FOR WANT OF A NAIL A SHOE WAS LOST FOR WANT OF A SHOE WE GOT CINDERELLA

I was standing at the window, looking out at the cobble-stoned street. My mind was else where, the woman next door had borrowed it to do a jig-saw puzzle. I began to talk to myself and it came out thus, "I wonder how many women with cats are standing looking out of their window at the cobble-stoned street and saying, I wonder how many woman with cats are standing looking out of their window at the cobble-stoned street and saying.....STOP IT! I yelled to myself, this could go on for ever." I turned away from the window and sat down. Only a chair was there, I would never have attempted it. I was bored, so bored. I looked at the cuckoo clock. it would be eleven minutes, before little Henry popped out and he never stopped to talk, just a quick--CUCKOO and he was gone before I could say, "Henry, bide a while, the kettle is on the boil and I have a packet of custard creams in the pantry."Will Henry and I ever have a serious talk about fiscal responsibility, global warming and the antics of Laurel and Hardy? The chances are slim. It seems the highly complicated expertise of the Swiss clock makers is against us. Damn those Swiss and their attention to detail. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, straight out of the blue, I got a wild hankering for a--lucky bag. I began to sweat and shake. My nerves were on edge. I was going through cold turkey--or cold cuckoo. I wanted a lucky bag and I wanted it--NIGH. But I had no money, not a penny. I spent it all on what the butler saw. Damn that Paul Burrell and his greedy, grasping love of money. I grabbed a crayon and tried to draw a five pound note. It was hopeless, no shop would ever accept a fiver written in green crayon and putting a moustache on the Queen was the work of a mad woman. I frantically searched down behind the sofa.My grasping fingers withdrew two fish suppers, a coal shovel, a very poor copy of the Mona Lisa by Fred Nitts from Cullybaccy and volumes 2 to 12 of, "Now You Too Can Be A Brain Surgeon" by Ronson Gatsby, a resident of Saint Dermot's home for the bewildered and confused in Harley Street. But no money, not a single penny. Where was I going to get money? I wanted a lucky bag and I wanted it--NIGH. Then it hit me, the bath fell through the ceiling and hit me. As I crawled out from under it, I came up with a cunning plan, Tommy would have money. Tommy my cat always had money. He would strut about in his grey flannels jingling money in his trousers pocket and shrilly whistling, "You Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two."
Tommy was in bed, after a late night on the tiles. I crept into Tommy's room on my hands and knees. Tommy's room was-immaculate, everything matched, the pink curtains, the pink duvet and the pink mat that kept Tommy's little toes as hot as toast on cold, winter mornings. Tommy was sleeping with his back to me. His little trousers hung from the bedpost. I rifled through the pockets and found one pound twelve pence, more that enough for a lucky bag. In the other pocket I found a photo of Lynda Byron's and two toffees covered in fluff. I popped them into my mouth and headed for the shop on the corner.
As I skipped back home with the lucky bag clutched in my hot little hand, I came upon a scene straight out of LA Law, The street was choc-a-block with police cars, peelers, with dogs were everywhere, a helicopter flew low over head. Tommy and Sir Hugh Orde stood at the door, Tommy was dressed in a simmet and gesticulating frantically. Could he not have waited until the police went away? When Tommy saw me, he grabbed Sir Hugh Orde by the fork of his police issue trousers (Well, he is very small) and yelled, "There she is, there is the female felon, who crept into my room like a thief in the night and stole mt spondulecks from out of my trouser pockets!" Sir Hugh, happed his baton of my head, got me in a neck hold and yelled, "Right chummy, the games up, there has been a spate of cat burglaries recently and I have good reason to believe that you are the Mister Big behind it!" "I'm not Mister Big," I yelled, "I'm missus wee." It was no good, I might as well have been talking to an English policeman, who was sent to Northern Ireland to clean up the RUC. As I was thrown into the back of a land rover, Steven "Tubby" Nolan went by, eating a haunch of Wilderbeest. The fat one giggled and sang, "They're coming to take you away ha-ha." I waved my shackled hands at Tubby and shrieked, "Damn you Nolan, if I'm going down you're going down with me. I'll tell the police all about the big mars bar caper." Nolan blanched, broke wind and took to his heels crying, "Mummy, it wasn't me, I'm a good boy mummy." I was thrown into a cell containing three of the hardest men in Belfast. Half an hour later, they were begging to be changed to another cell. My flatulence can be flavescent in a confined space. I lay on my bunk, wailing on a mouth organ and singing, "Lord, I feel so doggone blue tonight." Tommy relented and bailed me out four hours later. As we walked home hand in hand, we skipped gaily and sang, "Old friends, sitting eating Irish stew, with a dishevelled kangaroo, old friends, old friends, old friends."
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