THE WEDDING TACKLE

Winkle Wonkle was a simple soul, but Sashy Shingle had definite plans of her own...

The day when Winkle Wonkle went to town was truly memorable in more ways than one.

Tomorrow was to be his wedding day and he'd been advised by the doctor to avail himself of a particular piece of equipment if he and his new bride, Sashy Shingle, didn't plan to start a family straight away.

“Winkle Wonkle, old chap,” said the doctor soothingly, “I would advise you purchase a little rubber device and use it for the first few months, until your dearest Sashy's quite certain she wants to grow large with child.”

Now, Winkle Wonkle had lived a sheltered life. His parents had been the kind who believed that it's best to preserve the innocence of the young for as long as it's possible to preserve anything as corruptible as innocence, and so he had reached the ripe old age of thirty-seven-and-a-bit with no knowledge as to why people got married at all. He assumed it was for love, but nobody had actually gone to the trouble of explaining to him what love might be. As it rhymed with the word “dove” his first thought was that it might have something to do with feathers, a theory that was confirmed by his second consideration, that it rhymed with “above” and feathered birds invariably flew in the sky above.

Now here was his doctor talking about little rubber devices, and he hadn't a clue what they might be and how they related to love and marriage unless they had something to do with the carriage he presumed would whisk himself and his new bride off for their honeymoon in Skegness. After all, didn't love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, and as there was rhyming involved he was pretty sure that he'd got things right.

So he went into town the day before his marriage to Sashy Shingle in search of rubber, and it didn't take him long to sort that one out. He knew about the carriage because of the rhyme, and carriages have wheels and wheels have inner-tubes (at least his bicycle wheels did, and it stood to reason that others would too) and inner-tubes get punctures when you ride over broken bottles or rusty nails and need mending with a cycle repair kit, which incorporates rubber patches and little lengths of rubber tubing for leaking valves. All that rubber! She'd love him for it!

Therefore it was clear as mud to him that he would need a cycle repair kit and so he marched into the bicycle shop to buy one.

“I need a cycle repair kit,” he told the little old lady behind the counter, and she started his own personal ball of confusion rolling by asking him what kind of bicycle repair kit. He hadn't realise that questions of that nature would be involved, and that he'd have to make a choice.

“I'm getting married tomorrow,” he told the little old lady.

“Oh, that is nice!” she chuckled and her eyes made that fascinating half-moon shape cherished by little old ladies when they're feeling benevolent.

“The doctor said I need some rubber so dear little Sashy Shingle, my betrothed, doesn't get fat with child,” he told her, quite candidly, and he expected the half-moon eyes to continue crinkling at him, but instead they became outraged full moons, and the little old lady grabbed hold of a broom handle and started berating him with it, bashing him round the ears until he knew he must be bleeding. In a dire state of confusion he rushed out of the bicycle shop and stood blathering on the pavement. He was good at blathering: his mother had said so when he had blathered and blathered and got out of school on games days, years ago.

“What is it, my good man?” boomed a passing stranger, the sort of man who looked as if he might spend his entire life booming.

But all Winkle Wonkle could do was shake his head, start blathering again and rush off down the High Street as if he was being pursued by a pack of ferocious nanny goats. The passing stranger shrugged his shoulders, and passed on.

Meanwhile Winkle Wonkle arrived outside a chemist's shop. He looked at the board over the shop window. “Shoes the Chemists” it said, most importantly, and it crossed Winkle Wonkle's mind that there was a certain relationship between his doctor and this chemist because this was called Shoes and his doctor was Doctor Horace Wellington, and everyone knows that wellingtons are boots. Shoes and wellingtons: a neat and ever so tidy trio of words.

So he strode into the shop and right up to the young assistant.

“Yes sir?” she asked, fluttering her false eyelashes and examining the finger nails of one hand with pretty young eyes.

“The doctor said...” he began, and remembered the sudden explosion from the little old lady in the bicycle repair shop, and hesitated.

“Yes sir?” she purred, gouging a smear of something green from under one of her nails with the back end of a nail file.

“You see, I'm getting married tomorrow. Rubber. The doctor said I need rubber!” he blurted out, and for some unaccountable reason he blushed.

She noticed the blush. Who wouldn't have? After all, it was a really dark maroon and might have suggested, to the casual onlooker, that the blusher might suffer an unexpected heart-attack at any moment. He didn't, though, which was fortunate, it being the day before he was due to marry she who had been described by just about everyone but himself as the apple of his eye.

“Oh, condoms!” she said, brightly. “How many do you want sir? If you're getting married tomorrow I'd suggest at least a dozen. And do you want them lubricated or flavoured or ribbed?”

Winkle Wonkle was out of his depth. He knew all about mending punctures in tyres, but lubricated? Flavoured? Ribbed? His parents, both in their eighties and dreading the wedding because they were about to lose their one and only innocent son, had a lot to answer for.

“Which do you prefer?” he asked, nervously.

“Me? Oh �" I'm on the pill!” she chirruped, snipping a tiny shard of nail from a little finger with a delicate tool.

That wasn't the answer Winkle Wonkle expected at all. He didn't want to know about the medical problems suffered by the poor assistant and her finger nails, even though the notion that there might be a medicinal solution to punctured tyres intrigued him.

“Then I'll have the first sort,” he blurted out. “Two dozen, please! Did I mention that I'm getting married tomorrow?”

The girl nodded. “Yes, sir �" and she's a very lucky lady,” she breathed as she handed a paper bag to Winkle Wonkle whilst simultaneously demanding what seemed to him to be a huge sum of money.

The next day he and his beloved stood before a preacher man and swore serious oaths about death doing the parting, and afterwards, at the reception (attended by his parents and her Uncle Silas) he handed her the box of condoms.

She looked at him juicily, smiled like the tart she was and made a gorgeous display of lubricated balloons which she festooned around the empty coffin in the corner. He might have come prepared, but she'd come even more prepared with definite needs of her own.

© Peter Rogerson 28.04.10