Butchered to make a Roman Holiday
(Byron)
?
I don't know if you're at all
familiar with Florence.? Well, it's got
nothing to do with it, but I thought it was a very good opening.
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Well, there's a housing estate
just outside Welling Garden City. And a brand new housing estate, on which
there dwelled a family: a wife and a husband.?
And the wife was very petite, well-spoken, nicely mannered girl, known
to her associates as Butch.
?
And she had great troubles at
this place because the roads weren't made, and there was a manhole outside her
house in which her husband, when coming home from the fish shop? (and he frequented the OTHER place, Holmes's
place) used to fall in regularly every night.
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And she badgered the county
council to put a lid on this manhole so he wouldn't fall down. But they
wouldn't, so she made one of her own, by cutting up an old boiler, which she
had. And she put this manhole down over this open manhole.
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And of course, I don't know if
you know anything about housing estates, but you can't DO that.? And they said, "You're interfering with
the amenities."?
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The Amenities were the people
living next door.? And they didn't want a
manhole. And they asked this lady, Butch, and her husband to leave.
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And some neighbors were
discussing it, and they said, "Why did nice lady called Butch leave?"
?
And they said, "They made
her leave because she made her own manhole in it."
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"Oh, Butch erred to make her
own manhole lid, eh" which if you say it quickly, it sounds like
"Butchered to make a Roman Holiday."
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I must point out it doesn't sound
VERY much like it now that I come to think of it.
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Denis Norden 580625b
