ON THE ROAD FROM PHILTHY BOTTOMS

A clergyman sees the light, though he's not going to Damascus...

When the Very Reverend Bertie Snotnose stubbed his big toe at the village garden party he swore in a loud and enraged voice because it damned well, bloody well, hurt, and his world started tumbling down around his shoulders as a consequence. His whole life, had he known it, was about to change because of it.

“Did you hear the Reverend?” shouted Mrs Lampwick-Bottlebreath in the kind of voice she usually reserved for anyone under the age of twenty-one if they crossed her path when she didn't want it crossing.

“He's a potty-mouth!” squealed Amelia Pinkerton-Smythe, the only virgin over the age of sixteen left in the village and consequently highly critical of the rest of the human race.

“I'm going to have to have words with the Bishop,” whispered the soberly-featured Horace Bumshore. “The Bishop needs telling, and that's a fact, and he'll do something about it, he surely will, we can't have a reverend using such language, what would our gracious Lord say? And Jesus, eh? What would he say, his illustrious Christian Majesty?”

“I'll send a letter off to The Times!” roared Commander Lancelot Puggles. “It cannot go unremarked! A reverend Gentleman speaking like that and using such foul and filthy language!”

And so it went on, and all because the Reverend Bertie Snotnose had stubbed his toe. Letters did fly hither and thither, the Bishop was acquainted with the foulness of language that had blued the air at the Village Garden Party, the Times (on a no-news day) used the letter from Commander Lancelot Puggles as its lead, the editor being grateful for a quotation from someone who may have been a war hero, but wasn't �" and Amelia Pinkerton-Smythe remained a virgin despite an attempt (by her) at enticing the good Reverend with her body when he looked down in the dumps.

The Bishop duly arrived at the village Vicarage in his chauffeur-driven Bentley, with a copy of The Times tucked under one armpit. His face was beetroot-red (with hints of bluebottle-blue under the eyebrows) and the threat of apoplexy constantly blurring his whisky eyes.

But the Reverend Bertie Snotnose was in no mood for Bishops of any hue because he'd just had a life-changing experience. His toe (the one he'd stubbed) had been broken in the incident and the break had become infected somehow and his whole foot had swollen to at least three times its proper size, and the foetid juices it was creating were already sneaking up his leg in painful spasms. And then, on top of it all, he'd had his conversion, (not the kind of thing that might happen on the road to Damascus but rather on the road from Philthy Bottoms, an adjacent village he'd walked to in order to seek solace in “The Cartwheel and Thermometer”, a dissolute drinking house on its pretty market square.

With his head spinning as a consequence of hard liquor and his leg hurting more than any leg should ever hurt, he'd fallen into a vile and aromatic ditch when he was still half way home, and used a multitude of good old Anglo-Saxon expletives before extricating himself from the mud and grime and animal droppings that formed its slurry.

And it was when he screeched one particularly vulgar word into his Lord's clean good air that he'd realised his big mistake. The Reverend Bertie Snotnose lost his faith, all of it, on the road from Philthy Bottoms, and he knew that he had to die without it.

The local Wise Woman (Edina Noven) who lived in a hovel at the edge of the village, spotted him as he crawled home and kindly attended to his stubbed toe and shook her head sorrowfully as she confirmed the possibility that he would die pretty soon because there was simply too much poison in his system for anyone to survive its toxic tenacity.

So here he was, facing an unwelcome bishop whilst simultaneously trying to cauterise his own foot with a soldering iron, and groaning with almost unbearable pain as green and yellow juices oozed out.

“You!” he snarled at the Bishop, “sod off! I don't want any bishop snooting at me! I've had a revelation on the road from Philthy Bottoms, I have, and now I know that all that God-stuff is a load of old tosh! You can do what you like, but I'm off to see if I can do anything to alleviate Amelia Pinkerton-Smythe's virginity! Religion is a load of old tosh: there you are, I've said it!”

The Bishop sighed. then he shook his head and sighed again. “You know that, I know that and we all know that,” he murmured. “Even the Pope knows that. But it is a living after all, you know! Now be a good lad and pop off to attend to the Pinkerton-Smythe woman's dreadful problem, and when you get back I'll have a nice glass of port and some Stilton for you to enjoy, courtesy of God.”

© Peter Rogerson 24.09.10

Reviews

[Robert Parlange]

Do I detect some religion “issues?” I can relate. I'm currently being shunned by some of my family members because I'm not Catholic enough. Not sure what that means. I can't wait until they read some of the stories I'm planning.

Good story. You have a talent for writing interesting details and narration.

[Peter Rogerson]

In my opinion the various religions that have dominated most societies for several millennia are malevolent, self-serving and I'd go so far as to say evil.

[Robert Parlange]

I agree. I would also say dangerous.