Written by Sandshoe

“Y’ can’t be serious.”

“No.”

“What. ‘No’ it’s not possible or y’ don’t believe anything I ever say?”

“Yes.”

“How do you mean ‘Yes’?”

“100%”

“Where’s Big M?”

Hoo and Shoe are painting and papering the old House of Pain. There’s a jingle playing in a background sound track. Remember the jingle? Many hours of fun and laughter are spent at Glenda’s after? Everyone whistled it?

Big M puts his head in. He appears to be hiding the rest of what there is of a whole person behind the wall adjacent to the entrance door.

Shoe pronounces “Window Dresser’s Arms, Pig and Whistle” with relish.

“It’s a good trading name that is,” says HOO. HOO slaps his thighs, getting dust off his cover-all, well, his thighs. The Nail Salon’s gowns are none too commodious. Both of their bums (Shoe’s and HOO’s too) stick clear out the back from under the neat cloth ties that guarantee their frontal modesty. Shoe and HOO are saving their real clothes for a real job.

“The Boss wants us all to work harder.”

“Big, that’s ‘Job Description’.”

“Those gowns look better than the one I’ve got on. Not that I am ungrateful. It’s a saving.”

Shoe guesses the distance. She reaches over and throws Big M a gown pulled down earlier from the clothes stand beside Glenda’s wash troughs.

“Ta. I’ll call Big Al.”

“Who, Shoe? Who is he going to phone?”

“Who, HOO?”

We are down to the barest bones of our truth. We are to arrange a meeting of all the characters and plan a revival of business.

Thus Aristotle’s soul, of old that was,
May now be damned to animate an ass,
Or in this very house, for ought we know,
Is doing painful penance in some beau;
And thus our audience, which did once resort
To shining theatres to see our sport,
Now find us tossed into a tennis-court.

William Congreve: Love is Love (1695)