The Unlikely Adventures of Ranulf the Unready

Broad Moor Lands Manor, Northumberland, England, June 1914.

Spring in England can be unsettling. Those first wispy, ephemeral sunbeams to break through the gloom-laden slosh may well turn the most mundane Englishman’s mind to attempt elegiac poetry: the most Spartan Briton’s mind to Schillerlocken or Buttercremetorte with fresh, warm cream; and the most prosaic Brit to thoughts of eloping to the Grecian Isles with the Vicar’s wife.

And I was no exception as I had entertained all of these recently myself.

Nor was I alone. In Suffolk a man invented a bicycle which his dog could peddle. (Rover needed the exercise). A man in Downs divorced his wife for casting a hex on the favorite at Epson. (The Favorite, Royal Victoria at 2½ to 1 lost by three lengths and the judge awarded the divorce decree without demur.) In Yorkshire a man bit his dentist to prove that his new dental plate slipped. (The finger was hardly bruised.)

And subsequently this nefarious miasma spread throughout the Island even involving the prodigiously stuffy London Times as the morning headlines proclaimed:

“New York Stock Exchange and Milady’s hemlines rise to alarming heights.”

“Marshal Foch gains eight pounds on reducing diet.”

“The Prince of Wales falls off an Elephant. Ghandi laughs...”

Whether these two later items were related I never discovered as at that moment I realized I was being addressed and a reply expected.

Being quite unaware of the subject discussed I fell back on a gamut which had proven unfailingly successful with the sweeter sex.

“Quite right, Dear. Charming thought. Can’t think why I never thought of it myself.” I said.

“You agree then, Ranulf?”

My mother’s silky tone and the amused glance from across the huge steaming platter of kippers and scrambled, bangers and mash, set off my alarm.

I objected to what I suspected the subject was. “Except I quite fail to see, actually I feel it now my right, to go wherever I please on this my second grand tour. Did I not go everywhere and do everything you and Father expected of me the first time? Exposing my boyish charm and flawless husk to every scraggly-toothed, royal spinster in all MittelEurope as required.”

And it was a tremendous bore, I added to myself.