I sat on the verandah on a fine, summer Saturday morning wondering how I was going to spend the evening. The problem involved money. The lack thereof. No other problems, the motorbike was going well and the tank was nearly full, I was eighteen years old, in good health with no communicable diseases. Studly! Wait a minute! Daphne gets paid on a Friday. It's only Saturday, she'll still have some left and I might be able to interest her in splurging the remainder on me.
I rushed to the nearest phone-booth and rang good old dependable Daphne and got her mother.
Oops! “Oh, good morning, would Daphne be there?” I asked in my best modulated tones.
“Is that Dave?” she snarled.
“No, this is Fred from the local bible study class,” I lied.
“I'll get Daphne for you and may I say, it's good to know that she has a nice gentleman friend after that lout.”
A week earlier I had been with Daphne when she spotted her mum coming out of The Larger Ladies Gowne Shoppe and giggled, “Poor old Mum, she's starting to get middle-aged spread. I won't, I'll never get fat. I'm naturally slimmish.”
I looked at my Delightful Dumpling of Desire, and said, “Hmm.”
“Hmm, what?” Daphne asked.
“What that means is you'll be beautiful all your life.” Gawd, I'm smooth.
A digression there but the upshot of this, is a date for this evening with Daph. I bought some of yesterday's cakes from the bakery for her. Me, if I'm gunna consume calories, they're gunna be alcoholic ones. I packed my blanket and rode to our secret meeting place. Daph was waiting and looking quite enticing in a summer frock and hopefully, a bulging purse. Seeing she had just got paid yesterday, I took her to the pub, let her buy me a couple of beers and a bottle of port. We danced to the band until the security bloke told us. "That's enough! Go and get a room"
And then --- “Summertime and the livin' is easy,” I warbled in her ear. “Our hormones are jumpin' and it's time we communed with nature. Daph. Follow me.”
“Oo yes,” she giggled.
I piled her onto the motorbike, gave her a brisk ride to get her adrenalin pumping and into the woods behind the footy field to our own hidden sylvan glade. It was a mid-summer's night, a full moon and warm. A bottle of port and a dimpled Daphne glistening in the moonlight and paradise is here even now, like somebody once said.
I must have dozed off post-tryst because all of a sudden I felt an elbow in the ribs. Daphne's squawking. “Dave, Dave, wake up!” I propped myself up on my elbow, opened an eye and tried to focus on the crowd standing around us. Cross country walkers at this hour? Council rangers? I wondered if it's forbidden or a felony to fornicate furiously in the forest after five o'clock? I looked about trying to get a grip on the situation. I noticed our empty bottle and Daphne clutching her clothes modestly over her glistening dimples.
Something's wrong! “Damn, the course of true love never did run smoothly,” I groaned.
An overdressed old dear glared at me and said. “Aha, we're ill-met by moonlight, knave.”
“Knave? Dave!” I said. “Get it right. I'm Dave!”
A tall imperious looking, old bloke stepped forward from a clutch of oddballs and asked me, “Pray Sir, what perchance, are you doing here?”
Have a guess, you silly old bugger, I thought and asked him, “And who are you?”
“I am - - - Oberon, King of the Fairies!”
“Of course you are!” I told the deranged twit.
“And this is my Queen- Titania.” He said and introduced the still glaring, old dear.
“Titania, ay,” I said. “Do you have a pet nick-name, Love?”
“Lord, what fools these mortals be,” quoth The Big O. “You knavish pair have besmirched our fairy bower.”
“Well your kingship, like Shakespeare said, 'To besmirch in the pursuit of love is divine,'” I told him,
“Shakespeare never said that!”
“Course he did!” I insisted. “Besides, you can resmirch it tomorrow.”
The Big O drew himself up to his full height and in ringing magisterial tones said, “I'm sorry but we're going to have to execute the pair of you. Off with their heads!”
“Quick Daph!” I yelled. “To the bike!”
“And that, Your Honour, is why we were speeding down the highway naked. It was a life and death situation. Our alcoholic level was absolutely immaterial.”
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