Man’s world
In which our surprisingly civic-minded Southern man set out to sow the seeds of justice and weed out corruption at a grassroots community meeting.
Our stoic Southern man calmly takes in the drama at a community meeting.
At a recent meeting of the Lyttelton Beautification Society, held in the War Memorial Hall, a discussion arose on the subject of gardening gloves. Since the three main participants were all called Mary, I shall refer to them by their soubriquets, to wit, Mary the Posh, Mary Meditate, and Scary Mary.
Under Any Other Business, Mary the Posh announced that she had placed a bulk order for Chinese-made gardening gloves from an importer of some standing in the community and as a gesture of goodwill to the society she would on-sell them to members at cost.
Amid the murmurs of gratitude Mary Meditate was heard to remark they were probably dog.
Mary the Posh begged her pardon to which Mary Meditate replied it was common knowledge to anyone who paid attention to the internet that cheap Chinese gardening gloves were made of dog skin.
Mary the Posh begged her pardon for a second time. These were not cheap gardening gloves, she insisted, but rather top-of-the-range gloves that happened to be advantageously priced only because of her connections to the importer of some standing in the community.
Scary Mary – renowned for keeping a loaded air pistol on her windowsill for use on dogs that trespass on her garden, alongside a bag of dog biscuits with which to lure them into range – said she didn’t use gardening gloves but was prepared to order 10 pairs as gifts if Mary the Posh could confirm that they were indeed dog skin.
Mary the Posh said that she would pretend not to have heard that comment, though everyone heard her aside to the neighbour to the effect that had Scary Mary made more use of gardening gloves her hands might not be quite such a fright.
Mary Meditate, meanwhile, moved that the gardening glove offer be withdrawn because the society could not allow itself to be associated with canicide, a comment that brought Mary the Posh back to her feet to ask what, in that case, she was supposed to do with 200 pairs of gardening gloves.
Scary Mary said that she and her “person of standing in the community” – and here she winked outrageously at the Honorary Treasurer – should have thought of that in the first place.
Mary Meditate meanwhile expressed the view that all gardening gloves, regardless of their provenance and materials, came between the garden and the gardener, disrupting the positive flow of energy between plant and human being, life forms that had arisen from the same soil and would return to it, and that vibrated to the same cosmic rhythm. The world could only truly be loved through the skin, said Mary Meditate, and the more skin the better.
In response, Mary the Posh asked whether Mary Meditate was suggesting that they should all garden naked, a comment that brought a snort of delighted derision from Scary Mary.
Mary Meditate replied that she would indeed be delighted to garden naked were the law and social custom to permit it, but she added that if some members who were perhaps less restrained with their diet and less diligent with their exercise regimes were to do the same thing it would be difficult for the society to continue to justify its use of the word beautification.
Before anyone could react, the chairperson announced that the Sea Scouts were due in the hall in five minutes and that the chairs had to be stacked away, and declared the meeting closed. ✤