'Flaxen, have you been eating your winter, root vegetables?'
Fuck. Aunt Hilda is coming to visit. Since losing her husband, 'Harold the Harangued' to terminal halitosis she has made a point to visit me every Cuthberttide. On second thoughts, when does anyone succumb to bad breath? I suspect the yard arrow shaft found sticking through his neck may been a compounding factor, but we will never know. Admittedly his breath did smell rather rancid when we burnt his body seven days later.
Aunt Hilda belongs to the class of matron who has lived secure behind chain mail curtains and has viewed life through chinks in the armour. She judgeth not with words but with gesture, eye and frown. The thought of sitting through one of her monotonous monologues in the Great Hall fills me with great despair. Last year, Henrith did feign death in order to escape the lecture: 'The importance of wearing clean underwear whilst maiming, killing and burning stuff.' She returns to her Garth after a week. Her return to her homeland, by long boat, is inevitably uneventful. Alas, this year Jutish pirates have been espied off Tipton headland, and sadly, I predict that she will be intercepted, captured, but gratefully, not violated. As she is no longer in the full flush of womanhood, I fear the barbarous Jutes will have no further use for her and cast her unto the frigid waters of the North Sea where she will expire, accordingly. Once news of this happy/unhappy event reaches the Great Hall I will solemnly praise and extol her virtues unto the gods.....
The world for aunt Hilda was predictable, circumspect and banal. If only life and death, was really that simple.
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