By now many members will have heard about the drama-filled events that have engulfed the club this week. Our new corporate HQ behind the portaloo in the Wheatsheaf Car Park has been besieged by the relentless paparazzi of the BBC, CNN, John Craven’s Newsround and the Old Windsor Weekly Bugle.
It is time to set the story straight. Let us begin by stating for the record that Lady Annabel Goldsmith, our esteemed founding member and honorary president, is alive, conscious and slowly returning to her original colour. Members can breathe a sigh of relief that Lady Annabel, the last in a precious line of endangered aristocrats, is still with us and may one day even be ready to breed again. What a dream it would be to have Windsor Great Park once more teeming with shimmering flocks of Goldsmiths. To once again hear their distinctive ‘Mwah mwah’ mating call echo over the lake would be the culmination of everything the Perambulation Club stands for.
That is the good news, but there is tragedy too. Lady Annabel has been indefinitely sectioned and is confined in St Mungo’s Home for the Prematurely Deranged, Sunninghill East. We recognise that solitary confinement is a necessary precaution to protect both others and Lady Annabel herself from the effects of her inhuman merciless outbursts, but the tightened straitjacket seems overly cautious. And the ball gag and electric shock therapy are just gratuitous. (We have been asked to point out by Lady Annabel that her strait jacket is from Bottega Veneta’s ‘insanité’ collection and accessorises perfectly with the Londonderry Diamonds. This encapsulates the Lady Annabel we know and love; even at times of great crisis she is able to concentrate on the issues that matter).
The decision to section Lady Annabel was taken with regret, but we were left with no choice after we were unable to control her appetite for cheap cocktail sausages, which was leading to her rooting through bins hours after her curfew, desperate for scraps of processed pork to munch on. The final straw came yesterday when she was discovered at 4 am by horrified park rangers, lying spreadeagled under a gnarled oak tree, surrounded by Ginster’s wrappers and pie crumbs. As a consequence, our Sumo Wrestlers will go hungry today.
Lady Annabel was admitted to St Mungo’s yesterday and indefinitely suspended from all Perambulation Club activities. In line with club procedure, this was confirmed when Lady Annabel was defriended on Facebook by a man with a beard.
Hopefully this means we have seen the last of her frenzied rampages, careering around the suburbs of South London spitting out chipolatas and shouting PISH! at innocent bystanders. The staff at St Mungo’s assure us they will be able to help Her Ladyship, although she is certainly one of the worst cases they have ever seen.
Lady Annabel was, of course, the driving force behind the club’s popular Early Morning Sumo Perambulation and Tramp Patrol, and it is with great regret that we have to cancel these patrols. The dangers of attacks from zombies, weasels and Richard Hills are too great without the brute strength and street-fighting skills of Lady Annabel to protect our valuable sumo.
The Club wishes Lady Annabel a speedy recovery and hopes she will soon be ready to patrol again, half-eaten pork pie and zombie-seeking missile launcher in hand.
