THE PURPLY-HATTED MIMPSBY

High, high in the corkscrew tree, the purply-hatted Mimpsby polished his spectacle before opening up his filing box of the names of everyone who had upset him today. All around it the flies and the magpies flew, picking and pecking at his tasty coat of an uncertain hue, as it wafted the faintest scent of Basilica Tea into the air about him.

The very same Basilica Tea that had dribbled and dripped from a cracked teacup that he had been given in the “Younge Tea and Cake Shoppe” as run by the older Mrs Pugsworth in direct competition with her younger sibling, she of the “Old Tea and Pie Shoppe” in response to numerous family disputes that had led to fallings out, reconciliations and further fallings out, along with their many offspring who shared at least three fathers.

“Well” thought the Mimpsby, “She’s going in my book!” and so she did. He flipped open the lid of his ornately carved box of woe and flipped through his own private filing system, the one that started at “S”, took a bit of a curly route around the vowels and ended up at the letter “B”. The one that he personally thought to be much better than the one everybody else used. The appropriate card was plucked from where it had been carelessly and furiously stuffed and he noticed, with no sense of surprise, that both of the unsisterly sisters were already listed with a frequency that suggested that the mischievous and malicious thoughts that he regularly directed towards them were having little to no positive effect, as far as he was concerned.

Undeterred by this slight disappointment, he plucked a fine feather from a passing magpie (which caused it to screech angrily and then plummet groundwards) and formed it into a lustrous quill, dipped it into the bottle of green ink which he always kept about his person in case of such emergencies, and began to write her name again: “Mrs Pugsworth (the elder) - cracked and dripping teacup.” He paused, screwed up his one bad eye in the piece of brown paper he kept about him to keep it in, and added “Caused my one good coat to attract flies.”

He batted away an angry magpie and added “and magpies” before stuffing the card back where it belonged and slamming shut the lid.

Then he sighed deeply and looked back upon a busy afternoon that had begun with him being rudely awakened, at the crack of noon, by a passing tractor that had found him scampering up the corkscrew tree to write his spite before he’d even had the chance to have any breakfast. He was even more annoyed when he realised that he didn’t actually know who it was who had been driving the tractor, although he had a pretty good idea. Instead he just added the word “tractors” to one of his cards, closed the lid and was halfway back down the tree when he had another thought, scampered back up, and scribbled “tractor drivers” on another card.

Now satisfied in that completely unsatisfactory way that made only him the most unhappiest of creatures, he slid back down the tree and set off for his lunchtime breakfast.

It had not gone well.

Not only had his tummy been rumbling in a most extraordinary manner about which he had felt very embarrassed but for which he refused to apologise, but there had been a long queue in the Tea and Cake Shoppe and every single table seemed to be full of noisy people sipping and slurping and chomping away, with their even noisier offspring dashing about and being most disagreeable, and so it looked as though he would never get a seat.

His agitation at this made his tummy grumble even more, so much so in fact that he never even noticed how quiet it had become.

When he finally reached the counter and ordered up his Basilica Tea and Breakfast Macaroon, he turned about with his tea tray and found that the café was totally empty apart from himself and the stern-faced elder Pugsworth woman.

This pleased him greatly, and it never even crossed his mind that they’d all taken one look at this notorious Mimpsby and decided that they did not want to be around him, finished their lunches, gathered up their children and belongings, and escaped into the rest of their days rather than have to sit and talk to this wretched, lonely creature, and risk going into his ridiculous book.

We, of course, know better. We know that it wasn’t a book at all, and, if the Mimpsby had had any friends, they might very well have pointed this out to him. But he didn’t, and so he remained contented in his ignorance, nibbling at the stale Macaroon that Old Mrs Pugworth had discreetly spat upon, and sipping at his Basilica Tea which dribbled from the crack and onto his coat of uncertain hue, waiting to find something to complain about, which, as you also know, he did.

You could, of course, quite rightly say he had a point. Old Mrs Pugsworth should not have spat on his Macaroon, nor given him a leaky teacup and so it is quite right that the Mimpsby chose to add her to his list, but Old Mrs Pugworth knew that the Mimpsby coming into her shop tended to drive all of her other customers away, and she rather hoped that if she gave him a most unpleasant lunchtime breakfast every day, he might just start eating somewhere else.

But she did not know the Mimpsby.

She never took the time to.

Nobody did.

And the Mimpsby himself was not really happy unless he was complaining about something, which, as we know, was not really very happy at all, and so he was always going to keep on coming back to a place that was almost certain to give him something to complain about. If only they’d just talked to each other, all of these misunderstandings could have been avoided and two lonely people could each have gained a friend, but this just didn’t happen and they both carried on being unhappily happy and making each other thoroughly miserable for many years after that, and, despite all of those mischievous and malicious thoughts that he regularly directed towards her, nothing ever changed.