So that was old Dim’s cue and he went grinning and going er er and a a a for this veck’s dithering rot, crack crack, first left fistie then right, so that our dear old droog the red—red vino on tap and the same in all places, like it’s put out by the same big firm—started to pour and spot the nice clean carpet and the bits of this book that I was still ripping away at, razrez razrez. All this time this devotchka, his loving and faithful wife, just stood like froze by the fireplace, and then she started letting out little malenky creeches, like in time to the like music of old Dim’s fisty work. Then Georgie and Pete came in from the kitchen, both munching away, though with their maskies on, you could do that with them on and no trouble. Georgie with like a cold leg of something in one rooker and half a loaf of kleb with a big dollop of maslo on it in the other, and Pete with a bottle of beer frothing its gulliver off and a horrorshow rookerful of like plum cake. They went haw haw haw, viddying old Dim dancing round and fisting the writer veck so that the writer veck started to platch like his life’s work was ruined, going boo hoo hoo with a very square bloody rot, but it was haw haw haw in a muffled eater’s way and you could see bits of what they were eating. I didn’t like that, it being dirty and slobbery, so I said:

“Drop that mounch. I gave no permission. Grab hold of this veck here so he can viddy all and not get away.” So they put down their fatty pishcha on the table among all the flying paper and they clopped over to the writer veck whose horn-rimmed otchkies were cracked but still hanging on, with old Dim still dancing round and making ornaments shake on the mantelpiece (I swept them all off then and they couldn’t shake no more, little brothers) while he fillied with the author of ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ making his litso all purple and dripping away like some very special sort of a juicy fruit.