meant – Milly said ‘yes I do, I learned them from my Daddy, they mean my car won’t start’ “.

“That reminds me”, said Babs, “I’ve been having trouble with my parrot, she keeps cursing, where she’s learned it from I don’t bloody know, well I mentioned it to Dick the Vic because I knew he also had one; he told me that his just says prayers and suggested I take mine to the vicarage so they could meet, well, when I entered his room mine said, ‘well, hello’, and his raised its wings and said, ‘hallelujah, my prayers have been answered!’

Over at the knitting circle, Polly was telling her fellow knitwits that just lately everything was going wrong, she thought she was cursed, “I decided to visit a fortune teller hoping I might get prior warning of upcoming mishaps”, she said, “he was not much help but as I was leaving he gave me a gift, a calendar, I gave it a cursory glance and noticed the last two months were missing, worrying, anyway I then visited a palmist hoping for better luck and he said I could ask three questions – I asked him what kind of questions and he said ‘anything’, I said don’t you think £30 is a lot to pay for three answers?’ and he said, ‘no, not really, that’s two gone, what’s your third?’ “.

“Two fortune tellers met”, said Colin, “one said ‘your day’s going fine, how’s mine going?’ – I thought about becoming a fortune teller, but something told me there was no future in it – the fortune teller said he foresaw six years of bad luck, I asked if things would then get better and he said ‘no, you’ll have just got used to it’ – it’s bad luck to believe in superstition – fancy swearing is cursive – I used to be a chef that cursed a lot, then I discovered oven mits – I don’t curse, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink…dammit, I left my cigarettes in the pub – I banged my head and swore, I was con-cussing – someone who cares for swear words is a cuss-todean – a mouse that swears is a cursor – the animal that curses the most is the hippopottymouth – apathy is a curse, but don’t care enough to do anything about it – the painkiller that makes you curse is called I be profane – my alarm clocked cursed instead of beeping, I got a rude awakening…..”

Bad language in the Baaamy Inn is a no-no, Landlord Len objects to cursing of every nature, and this evening things had got a little uncomfortable on occasions; his dearly departed Maggie used to tease him about it and couldn’t resist whispering something in his ear, ’I love you Len, I swear’, she said – “I love you too, Maggie, I promise”, he muttered, “but I don’t swear!” – you should have heard them chuckle!