Gentlemen of
the Jury. M’Lud. My client, Miss Crabbe, the former Triumph
International model, has instructed me to declare that she strenuously denies
the charges of robbery with menaces, and she certainly never would set foot
inside that rat-infested flea-bitten manager’s office at her local branch of
the Caja de Extramadura.
Despite her
having lived virtually next door to it for the last twenty years, she suggests
this was simply a case of mistaken identity because she is rarely drunk before
mid-day and she only ever uses that kind of bad language, or wears fishnet
stockings, during serious pub crawls on public holidays, unlike some other
women she could mention.
The fact is, ladies
and gentlemen, that on the day in question she was auditioning for a job with a
travelling circus that had camped on the edge the pueblo, and whose colourful poster
showing a handsome weight-lifter had intrigued her artistic sensibilities.
She is indeed
a very sensitive and caring person at the best of times but is often tired out and made light-headed
by all the scrubbing and starching and ironing that Spanish housewives of her moral stature and
giving nature are forced to endure by their cruel and cold-hearted and incredibly narcissistic husbands.
In these
days of political and economic and social turmoil, I’m sure all of you will
understand that even a girl with an iron will and a heart of gold must sometimes need a little
relief and even the most saintly are sometimes susceptible to flattery.
Thus it was
that she boldly accepted the angry challenge of the ringmaster’s wife, ( after being
found with him in the haystack behind that fully-bearded lady’s side show, when
he should have been mucking out the elephants’ cage ), and so Miss Crabbe, or
Lulu as she is affectionately known by the local shepherds and goatherds,
fearlessly strode forth into the centre of the lion tamer’s cage where she
performed her well known party trick ( famous throughout the milking parlours of La Vera and the pig
farms of the Dehesa ) and juggled seven flaming tortillas with only two frying
pans whilst wearing her old school uniform and smoking a cigar, as she often does
when the family gather for recriminations.
( Addendum ...
a foresworn affidavit from Senor Francisco Xavier Heironymus Bosh, Circus Master, states that he was only helping her find a lost jewel-encrusted Lalique safety pin which she needs to hold up her red flannel petticoats )
And it is
there that my client asks me to rest her case, only pausing to add that the
photographs which will inevitably prove her cast-iron alibi haven’t been developed yet but
here are the frying pans, still scorched from the act.
.JPG)
-Flight_into_Egypt+before+restoration.jpg)