Percy Bluffer-Baton, third in line to the Earldom of Twinkle-on-Haze sat on the small marsupial shaped crenellation that extruded from the grassy knoll and had a moment. Percy’s moments tended to be on the short side, almost dwarfish in their brevity and contain three parts randomised anxiety, a pinch of paranoia and the merest tintagal of a rosy hue. Mostly they followed the discovery of a sartorial discombobulation – a dangling button, an inelastic sock top or a worrisome loosening of some fundamental stitchery. Today’s however took on a more gluttonous texture: his spats were splattered in what could only be described as a formless muddy blob having cubist aspirations.

‘I fear so, Sir,’ agreed Percy’s lugubrious man, Joves when Percy pointed out the similarity between the earthy patterning on his upper footguards and the inscrutable Woman in a Chocolate Maelstrom by the Swedish daubsmith Hint Strobelstrom. ‘Would sir care for a moist eradicator?’

‘Sir would prefer something that will bally well let him wander the banks of yon lovelorn lough without feeling as if sir is a dashed wandering daffodil in search of a bed.’

‘Very poetical, sir. Perhaps galoshes are the answer.’

‘Joves, it is a truth universally wotsitted that you are a fine fellow but I think I have enough oaths thank you.’

‘I was referring to waterproof overshoes, sir, not an alternative expletive. I think sir’s use of gosh and jolly jingles to be something of a sine qua non in the well-informed lexicographical circles.’

‘Really? I say. That’s rather topping, isn’t it?’

‘Indeed, so, sir. The icing on the gateau if one may make so bold.’

‘Oh one may, indeed. I didn’t realise they were thing.’

‘Very much a thing, sir. Two in fact, one for each foot.’

‘And where may one procure a set of this galloping goshes?’

‘When I appraised myself of sir’s need for some medicinal solitude after the termination of sir’s emotional if necessarily forlorn pursuit of The Lady Honore and the inevitability that a body of smooth water might be a draw I took the liberty of bringing a pair.’

‘Well may my dander never dither, Joves. These are mighty fine as our American cousins might say.’

‘I believe that is the correct vernacular in use in certain post colonial groups. If sir would hold the knot of that tree we may be able to…. very good sir.’

As Percy, newly shod splashed happily in the murky shallows, his mood moving from the peaky to the perky and he cast an approving eye on his man. ‘What would I do without you, Joves?’ the gormless inbred pondered as he stood in the shifting silt.

‘I think that sir would very likely sink.’

‘And that wouldn’t do, eh?’

‘Not before tiffin, sir. Shall we?’

This week’s response to the latest #writephoto prompt…