Hello All,

Bingo here.

Well, just as I foresaw, the diabolical Nobby has been squelching and slithering his way into the picture hereabouts.
Have you seen the Emporium, which he set up on the shameless pretext of providing gainful employment for the Yetis?

Oh, what avails the sceptred race, when credulous Yetis are set up as shopkeepers to rake in the profits (for Nobby!) whilst I, Uncle G's only nephew and rightful heir, must stand by aghast and helpless as the delicate ecology of Swinehurst is laid waste!

Right, the ecology in this God-forgotten place is frightful (and dead hazardous in the swamp)at the best of times, but that's no reason to turn the precincts of our ancestral home into a Persian bazaar! Hawking Yeti-made trinkets and gewgaws to the unsuspecting public at all hours!

Bear with me here, as I have trouble concentrating on this sort of thing, but the time has come for a bit of manly cane-banging and chair-tossing, so please feel free to rattle your sabres and smash your empty bottles.

For starters, all that business about the Yetis going mad and destroying the place when they are unemployed is just so much treacly do-good nonsense, a lot of psychological rubbish meant to excuse their slothful behaviour.
Surely you don't think any amount of Yeti rioting and mayhem would make the slightest bit of difference, as it would go unnoticed in the general scheme of things here at Swinehurst.

Ku and all his lazy lot at the Yeti Trades Council should mind their step or I daresay they'll be sent back to where they came from, which is what happened to the giant squids when they got too full of themselves.

But, as matters stand, the Yetis at the Gazette get away with everything!
Perhaps now you see why the Gazette has become such a rubbishy paper over the years!

If my Great-Grandfather, Col. S.L.A.M. "Gordon" Rohde, were here today he'd throw out those troublemaking, ungrateful, grasping Yeti lithographers neck and crop, but as it is they take advantage of Uncle G right and left.
What, driven mad by idleness, are they? Then why don't they lay off the tea and pass the gin bottles like any decent person in civilized society!
Yes, I know, the Yetis spend half the year in female form, and the transformation from raving beauty to hideous ape is not a pretty picture, but there you are, biology is destiny. It makes no difference to me, as I don't plan to marry a Yeti, and you shouldn't either if you know what's good for you. For one thing, they don't stop to think that six months a year of endless LaCrosse is altogether too tiring for the rest of us. Selfish, I call it.

Meanwhile, amidst all the bleeding heart whingey blubbing about the plight of the Yetis, has anyone spared a thought for the triffids, who are now languishing in the swamp, unnaturally restrained from lashing out at anyone wandering too near their habitat? No.
Yet the triffids were here thousands of years before the ungrateful Yeti hairballs, who have put on airs above their station, and now have the run of the place thanks to Nobby's development schemes.
What will be next? A luxury yurts development? Paved roads?

When the Yetis are reduced to flaccid, toothless weaklings from living indoors and manufacturing gaudy trinkets hours on end and nibbling biscuits (instead of stones), what will become of the social order at Swinehurst, that's what I'd like to know! We may as well have a bonfire of the LaCrosse sticks, and there'll be no one to put it out because the Yeti Fire Brigade will have ceased to be! And who'll do the tapestry cleaning and the washing up for Grogan? Anthropopagi tinkers from Greenland? Or unskilled Viking day-labourers?
The space aliens in the swamp, perhaps? Not bloody likely!

Speaking of Grogan, she was no doubt thrilled when Nobby installed her niece, the lovely Tessa, as manageress of the Emporium (an establishment which was originally my idea, but do I get any credit? I do not, and none of the profits neither).

Mind you, Grogan is sitting up betimes like a spider in her web, hoping her niece Tessa will soon be affianced to the serpent Nobby, nephew of Uncle G's very good (and wealthy) friend Mr.Benny Robinson. Neither of those old parties suspect what Grogan is up to, which means it's all up to me if her treachery is to be exposed and thwarted.

Meanwhile, all Swinehurst has been thrown to the wolves! I said as much to Uncle G and to Dr. Ku (whose imbecilic notions contributed to the Emporium scheme), pointing out that Nobby may now succeed where the Geographic Society failed! I told them it was only a matter of time before hordes of Mainlanders come here, tramping all about with cameras and making maps and poaching in the swamp until the Auks and triffids are hunted to extinction!

I thought it was a most compelling argument indeed,and quite persuasive along lines of Save The Earth and all that business.
But with what result? Uncle G and Ku just shook their heads and laughed. Laughed! Now do you see what I must put up with?

Uncle G said it was no good carrying on in the style of a Mainland politician and pretending I cared about the ecology which, he says, is in no danger at all, having withstood upheavals and assaults unequalled in the annals of natural history and having thus far been protected by the Unseen Hand, and the All-Seeing Eye, and the Ancient of Days, and so on.
That's as may be, said I, but things may take a nasty turn if Nobby's schemes interfere with the natural order of life at Swinehurst.
Then know-all Ku chimed in, saying I didn't care a fig about the Swinehurst or the Yetis before I knew about Nobby's capital investment in their Emporium.

Well, I don't mind telling you I was cut to the quick by such cruel retorts, notwithstanding I am accustomed to being rebuked and scorned! It's a waste of my time talking to those wizened and crabbed old gits!
Suspicion And Disloyalty, that's their motto!

Mind you, five years ago this Christmas, I suggested a manufacturing and retail establishment at Swinehurst. It was to be annexed to the public house I was building at the foot of the Black Cliffs, and it was to be staffed by able bodied pirates, not Yetis.
Of course when they heard of it the spiteful, jealous Yetis went on a rampage to keep up appearances, as they are wont to do.

Now do you see? When the public house was dashed to pieces by a cyclonic storm (not by pirate cannons, as certain crafty insurers would have you believe), did Uncle G come forward with any offer of emergency financial assistance to yours truly?
He did not.

And vengeful Dr. Ku wanted Uncle G to take the balance I owed on the first note out of my annual allowance!! There, have you ever heard of such knavery?
Fortunately for me, Mum intervened, or I would never see a farthing of the money Uncle G pays into my trust account each year.
Were it not for that miserly amount I'd have long since pitched forward, ragged and delirious, into a pile of snow-covered debris on the strand, there to die of thirst, or to be robbed and murdered by Vikings.
Right, if you think £20,000,000.00 a year is enough to get on with, just try living here on such a miserable pittance and unless you're a teetotaller you'll rearrange your views post haste.
Too bad Nobby is not forced to eke out an existence on such meagre funds! He'd have to follow in the footsteps of his uncle, Benny Robinson, a gentleman of Wall St. who came about his fortune the old fashioned way - piracy. As it is, little Nobby is mad with envy of the TipTop Tea fortune I shall inherit, which is why he has pursued my beloved Tessa, just to spite me. He has even bragged to the Wreckmaster, ffinch-ffrench, that Tessa will be very glad to leave Swinehurst and become Mrs. Cecil Robinson!

So there you are. I shall have to resort to desperate measures against Nobby, as my appeal to reason and logic has fallen on deaf ears.
Speaking of which, Beethoven is well on the way to convincing the rest of the gits in the West Wing that Nobby is not only swiping valuable objects from their quarters but is planning to raze that wing, and put up housing for the Yetis in its place, booting all the houseguests out on their bums.

I knew my little talk with Beethoven would set the cat amongst the pigeons!
The game was almost up last night, however, when I accidentally raised a terrible clatter by knocking over his night table (whilst swiping his pencils) , but of course he didn't hear a thing, not even when great clots of plaster crashed down from Bach stamping madly on the floor above.

This morning in the breakfast room there was whispered speculation to the effect that the cause of the midnight disturbance was probably the Yeti workmen, come to get started early on the demolition and to swipe valuable objects while they were at it. Where do you suppose anyone got that idea (haha)?
Nobby passed by in the hall and, as he did, his brilliantined head shot round most unpleasantly in my direction, like a hound sensing a rabbit! (But of course he said nothing, only loured at me from the doorway.)
A LaCrosse ball crashed through one of the windows and Beethoven's face went white with rage, but as he is always in a rage perhaps some of it was the plaster dust from his ceiling, and later he and Bach muttered dark German oaths when Milton Ku reached for the marmalade.
I don't think old Ku took any notice of them, busy as he was gobbling up the toast and chatting with Tessa and Mum about the bloody Emporium, but you never know. He can be very wily at times.

Uncle G was not at breakfast because he rode out quite early with the hounds. I gathered he didn't invite Nobby to join the hunt, the discovery of which interesting fact made my going to breakfast personally rewarding despite a fierce hangover.
I don't know what happened at tea time, as I was in my rooms asleep for the remainder of the day, owing to the sheer exhaustion of rising at an ungodly hour for breakfast, a senseless exertion which I habitually avoid except on Christmas.

Now I must ask you to pass that gin bottle and leave me in peace, as I could use another lie-down before heading off to the West Wing for a midnight chat with Mozart. By the way, how do you suppose he will react when I tell him it has been put about that his Swinehurst Christmas Sonatina has been bumped off the programme to make room for the Yeti Chamber Orchestra playing their traditional holiday song,The Bloody Rampage of Ku Dung Nik (that's their dreadful heathenish version of Father Christmas), at the suggestion of Dr. Ku and Nobby?
Ha! Mozart keeps to himself, but that'll get his goat, I'll wager!

- Bingo