The hour was approaching midnight and L. T. Ponkleton, Lord by the Grace of God and Majesty, sat in the manor of Ponk Plaza, recollecting the events that had lead him to reach for his quill and note down his state of mind.

The catharsis had been overwhelming, but at least it was now over. Like, as he had phrased it only moments earlier, the immediate aftermath of a tornado – “It’s still a bit windy and you realise with some trepidation that you have a lot of tidying up to look forward to”. Upon the tornado’s dramatic exit, L. T. Ponkleton had reached for his telephonic apparatus and without delay dialled the number of the Mottsford estate. He had found that Lord Mottsford was an agreeable aqueduct for biblical floods like the one that rushed through his heart and mind at the time. Pouring his heart out to no one but himself in the shower was a relief, but neither served a greater purpose than just that, nor had a much more positive outcome than leaving him looking like even more of a prune than he already did after an hour or so under the cascade of water. No, Lord Mottsford was a far better substitute. It would later be revealed, however, that Lord Ponkleton would still hold his one-man-show in the shower the following morning. No matter…

“What a heartless barrel of tears is Fortuna, what a callous, cruel and cold-hearted trollop,” Lord Ponkleton thought to himself. “My chi’s all fucked. I need booze,” he continued and for a moment considered ringing his bell to summon a butler who could bring him some, but re-evaluated his need of fire-water and cracked open a fresh packet of cigarettes instead. With admirable grace, he brought a cigarette to his lips, but let it perch there unlit, as he had recently banned all forms of smoking, save that of the narghile, from Ponk Plaza, the balcony not withstanding.

He started writing. “How did it come to this? Where did I go wrong? Why do I insist on being such a hopeless romantic?” He thought aloud, “hopeless”being the keyword of his concluding rhetorical question. As the lines progressed on the parchment before him, so did his chain of thoughts. He pondered the significance of everything the young lady indirectly responsible for the tornado had said and done. (I would say “directly”, but Lord Ponkleton had gone to the girl to proclaim his feelings for her of his own free will, without invitation and in spite of minor dissuasion from Lord Mottsford.) He considered the subtext of every action and phrase, every motion and gesture. And he hated himself for implementing the non-smoking rule to save the atmosphere of his manor at the cost of his soul.

His quill was still dancing across the quire. He was well into his second page now. “In my mind,” he said, “there are plenty of lanes, and the one labelled Memory sucks balls.” I cannot determine whether he was reading his work out to himself, but he said it nonetheless. He then abated his scribbling for a moment, looked up at the ceiling, and then smiled the sort of smile that may only be attributed to either self-confidence or the settling in of denial. His quill was on the move again.

There was not much to write, though. He had received what he had interpreted as mixed signals, and then gone to face the young lady in the hopes that he had been a pessimist when labelling them so. Greater riches of knowledge were to be found in his conversation with Lord Mottsford and somewhere, one might hope, in the depths of his own, troubled psyche.

There had in fact been two communiqués between the two noblemen that evening, as the evening in question had offered two meetings between the two star-crossed not-quite-lovers as well, and the star-crossedness had been the gentlemen’s topic of conversation on both occasions. Here is a brief summary of the evening for those of you who haven’t stopped reading yet, though who have bridged each sentence thus far with the thought: “Well, so what the hell happened in the first place?”

Lord Ponkleton, who had overslept by only a modest four-hour period, had climbed out of bed with his nerves in shambles to prepare for the evening when the only young lady who bears any relevance to this anecdote was to join him for dinner at Ponk Plaza, following a joint excursion to the Museum of Photography. Though he did not engage in Herculean labour to render Ponk Plaza more attractive to the female eye, he did do something. Suffice to say dishes were done. By the maid, that is. Lord Mottsford had made an unannounced, though highly welcomed, stop by Ponk Plaza to boost, as it were, Lord Ponkleton’s ego and to encourage him intellectually and spiritually. The experiment had been successful, and moments later they had parted ways and Lord Ponkleton had made a gentlemanly stop by the flower shop and procured a modest, though insinuating, bouquet for the young lady, to complement the birthday present for her that he had acquired the day before. The flower shop girl, one might add, must have recently suffered an aneurysm, or something of that kind, for despite Lord Ponkleton’s unspoken need to return home with the bouquet and hide it before going to meet the lady, as well as his need for haste, she moved with the grace and speed of an anteater, and showed no sign of being from anywhere near the western hemisphere, or of sound mind for that matter.

Next, he had gone to meet the girl, located her, forgone the opportunity to visit the museum with her, obtained some marzipan treats with her, gone back to Ponk Plaza with her, talked with her, and then followed her to the vacuous urban indentation that was the proximal entrance to the train station. With her. But that was it. She had gone on the train and out of his life, as it were, and with no more than words – though what wonderful, stimulating, invigorating words indeed – and embraces being exchanged between the two. Included among the words, however, had been certain indications of interest that Lord Ponkleton had interpreted as vaguely promising at best, which one had to concede was still a lot better than determined estrangement. And so, he had used his telephonic apparatus to speak to Lord Mottsford and bring him up to date on the proceedings of the recent rendez-vous, if that expression might be permitted to be used in reference to a meeting between people who may or may not in fact have anything even hazily romantic in store for them even in the distant future.

Propelled by testosterone and romantic idealism, the aforementioned indications of interest, and the memory of sparks indeed having flown between the young lady and himself not too long a time before, Lord Ponkleton decided to dash home, pick up one of his plays (that the girl had started to read, but that he had continuously forgot to lend to her so she could finish and subsequently pass judgement on his magnum opus), and then hurry off to take his place beneath her proverbial balcony to give her the play and, hopefully, land a kiss as well.

Things did not go quite as planned, though not as horrifically as could have been the case, and, suffice to say, L. T. Ponkleton now had “a lot of tidying up to look forward to.”

Immediately following his despondent return home, he had established yet another, final, verbal connection with his second in this duel with fate via the telephonic apparatus located in the sitting room of Ponk Plaza, and told him everything, and Lord Mottsford had conveyed his willingness to teach Lord Ponkleton about, as he put it, “the intricacies of bitches.” L. T. Ponkleton had responded with a hungry, “tell me more, Bwana,” and meant it.