SCRUMPTIOUS AND THE BOILS

Picture two opposites - a dirty, scruffy, smelly and ugly old man and the prettiest girl ever. And add a dreadful accident. A bit of Heaven and hell ... and a warning.

Barnaby Scrumptious was nothing like his name. He was anything but scrumptious: in fact, he was embarrassingly frequently referred to as the dirtiest and ugliest man on the planet.

His habits were appalling. I won't go into some of the more disgraceful things he got up to, the delight with which he walked through the deepest and muddiest puddles as though he were a toddler fascinated by his first meeting with rainwater, or the way he never, absolutely never, washed his bedding, not even when it reeked of all manner of abhorrent things. And I won't begin to describe the nature of his underwear

No, such things are not suitable reading for the sensitivities of a delicate audience.

But it was the way he walked arrogantly through the streets, mud dripping off this or that part of his clothing, diseased moisture hanging in pastel droplets from his oversized nose when it wasn't dripping down, under the influence of gravity, to splash on his old shirt or the rusted fly of his trouser zip.

People kept out of his way. It wasn't because he was inherently nasty " in terms of his attitude to others he wasn't. If he took any notice of his fellow man at all it was with what almost amounted to benevolence. He would toss the odd penny to children if they seemed to be miserable or in need. He would offer to help old ladies across the road and, indeed, sometimes grabbed hold of them by the shoulder and guided them across busy roads even when they didn't want or need to cross. He was, in fact, a vast repository of unnecessary kindness which sat uneasily with his otherwise noxious physical being.

But he wasn't scrumptious.

In the same town and at quite the pompous, moneyed end there lived Petula Boils, and in quite the opposite way to Barnaby she had the least appropriate of surnames: she just about never suffered from boils or, if it comes to that, any kind of unpleasant skin condition.

She was one of those fragrant creatures, young, vivacious and inordinately aware that her legs were long and perfectly shaped, that her bosom was tilted at just the right angle even without the assistance of any sort of foundation garment and that her fine blonde hair was textured just right. And, in order to enjoy her own body (it was in no way showing off) she elected to wear appropriately skimpy garments, the sort that covered her modesty almost perfectly well, but which also left a great deal of aromatic flesh on show.

People loved her. It seems that the most natural thing in the world is for any man to worship a creature such as her, and for any woman to admire her without malice or envy, for whereas some diaphanously clad creatures might evoke rancour she was, by virtue of her sweetness, incapable of it.

The big test, they say, comes at life's ending, and so it proved to be for our two diverse souls.

Picture the scene. There is a country lane, the sort bordered by tall trees covered with excessively green and luscious foliage. It leads, it seems, almost from nowhere to nowhere, and along it on a fine a blue-sky sunny day there walked our two heroes, going in opposite directions. He, reeking of the slime of ages and with stained underwear on one side of the road and she, wearing the tiniest tartan skirt in her wardrobe of tiny tartan skirts, on the other.

There never was a chance meeting of two so diametrically different characters.

Now picture a rumbling threat to the scene. You can just about hear it humming in the distance. A bus is trundling along, a lovely red bus filled with happy people singing choruses of sweet love songs to a smiling driver. You can hear its throbbing engine and the distant sounds of its musical passengers. The sound rises into the summer air like the echo of a soaring nightingale. It is wonderful to hear. And behind it, chugging along, is a second bus, also red and also filled to overflowing by revellers who are also regaling each other with choruses of adoration

“Lovely,” sighs Barnaby Scrumptious.

“Did you say something, old man?” asked Petula Boils. “For if you did, it cannot have been to me, for I do not talk to old men alone in the country or they might desire my perfect flesh and take it without a by-your-leave and thus leave me despoiled and wretched!”

“I merely said how lovely it is to hear happy people singing as they joggle along in a big red bus,” sighed Barnaby with a twisted grin. He couldn't help that grin of his. As a child he'd been involved in a domestic quarrel in which his father had knifed his mother. She had bled to death and the father had slung the weapon at Barnaby's face before leaving the home as swiftly and permanently as he could. He'd been a bad lot, had Barnaby's father. Mind you, his mother hadn't been much better. Anyway, the end result had been a twisted grin for the boy, and a life of isolation and contempt.

“I'm going to run away!” screeched Petula. “I don't like being on the same road as dirty old men!”

And she did run. Barnaby might have tried to stop her but a life of rejection had taught him that others didn't ever seem to appreciate him doing the right thing, so he slouched along while she ran straight into the path of the bus.

And it killed her. That's what buses do: kill those they trundle over.

Both of her delicious long legs were broken in umpteen places and most of her hair stained red with her own fragrant blood.

“That was silly,” sighed Barnaby, and, troubled but seeing there was no way he could render assistance to the beauty he slouched on, and as fate would have it he found himself facing the front end of a second bus that had been completely hidden from him by the other.

And it killed him. Dead, like she, and bleeding, with broken legs and red hair.

Mere moments later they were both standing before the Pearly Gates and one guard with silver hair eyed them suspiciously.

“You,” he beckoned Petula, “you'd best come in, for we have harps and lyres and fluffy clouds and all manner of girly things for you to play with, like descant recorders and other screechy things, and you'll fit in here nicely, I'm sure.”

“Do I have to?” sighed Petula. “It's not exactly sexy, is it?”

“What about me?” snivelled Barnaby.

The silver-haired guard sniffed.

“You're for the other place,” he growled.

So Pelula entered the Pearly Gates and began an eternity of plying soft music and sitting on fluffy clouds and trying to learn how to play the recorder whilst scowling at the boredom of it all, and Barnaby found himself face to face, in the other place, with an elderly gentleman with a beard and what might, in some cultures, be accounted as kindly eyes.

“What you need more than anything else,” observed the bearded gent, “is a bath and a bit of plastic surgery.”

And that's what he received. A nice hot bath and the knife.

In no time at all he was more presentable than any toff from any city, clean, shaved and smart.

“Now,” said the bearded one, “what is it to be? Harp? Zither? Fluffy clouds...?”

“No thank-you, sir,” mumbled Barnaby. “Though I wouldn't mind half an hour with that lass who got run over on the road back there, just before I was mowed down.”

The Bearded one frowned. “I'll see what I can do,” he murmured, and like a deity wandered off.

He returned in short order and shook his head sadly.

“I wouldn't,” he muttered, “I really wouldn't.”

“Why not?” asked Barnaby, puzzled.

“Well, she's with the harps and clouds, both puffy and stormy according to my mood, and you're here, awaiting your fortune.

“You see, take no notice of how things seem to be, you're in Heaven, really, and she, bless her and her pretty little nose, is in Hell where she's just got to stay for an awful long time because we're not so fond of vanity here in the Afterlife. If I were you I'd nip back down to where you were and try to work out where you went right.”

And he did just that. He found himself, by magic, on the country lane where he'd been killed by the second big red bus, and unable to control the kindness in his heart he rushed to the prettiest girl in his world and, generously and successfully, administered the kiss of life.

And she opened her eyes there in the road with a big red bus roaring away from her, and screamed loud and long and fearfully, and then, despite the pain in her legs smiled and told him yes, she would marry him.

And he blushed bright red, his heart started pounding unnaturally, and gripped by a sudden fear of the unknown he ran off, fast as he could, into the path of a third big red bus being driven by a blind man.