I suppose that I’m going to have to come clean about the horse and cart then. Yes, it’s true, I have driven a horse and cart for some time now and learnt my trade as a baker’s boy, slowly progressing up the different rounds until I was given a round of my own. Everything was going great guns until my round was extended to cover another baker’s route that he couldn’t cope with; this was my introduction to Linley Lane.
Everything was fine for a couple of months until a young widow by the name of Sue (at number 22) started asking me in for a quick cuppa and a bun. Seeing as it was near the end of my round I couldn’t see the harm in it, but one day she suggested that we watch a film on the daytime telly. Nearing the end of the film I heard a strange noise outside and looking out of the window saw the milkman kick my horse; apparently, according to Sue, he was called Ernie (the milkman, not the horse). Most of the ladies in the road knew him as “The Fastest Milkman in the West” because he had a very unfortunate malady which none of them wished to go into.
Anyway, he wasn’t going to get off lightly after kicking my innocent animal and so I challenged him to fight for Sue’s hand. His first shot was a strawberry flavoured yogurt which knocked my bun out of my hand, but I got him underneath the heart with a rock cake and followed it with a stale pork pie to the head. That was my undoing because it finished Ernie, and the court case was very long and protracted. I was tried for murder but eventually managed to wriggle out of it with a plea of self-defence.
Bakers’ rounds are now a distant memory, as is my previous name before I entered the Witness Protection Programme. Needless to say, I find Redditch a much friendlier place than Teddington ever was.
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