How to Get Lords To Leap (Day 10 of 12)

There are those among you who would no doubt approach the Lords-a-Leaping problem with a rather cynical eye.  ‘Where are there some spare Lords that never do anything worthwhile?’ you’d ask.  Well, they’re all down Westminster hanging around the Big House, pretending to be part of the government, swaggering and posing like school boys colonising the bike sheds to smoke Marlboros (the obvious brand choice for the nobility) and sodomising the smaller pupils.  All you have to do is go down there, pour out the lighter from their Zippos and set fire to the floor.  They’ll be leaping around all over the place.

Let me tell you, that will not work.  For a start, smoking is banned in the Parliament Building and general environs.  Secondly, half of homeland security have their semi-automatic weaponry trained on anyone who gets close enough to a Lord to so much as fart in protest in their general direction.  And thirdly, Lords don’t smoke cigarettes; they smoke crack.

I have a more subtle plan.   As I pointed out in the previous episode, I live in rural Northamptonshire, we have neighbours.  Just up the road is Althorp House.  All I have to do, or so I thought, is hop around to Earl Spencer’s place with an empty bowl of sugar, ask for a top up, and get chatting about my noble quest.

So off I go.  I don’t bother going in through the front gates, because that’s way around the other side of the estate and anyway, I have previously noticed that a length of the otherwise unscaleable Great Wall of Althorp that surrounds the property has come down in a Christmas storm (note: this bit is actually true – I drove by it yesterday – so if anyone wants to nip in there for ‘souvenirs’, now is the time).

I knock on the door.  It’s a very big door to a very big house, so it’s not surprising that it takes a while for anyone inside to stop what they are doing and come to answer (you just can’t get the staff these days).  After a minute or two, still nothing.  I bang again and yell, “Oi, Earl-baby!  I know you’re in there.”  Surely they can hear me with those ears (My God, what a family trait!)

Eventually a vaguely royal-looking man comes to the door.  I can’t actually say I recognised him.  The house must be on sub-let, or something.  Anyway, this guy’s wearing a red velvet bath robe and a pair of those fluffy slippers (the cartoon face of Queen Liz on one and Prince Philip on the other), so I know he’s a minor royal of some description.  He’s also carrying a twelve-bore shotgun.

To begin with, I’m not too disturbed.  I’ve lived in rural Northamptonshire a while.  You get used to the land owning aristocracy carrying weaponry.  They don’t usually shoot anything, unless they’re startled or faced with migrants.

“I am an English citizen,” I begin.  I find it’s best to get that established early on with these people.  “And I was wondering if you could help me out.”

“With sugar?” he says, eyeing my empty bowl.

“Well, yes,” I say, “and also no.  I was wondering if you had any knights of the realm, Earls, Viscounts or Barons staying over the holidays.  Actually, anyone who gets up near the ‘Champions League’ end of the Chivalric table will do.  I need ten of them… for a party.  We’re going to play punk music.  I’d like them to Pogo.  We have Asti Spumante, but if they could all bring a bottle, that would be appreciated.  Oh, yes, and straws too.”

At this point, the conversation turned somewhat sour.  The gentleman (I shall maintain my civil address, which is more than I can say for him) turned both barrels my way, and demonstrated his fluency with the ancient Anglo-Saxon language of his forefathers.

I spent the next five or six minutes on a rapid tour of the parklands of Althorp, weaving between trees, squatting behind seasonal bushes, that sort of thing.  All the time, a man in what I have now realised is a red ‘hunting’ dressing gown is pursuing me with a shotgun.  My ordeal only ends when the dangling sash of his outfit catches on a passing bramble.  This spins him around and literally unwraps him from the dressing gown.  Disoriented, he discharges both barrels randomly into a nearby tree, killing a squirrel, then proceeds to trip over his royal slippers.   As he went down, I am able to notice his remaining attire: a black suspender belt and crotchless panties.

Now, isn’t Twitter a wonderful thing!  And iPhones too.  You know what I mean, right?  Suppose, you’re out one day, say, in the supermarket or trespassing on a royal estate, and you see something that thousands and thousands of Tweeters would like to see and, maybe, re-tweet to their friends, lots and lots of their friends.   You get out your phone.  You start filming.  Once the images are captured in your ‘connected’ smart device, you have many options:

1) Upload it, just for the hell of it.  You will become a viral star in the virtual universe.  Fame will last roughly fifteen minutes, just as Warhol predicted (You can try to get an agent and, if you get a good one, go to Australia eating bugs in the jungle, but sooner or later, you’re going to end up in panto with Peter Andre).

2) Sell the footage for money, preferably to the person who is the subject of the footage, since they always have more to lose than, say, the Murdoch Empire has to gain  (the Murdoch Empire has nothing more to gain; it owns everything.)

3) Use it as leverage to fulfil the quest of turning the head of your true love.

Of the three, this third option, I would contend, is the most noble.  The world will never see the footage  (you may have noticed, I’m using the word ‘foot-age’ a lot, just to leave a clue to the long and short of what you are missing), but the tenth day of the quest is ticked off.  Ten Lords do indeed turn up to the party.  They bring their show jumping ponies, rather than dance to punk music (a compromise I struck after we’d wrapped the Lord and his shotgun back into his dressing gown), and we have them jumping over the kids’ miniature goal posts in the back garden while all the other party-goers watch them through the kitchen window.

Two more days to go and we’re building up to a big musical finish.

If you haven’t done so yet, check out the rest of the series…

• The Partridge in the Pear Tree
• The Two Turtle Doves
• The Three French Hens
• The Four ‘Corley’ Birds
• The Five Gold Rings
• The Six Geese-A-Laying
• The Seven Swans-A-Swimming
• The Eight Maids-A-Milking
• The Nine Ladies Dancing