Fooling the Natives.

I’ve had a thought. Why don’t I get my friend Ms Wong (see previous post) to come shopping with me in Ashbourne? Quite a few people in Ashbourne – especially in Sainsbury’s – are familiar with me, and the sight of an oriental flower would give them something to talk about.

‘Oh, look. JJ’s only gone and bought himself one of those Thai brides. (I think I should explain that Ashbourne is a very conservative, almost exclusively white sort of place, whose inhabitants – good, decent people though they undoubtedly are – probably wouldn’t know a Maori from a Mongol. Everybody from east of the Bosporus looks the same to them.) You know what I reckon? I reckon he’s loaded really, and he only drives a Fred Flintoff car because he likes to be thought eccentric.’

‘She’s very chic, isn’t she? Is that the right word?’

‘It is, and that’s what’s fishy. Buying a dusky maiden and then kitting her out to go one better than Audrey Hepburn? You’re not telling me that he hasn’t got a few more pennies in the bank than you or I have.’

‘Do you think he’d fancy being Mayor?’

So then everybody would want to know me and I’d live happily ever after.