2.19: The smoke clears

With all the windows and the door thrown open, the smoke finally clears and with it everyone’s heads. The room returns to normal and instead of Juggins, there stands Masongill again looking much more normal. pTravis lets go of Froggie who has been chuntering but seems no longer keen on reckless escape.

And so, Alcock can finally explain things. For reasons that remain a little obscure - in this, Alcock is Paul Temple’s faithful disciple - Froggie has taken to smoking leaves from the Barman’s precious Dhuttura Kanaka plant which is also known as the Devil’s Foot. Under its heady influence, he has come to support, more actively than his normal armchair indolence, the right wing politics symbolised by the folded frog fist on the badge he has been wearing, in plain sight, of the Frogs’ Dictatorship Party.

“Neh, but they’re just a bunch of harmless idiots!” the Barman exclaims.

In his drug-induced enthusiasm, he had resolved to take over the pub, offering free beer and little financial foresight, by undermining the Barman’s standing with the licensing authorities. Late at night when the Devil’s Foot he was smoking took hold he would type his letters in Ver Kwin’s Orn Indlish on the narrow receipt strips of the cash register and send them to the local newspaper. There, Bill had been a little bemused but, as a favour to his colleague, had translated the letters and poems into English and had them published. Only as he began to see the damage that might be done to the Barman did Bill realise that this needed to stop and so attached a Frogs’ Dictatorship Party clip to the sleeping Minkey’s apron. 

“Well,” says the Barman, remarkably - some might say unrealistically - forgiving, “No real harm done. My, my: to think it was all my Dhuttura Kanaka! Let’s all have some pints of strong ale and sleep snugly here now the fire is no longer putting out quite such noxious fumes.”

And so they do.