The Klugenhoffs
by Brian Morrison
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: A couple of strong ones.
Description: Bertha Klugenhoff's bubble of wonderment is just about to be burst. (An excerpt from the comedy novel, Blister.)
_____________________________________________________________________
Bertha Klugenhoff was a large boned woman, with an equally large frame to carry the bones. She had the shoulders that a heavyweight boxer would have been proud of. Her hair was the colour of slush on a grey winter’s morning. Her eyes were like piss-holes in the same slush. Bertha wore her hair up in a bun; a hairstyle that had been perfected over many years. The bun had been so tightly wrapped that its centre almost had the properties of a black hole. Everything was pulled towards it. Nothing - not even light - escaped. Passing flying insects would be pulled in by the bun’s irresistible effect on gravity.
Today was going to be a special day for Bertha, but she had no idea why. Her husband, Otto, had been cruelly teasing her for weeks. She knew that an Easter Saturday luncheon had been booked at one of Broxley’s finest eating establishments. She was aware that a surprise awaited her, but Otto had been playing his cards very close to his chest. Her birthday had come and gone and their wedding anniversary was not due until August.
Perhaps her husband was going to surprise her with a gift of airline tickets back to the Fatherland. She missed Germany. She missed the magic of the Rhine and the Neckar valley where she had spent her formative years. It seemed so far away now. Broxley held no comparison to her home town of Mingeshafen. Bertha hadn’t seen her daughter in over eight months. She had a feeling deep in her large bones that that was about to change. Ich haben Ihr so viel verpasst - I have missed her so much, she thought as the stretch limo that Otto had hired, along with a chauffeur, swung into Broxley’s main street. The surprise had been kept secret until the last possible moment. Bertha was instructed to keep the whole of Saturday free as there was a special event about to happen. The excitement was beginning to rise now and her pulse rate had increased by quite a degree.
Otto Klugenhoff charged his wife’s glass with a fresh measure of champagne from the fridge in the rear of the limo. The pressures of running the giant nuclear site were - for today, anyway - removed from his mind. The power plant had been behaving remarkably well in recent months. All production targets had been met and everything looked shipshape and almost German-like. There were one or two staffing issues that he had a mind to address when the Easter weekend was over – one being the position of the young Welsh idiot, Tudor Reece. Otto knew that this man was at the bottom rung of the ladder as far as his career was concerned. There was no further demotion available other than showing him the door.
He visibly cringed when his thoughts turned to Tudor. There was the toilet incident with the Japanese visitors - then there was the day when Tudor brought his pet frog to work.
“What do you think this is?” screamed his supervisor. “Fucking show-and-tell day?”
The logic behind Tudor bringing his pet frog to work stemmed from the fact that practical jokes were continually being played on him by others. His lunch box had been nailed to the table; he had been sent two hundred and sixty feet up the side of one of the station’s cooling towers to collect a bucket of steam to supplement the turbine’s steam supply. He had fallen for that ruse twice.
Tudor’s intention was to drop his frog into one of his co-worker’s lunch boxes, but the plan failed miserably when the frog escaped. It was eventually discovered merrily swimming around in the station’s cooling pond, where the irradiated fuel is stored prior to being shipped off site. The little frog’s life span was drastically reduced. The Animal Protection Agency loved it. They had already been at odds with the power station over other animal issues involving grazing cattle and sheep in the fields around the site’s perimeter. When the story hit the headlines, Herr Klugenhoff was under immense pressure not to sack the young Welshman. Tudor’s deceased pet was given an inglorious send off. Packed up in yellow polythene and labelled ‘Low Active waste’, it was despatched to a concrete bunker within the bowels of the power station.
Herr Klugenhoff reckoned that enough time had passed between that particular incident and the present day, to allow him to offload the Welsh idiot without attracting too much attention. The wheels would be put in motion on Monday when he returned to his office at the power station.
Bertha was beside herself. She was so looking forward to seeing Heidi. She hoped that her daughter was well and that she had enjoyed her trip over to England. They were only a couple of hundred yards from the restaurant now. A small crowd of around a hundred people had gathered around the town square off to her right. Bertha noticed that the local press were in evidence, too. Something else caught her eye, as she looked out of the limo’s smoked glass windows.
A large bulky green erection had suddenly appeared overnight. This seemed to be the main focus of the crowd’s attention. Bertha’s heart sank as the chauffeur rolled the limo up next to a red carpet and brought the vehicle to a standstill. All eyes were now redirected towards the Klugenhoffs.
Bertha knew then that she had been wrong in her assumption. Her daughter, Heidi, was still in Germany. There would be no air trip either.
The limousine’s door was opened by a wizened faced chauffeur who looked to be at least eighty years old if he was a day.
“Step this way Frau Klugenhoff,” the old man said, as he struggled with the weight of the car door. Bertha was greeted by her husband, who had left via the opposite door and was standing on the red carpet with his hand extended. Applause was heard all around – applause, music, cheering and something else. The blare of the brass ensemble was overpowering most of the other sounds around the square, but Bertha was sure that she heard a booing noise coming from somewhere.
Otto Klugenhoff administered the customary ‘tap’ to the public address microphone that had been sited in the centre of the purpose-built podium. A howl of feedback and a noise similar to the sound of a jackhammer bounced off the walls around the square.
“Oops,” said Otto, his voice booming and accompanied by even more feedback. “Guten Tag everyone,” he said cheerfully. “Zank you all for bekommen heir today, und zank you all for your support. We at Wortherley Power Station are proud to adopt Rupert the monster as our official mascot. After all,” he said, raising a hand to the side of his mouth as if imparting a long lost secret, “we have been keeping him comfortable for years by pumping warm water into the lake.”
Otto’s little joke was greeted with a few giggles, but more worrying – the booing had returned.
“Blah, blah, blah,” said Derek to Marjorie. “Have you ever heard anything so pathetic in all your life? He is just jumping on the ‘Rupert bandwagon’. Anything to improve his profile, and the profile of that damned power station.”
Tudor Reece arrived just in time to hear some more derision aimed at his boss on the podium.
“My wife and I were so pleased to have been invited to officially unveil this statue today.” said Otto.
It would have been nice to have been told, thought Bertha Klugenhoff.
“You are poisoning our lake!”
It was a voice from somewhere in the middle of the crowd.
“Go back to Germany. We don’t want you here,” said another voice. The booing grew like a Mexican wave. Voices cried out from all parts of the assembly – all howling derision at the Germans. Bertha’s cheeks flushed red. She wished that the earth could just swallow her up. She whispered a few words in Otto’s ear. There were no prizes for guessing what her message would translate to.
Just finish this and let’s get to fuck!
Otto smiled nervously, and then continued. His prepared speech was stuffed into his jacket pocket as he began to take his wife’s advice.
“Finally I would just like to . . .”
A cry rang out, “What do we want?”
“No Nuclear,” was the chant from all corners.
“When do we want it?”
“Now!” they shouted.
The antinuclear protestors settled into a steady chant, getting louder by the second.
“What do we want?”
“No Nuclear.”
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
Banners and placards suddenly appeared from nowhere. Otto Klugenhoff stared in disbelief as the protest gathered pace. He began to read the messages being waved around before his eyes.
‘YOU ARE POISONING THE BIRDS’ . . . The Broxley Twitchers.
‘DOWN WITH NUCLEAR POWER’ . . . The Noise Abatement Society.
‘DOWN WITH UNCLEAR POWER’ . . . The Broxley Dyslexic Association.
The drone of a light aircraft momentarily shifted the assembled crowd’s attention as it passed low overhead. A loud cheer rang out when it became clear that the plane was towing a long sheet of cloth with the message, WE WANT TO BE NUCLEAR FREE.
“What on earth is going on?” asked Marjorie. “This must have taken quite a bit of organising. Do you hear me, Derek?”
Derek was too busy to listen to his wife. He was unfurling what looked to be a white bed sheet. “Hold this,” he said to Tudor Reece. The young Welshman accepted one end of the cloth. “Now - hoist it up as high as you can reach.”
Otto Klugenhoff had seen and heard enough. He turned to his wife, “Cut the tape. Cut the damned tape.”
Bertha was more than happy to oblige. She lifted a pair of scissors from the rostrum and unceremoniously hacked through the restraining ribbon that held, through a series of pulleys and chain blocks, the tarpaulin over the statue. The green tarpaulin fell to the blast of a trumpet - a blast that withered away to an out-of-tune whimper when the statue of Rupert was unveiled at last.
The monster was, as expected, Nessie-like, with a scale covered body, three humps and small legs like an alligator. There were gasps from the crowd though, when they saw that Rupert had a large placard hanging around his neck. Someone from the Council, an antinuclear protestor, had carried out some ‘extra’ work under the giant tarpaulin. The message around Rupert’s neck read:
PLEASE HELP ME . . . I AM BEING POISONED.
Swearwords: A couple of strong ones.
Description: Bertha Klugenhoff's bubble of wonderment is just about to be burst. (An excerpt from the comedy novel, Blister.)
_____________________________________________________________________
Bertha Klugenhoff was a large boned woman, with an equally large frame to carry the bones. She had the shoulders that a heavyweight boxer would have been proud of. Her hair was the colour of slush on a grey winter’s morning. Her eyes were like piss-holes in the same slush. Bertha wore her hair up in a bun; a hairstyle that had been perfected over many years. The bun had been so tightly wrapped that its centre almost had the properties of a black hole. Everything was pulled towards it. Nothing - not even light - escaped. Passing flying insects would be pulled in by the bun’s irresistible effect on gravity.
Today was going to be a special day for Bertha, but she had no idea why. Her husband, Otto, had been cruelly teasing her for weeks. She knew that an Easter Saturday luncheon had been booked at one of Broxley’s finest eating establishments. She was aware that a surprise awaited her, but Otto had been playing his cards very close to his chest. Her birthday had come and gone and their wedding anniversary was not due until August.
Perhaps her husband was going to surprise her with a gift of airline tickets back to the Fatherland. She missed Germany. She missed the magic of the Rhine and the Neckar valley where she had spent her formative years. It seemed so far away now. Broxley held no comparison to her home town of Mingeshafen. Bertha hadn’t seen her daughter in over eight months. She had a feeling deep in her large bones that that was about to change. Ich haben Ihr so viel verpasst - I have missed her so much, she thought as the stretch limo that Otto had hired, along with a chauffeur, swung into Broxley’s main street. The surprise had been kept secret until the last possible moment. Bertha was instructed to keep the whole of Saturday free as there was a special event about to happen. The excitement was beginning to rise now and her pulse rate had increased by quite a degree.
Otto Klugenhoff charged his wife’s glass with a fresh measure of champagne from the fridge in the rear of the limo. The pressures of running the giant nuclear site were - for today, anyway - removed from his mind. The power plant had been behaving remarkably well in recent months. All production targets had been met and everything looked shipshape and almost German-like. There were one or two staffing issues that he had a mind to address when the Easter weekend was over – one being the position of the young Welsh idiot, Tudor Reece. Otto knew that this man was at the bottom rung of the ladder as far as his career was concerned. There was no further demotion available other than showing him the door.
He visibly cringed when his thoughts turned to Tudor. There was the toilet incident with the Japanese visitors - then there was the day when Tudor brought his pet frog to work.
“What do you think this is?” screamed his supervisor. “Fucking show-and-tell day?”
The logic behind Tudor bringing his pet frog to work stemmed from the fact that practical jokes were continually being played on him by others. His lunch box had been nailed to the table; he had been sent two hundred and sixty feet up the side of one of the station’s cooling towers to collect a bucket of steam to supplement the turbine’s steam supply. He had fallen for that ruse twice.
Tudor’s intention was to drop his frog into one of his co-worker’s lunch boxes, but the plan failed miserably when the frog escaped. It was eventually discovered merrily swimming around in the station’s cooling pond, where the irradiated fuel is stored prior to being shipped off site. The little frog’s life span was drastically reduced. The Animal Protection Agency loved it. They had already been at odds with the power station over other animal issues involving grazing cattle and sheep in the fields around the site’s perimeter. When the story hit the headlines, Herr Klugenhoff was under immense pressure not to sack the young Welshman. Tudor’s deceased pet was given an inglorious send off. Packed up in yellow polythene and labelled ‘Low Active waste’, it was despatched to a concrete bunker within the bowels of the power station.
Herr Klugenhoff reckoned that enough time had passed between that particular incident and the present day, to allow him to offload the Welsh idiot without attracting too much attention. The wheels would be put in motion on Monday when he returned to his office at the power station.
Bertha was beside herself. She was so looking forward to seeing Heidi. She hoped that her daughter was well and that she had enjoyed her trip over to England. They were only a couple of hundred yards from the restaurant now. A small crowd of around a hundred people had gathered around the town square off to her right. Bertha noticed that the local press were in evidence, too. Something else caught her eye, as she looked out of the limo’s smoked glass windows.
A large bulky green erection had suddenly appeared overnight. This seemed to be the main focus of the crowd’s attention. Bertha’s heart sank as the chauffeur rolled the limo up next to a red carpet and brought the vehicle to a standstill. All eyes were now redirected towards the Klugenhoffs.
Bertha knew then that she had been wrong in her assumption. Her daughter, Heidi, was still in Germany. There would be no air trip either.
The limousine’s door was opened by a wizened faced chauffeur who looked to be at least eighty years old if he was a day.
“Step this way Frau Klugenhoff,” the old man said, as he struggled with the weight of the car door. Bertha was greeted by her husband, who had left via the opposite door and was standing on the red carpet with his hand extended. Applause was heard all around – applause, music, cheering and something else. The blare of the brass ensemble was overpowering most of the other sounds around the square, but Bertha was sure that she heard a booing noise coming from somewhere.
Otto Klugenhoff administered the customary ‘tap’ to the public address microphone that had been sited in the centre of the purpose-built podium. A howl of feedback and a noise similar to the sound of a jackhammer bounced off the walls around the square.
“Oops,” said Otto, his voice booming and accompanied by even more feedback. “Guten Tag everyone,” he said cheerfully. “Zank you all for bekommen heir today, und zank you all for your support. We at Wortherley Power Station are proud to adopt Rupert the monster as our official mascot. After all,” he said, raising a hand to the side of his mouth as if imparting a long lost secret, “we have been keeping him comfortable for years by pumping warm water into the lake.”
Otto’s little joke was greeted with a few giggles, but more worrying – the booing had returned.
“Blah, blah, blah,” said Derek to Marjorie. “Have you ever heard anything so pathetic in all your life? He is just jumping on the ‘Rupert bandwagon’. Anything to improve his profile, and the profile of that damned power station.”
Tudor Reece arrived just in time to hear some more derision aimed at his boss on the podium.
“My wife and I were so pleased to have been invited to officially unveil this statue today.” said Otto.
It would have been nice to have been told, thought Bertha Klugenhoff.
“You are poisoning our lake!”
It was a voice from somewhere in the middle of the crowd.
“Go back to Germany. We don’t want you here,” said another voice. The booing grew like a Mexican wave. Voices cried out from all parts of the assembly – all howling derision at the Germans. Bertha’s cheeks flushed red. She wished that the earth could just swallow her up. She whispered a few words in Otto’s ear. There were no prizes for guessing what her message would translate to.
Just finish this and let’s get to fuck!
Otto smiled nervously, and then continued. His prepared speech was stuffed into his jacket pocket as he began to take his wife’s advice.
“Finally I would just like to . . .”
A cry rang out, “What do we want?”
“No Nuclear,” was the chant from all corners.
“When do we want it?”
“Now!” they shouted.
The antinuclear protestors settled into a steady chant, getting louder by the second.
“What do we want?”
“No Nuclear.”
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
Banners and placards suddenly appeared from nowhere. Otto Klugenhoff stared in disbelief as the protest gathered pace. He began to read the messages being waved around before his eyes.
‘YOU ARE POISONING THE BIRDS’ . . . The Broxley Twitchers.
‘DOWN WITH NUCLEAR POWER’ . . . The Noise Abatement Society.
‘DOWN WITH UNCLEAR POWER’ . . . The Broxley Dyslexic Association.
The drone of a light aircraft momentarily shifted the assembled crowd’s attention as it passed low overhead. A loud cheer rang out when it became clear that the plane was towing a long sheet of cloth with the message, WE WANT TO BE NUCLEAR FREE.
“What on earth is going on?” asked Marjorie. “This must have taken quite a bit of organising. Do you hear me, Derek?”
Derek was too busy to listen to his wife. He was unfurling what looked to be a white bed sheet. “Hold this,” he said to Tudor Reece. The young Welshman accepted one end of the cloth. “Now - hoist it up as high as you can reach.”
Otto Klugenhoff had seen and heard enough. He turned to his wife, “Cut the tape. Cut the damned tape.”
Bertha was more than happy to oblige. She lifted a pair of scissors from the rostrum and unceremoniously hacked through the restraining ribbon that held, through a series of pulleys and chain blocks, the tarpaulin over the statue. The green tarpaulin fell to the blast of a trumpet - a blast that withered away to an out-of-tune whimper when the statue of Rupert was unveiled at last.
The monster was, as expected, Nessie-like, with a scale covered body, three humps and small legs like an alligator. There were gasps from the crowd though, when they saw that Rupert had a large placard hanging around his neck. Someone from the Council, an antinuclear protestor, had carried out some ‘extra’ work under the giant tarpaulin. The message around Rupert’s neck read:
PLEASE HELP ME . . . I AM BEING POISONED.
About the Author
Born in Saltcoats, Brian Morrison has a day job at the Hunterston Power Station. But in his other life he is well known as a caricaturist and comedy sketch writer. More recently, he has become a novelist and a writer of children's stories. His dark comedy, Blister, is available on Amazon.