Time Gentlemen Please

Peg was absolutely furious. 472 years she’d been waiting. Jeff had promised. He’d bloody promised. 472 years. Damn him. Bloody damn him. 472 years and now Time had run out. She would never forgive him. Ever. How bloody dare he?

Jeff was miserable. It had gone so quickly. It had gone too quickly. It seemed to Jeff that one moment he was picking candy floss from his teeth whilst considering the mysteries of the Universe and then . . . Tick tock tick tock ti . . . it had all stopped. Mr Bartholomew had called time. Why today?

‘How could I have known?’ he asked Peg, ‘it all happened so fast . . .’

‘Don’t give me that.’

‘Can we talk about it?’

‘No.’

‘Peg, love, please.’

‘Don’t you Peg love me.’

‘But . . .’

Peg glowered.

‘Have I been too demanding Jeff?'

‘No Peg.’

‘Did I ask too much of you?’

‘No Peg.’

‘472 years Jeff. 472 years I have been waiting for you to fix that bloody gate and now it’s too late. 472 years Jeff. Fourbloodyhundredandsoddidngseventytwoyears. Some would say that I have waited a lifetime. Damn you.’

Jeff felt like a proper Charlie.

‘Peg, if I had known that today was the day . . .’

‘You know that’s not how it works Jeff. There isn’t a book with a person’s end of time date in it. Mr Bartholomew decides and then that’s it.’

Jeff knew this. He was desperately trying to think of something he could say to absolve him from his idleness.

Nothing sprang to mind. He was pretty much done for in the ‘trust and believe’ stakes.

‘Time to go-oh’ called Mr Bartholomew.

‘Sorry Peg.’

And they shuffled off.

No need to explain the moral of this tale . . .