Me: Middle-aged rodent with impeccable table manners and a fastidious attention to hospital corners is searching for a love to call his own. Enjoys a nice cravat, fine wine, and travel on only the most luxurious steamers. Prone to fits of intrigue and plots of danger

You: A young to mid-aged rodent lady, keen on short hops down the lane, veg tops (esp. beet, carrot, and radish), and have a special affinity for Chopin. Body size, color, and ear length is no concern, but a good dewlap just can’t be denied.

Would you like to share a life together? There are EVER so many things for us to experience. Namely, snuggling.

*B for bunny

I received a telegram to-day from Henrietta Penniweggs that I was QUITE overdue for the next installment of my tale of Old Siam. So true, so true. Let us re-enter that shadowy world of spice and ancient doings?

H. Penniweggs cannot be denied...

Let’s see, where was I? Oh yes! The moment I arrived at the port of Old Siam, most unsettled by a bad cask of wine and a devilish case of malaria from the foul insects that buzzed about, I ran SMACK into – who else? – Jerry Wombat. He had received a cable from that dastardly curr, Finch, that I had been sacked and trundled off for my role in accounts and ledgers with J. Theramungo. “But Jerry!” I exclaimed, “I’ve no doings with Theramungo since the Great War! However could Finch hold such a grudge against a fellow for such water passed?”

Jerry, stalwart and distractable sort he is, suggested we drown our sorrows in a pint of noodles before making our way to the steamer set back home. A fine fellow, but a little prone to bloat (on account of fried things – noodles and otherwise), so I ambled beside him.

We saw MANY things in our locomotion of Old Siam! The Siamese are a lovely and particular sort. For example, did you know that screaming is their preferred method of communication? Or that cross-eyes are QUITE the norm in Old Siam? Though I saw many things in the trenches of French those many years ago, I never quite experienced the otherness of travel until I found myself trying to keep up with a portly wombat in Old Siam.

UNCLE ROGER

As we weaved and dodged the funny little screaming Siamese, who should we encounter but my dear departed mum’s second cousin, Uncle Jerry. Jerry’s a bit of the black sheep in the family, you see, as he ran off with a Siamese lass of ill-repute nearly 40 years back – leaving a wife and 400 children behind to pick up his pieces. A right scoundrel, if you ask me, which you did. I made nice-nice with the gent, because that is what a true gentleman does, but I high-tailed it out of there post haste!

After tucking into four plates of noodles, Jerry decided that it was QUITE necessary that we visit a place of God. They do not have churches in Old Siam, but they DO have little huts with a golden man to worship. If you ask me, a sleepy chap like that isn’t up to the task of creation and it’s proper upkeep.

That is just this fellow’s most humble opine. What do you think?

He had gentle, albeit cold, hands.

Oh dear! There is EVER so much smoke coming from my stove just now! I do fear the shortbread, baking in time for the arrival of the most dear Hibiscus T. Porridge, is getting rather singed. More on Old Siam in due time…

Dear Friends: Have you ever had a dream?

No, no, not a night-time dream of fancy or glee. A fond wish to see something or somewhere unusual and fantastical? Well, I have! And that place is the MOON. When I was just a lad of 8 or 9, my dear old mummy took me to see a simply marvelous picture called Le voyage dans la lune* at the local theatre. My words, did I EVER enjoy that picture! My favorite portion, you see was that of the MOON. Ever since seeing that stirring film, it has been a life-long desire to picnic with a good friend upon the surface of that pocky surface, even… dare I say?… nibble on it’s crusty/cheesy surface.

I would spend hours as a lad gazing up at the MOON, sometimes wasting many hours which SHOULD have been devoted to studying Latin drawing her rounded edges on my slate. Quite the red knuckles and bottoms had I after the nuns caught on to that little diversion, I tell you! But time takes a young man’s fancy and turns it into so much dust in the wind, or so they say, and the dream of one day picnicking on La LUNE’s surface evaporated from my frontbrain as I matured through a difficult adolescence.

Then, when I was about 23 years of age, laying in a ditch one night in Belgium under a cloud of mustard gas**, I looked up at that beautiful globe above me and knew in my bones that I’d make it there one day. Many bayonetings and quite a few misunderstandings with the authorities about “just who exactly owned the villa,” I’ve come to fulfill my dream. This time next week, your fair friend GB will dine with his good-friend (and maybe more!), Ms. Hibiscus T. Porridge… on the MOON!

* This is French for “Fantastical Picnics Upon the Moon”

** What they do not tell you is that mustard gas is NOT a delicious, airbourne treat. It is quite foul, and causes gangrene of the testes – something of which *I* never recovered from!

As I was so RUDELY reminded by that ponce, Pliny, collection of my memoirs are quite behind as of late. Yes, yes, I know I could blame the woeful heartbreak caused by… I cannot even bear to repeat her name! No, it is truly a lazy gentleman that allows his memoirs suffer due to an affair of the heart. Sigh.

‘Ahem.’ Where was I?

Hibiscus, my first love!

Oh yes, memoirs. But this latest heartbreak has left me morose, and harking back to a younger, more carefree day when love was still fresh, new, and cupid had not overshot his aim. Friends, I shall tell you the tale of my First and True Love. It was with, you see, a lady of most delicate taste and nature, Ms. Hibiscus T. Porridge.

Shocked, are you? Do not be! While we have a most understanding and mature friendship these days, Ms. Porridge and I go way back – almost 85 years, to be perfectly frank!

When I was a younger man, I briefly attended a university by the name of St. Olaf’s. While I may be a man of learning, I most certainly am not designed for such a staid and ASININE organization. Did you know that they actively dissuade a gentleman from consuming his own faeces? Travesties! In any event, I was walking across the most lovely campus greens, lost in thought over some quadratic equation or another, when I most rudely ran SMACK into a hurried young lady. It was Hibiscus, late again to Looming 201 (she is QUITE the loom’s mistress!), and in the kerfuffle we managed to mix up our handkerchiefs. After a bit of hunting ’round the sorority houses that evening, I found Hibiscus reading Woodsworth in the dusky summer twilight on a porch swing. Words cannot describe the turnings over of my heart at the sight of her in her pastel dress, but suffice to say that I was most smitten.

How can one describe the three perfect months we spent together? I could not summarize our morning walks between classes, the picnics by the river, or the midnight swims we took in Lake Tomato. It was beneath a tree at the side of Lake Tomato that I held her hand tenderly in mine and gave her the most gentle of kisses. What?! A gentleman does not normally kiss and tell, but these are Memoirs!

I cannot say why we ended our summer affaire, but perhaps it was over the objections of her father – a most upstanding local pastor – that she was far too young, and I of far lesser status, to consider marriage. And it was true then, I was a rank lower-class gent, and she a proper lady. Years later, surrounded by the acquisitions of a lifetime of trying to attain standing and status, I yearn to know how different my quiet life of solitude would be if I were born in her circle, or she in mine.