Middlethorpe Malady

I'm not sure in which year Middlethorpe and Toddlesworth
were evolved, but I do know where and when. It was the
Friday before the August Bank Holiday at about six in the
evening whilst sitting in a traffic jam in the middle of
rural Gloucestershire.

I'd left the West Midlands about two and a half hours
earlier making a foolhardy attempt to go south on the M5.
The trouble was so were umpteen thousand other motorists,
a significant proportion of which were towing caravans
and assorted temporary accommodation equipment.

I turned off the Motorway thinking "Go East young man".
Now don't ask me how, some hours later, I ended up in
Morton in the Marsh, with a great big Jersey cow giving
me a funny look through the window, and later, much
later, taking a short cut the wrong way along a one way
street in Stow on the Wold because to this day I really
don't know. Suffice it to say that I learned that day
that the only thing worse than being in a traffic jam is
being totally lost and in a traffic jam. The only thing
worse than being totally lost in a traffic jam is being
totally lost in a traffic jam on Bank Holiday Friday. The
name of Middlethorpe in the Mire simply flashed into my
head and has stayed there ever since. I mean no
disrespect to the delightful aforementioned towns which I
have visited since on a number of occasions.

It was that event which spurned the first of the
Middlethorpe chronicles....

THE MIDDLETHORPE MALADY

N

estling within its own unique brand of congenial squalor, deep within
the picturesque surroundings of Toddlesworth in the valley of the river
Pee lies the small town of Middlethorpe in the Mire...Nestling in his
own brand of deep and exhausted post motorway jet-lag as he pulled into
the pub car park we find Cedric Littlepiece, MD. Doctor of medicine,
and amateur adventurer. The latter title being ascribed to the doctor
since he was one of the very few Middlethorpe residents brave, able,
and foolhardy enough to leave the sanctum of the Toddlesworth district
by more than a margin of twenty miles. Beyond a twenty mile radius?
That was bandit country!.

'Twas a weary Doctor who now occupied a bar stool at the
Middlethorpe Wise Owl Tavern

"I've got it?" he exclaimed.

"Well then Doctor cure thyself...as the man with the shakey spear once
said." joked Brian Belcher as he pulled three darts from the board, all
of which had missed double fourteen....(not by a twenty mile
radius...but then, all things are relative. In any case treble three
with the last dart was positively bandit country.)

"I wish I could get it." chipped in Horace Snoad, the opposing
protagonist in the miniature archery contest ruefully acknowledging
that he had now tried seventeen darts at double one with zero
success.

"Just exactly what have you got?" enquired Fred, landlord and Mine Host
of the aforementioned hostelry.

"Anyway" broke in Brian again without waiting for the Doctors reply
"You're not supposed to have it. We're supposed to get it. You tell us
what it is. You then give us something for it, old Cuthbert makes up a
prescription of horrible green, ghastly tasting smelly stuff. and the
mere thought of swallowing a dollop of that's enough to cure all the
ills we never wanted in the first place."

Now Horace Snoad was the local undertaker. Not taking the medicine, to
his thinking, might be good for trade.

"No... not got as in possessed as in a disease or an infection....A
discovery.... a realisation of a malady, a sudden understanding.... a
dawning of comprehension of instictive behavior resulting from
physiological or perhaps sociological pressures."

Nothing made Brian suddenly understand why he was left to get three,
double eight.

Horace didn't have a dawning of comprehension about how to get double
one either.

Now when the learned doctor gets the merest hint of a chance to
postulate on the medical profession he's harder to stop than a charging
bull with no brakes. Everything vaguely beginning, including or ending
in "ology" is somehow included in the dialogue.

Fred, conscious of the tirade of verbosity which was sure to follow if
he questioned the learned medic further, contented himself with
re-filling the doctor's glass and made no attempt at a further
prompt.

This, therefore, could be the end of our story but... for the benefit
of readers, here, faithfully reproduced, is the Doctor's subsequent
letter to his mentor, Sir Hubert Beaconsfield Mobray (no relation to
Melton),Professor of Behavioral Psychology at the University of The
Western Shire Counties....

THE MEDICAL CENTRE
MIDDLETHORPE IN THE MIRE

Dear Sir,

Whilst having no pretensions of being as qualified as your goodself in
the medical profession, I am moved to contact you in the hope that you
will bring your learned knowledge and experience to bear upon a
sinister, virulent and seemingly contagious strain of a nouvelle
disease which I have discovered and have entitled Maladus Automobiliae
or Mad Motorists Disease.

The symptoms of the disease are very obscure and appear to be most
prevalent at approximately five thirty post meridian on any Friday
which starts a weekend which calendar printers and diary publishers
have decreed shall consist of three days instead of the customary two
and for which for some obscure reason the Banking institutions stand
accused of blame.

Upon such occasions it appears that otherwise rational and intelligent
beings inexplicably develop an earnest, insatiable and totally
preoccupying desire to pack every personal possession in christendom
into the kitchen sink, pack said kitchen sink into anything resembling
a caravan, truck or trailer, then hurtle, insofar as the resulting
traffic jams may allow, like lemmings to the cliff, single minded in
their avowed intent, to invade, like the marauding hoards of history,
those erstwhile peaceful corners of our green and pleasant land, that
lie to the south of that mystical line thrust betwixt the Severn and
the Thames and known more colloquially to we southerners as the
M4.

Such madness does not, as one might perhaps expect, affect merely the
upper class echelons of Personnae Brittanica, but appears to cross all
social, class and ethnic barriers. Not all have caravans. This setback
is seemingly overcome by merely adding a set of ancient perambulator
wheels to the aforementioned pre packed kitchen sink and attaching the
resulting assembly by means of chain, tow rope, laddered tights or old
school tie to any vehicle professing to be firing on more than one
cylinder at the outset of the journey.

Second stage symptoms include the creation of many long traffic queues,
normally most noticeable between Worcester and Bristol.

Serious cases appear to experience sickness and nausea, screaming
offspring in the rear, busting for a wee, whining dogs with a similar
problem, over boiled radiators, and much bemoaning of the adjacent
female of the species who is coincidentally fervently searching the map
for an alternative route whilst reciting solemn incantations of "Never
Again!"

This in turn results in all loss of rationale, much anguished thumping
of the steering wheel, manic use of the horn and the use of language
not suitable for broadcasting on the BBC even after the nine o'clock
watershed.

It is true to relate that a dairy herd who were witnessing the above
event, far from exhibiting any signs of mental disorder themselves,
betrayed by facial expressions and forlornness of voice alone a certain
degree of scepticism as to the absolute sanity of the becalmed mobile
participants.

Perhaps you and your learned colleagues would be moved to
comment.

Sincerely yours....etc...etc...

The scene now returns to the bar of the Wise Owl Tavern. Our doctor is
hunched over the bar, an expression half of anger and half of
humiliation over his face.

Fred was about to ask whether he had received a reply from the medical
professors, when, anticipating the question, the doctor thrust a
crumpled piece of paper into Fred's hand.

"Some success then?" questioned Fred

At that moment Horace Snoad's voice called across the bar.

"More bloody success than I've 'ad with double blinkin' one!"

Fred read the letter and smiled inwardly to himself. He thought better
of any comment. So here, for the second time in just a few pages our
story could end. The Author, however, conscious of the fact that
certain readers develop a twitch and nervous disposition if things do
not have a logical conclusion, provides a faithful reproduction of Sir
Huberts reply.

The Department of Behavioral Studies
University of the Western Shire Counties.

Dear Doctor Littlepiece,

Thank you for your recent letter, the subject matter of which was very
absorbing and smelt heavily of petrol fumes.

Your discovery leaves us totally underwhelmed, and, having got over the
initial shock, it is quite apparent that you are most excited about it,
since your unsigned, undated letter arrived without a stamp on it. The
shock thus herebefore referred to was not so much the discovery itself
as the half crown we had to squeeze out of our treasurer in order to
pay the postman.

As regards the discovery itself, I have discussed your research and
findings with my learned colleagues. They were, frankly, gobsmacked.
They didn't actually say so but the sentiment was close. Despite your
profound and innovative theories coupled with "ologies" various, their
conclusions, with which I fully concur, suggest that the encounter with
the herd of cows provides the strongest evidence for the substantiation
of your theory. It is our unanimous belief however, that had you
observed the rear ends of those animals, eventually the answer would
have become apparent.

Yours etcetera