"Right, to business!" said the padre. He went at it like a shark through butter and I could tell he was as sharp as a button. He didn't mince his punches either. "I'll begin collecting isms immediately. As I said earlier, it shouldn't be too hard around here as they all have closets in their cupboards. I'll have to be a bit secretive though because I'll be hung, dried and quartered if they find out what I'm doing. Still it's for a good cause and the church as a whole will benefit from the profits. However, if our share prices go down, the store-holders won't be too happy. The market is like a game of golf: one pops up and someone else swings it back in the next bunker. But, you've got to expectorate to accumulate; it's the pack of cards effect!" I could tell this was like trying to teach a curate to suck eggs.
We talked business for about an hour with the padre trying to move the pitch and up his aunty, but he was always battling on thin ice and I put my foot down with a firm hand. Eventually we agreed that the padre - Gersust R Ponti - would become the French ISMS International Co-ordinator. He also mentioned that if we wanted to expand our empire even further, he knew a friendly priest on the island of Corfu - but he was a Greek Orthodontist. We finished what was left of the afternoon by strolling around the remaining parts of the church fete - I'd almost forgotten that I should be beginning my trip back to England.
"Is that one of those flamingo dancers?" I asked pointing to a highly-decorated booth in the corner of the churchyard.
"No" replied the padre "and that's an old ism and I've heard it before. Number 84 if I'm not mistaken - one of the President's finest."
"Correct!" I replied "I just wanted to make sure that you knew your carrots and I hadn't just been barking up a wild goose for the past hour."
"No, it's OK" said the padre "you haven't been sent up here on a false goose leg. It was a Fiat Acompli - and that's an old one too!"
"Well I must be going" I said "I'm flying out at 4am in the morning."
"Well, bon voyage, and nice to have met you." said the padre "Remember, you can rely on me to keep the French end up. Isms will be winging your way within days. We're all battling from the same hymn sheet. And if we can't get the data quickly we'll just have to wing it from the hip."
I was really impressed by the padre's business acumen. Quite surprising really, because the French don't even have a word for entrepreneur. However, with that business sorted I needed to get to the airport and get back to ISMS HQ to see what had been happening in my absence.
To try and cheer up the staff after all their hard work (I hoped) I though I would take a few presents for them. I knew things were not cheap in Paris but I had just been paid and was soluble again. I called into Rochester's department store. Walking through the store keeping my ears peeled I picked up a sense of the local population. One lady was ordering three walls of rollpaper; another was bragging about how she got 36 Valentimes from her classmates, while her friend was saying that she no longer had to have those circular smear tests. Eventually, I reached the gifts counter where a shop assistant was on the telephone: "Hello, can you give me an RTA for your delivery driver?" she was asking someone in despatch. "Be with you in a moment, sir" as she acknowledged my presence. It was obvious that she was going to be some time so I strolled casually around the department while I waited to be served.
There were a number of television sets on in one corner of the floor so I strolled over just in time to catch the CNN news. In summary: a group of anti-war protesters wanted George Bush to send in the MFI to sort out the Arabs; some religious fanatic (whose mother had survived the Holycost) was claiming that Jesus was born as the result of an immaculate reception; somewhere in America a highjacker was holding up a plane with a toothpick; in another part of the same state a shooter had held himself up for hours in his apartment after a shooting and apparently many people had died in an inferno fire and, perhaps surprisingly but of some interest to me, a woman who had been visiting our ISMS site was complaining that there was nothing wrong with one of the isms except that they got it the wrong way round! That's the whole point, my dear, or at least it probably definitely helps.
I moved to another area of the department. What! Christmas decorations for sale at this time of the year! It's becoming a year round event. Mind you, I love Christmas. Last year we hung Christmas reefs on all our windows. Wonderful!
