Open Air Business March 2017

PERIWINKLE
FIELDS OF GOLD
Periwinkle and co make it up with neighbour Twistleton-Penge before
suggesting a solution to improve his cash flow
CHUFFER, TUBBY AND yours truly were
hanging about the Glamper’s Retreat one
afternoon, playing some drinking game Tubby
dreamed up and which obliged the loser to
down Pimms Number 1 by the saucepan. Just
when it looked like the paramedics should be
called in, who should pitch up but that old
war horse, Twistleton-Penge himself.
“Look chaps,” he said, after buying a round,
“Why don’t we bury the hatchet? Start over,
eh? I’m tired always being at odds.”
We all signed up to that (Pimms is known
for encouraging conviviality, especially when
consumed by the saucepanful). Everyone
agreed that life was too short, and we all
shook hands.
“The thing is,” said Twistleton-Penge after
a while, “cash flow’s a bit tight right now, and
I could use your consultancy firm to help me
generate some extra ackers. Keep the wife in
Chanel.”
I found it hard to sympathise. It was well
known that were fiscal calamity to decimate
the Twistleton-Penge fortune, the old buffer
would still have been able to change his
Bentley every time the ashtray in the old one
started to overflow. But griping has been a
trait of the Twistletons since Norman times.
“There was a time,” he said wistfully, “when
I used to get my Turkish Delight flown in daily
from Istanbul. Now, a redundant stockbroker
from Plymouth delivers it in a Sainsbury’s van.
I blame Brexit.”
It was indeed true that Chuffer, Tubby
and I had set up a consultancy specifically
to encourage hard-pressed owners of vast
country piles to diversify. ‘Fields of Gold’ it
was called, and at that precise moment we
had not one single client.
Of course, that was before Twistleton-
Penge’s appeal for help caused me to
experience a sudden entrepreneurial
thunderclap and I found myself saying
“Bungee ropes!”
“I beg your pardon, Periwinkle?”
“Bungee ropes,” I said. “They’re all the rage
again I believe.”
“I can’t see members of the Rotary Club
throwing themselves over a bridge and paying
fifty quid for the privilege,” Twistleton-Penge
grumped.
“No, no,” I said. “In my scheme, the punters’
feet never leave the ground!”
“Look,” I said, “The bungee cord is attached
at the waist and anchored to something solid.
We’ll set up some of those sherry casks from
your wine cellar along a hundred yard stretch
of your lawn. On top of each cask we’ll put
some of the junk you’ve had in your attic since
VE day, Twistleton. Folks will think they’re
antiques.”
“Not sure I’m getting this Periwinkle,” said
Chuffer.
I pushed on. “At a given signal, the punter
starts running along the line of barrels,
grabbing prizes as he goes. The further he
goes the more prizes he can get. But - and
here’s the fun of the thing - the bungee rope
makes it more and more difficult to gain
ground as it stretches.”
“Sounds like The Generation Game,” said
Chuffer.
“More like It’s a Knockout,” Tubby said.
“Or the Antiques Roadshow?” Chuffer
again.
“We’ll call it ‘The Knockout Antiques Show,”
I said. Boy, was I on fire!
Twistleton-Penge was as effervescent as
a glass of liver salts at the idea. “Let me see
if I have this straight,” he said, “We charge
punters £50 a pop to run like a cheetah with
its tail on fire to overcome the resistance of a
bungee cord. The harder they run, the better
the prizes they get?”
“That pretty much covers it,” I said.
“Brilliant!” he exclaimed.
Two hours later, the paraphernalia of the
game had been set out on Twistleton-Penge’s
six-acre lawn - 10 barrels at 10 yard intervals.
Each topped with some item of antique brica-brac
from the barn.
On the furthest away barrel sat a small oil
painting of dubious provenance on its own
little easel. The trouble started when Tubby
decided that the worthless daub was in fact
a missing Constable and ended up insisting
on testing the game out in the hope that
Twistleton-Penge had no idea about the
painting’s worth.
Twistleton-Penge fired a starting pistol and
Tubby took off as if he was being pursued
by Auld Nick himself. By dint of superhuman
effort, Tubby bagged the propane gas
cylinder, a Georgian crystal decanter and
glasses, and a pair of Wellington boots that
once belonged to Queen Victoria’s faithful
servant, John Brown. Only the splurge of oil
paint to get.
The painting lay a quarter of an inch
beyond the grasp of Tubby’s fat fingers.
But, as exhaustion brought his legs to a
shuddering halt at the limit of his physical
endurance, Tubby reached out one hand to
grab the painting. Nothing moved in that
half-second as the forces of nature stood in
sublime balance - the bungee rope’s pent-up
energy matching the rapidly diminishing
power of Tubby’s forward motion.
And in that yin-yang equilibrium,
Newtonian physics took over. Chuffer later
said that it was like watching that bit in Star
Trek when the Starship Enterprise is about to
enter hyperspace: one minute it’s there, the
next it flashes into hyperdrive and vanishes
in a blur.
The bungee rope shed its stored-up energy,
rocketing Tubby backwards at warp factor
four, arms windmilling, each of his hard-won
trophies tumbling one by one from his grasp
and smashing to pieces on the lawn. All he
had left to cling to was the propane cylinder.
I suppose we got carried away. All that
Pimms. No one had anticipated the ‘return
journey’; least of all Tubby. Especially the bit
where he, the propane cylinder and the bridge
across the moat round Twistleton-Penge’s
grange collided with sufficient force to blow
them all to kingdom come.
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