27 November 2010 (Saturday) - Miss Scarlett Did It !!!

According to the NHS website, gout affects 1% of the male population. Just my luck. My right foot has been swollen up like a balloon for two days now. I really shouldn’t have gone to work today, but I either have a sense of duty or a sense of stupidity.

On the way home I drove past the G.P.’s surgery in case they were open. They weren’t. I tried the pharmacy next door. I asked if they had anything for gout. They asked how I knew I had gout; had I had it before? I explained that I wouldn’t normally self-diagnose, but with the G.P. being closed, the Internet seemed to make me think that gout was my most likely (immediate) problem. The nice lady sold me some ibuprofen to relieve the swelling, and suggested I went back to the Internet to get some ideas about how I might control my gout through changing my diet.

So I went back on line. Guess what causes gout? I nearly cried, but I expect my loyal readership with laugh. Stout !! I’ve spent quite a bit of money on making stout over the last few weeks. I’ve got another five gallons of the stuff brewing for Xmas. And it turns out that I shouldn’t really touch a drop of it.

So if any of my loyal readers should happen to pop in over the festive period, feel free to help me empty out the barrel of stout. It’s a good job ‘er indoors ^TM  likes the stuff. For myself, I’ve visited the brew shop and have some light coloured wheat beer to make up.

Other than cutting out the stout, I wondered if there was anything else I could change about my lifestyle to sort out this gout. I don’t really eat a lot of red meat, and I have poxy salads quite a bit already. I could lose some weight. Well, I could in theory. In practice that is easier said than done. The internet says that celery and cherries and drinking loads of water are supposed to help. The internet however doesn’t say where you can buy cherries in late November. Tesco’s didn’t have any when we went there this afternoon. They had celery, though.  They didn’t have much in the way of canvas shoes, which was a shame.

I slept for much of the remainder of the afternoon, and then whilst Miss Blue got ready I assumed my alter ego of the Reverend Rose. Andy had organised a murder mystery evening, and I’d been looking forward to this for some time.

Once Miss Grey and Colonel Mustard had arrived I drove us all round to Blackwater Manor. The vicar drove, because the vicar wasn’t drinking that night. Because of the tablets he was taking for his gout.

We arrived to be greeted by the butler, who soon disappeared never to been seen again. Professor Plums and Lady Blackwater were in residence, and very soon we were joined by Mr Green, Major Strangely-Brown (he was!), Miss Scarlett and a shifty looking Russian. After a welcoming cocktail, everyone wandered off and the lights went out. There was a scream from “Latrine” (the French maid); the shifty looking Russian was dead. Despite having a lump on the back of his head and stab wounds in the chest, as our investigations proceeded we speculated on the possibilities that the deceased had been variously shot, smothered, hung, garrotted and poisoned. To begin with we were rather hampered in our investigations by the fact that Mr Green seemed to have an unholy fascination with what Major Strangely-Brown had been doing in the lavatory. And then we found that the hallway was filled with feathers. Bird feathers (as opposed to cow feathers!). But with the help of some rather cryptic clues we eventually got past that stage.

Eventually we found the closed circuit TV. In the hour before he was murdered, everyone had had dealings with the shifty looking Russian. He was a nasty piece of work, that shifty looking Russian. He was trying to bribe and blackmail everyone there. Miss Blue was secretly running an escort agency featuring ladies of loose morals and even looser knicker elastic. Colonel Mustard was in the fiddle; selling arms to Chechen rebels. Professor Plums had been guilty of research malpractice. The vicar turned out to be still in the closet. In fact the only one who wasn’t being blackmailed was the environmentalist Mr Green, who wasn’t happy that the shifty looking Russian was going to bulldoze the ducks and stuff.

Eventually we figured out what had happened. As the lights went out Professor Plums had tried to shoot the shifty looking Russian, but had missed. As the shifty looking Russian ran away, Miss Blue smacked him over the head with the candlestick, and he staggered into the kitchen. This was where Miss Scarlett did for him with the glass shards from the broken poison bottle so that he wouldn’t reveal the fact that she was a secret MI6 agent.

A brilliant evening. Great fun, and we had to think too! Andy did wonderfully with the plot. I can’t wait until the next one. But next time I’ll spend the evening sitting down. Because standing up played up my gout….