Them Thar Hills

Pure Welsh gold is the world's most valuable precious metal but I learned from the TV this morning that we have - to all intents and purposes - run out of it.

More bad news - as I move smoothly from gold to Golden Shred - marmalade is falling out of favour with our yoof and over four hundred and forty thousand British households stopped buying it last year.

Is nothing sacred? All I can do is note with resignation that the great British breakfast has been in gradual decline since tea replaced the previous staple morning drink of beer some time in the 1700s.

If the profit burglar and I ever make a real go of the business and cash in our chips you are all invited round to my place of a morning where a liveried footman will serve us tea, coffee (or beer) as we help ourselves to eggs, sausages, kippers, kedgeree and devilled kidneys plus toast and marmalade from the groaning sideboard.

That said, there is room in my heart for the International House of Pancakes, and the ginger geezer's greatest creation also had the right idea about the most important meal of the day:

"Filth hounds of Hades!"

Sir Henry Rawlinson surfaced from the blackness, hot and fidgety, fuss, bother and itch, conscious mind coming up too fast for the bends, through pack-ice thrubbing seas, boom-sounders, blow-holes, harsh-croak Blind Pews tip-tap-tocking for escape from his pressing skull.

With a gaseous grunt he rolled away from the needle-cruel light acupuncturing his pickle-onion eyes, and with key-bending will slit-peered at the cold trench Florrie had left on her side of the bed. Tongue like yesterday's fried cod: "Mind over batter? Tongue sandwiches? Bleah! Eat what? But it's been in somebody else's mouth!" Black spot! The Blind Pews were now thrashing with their canes. "God's turban and tutu! Do I need a dare of the hog?"

He reached for the bellrope, yanked savagely to summon the housekeeper, and discovered himself, nighty round his waist, turned tortoise on the rug. Paralysis lasted... scarce a blink but with impotent rage he bellied his unwilling hulk to the wardrobe. Cold comfort, as his palsied hand found the shotgun. Good stock. "Roll over!" One action: commando stuff. "Cock over!" Safety off, both barrels through the ceiling. Stunned shock and then Henry's eruptive bellow "Mrs. E!". The plaster had not setted before the housekeeper stood lurcher-backed at-your-servile-sir in the room.

"Yes?" she said.
"I don't know what I want but I want it now".
"Fried or fried?"
"Now"
"Fried?"
"Fired!"
"With or without, dear?"
"Within. Get out."
"Fried, without...