2.11: Finally, a clue!

After a long night trying to get through the backlog of three years of unwashed glasses, the Minkey had fallen into a deep sleep, his head in the sink. But waking this morning he finds a clip attached to his apron holding a piece of typed paper saying: 

‘Minkey, if you want clues, this is one.’

But what is the clue? Is it the paper, the clip with its strange plant-like pattern, or, more abstractly, the act by someone of leaving him a message while he was asleep in the pub. One of the other creatures here must be responsible. 

Quickly he hurries down the hill to the Potting Shed where he finds Alcock finishing a piece of toast and marmalade. (How much marmalade do these fellows get through, he wonders? He himself has spent the last three years eating roots and damp leaves!)

A quick meeting of the ‘4Cs’ is called but even after hard thought, no one knows what to make of this.

Alcock decides to continue with his plan to visit the offices of the local newspaper and rejects offers from both the Minkey and the others to come along too. “Ndànk-ndànk, mooy jàpp golo ci ñaay.”* He says, adding “No offence, Minkey!”

*This might be rendered as ‘Softly, softly, catchee monkey’, a phrase that would be more likely uttered in the 1970s atmosphere of the Swan Hotel - the Barman has been known only slowly to cross the pub to switch off episodes of Mind Your Language on the television, though being around 90 years old may also be a factor - than in the more culturally sensitive Potting Shed, as Alcock himself realises with a little embarrassment. Well, even he was once in the army, a rough and ready fellow who has only slowly found himself.