An attack of the vapours

A black, black weekend.

First, I was served an elevenses of human effluent. Later, I burnt my arm poking the fire with a gin-soaked shirt.

Needless to say, the two are related.

My abode, on ------ Road, Marylebone, is situated a mere 14 feet short of a latitudinal line that runs direct to that seething cesspit of London named Whitechapel, which, as any well-travelled man knows, is replete with a level of depravity otherwise unknown to the Western world.

The sickness of this location literally oozes down the lateral line (51.51, to be precise), forming rivulets in the roadside near my house. These then stream downhill, leading right down under the door of my parlour, forming pools which after some hours will ferment fizzingly and efforvesce into the air stream, wafting deadly putrefaction upwards under the door of my chambers.

Reader, this is not purely my hypothesis - the kernel of its' truth is borne out here. I merely have added my own metaphysical meat to Enfield and Allen's brain-bones.

(There are, incidentally, further moral effects of latitudinal positioning which I have experienced. Once, whilst visiting my sister Agnes in North Kensington, I was taken by an overwhelming surge of piety - I literally felt God's gilded beams purging my flesh of sin. It was some time later that I discovered that the dwellings of my darling sis run parallel to St Paul's Cathedral.)

Given there are such gaseous forms collecting in my chambers as I sleep, is there little wonder that on my awakening I was taken with a fit of what I cautiously describe as "priapic enlightenment". As Jessie the handmaiden brought hither my almond-stuffed kippers and a fresh copy of FHM, I set upon her with a righteous fury befitting Mad Jack McRory himself.

Having given the incident a three-quarterhour of peaceful distance I considered it "old news" enough to tinkle the kitchen for tiffin before indulging myself in a four-page interview with Carmen Electra.

Alas, on removal of the the metal cover on my plate, I discovered that my elevenses took the form of Merde de Jessie, drizzled with a thin urethral liquor. Looking on the bright side, I considered that at least it was warm.

My morning having taken such a distaseful pallour, I took alcoholic solace in the bars of this dissolute city.

By the hour of four in the morning I returned home, a mildewed stoat in one arm, a half-devoured packet of crabs' legs in the other. Lacking below-stairs aid and with an almighty chill upon my soul, I set upon the fireplace to build me a fine old blaze. However, my stars looked disfavourably upon this endeavor and I was scorched accordingly for my troubles.

And so, having rubbed a preparation into my forearm and placed an ad in the The Times for a forgiving servant, I have taken myself to bed.

Damn these vapours!