Aunt Kabitha loses her marbles.

Well it all began they day she received a letter from City Hall. I heard her screams all the way in the sauna where Watson was washing the candlewax off my nipples. He rushed to her aid leaving me dripping wet and my nipples half-unwaxed. "Nameless faceless bureaucrats", she sobbed "how dare they?" I rolled her a joint of Afghan Gold, brought home from Kabul by Watson's nephew, a national Guard Corporal,lit it and passed it to her hoping to calm her down but she was in full throttle. "Purple is the ONLY colour that shows my bougainvillea to its best advantage" she exclaimed, pulling on the joint and holding her breath until her face went puce. Immediately I grasped the problem. The neighbours had complained to the city about her decision to repaint the ancestral home, roofs, walls and fences Imperial Purple. Not just the fabric of the building. She also had the Rolls resprayed, the pigeons dyed and the pavements outside purpled. Worse still she hired a young rasta graffiti artist to purple the nearby subway station. Aunt Kabitha never did anything by halves. I returned to the sauna leaving her quaffing absinthe with Watson, himself now entirely attired in swathes of purple chiffon. I snoozed off assisted by a large lunch brought in by the housemaid, Roger. When I awoke it was late afternoon and I could hear strange bumps and scratching noises in the house. I grabbed a towel and exited to find hordes of workmen all in purple overalls packing my aunt's treasures into wooden boxes. "Kabouter", she trilled from the top of the stairs. "Pack your things, we are LEAVING!" Then I discovered that the mad avuncular cow really meant it. She stood in her room in full battledress (purple fatigues) .. "I have bought an ISLAND!" she stabbed at a map of the South Pacific with a purple-tipped fingernail, making a hole somewhere west of Tuvalu. Watson moaned softly from under the table. Kabitha kicked him persistently as she rolled up the map."And you are coming with me".... "But, but..." I stammered conscious that my duties at the public library remained an ongoing civic commitment. "But Bugger-all" she announced imperiously, "or I cut you off without a cent." I went upstairs to pack. Well what to take with me? I didn't have much but a few treasures found their way into the old railway trunk. Smurfie's ciggie lighter, Jimf3's used undies (with skidmarks), the towel with which I wiped Afin's fevered brow, Tygyr's left skate, a cigarette butt from Retty, Innuendo's queen CDs, an empty jar of Camper's mother's excellent jelly, Bach's tuning fork, Bonzo's cigarette holder, Llewellyn's poffertjes pan, Pige's VCR remote control, Kosher Express's pocket menorah,Vict0r's poem, ten years of flotsam and jetsam accumulated mostly under my bed and cried over softly some nights when the power went out before CNN lulled me to sleep. I rolled them all up in the carpet that Sean007 gave me the night we laughed at the moon. They fitted easily into a small wooden box the size of Brooklyn. "Kabouter!" shrieked aunt Kabitha from somewhere downstairs, "get here now you silly twisted boy". "The helicopter is leaving in FIVE minutes!" So there we have it. My aunt is resolute. She has been scorned, she has been slighted she has been violated by bureaucracy, she is indominitable. The island is remote. There is no easy access. There is no telephone or internet communication. We are to live on organic vegetables, shellfish, small mammals and goat's milk. (Luckily aunt Kabitha agreed to my suggestion that we employ a throng of nubile young polynesian goatherds....) I bid you all adieu. Who knows when we will again make contact with the outside world. Its been nine years and eight months. I may celebrate the decade with a goatboy and a glass of coconut wine. Be certain that when I do I will be delving into my box of treasures.... But now the helicopter awaits growling impatiently on the lawn like a tiger with haemorrhoids. Its time to go. kabouter