SCHNOOZE

Baskerville Old’s face collapses into the end of the sentence. He’s lost his bloody beard snood again.

- Bugger, blast and damnation!

Now he’ll have scraps of scone in his whiskers, and Mrs Baskerville Old will have a pretext to nag, and Baskerville hates shrewish fishwife carry on more than he dares admit to, even at the coffee shop, when the misandrists have sloped off to hone their cure for cholera, or whatever it is they do in their kitchens in the late afternoons, after they have packed the children off to Ceylon with a lump of coal and a cheese ration.

Baskerville’s views like those of most of his companions are fixed, strong and wildly inaccurate.

Mrs Lillian Florence Martha Old does regularly imbibe. Indeed, her homemade prophylactic of laudanum, camphor, red pepper, opium, rhubarb, peppermint and cayenne tincture is infamous. And while it is certainly true that neither she nor any of her sisterly visitors has ever fallen prey to the cholera, it seems apparent to all except Baskerville that Mrs O’s celebrated kitchen remedy is to be commended on several grounds - not least of which is its power to loosen the bowels of even the most retentive of gentleman at the coffee shop.

So it is that Mrs O stumbles into the wild notion of a minor experiment upon her hapless hubby. Baskerville, or Basketful, as she is wont to call him, and his wayward temperament is too choleric by far! What is needed is a good dose of sanguinity administered by way of a cocktail of potions concocted to prevent pusillanimity and bolster resilience. 

After many hours of toil in her kitchen-laboratory, which goes completely unpaid and unnoted as per the norm, she combines two previous compounds into a new synthesis that she is sure won't kill him at least.  It is best ingested through the snozzle - hence, the absent beard snood. 

One sniff of the said synthetic substance and her spouse is supposed to slide away from the snide sneaks and sneering snitches that patronise the coffee shop to embrace a cheerier outlook towards all and sundry - and especially her.

On a cautionary note, when mixed with liquor, Mrs Old’s notorious compound is said to be incendiary. However, this point of detail is lost in the small print of the face-paced voice over in her head.

So it is that, on his return from the coffee shop, Baskerville stumbles upon his beard snood in the parlour, next to his chaise longue, on the occasional table among his snuff box, opium pipe and pedicure tank filled with minute, toothless Garra Rufa fish. As the aquatic creatures tend to his feet, and the papaverine, codeine and morphine nibbles at his nervous system, Baskerville, to celebrate the recovery of his favourite beard snood, has a hankering to sink a nifter of porter, something he very rarely does.

He rises, ambles over to the mantelpiece and peeks inside the Toby jug. It isn't particularly clean, but since it smells only of porter, Baskerville chances his arm. He fills it up to the frothy brim with fine mild London porter, fetches his beard snood and places it over his head. It has the comforting smell of a snug old friend. 

First, he sniffs his snuff. Then, he snuggles in his snood. At last, Baskerville Old snorts on his porter, and

...BOOM!

Suddenly, like a Barrett Estate on a flood plain, green and yellow bile spills across the parlour floor, sloshes back against the wall, submerging Mr Old in a sea of his own making.

With a little help from her indoors, of course. Sometimes experiments go awry; sometimes they can proceed favourably.

Lillian has decided to leave the cleaning today.