Katoomba Amusements Company

Magpie Mockery

(An ongoing series of snippets overheard on the streets of Katoomba)

It has been relayed to me by a close acquaintance, who was told by their cousin twice removed, that his sister had heard that the Colonel and the infamous Dr. Yorrick have been of late playing 'games' with the local ladies and attempting to convince them that they are really the renowned Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson 'in disguise'.

The Colonel has taken to wearing a deerstalker hat and smoking a pipe when in the company of a large entourage of Katoomba and Leura ladies. He, thus attired, thence produces a large magnifying glass and commences 'investigating' any gentlemen who may approach the aforesaid ladies and loudly describing to the company their 'inherent tendencies as to licentiousness toward ladies of refinement'.

This action drives away many of the ladies' potential suitors in disgust and reduces the ladies in the 'devilish duos' entourage to 'rampant fainting fits'. Thence this result instigates a call by the Colonel to his 'twin trickster', Dr. 'Watson', to arrive on the scene and they both proceed to revive the often prostrate ladies with 'malodourous' smelling salts and other fiendish implements of 'jackanapery' the Doctor produces from his 'bag of tricks'.

On awakening from their fainting spell the 'practical joking pair' continue their farce by emphasising to the ladies how they have most likely saved them from a potential 'fate worse than death' and that they should not venture out in social company without the two of them as 'chaperones'.

Fortunately only the youngest and most naive of the local ladies are taken in by this, and they are soon convinced by their elders as to the terrible 'rapscallion' and 'scallywag' natures of this pair of jackanapes!!

Afterword: Mr. Henry Hedgewick, esq. of Hedgewick's Emporium (open Mon. to Sat.) has been asked by the local Ladies Union for Scallywag Temperance (henceforth, L.U.S.T.) to reign in the trickery of these 'jack-in-the-box jokers' and to keep a watchful eye on any potential copycats.