Anyhow, Bobby and Duke have finished now, so we can visit them again. If he was honest, Bobby hadn�t listened to a word of Duke�s rushed explanation, instead focussing on trying to read the newspaper backwards from Duke�s face, so he tried to change tack:
�Oh! They�ve finally caught that darned gnome thief! Excellent, my Nan lost two from around her pond and she has been fretting like nobody�s business.� Said Bobby,
Duke, momentarily caught off guard, sat frozen in spot for a second, shocked by the audacity of Bobby�s topic change. Duke was not an unkind man, and he could sense Bobby�s disinterest, so he followed Bobby�s topic change for his sake,
�Yep, that dastardly devil won�t be Nan bothering again.� Was Duke�s contribution.
�Terrible, really, isn�t it?� Said a relieved Bobby, �These criminal types, it�s not like the gnomes are worth much, but to these old ladies it�s all they�ve got. My Nan, for instance, got missing persons onto the case, that�s how frantic she was.�
�Did she really?� Said Duke, fairly disbelievingly, �What did they say?�
�Well,� Bobby started to get into this, now the conversation was something he could understand, and he settled more comfortably into his seat, �she said her little Bobby had been kidnapped, that was the name of the gnome. Yes it was named after me.� That last bit was said with a tinge of embarrassment in response to a look from Duke, �And she was so distraught all else she could say was that he was wearing a blue coat and that he had been fishing. Now the police, they had no idea she meant a gnome, so they looked in their files for a Bobby living in the local area, and, lo and behold, they found me, grandson of the distraught caller, and so naturally they came looking for me. So, three days ago I was walking down the street, in my blue coat, when a police man come up to me, school photograph in hand and says, �Are you Bobby Steiner?� so I said yes, so he says �Can you come with me please.� Four hours later Nan arrives at the police station to identify Bobby and sees me there. Assumed I�d been drug dealing! Once the policemen had pulled her off of me and removed her handbag so she couldn�t hit me again, she was sat down and the whole tale came out. The police were livid, pretty near threw her out of the station, and I was released with an apology. I�d missed my date by then of course.�
Duke was by now barely able to talk for laughing, and when he spoke it was through a laughter-tear streaked face, �I can�t believe that, did it really happen?�
�Nah,� Said Bobby, �Don�t be silly, I could never get a date. Gnome thing�s true though.�
And thus it continued for much of the evening, the two friends chatting over inconsequentialities. The chatter only stopped for the ordering of more drinks, which turned out to disagree with Bobby for most of the next day.
On the way home (about fifty yards from the pub door, as the crow which strictly follows roads flies) Duke encountered one or two hedges, as he was drunk and still suffering from his leg injury. He was also talked to by at least three gnomes, but he was drunk, so he ignored them.
* * *
The next day Duke found he had a task once he had woken up. He had to find a hangover cure before he lost patience and sawed his head off with his own left elbow. Beating his head against the wall was found to be a failure, as was the sticking of head down toilet and flushing. Some relief was found by listening to loud music, as it drowned out the throbbing, but he had to go to work eventually. It�s going to take him a while to get there, as he isn�t walking entirely in straight lines, so I�ll burble a bit, as is my wont.
The village Duke lives in seems rather an odd place, what with a very traditional pub, hedges and a research institute with a high-powered particle accelerator, but then oddness is a very subjective thing. Our society may find old pubs and accelerators don�t generally mix, but is that really a fault of the villages which contain both, or is it more a problem which society itself has to deal with? I�d suggest the latter, though you are obliged to make your own views. It may help to hear that the place is called Fordford, though it might not.
Duke has now arrived at work so I�ll follow him for a bit. The laboratory has relatively high security, so Duke is rather peeved to find he has left his wallet with his pass-card at home. That isn�t entirely accurate actually; mighty peeved would probably be a better way of putting it. Luckily the card scanner seems to be detachable from the wall, so Duke made his way in, electronics spitting at his back. At his desk Duke finds a few unexpected items, the first of which is a polite latter from maintenance telling him they have changed his desk after finding the old one rather unsafe. The second thing Duke finds is that maintenance have changed his desk. There is also a letter from his supervisor telling Duke that he can see him a fortnight from that day, for half an hour. That�s quite good going for supervision meetings, so Duke doesn�t mind, but his report and indeed all of the data his report was based upon are gone, presumably with his old desk. Quite what word Duke uttered next I didn�t catch, but it contained lots of letters only obtainable by pressing shift on a keyboard followed by most of the numbers on the top row.
Duke now did the only sensible thing given the circumstances and looked for his old desk. It wasn�t, unfortunately, underneath his new desk, nor in any of it�s drawers. Duke travelled to the maintenance department now, to track down the desk. There he found a kindly old man, of the type that has been much on the increase since Pinocchio was first published, with small glasses and a careful nature. This maintenance man, it turned out, had never actually been a carpenter and neither had he even carved little toys, however, so he probably wasn�t about to make a talking puppet. �Hey there,� asked Duke, �have you seen my desk?�
�Oh, yes,� said the maintenance man, looking up, with a contented look on his face, �brand new, isn�t it? Mmm, installed it yesterday, lovely and sturdy, keep you going for years, not like those old ones, fall apart soon as you look at �em.�...