YOUR SEVERED FOOT WOULD LOOK GOOD ON MY COFFEE TABLE
Every now and then, I try to introduce something from the classics to my audiences. Being the philistines that we tend to be, it's the only culture most of us are exposed to.
Without further ado, allow me to present Harry Hutton's Cliff Notes adaptation of Jane Austen's "Bleak House":
A big black car is driving through the snow. A rich fat man sits in the back, smoking a cigar, looking pleased with himself. The car stops at traffic lights, and a scruffy man offers to wash the windscreen. The fat man says, hey, come here. Scruffy approaches.
"I'll give you a million dollars," says the fat man, "for your foot."
"Eh?"
"I'm offering to buy your foot. $1,000,000."
"My foot?"
"It'll look good on my coffee table. Here's my business card. You think about it."
The lights change and the fat man drives off.
Scruffy thinks about it. Much as I enjoy having two feet, he thinks, my life isn't great, and I could really do things with $1,000,000. A second foot, he decides, is a luxury he can no longer afford.
Scruffy goes to the railway track, and lies with one foot across it. As the train approaches he leaps up; he can't bear to go through with it.
He tries to find a doctor willing to amputate a perfectly acceptable foot. None is, because of their professional code. Eventually a friend of Scruffy's removes the foot with a saw, while Scruffy is asleep on tranquillisers. Scruffy goes on crutches to see fat man, clutching a box containing his severed foot. The receptionist is reluctant to let him into the building. She speaks to the fat man on the telephone. "A man is here," she says, "about a foot." The fat man doesn't have time to talk, and the receptionist tells Scruffy to wait. He shows her the foot. "How pefectly foul," she says, and runs gagging to the bathroom. When she emerges she phones security and Scruffy is removed from the premises.
Scruffy waits outside the building. When the fat man emerges, Scruffy hobbles towards him. "I've got that foot you ordered," says Scruffy, showing inside the box.
"I don't want your foot, lunatic," says the fat man, and gets into his car.
Scruffy plots the murder of the fat man. Being England it is hard to get a gun, so he gets a knife, and waits for the fat man the next day. When the fat man emerges from the building, Scruffy tries to stab him, but falls on his arse, since he is on crutches.
The fat man laughs at him, and drives off.
Scruffy lies in the snow, crying.
THE END
Now wasn't that easier than wading through 500 pages of turgid prose? Stay tuned.... In our next episode, we'll reduce Tolstoy's "War and Peace" down to 3 1/2 paragraphs. (Hint: Napoleon still gets his @$$ kicked at Borodino)
