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Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson
817. Parson’s Pleasure by Roald Dahl (Learn English with a Short Story)
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You're listening to Luke's English podcast. For more information, visit TeacherLuke.co.uk. Hello listeners. Welcome back to my podcast for learners of English. Today, I just want to tell you another story. So just listen and enjoy it, and I'll use it to help you learn English. So I'm going to start the story today in this episode in just a moment. But first let me tell you a few things about the story to get you ready so you understand it a bit better. Okay, so today's story is about an antiques dealer. A story about an antiques dealer an antiques dealer is a person who buys and sells antiques. Antiques are very old objects, especially items of furniture. So we're talking about old chairs, tables, chests of drawers, paintings, maybe other decorative items. Okay. Buying and selling antiques is very common and very popular in the uk. There's quite a big market for antique furniture in the United Kingdom. What about in your country? Is there a big market for antiques where you come from? Do people buy and sell old furniture? Can you get rich doing that? And do you have any items of furniture that actually might be very valuable, perhaps in your home, in the loft upstairs? Or maybe AT Your parents or grandparents, house or something. Have you ever thought about that? If you actually have any potentially valuable items that you could find and sell, and who knows, maybe you could become rich selling some of the things that you've got in your home, or maybe all your possessions are worthless. I don't know your life, but who knows, maybe that old chair that's been in the family for decades might actually be worth a fortune. Selling antiques can be quite a profitable business, but only if you can find the right items, buy them for a good price, and then sell them for a big profit. And this means, if you are an antiques dealer, this means finding objects which are old, obviously, and the older the better. Well made, especially if they were made by well known designers or furniture makers, still in good condition, and then rare, unique, or part of a famous collection. And you have to be very lucky or perhaps very clever if you want to find a real bargain. And that means a valuable piece for a very good price. Okay? And dealers, and that's antiques dealers, not drug dealers, dealers will always be on the lookout for valuable antiques that could be worth hundreds, thousands, or even millions of pounds. Like, for example, a very precious Chippendale commode, which is a fairly well known antique chest of drawers built by Thomas chippendale in the 18th century. This is an example of like famous, a famous set of antiques. If you find a Chippendale commode that could be worth millions of pounds, okay, a chest of drawers is like the sort of thing that you would have in your home with drawers in it. You open the drawers, you can keep things in it. Most of us get our chests of drawers from places like Ikea of right, and you have to build them yourself. But if you find a Chippendale commode, that one would have been made by Thomas chippendale in the 18th century. One of those was sold for nearly £4 million a few years ago. So that's, that's the real target if you're an antiques dealer finding something like that. Now, the story I'm going to read to you is about an antiques dealer who uses a particular trick to find very valuable antiques. The story has a really good little twist at the end and I think you will really enjoy it. So the story is called Parson's Pleasure by Roald Dahl. Let me just explain that. So a parson, that's a parson, not a person. I think you know what a person is. But a parson, this is basically another word for a priest or a vicar. This is a person, usually a Man, depending on the rules of the church, a parson, normally a man. These days it can be women can become members of the clergy. Anyway, a parson is someone who leads services in a local church in England. So a parson is in the Anglican church system. So similar words would be a vicar, a priest, a member of the clergy or a clergyman. A parson. Right? Do you know what I'm talking about? Parsons usually wear a black jacket and a black shirt with a white collar. It's a bit of a cliche of rural English life. If you think of sort of images of old fashioned English life in the countryside, in a town somewhere in the countryside, the sort of images that you imagine you would see nice country lanes, farms, old country houses, and maybe a parson on a bicycle popping round to someone's house for tea or something like that. So this story is about a man who isn't a parson, but he dresses like a parson. Okay, he's not a parson, but he dresses like one. Now why would someone do that? Why would someone pretend to be a clergyman or a parson? Why would someone pretend to be one? And what is the connection to the antiques trade? So I'm just getting you to think about that. It'll prepare you for the story. We'll find out in a moment. So the story was written by Roald Dahl. Obviously, all the credit for the story goes to him. Roald Dahl is one of the UK's most popular authors. He wrote lots of books for children, but also lots of great short stories for adults. You can find this story in collections of his work published by Penguin. And I highly recommend that you buy some of Roald Dahl's books. They are great for learning English. They're very well written, easy to read, clever, entertaining and full of descriptive language. So if you're looking for things to read in English, then I really recommend Roald Dahl's work. And I suggest that you get a copy of this book, the one that I've got, which is the Complete Short Stories by Roald Dahl, published by Penguin. It's actually a two volume book and it contains all of his short stories. So that book should be available in all good bookshops. The Complete Short Stories, volumes one and two. You'll find a link for it in the description for this episode. The story I'm reading today is included in Volume 2 of the complete Short Stories and I'm going to read a slightly abridged version of that story. Okay, not the full story, just an abridged version. That means it's been edited to make it slightly shorter. So this abridged version appears actually in an old English course book that I used to use in English lessons ages ago at the start of my teaching career. So this abridged version is in this book, Headway Advanced by Liz and John Soares. Some of you might have used it to maybe to learn English or maybe even to teach English, because I do have English teachers watching this as well. So this is, this is the first edition of Headway Advanced, published in the 1990s, I think by Oxford University Press. Now we're nearly ready to start the story. I promise I'm going to read the story to you twice. First, I'll read it all in one go and you just have to try to follow what's happening. Then I'll summarize it in my own words to make sure you've understood it. I'll just sort of like retell the story again myself to make it maybe a little clearer. And after that I'll go through the story again and I'll explain some of the vocabulary. All right. And then I'll give my comments and stuff as well. The time period for this. The story was first published in 1958, so it is slightly old fashioned, but not too much money as well. Money is mentioned a few times in the story as the characters discuss the price of a certain piece of furniture. Of course, money has changed its value since the story was written because of inflation. So just to kind of help you understand how much money is being talked about, you could multiply everything by about 30, let's say. So one pound in 1958 is worth about 30 pounds now. That's around about 35 US dollars or 35 euros depending on when you listen to this. So one pound would be 30 pounds now, 1,000 pounds in 1950. 1958 would be 30,000 pounds now 20 pounds in 1958 would be. Can you do the maths? 600 pounds now and 20,000 pounds in 1958 in today's money would be about 600,000 pounds. That's over half a million. Okay. Right, so let's start now. Mr. Boggess is the antique dealer's name. Okay, so just a couple of questions to get you focused. Where is he at the start? What is he doing? What's he looking for? What kind of person is Boggess and what happened nine years ago? But mainly, can you follow the story and guess what is going to happen next? Let's get started. Okay, Here we go. Mr. Boggess stopped the car just short of the summit, got out and looked around. It was perfect. He could see for miles. Over on the right, he spotted a medium farmhouse. Beyond it was a larger one. There was a house that might be a Queen Anne, and there were two likely farms over on the left, five places in all. Then he drove to the other side of the hill, where he saw six more possibles, five farms and one big Georgian house. He ruled out the latter. It looked prosperous, and there was no point in calling on the prosperous. Apart from the fact that he was at this moment disguised as a clergyman, there was nothing very sinister about Cyril Boggess. By trade, a dealer in antique furniture with a shop in the Kings Road, Chelsea, Boggess had achieved a considerable reputation by producing unusual items with astonishing regularity. When asked where he got them, he would wink and murmur something about a little secret. Boggess little secret was a result of something that happened on a Sunday afternoon nearly nine years before, while he was driving in the country. The car had overheated and he'd walked to a farmhouse to ask for a jug of water. While he was waiting for it, he glanced through the door and spotted a large oak armchair. The back panel was decorated by an inlay of the most delicate floral design, and the head of a duck was carved on either arm. Good God, he thought, this thing is late 17th century. He poked his head in further. There was another one on the other side of the fireplace. Two chairs like that must be worth at least a thousand pounds up in London. When the woman of the house returned, Boggess asked if she would like to sell her chairs. They weren't for sale, she said, but just out of curiosity, how much would he give? They bargained for half an hour, and in the end, of course, Boggess got the chairs for less than a twentieth of their value. Returning to London in his station wagon, Boggess had an idea. If there was good stuff in one farmhouse, why not in others? On Sundays, why couldn't he comb the countryside? The isolated places, the farmhouses that dilapidated country mansions would be his target. But country folk are a suspicious lot. Perhaps it would be best if he didn't let them know he was a dealer. He could be the telephone man, the plumber, the gas inspector. He could even be a clergyman. Hmm. Boggess ordered a large quantity of superior cards on which the following legend was engraved. The Reverend Cyril Winnington Boggess, president of the Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum. From now on, every Sunday he was going to be a nice old parson, traveling around on a labor of love for the society, compiling an inventory of the treasures that lay hidden in country homes. The scheme worked. In fact, it became a lucrative business. And now it was another Sunday. Boggess parked some distance from the gates of his first house, the Queen Anne. He never liked his car to be seen until a deal was made. A dear old clergyman and a large station wagon never seemed quite right together. But there was nothing of value in the house. At the next stop, no one was home. The third, a farmhouse, was back in the fields. It looked rambling and dirty. He didn't hold out much hope for it. Three men were standing in the yard when they caught sight of the small pot bellied man in his black suit and parson's collar. They stopped talking and watched him suspiciously. The farm owner was a stumpy man with small shifty eyes whose name was Rummins. The tall youth beside him was his son Bert. The short man with broad shoulders was Claude, a neighbour. And what exactly might you be wanting? Rummins asked. Boggins explained at some length the aims and ideals of for the Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture. We don't have any, said Rummins. You're wasting your time. Now just a minute, sir, Boggess said, raising a finger. The last man who said that to me was an old farmer down in Sussex. And when he finally let me into his house, do you know what I found? A dirty looking old chair in the kitchen that turned out to be worth £400. I showed him how to sell it and he bought himself a new tractor with the money. Rummins shifted uneasily on his feet. Well, he said, there's no harm in you taking a look. He led the way into an exceedingly filthy living room and there it was. Boggess saw it at once and gasped. He stood staring for 10 seconds at least, not daring to believe what he saw before him. It couldn't be true. At that point Boggess became aware of the three men watching him intently. They had seen him gasp and stare in a flash. Boggess staggered to the nearest chair and collapsed into it, breathing heavily. What's the matter? Claude asked. It's nothing, he gasped. I'll be all right in a moment. I thought maybe you were looking at something, Rummy said. No, no, no, Boggess said. It's just my heart. It happens every now and then. I'll be all right. He must have time to think, he told himself. Take it gently, Bogis. Keep calm. These people may be ignorant, but they are not stupid. And if it is really true, to a layman what he'd seen might not have appeared particularly impressive, covered as it was with dirty white paint. But it was a dealer's dream. Boggess knew that among the most coveted examples of 18th century English furniture are three pieces known as the Chippendale commodes. A trifle unsteadily, Boggess began to move around the room, examining the other furniture one piece at a time. Apart from the commode, it was a very poor lot. Nice oak table, he said. Not old enough to be of any interest, this chest of drawers. Boggess walked casually past the commode. Worth a few pounds, I dare say. A crude reproduction, I'm afraid. That's a strong bit of furniture, Rummy said. Some nice carving on it, too. Machine carved, Boggess replied, bending down to examine the exquisite craftsmanship. He began to saunter off, frowning as though in deep thought. You know what? He said, looking back at the commode. I've wanted a set of legs, something like that, for a long time. I've got a table in my own home, and when I moved house, the movers damaged the legs. I'm very fond of that table. I keep my Bible and sermon notes on it. He paused, stroking his chin. These legs on your chest of drawers could be cut off and fixed on my table. What you mean to say is that you'd like to buy it? Rummins said. Well, it might be a bit too much trouble. It's not worth it. How much were you thinking of offering? Rummins asked. Not much, I'm afraid. You see, this is not a genuine antique. I'm not so sure, Rums said. It's been in here over 20 years. I bought it at the Manor House when the old squire died. Bert, where's that old Bill you once found at the back of one of the drawers? You mean this? Bert lifted out a piece of folded yellowing paper from one of the drawers and carried it over to his father. You can't tell me this writing ain't bloody old, rummy said, holding the paper out to Boggess, whose arm was shaking as he took was brittle and it cracked slightly between his fingers. The writing was in a long sloping copperplate hand Edward Montague, esq. Debtor to Thos Chippendale. A large mahogany commode table of exceeding fine wood, very rich carved set upon fluted legs. Two very neat shaped long drawers in the middle part and two ditto on each side with rich chased brass handles and ornaments, the whole completely finished in the most exquisite taste. £87. Boggess was fighting to suppress his excitement. With the invoice the value had climbed even higher. What in heaven's name would it fetch now? £12,000? 14? Maybe 15 or even 20? He tossed the paper contemptuously on the table and said quietly, it's exactly what I thought. A Victorian reproduction. This is simply the invoice that the seller gave to his client. Listen, Parson, Ramin said. How can you be so sure it's fake? You haven't even seen it underneath all that paint. Has anyone got a knife? Asked Boggess. Claud produced a pocket knife. Working with apparent casualness, Boggess began chipping the paint off a small area on top of the commode. Take a look. It was beautiful. A warm little patch of mahogany, glowing like a topaz. Rich and dark, with the true colour of its 200 years. What's wrong with it? Rummins asked. It's processed. Without the slightest doubt. This wood has been processed with lime. That's what they use for mahogany to give it that dark, aged colour. Look closely. That touch of orange in among the dark red. Brown is the sign of lime. How much would you give? Rumons asked. Boggess looked at the commode, frowned and shrugged his shoulders. I think ten pounds would be fair. Ten pounds? Rummins cried. Don't be ridiculous, Parson. Look at the bill. It tells you exactly what it cost. £87. Now it's antique. It's worth double, if you'll pardon me. No, sir, it's not. It's a second hand reproduction. But I'll I tell you what, I'll go as high as 15 pounds. Make it 50, Rumin said. My dear man, Boggess said softly, I only want the legs. The rest of it is firewood. That's all. Make it 35, Rumin said. I couldn't, sir. I couldn't. I'll make you one final offer. £20. I'll take it, Rumin snapped. Oh dear, Boggess said. I shouldn't have started this. You can't back out now, Parson. A deal's a deal. Yes, yes, I know. Perhaps if I got my car, you gentlemen would be kind enough to help me load it. Boggess found it difficult not to break into a run. But clergymen never run. They walk slowly. Walk slowly, Boggess. Keep calm, Bogus. There's no hurry now. The commode is yours. Back in the farmhouse, Rummins was saying, fancy him giving me £20. For a load of junk like this. You did very nicely, Mr. Rummins, Claude told him. You think he'll pay you? We don't put it in the car until he do. And what if it won't go in the car? Claude asked. He'll just say to hell with it and drive off. Rummins paused to consider this alarming prospect. I've got an idea, claud went on. He told us that it was only the legs he was wanting, so all we got to do is cut em off. Then it'll be sure to go in the car. All we're doing is saving him the trouble of cutting them off when he gets home. A bloody good idea, rummin said, looking at the commode. Within a couple of minutes Claude and Bert had carried the commode outside and Claude went to work with the saw. When all the legs were severed, Bert arranged them carefully in a row. Claude stepped back to survey the results. Just let me ask you one question, Mr. Rummins, he said slowly, even now. Could you put that enormous thing into a car? Not unless it was a van. Correct. Claud cried. And Parsons don't have vans. All they've got is usually little piddling Morris eights or Austin Sevens. Well, the legs is all he wants, Rums said. If the rest of it won't go in, then he can leave it. He can't complain he's got the legs now. You know better than that, Mr. Rummins, Claude said patiently. You know damn well he's going to start knocking the price if he don't get every single bit of this into the car. So why don't we give him his firewood now and be done with it. Yeah, fair enough, Rumin said. But fetch the axe. It was hard work and it took several minutes before Claude had the whole thing more or less smashed to pieces. I'll tell you one thing, he said, straightening up and wiping his brow. That was a bloody good carpenter put this job together. And I don't care what the parson says. We're just in time. Rummins called out. Here he comes. That's the end of the story, okay? So did you get it? Did you get what happened? Did you understand what happened at the end? I hope so. Let me give you a summary of the story in my own words, right? In maybe slightly more simple English. So we start with Boggis. He's an antiques dealer. You know what an antiques dealer is now. And Boggess has a shop in London in Chelsea, and seems to be quite successful. He's got a good reputation People know him as someone who always has interesting items to sell. He's got a good reputation, and he sells lots of antique furniture on a regular basis. He's doing well. When people ask where he gets his items, he just says, oh, it's a little secret. So he doesn't give away how he's getting all these items of antique furniture. He just sort of mutters something. Oh, it's just a little secret of mine, he says. In fact, the secret is that he's cheating. He's tricking people. He's lying and deceiving people in order to buy precious antiques at very low prices. Basically, he's a swindler or a con artist. Okay, a swindler, a con artist. These are names that we give to people who lie or trick people, deceive people in order to get profit, and sometimes commit crimes, you know. So what's his trick? Well, nine years before he got this idea, when his car broke down in the countryside and he visited a nearby farmhouse to get help, he wanted to get a jug of water because the car had overheated. That doesn't seem to happen so much these days, does it? Cars don't overheat like they used to, but back in the olden days, cars would overheat quite easily, and you had to, like, fill them back up with water and let them cool down. So anyway, he visited a nearby farmhouse to get help when his car broke down. And while he was there, he spotted several antique chairs and was able to buy them from the owner of the house, who had no idea of their real value. So Bogges had to probably work quite hard to negotiate. But he found the two chairs in this farmhouse and he bought them at probably a good price. Bogges then decided that there might be lots of other valuable antique items in other old homes in the country. So this was his plan, that he could. Every Sunday, he could go into the countryside to a different place and spot houses that might contain more precious items of antique furniture. And then he could, you know, try and buy them. But he decided to lie to the owners of the houses so that he could visit their homes and check if they had any valuable items which he could then buy. This was his way of actually getting inside people's homes in order to locate any valuable items. And he created a false identity for himself, pretending to work for an organization associated with the Victorian the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is a famous museum in London full of, you know, interesting old items, including some, you know, priceless furniture and stuff. So he pretended to Work for the Victoria and Albert Museum as part of a society for the. Was it the Royal Society for the Preservation of Antique Furniture or something? He decided that people would not be suspicious of him if he also dressed as a pastor. Pastor. Parson. Parson. Pastor. You think what, spaghetti? No, not that. No, a pastor is another synonym for a parson. Vicar, clergyman, priest. Anyway, he decided that if he dressed as a parson, people would not suspect him, people would think he was harmless and they would trust him. This was his plan and this worked very well. And one day he visited a farmhouse in the countryside. Or one day, as we discover him at the beginning of the story, he's driven to the top of a hill and he's surveying the area, spotting houses that might contain some furniture. He spots a few houses and plans to visit them. The first two houses bring no results. But the third house is this farmhouse. And to his great surprise, he found an extremely rare and valuable item of furniture, a Chippendale commode. The moment when he sees it is quite interesting because he can hardly contain his surprise and he has to sit down. And the farmers, the people in the house, notice something and they are you all right? And he brushes it off and says, oh, it's my heart. It happens sometimes. I'll be okay in a minute. But in fact, he's just stunned at having seen a Chippendale commode. As I said at the beginning of the episode, these days, one of these items could be sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds, even millions of pounds. For example, the one that I mentioned earlier was sold at Sotheby's in London in 2010 for 3.7 million pounds. That's how much a Chippendale commode can be sold for today. I mean, that's a lot. That's a lot of money. Now, Boggess couldn't believe his eyes when he saw was there in the farmhouse. The farmhouse was quite messy, dirty old place. And in fact, the. The Chippendale commode was just in the corner of the room covered in white paint. Someone had painted it white. But he couldn't believe his eyes when he saw it. And then he used all his clever tricks to persuade the owner to sell it to him for a very low price. He made the owner, Mr. Rummins, believe that he didn't really need it. It made him believe that it wasn't really worth very much and that he could easily just leave without paying the guy some money. As far as Mr. Rummins is concerned, getting £20, £10, 15, 20 you know, £50, that's all good. That's all better than nothing as far as Rummins is concerned. So Boggess told the owner that the chest of drawers was basically a worthless copy and he only wanted it for the legs, which he would use to repair a table in his home. The rest, he said, could be used as firewood. After some negotiation, the owner agreed to sell it for £20, thinking he was getting a good price. In reality, it was only a tiny fraction of the real value of the chest of drawers. And Boggess was secretly delighted and went to his car. Right. The car, by the way, is also an important part of this because Bogges actually drives a station wagon. Station wagon is basically a kind of an estate car or a car that you could use. A car that's got a lot of storage in the back. The sort of car that an antiques dealer might drive because it would allow him to put lots of furniture in the back. These days that would be a van, really. But in. In the 1950s, a. What did it, what was it called? A station wagon. The sort of car with a lot of space in the back that you could use to transport furniture around. So Bogges parked his car away from the house because he didn't want people to see his car because they. Because it would spoil the illusion that he was a parson, because parsons don't drive station wagons, they drive little cars. So he kind of hid his genuine car around the corner. So he went off to get the car and he was delighted. He could hardly believe his luck. But while he was gone, the farmers decided that they should make sure Boggess could fit the chest of drawers into the car because they thought that he's a parson. Therefore he would have a small parson's car, like a Morris Minor, which is an old fashioned, small English car, a bit like a Mini or something like that, okay? So they thought, oh, there's no way that they can get this in, into his car. So they decided that they would. They would do something so that he wouldn't try to lower the price any further. Right. Boggess had told them that he only needed it for the legs, so they decided to cut the legs off, which they did with a saw. What a total tragedy. This is an original Chippendale commode and they're just going at it with a saw, cutting the legs off. Then assuming that Boggess would have a small car, as I said, they thought it would be best to smash up the rest of the table with an axe. Just smash it to bits, just to be sure it would fit in the car. After all, Boggess said himself that it was only good for firewood. So not only did they cut the legs off this incredibly precious item, but they also smashed it to pieces with an axe. And we can only imagine how horrified Boggess was when he returned with his car to see the smashed remains of his precious Chippendale commode. Who knows what the shock and the bitter irony of it might have done to him. So what do you think happened, listeners? What do you think happened next? So the story ended with Rummins and the other guys going, oh, I think we did a good job there, removing the legs. And Bert laid them out nice and carefully on the floor for Bogges. And then they smashed up the rest of the commode and left it in pieces. And they were like, I think we've done well here. And look, here he comes now. So the. What happens next is left up to our imagination. So what do you think happened next? What was Boggess reaction to this, to the smashed furniture? What do you think? I think he would have been shocked, right? He would have been absolutely devastated, but he wouldn't have been able to show it. He wouldn't have been able to show how shocked he was, which, of course would have made it so much worse for him. He would have had to try to contain his reaction because, after all, he told Rummins he just wanted the legs and the rest was firewood. He told him it was a worthless pile of wood, basically. So they would expect him to be glad that they cut up the commode for him, but of course he'd be devastated, but he couldn't show it because then they would know the truth, then the mask would slip. So who knows? All this, all the pressure of trying to maintain his front, to maintain the image of the parson who just wanted some legs and some firewood. The pressure of that, plus the sheer devastation of seeing this furniture destroyed and the fact that he wasn't going to get his fortune. All this might be too much for him, especially if it's really true that he has a weak heart. So I don't know, who knows what could have happened. Maybe he would have collapsed or something in shock, and his greed might have been his fatal flaw in the end. Okay, a flaw is like an imperfection in someone's character. Okay, so here are some thoughts and comments before I go through the story again and maybe just highlight some bits of language. So this is a story about the dangers of Greed, selfishness, dishonesty, fraud and arrogance. Fraud is a crime, essentially, and it involves deception and profit. So if you lie and you gain profit as a result, that's a kind of fraud. For example, if you pretend to be someone that you're not, or if you maybe if you are an art dealer and you create a fake painting, so you make a painting that looks exactly like a Van Gogh or a Picasso or something, and it's not a genuine Picasso, and then you sell it as if it is and you get loads of money. That's a kind of fraud as well. And other kinds of fraud would be, for example, writing your accounts wrong. So false accounting, for example, declaring that you got only a certain amount of income so you don't have to pay tax, or other forms of corruption like financial crime. That's all fraud as well. So Boggess got what he deserved, didn't he? Ultimately, the precious commode is destroyed because of Boggess greed. In order to get the lowest price possible. Boggess convinces Rummins that he only wants the legs. But this wasn't necessary. This chest of drawers is worth over half a million pounds in today's money. Bogges could have offered rummins a 5%. Boggess could have offered rummins 5% of that price and Rummins would definitely still have accepted. Right? What's 5% of half a million? I don't know really. But Bogus's greed led him to try to get the lowest possible price. He's trying to negotiate down to 0.001% of the actual value of the property of the property of the actual value of the furniture. That's how much. That's just ridiculous. He could easily have given Boggess. He could easily have given Rummins 5%, not 0.001%. And he would still. Rummins would definitely have accepted that. And you know, he didn't need to do that. He didn't need to try and get it for such a ridiculously low price. He could have given him a fair price and he still would have made 95% profit. Right? But Boggess was greedy. He wanted the absolutely lowest price possible. And as a result, through an ironic chain of events, the table was destroyed. Table, chest of drawers, let's call it a chest. Bogus survives the story, probably, although we don't know, maybe he has a heart attack or something at the end. But let's say he survives the story and can probably carry on doing his work and can even continue his nasty tricks. Unless he gets discovered. But he will never, ever forget what happened because A he missed the opportunity to make his name and make his fortune and B, he caused the destruction of an incredibly valuable item of antique furniture. And he'll have this on his conscience, right? This is. He'll think about this. He'll never be able to forget this. It'll be on his conscience for the rest of his life. And he won't be able to tell anyone about it because he would have to reveal his devious methods. If he told people what happened, everyone would know that he was a liar, a cheat and a con man. And so, yeah, as I said before, Boggess chose to hide his station wagon car in order to convince people he was a real clergyman. And it worked a little bit too well, didn't it? The commode would have fitted in Bogges car, it would have gone in the back. But the farmers assumed that he had a small car because they thought he was a parson. So if Boggess had just gone in and negotiated fairly without lying, without pretending to be a parson, he probably would still have got the commode, albeit at a higher price, and they wouldn't have removed the legs or smashed it to pieces. Now, Bogges is certainly very clever and his deception is quite brilliant. In fact, his whole performance of like ignoring the commode and then going back to it and the whole thing is quite brilliant. But he goes too far and he pays the price.
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almost half a million customers and over a Trillion dollars of secure payments. Bill isn't new to intelligent finance. It's the proven way to simplify bill pay and maximize cash flow. Want to learn more? Visit bill.comproven for a special offer. It's a good story. Let's read the story again and look at some of the vocabulary. I've been going for about 50 minutes. I'll do some of the vocab. I'm not suggesting I'm going to do the entire story, but let's go, let's, let's have a look at what we can do. Mr. Boggess stopped the car just short of the summit, got out and looked around. So the summit means the top of a hill. Could also be the top of a mountain. But this is in England, in the home counties, probably Berkshire or something. So there are no mountains there. So it would have been the top of a hill where you could have a good view. So the, the summit means the top, in this case the top of a hill. He got out and looked around. It was perfect. He could see for miles. Over on the right he spotted a medium farmhouse. To spot something is to see something and identify it. Right? It's like okay, medium farmhouse over there, beyond it, meaning here's the farmhouse. And a bit further away beyond it was a larger one, another farmhouse. There was a house that might be a Queen Anne. So a Queen Anne is a house from a particular period in English history. Okay. Particular type of house built in a certain period, certain style. There was a Queen Anne and there were two likely farms on the left. Likely. This means it probably is. It's likely to be a farm, means it probably is a farm. Okay, so he's not sure exactly what those buildings are, but they are likely to be farms. So these are two likely farms over on the left, probably farms five places in all. Then he drove to the other side of the hill where he saw six more possibles, six more possible targets, five farms and one big Georgian house. Again, a Georgian house, that's from the Georgian period in English history. A certain style Georgian houses are normally quite large, quite grand looking houses. And he said, and the book says he ruled out the latter. The latter, when you, when you're listing things, the latter is the last in the, the last item in the list. So we've got five farms and one big Georgian house. He ruled out the latter. So the latter means the Georgian house. The last thing in the list of things that was just mentioned, the former is the previous one and the latter is the one mentioned after. See? Alright, so for example, if so, if I say, would you like the English tea or the Japanese tea? And you say, oh, I'll choose the latter. That means the Japanese tea. The English tea or the Japanese tea. I'll choose the former. That's the English tea. Although it's fairly formal language, so we don't normally use it for choosing tea, but there you go, that's what that means. So he ruled out the latter. If you rule something out, it's kind of like you cross it out of your list, you cross it off your list. So it's not included in your consideration or in your plans anymore. You rule it out. Why did he rule it out? Because it looked prosperous. Prosperous, basically, is another way of saying rich. Wealthy. So this Georgian house looked prosperous. It looked like it was owned by rich, wealthy people. And there was no point in calling on the prosperous, so there was no reason to call on rich people. So why. Why not? Why would he not visit rich people's houses? I suppose it's because what Boggess is looking for is kind of probably poor houses or modest houses, houses that probably don't really. Houses that are owned by people who probably don't really know the value of antique items. The sorts of places where some valuable items may have just ended up somehow just ended up there without the owners really knowing the true value. So Boggess is targeting poor and less educated people, which again is. Which again is pretty. Pretty mean. Pretty. Which again is pretty despicable behavior by Boggess, targeting people who, you know, who don't know any better. Apart from the fact that he was at this moment disguised as a clergyman, there was nothing very sinister about Cyril Boggess. So there was nothing very sinister. I mean, he. He seemed to be a fairly harmless looking person, really, except for the fact he was disguised. Other than that, there wasn't really anything very scary or dangerous about him. By trade, a dealer in antique furniture with a shop in the Kings Road, Chelsea, Boggess had achieved a considerable reputation by producing unusual items with astonishing regularity. Astonishing means like surprising. Like, wow. People are kind of saying, this is astonishing. Boggis, where do you get these items? What's your secret? And Boggis says, oh, just never you mind. And some, for some reason in our culture, we. We point and tap our nose, just my little secret. You tap your nose like that when you are mentioned, when you're talking about a little secret that you've got. Ah, never you mind. Mm, a little wink. A little secret of mine. Now, Boggess little secret was the Result of what? Boggess little secret was a result of something that happened on a Sunday afternoon nearly nine years before. This is how he first got the idea. While he was driving in the countryside of the country, the car had overheated and he'd walked to a farmhouse to ask for a jug of water. Okay, can I. Sorry to bother you, sorry to trouble you, my car has overheated on the road and I was wondering if I might trouble you for a jug of water to help the car cool down. Oh, yes, certainly sir. Yes. Just hold on a second. Something like that. While he was waiting for it, he glanced through the door, just had a quick look through the door, being a bit nosy, and spotted a large oak armchair. Huh. Okay. Oak is a kind of wood, very common in England. It's good for making furniture. Good solid wood. The back panel was decorated by an inlay of the most delicate floral design. So the back panel of the chair, the bit that you would rest your back on, was decorated by an inlay. This is another piece of wood that was probably added of the most delicate floral design. So a design with flowers on it, very delicately made, probably with a lot of skill. And the head of a duck was carved on either arm. Good God, he thought, which is a sort of slightly old fashioned expression of surprise. Good God, this thing is late 17th century. So he instantly identified that this item was late 17th century. That's 1690 something. 1680 something. Yeah. Valuable. He poked his head in further. So he put his head in the doorway a little further and looked further into the room. And there was another one on the other side of the fireplace. Yeah, two. Two chairs like that must be worth at least a thousand pounds up in London. So that would be about £30,000 by today's money. Not bad. Buy yourself a car. Pretty good one. When the woman of the house returned, Boggess asked if she would like to sell her chairs. Right. Would you be interested in selling those two chairs? And she said they weren't for sale. But just out of curiosity, how much would he give? Sorry, they're not for sale. But just out of curiosity, how much would you offer for them? They bargained for half an hour. To bargain means to negotiate the price. They bargained for half an hour and in the end, of course, Boggess got the chairs for less than a twentieth of their value. So whatever that is. 30,000 divided by 20, it was less than that. So he got them for a real bargain because apparently he's clever. Right. Now, returning to London in his station Wagon. Boggess had an idea. If there was good stuff in one farmhouse, why not in others? On Sundays, why couldn't he comb the countryside? To comb the countryside? Yeah. To comb is the same word as the thing you use to make your hair look all neat and tidy. Or not. Maybe in my case. But comb your hair, it's kind of thin, with teeth. Not a brush, but a comb. To comb the countryside. In this case, to comb the countryside is to search the countryside very, very carefully. Okay. All right. The isolated places, the farmhouses, the dilapidated country mansions. Dilapidated means it's kind of old, worn down, damaged now, because time and use has made it old and damaged. So if something's. If a house is dilapidated, it needs a lot of work to make it look nice again. Okay. So the isolated places, the farmhouses, the dilapidated country mansions would be his target. But country folk, country people are a suspicious lot. Like. Hmm. They don't trust people very easily. Perhaps it would be best if he didn't let them know he was a dealer. Yeah, that sounds logical. He could be the telephone man, the plumber. Plumber is the person who comes to fix the pipes, the water pipes in your house, in your bathroom or kitchen. He could be the telephone man, the plumber, the gas inspector. He could even be a clergyman. Hmm. So then Bogges ordered a large quantity of superior cards. So these are like, you know, cards with little messages engraved on them, sort of business cards with the following legend engraved. A legend is basically, you know, sort of words that would be printed on a card. Right. The Reverend Cyril Winnington Boggess. Reverend is a. Again, another whoops. Another word referring to a clergyman. The Reverend Civil Winnington Boggess is a good name. President of the Society for the Prevent for the Preservation of Rare Furniture. Not president of the Society for the Prevention of Rare Furniture. But that's kind of what he became at the end of the story when he inadvertently prevented this rare bit of furniture from existing, didn't he? He had it destroyed unintentionally in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum. So a complete lie. He is not president of this society. This society doesn't exist. From now on, every Sunday, he was going to be a nice old parson traveling around on a labor of love. A labor of love is work that you do because you love it. Because you're trying to achieve something just because you love it. It's something you're passionate about, something you work on just because you're passionate about it and you love it. It's a labor of Love for the society. Compiling, making a list, compiling an inventory. It's a list of things, of the treasures that lay hidden in country homes. The scheme of the plan worked. In fact, it became a lucrative business. If a business is lucrative, it means that it makes lots of money profitable. And now it was another Sunday. Boggess parked some distance from the gates of his first house, the Queen Anne. He never liked his car to be seen until a deal was made. A dear old clergyman and a large station wagon never seemed quite right together. But there was nothing of value in the house. So the first house, the Queen Anne, nothing of value in there. The next stop, no one was home. But the third farmhouse, the third place a farmhouse was back in the fields. So we had to walk through the fields to get to the house. It looked rambling and dirty. Rambling means that, well, a bit like you can, you can be rambling when you speak, meaning you just kind of go on and on in the same way a house can be rambling. One room leads to another room and it's all a bit disorganized. It looked rambling and dirty. He didn't hold out much hope for it. If you hold out hope for something it means you think, oh there, I think there might be something here. But in this case he's like, no, I don't think there'll be much here. No, I don't. I don't hold out much hope for this place. Three men were standing in the yard, that's the space at the back of the house. When they caught sight of the small pot bellied man in his black suit and parson's collar, they stopped talking. Pot bellied. If you've got a pot belly, it means you've got a round belly like a fat stomach. Okay, a round pot belly. Maybe you'd get one from drinking too much beer. Pot belly. So this is a description of Boggess. He was small, he had a pot belly. And when they saw this man, this small pot bellied man in his black suit and parson's collar, they stopped talking and watched him suspiciously. Which country folk can do sometimes. The farm owner was a stumpy man, so that's short with small shifty eyes. If you have shifty eyes, it means your eyes move around maybe suspiciously. What do you want, eh? The tall youth, that's young person beside him was his son Bert. The short man with broad shoulders was Claude, a neighbour. Broad means wide. And what exactly might you be wanting? Rummins asked. So he speaks a bit like, you know, kind of country person, a farmer. What might you be wanting? Maybe I should push the accent a bit more. What exactly might you be wanting? Romans asked. Bogges explained at some length the aims and ideals of the Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture. He probably put on a bit of an act. Well, I work for the preferred. The Royal Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture. Here's my card. It's a. It's a labor of love, you see. I travel the length and breadth of the country searching for rare items which can be logged in the, in an inventory at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. And in fact, if we find any special items, sometimes we may be placed to even make an offer to make sure that the furniture is well kept. Right. And Rumin said, we don't have any. You're wasting your time, unfriendly. Now just a minute, sir, Bogges said, raising a finger. The last man who said that to me was an old farmer down in Sussex. Sussex is one of the home counties, one of the counties near London. And when he finally let me into his house, do you know what I found? A dirty looking old chair in the kitchen that turned out to be worth £400. I showed him how to sell it and he bought himself a new tractor with the money. He bought himself a new tractor which is, you know, Boggess knows who he's talking to. That this is the sort of thing that Rummins would be interested in. Of course, a new tractor would be very important for him. Robbins shifted uneasily on his feet. So he sort of shifted. Meaning he shifted his weight. Maybe moved his weight from his left foot to his right foot. Well, he said that there's no harm in you taking a look. There's no harm. It couldn't hurt if you just took a look. That's not going to hurt. There's no harm in that. He led the way. Meaning like, follow me, I'll lead the way. He led the way into an exceedingly like extremely filthy, meaning dirty living room. Okay, and there it was. Boggess saw it at once and gasped. That's the gasp. He stood staring for 10 seconds at least, not daring to believe what he saw before him. If you don't dare to believe it, it's just like he can't believe it. In fact, he won't believe it. He won't even dare. He's not quite confident enough to even believe that he can see what is before him. It couldn't be true. At that point, Boggess became aware of the three men watching him Intently. They're watching him intently. They're watching him, studying him very carefully. They'd seen him gasp and stare in a flash, meaning very quickly, Boggess staggered to the nearest chair and collapsed into it, breathing heavily. What's the matter? Claude asked. Oh, it's, it's, it's nothing. He gasped. I'll be all right in a minute. I thought maybe you were looking at something, Ramin said. No, no, Bogges said. It's just my heart. It happens every now and then. I'll be all right every now and then. Meaning sometimes all right. He must have time to think, he told himself. Take it gently, Boggis. Keep calm. These people may be ignorant, meaning uneducated, but they are not stupid. And if it is really true. So to a layman, what he had seen might not have appeared particularly impressive. A layman is a normal person who's not. Doesn't have specialist knowledge. Okay? So if you, in the world of science, you have specialists who understand about certain, you know, chemistry or physics or biology or whatever. But I'm not a specialist, so I'm just a layman, right? Also in law you've got lawyers who understand all the legal terms. They understand the law and everything. And then ordinary people who haven't studied law, we are just laymen or lay people. So a layperson is someone who doesn't have specialist knowledge in a certain area. Just ordinary person. So to a layman, what he'd seen might not have appeared particularly impressive, covered as it was with dirty white paint. So someone had painted this thing, which I suppose is not the end of the world because you can remove paint from furniture, apparently. So to a layman it looked unimpressive, but it was a dealer's dream. Boggess knew that among the most coveted examples of 18th century English furniture are three pieces known as the Chippendale commodes. If something is coveted, it means it's desired that everyone wants to have it. Okay? Among the most coveted examples of 18th century English furniture are three pieces. Only three. The Chippendale commodes. Maybe there are more Chippendale commodes than three. Maybe this is the fourth. I don't know. A trifle unsteadily. If you say a trifle something, it means a little bit slightly old fashioned language. A trifle unsteadily meaning a little unsteadily. If you're unsteady, you're not steady. For example, if you do something unsteadily, it means maybe your legs are a bit wobbly and you might fall again. Because remember, Boggess is still recovering from the shock of seeing this thing. So he moves around the room a little unsteadily, you know, trying to regain his composure. Boggess began to move around the room, examining the other furniture one piece at a time. Apart from the commode, it was a very poor lot. So the rest of it was not worth anything, really. Nice oak table, he said. Not old enough to be of any interest, this chest of drawers. Boggess walked casually past the commode. Worth a few pounds, I dare say. I dare say is like saying, I suppose, a crude reproduction. I'm afraid if something is crude, like in this case, a piece of furniture, if it's crude, if it's. If the design or the work is crude, it means it's done kind of badly by someone who didn't really know what they were doing. If I made a table, it would be a very crude table. It'd just be like, right piece of wood, legs, bang, bang, bang. There, there it is. And the table's unsteady. It wobbles. My crude carpentry skills. A crude reproduction, I'm afraid so. He's saying that this one is not an original. It's just someone's attempt to copy that style, and they've done it very badly, very crudely. That's a strong bit of furniture, Rumins said. Some nice carving on it, too. Carving is when the wood is kind of cut into different shapes with a chisel. You would carve wood into different shapes. You can carve a design. Carve some designs on a piece of furniture. Okay. Nice carving, said Rummins. Machine carved, Boggess replied, bending down to examine the exquisite craftsmanship. Exquisite means wonderful. Excellent. Mm. He began to saunter off. If you saunter, if you kind of walk in a casual kind of way. He began to saunter off, frowning as if in deep thought. You know what? He said, looking back at the commode. So this is all part of his act. He's pretending not to care about it. Saunter off and then turn back. Oh, you know what? He said, looking back at the commode. I've wanted a set of legs, something like that for a long time. I've got a table in my own home, and when I moved house, the movers damaged the legs. I'm very fond of that table. He's fond of a table he has at home, and he likes it a lot. He's, you know, he feels attached to it. He likes it, he's fond of it. So he's got A table at home. And the legs have been damaged by some movers, some people who moved the furniture when he moved to a new house. So his nice table he's got at home needs a new set of legs. He said, I keep my Bible and sermon notes on that table. He paused, stroking his chin. These legs on your chest of drawers could be cut off and fixed onto my table. And Rummins has been caught by this trick, right? Rummins is. It's clever because Boggess is essentially encouraging Rummins to take initiative to. Now Rummins wants Bogges to buy it, right? Bogges is not concerned, but Rummins now spots an opportunity to actually sell this thing and get some money maybe that you could sell, you know, buy. You could buy something useful with it, that money. And so Romans says, what you mean to say is that you'd like to buy it? Well, it might be worth. Might be a bit too much trouble. No, it's not worth it. How much were you thinking of offering? How much were you thinking of offering? Romans asked. Not much, I'm afraid. You see, this is not a genuine antique. It's not genuine means it's not. It's not real. It's a. It's a fake antique. I'm not so sure. Rumin said, it's been in here over 20 years. I bought it at the manor house when the old squire died. So the manor house would be the house owned by the. Maybe the. The aristocrat or the sort of the. The. The. The lord of that area would have. Would own the manor house. The rich person of the area, the old squire. That's probably when the. The owner of the house, the owner of the land when he died. So. So Rummins bought it from the manor house. The manor house would be like Downton Abbey or something like that. I bought it from the manor house when the old squire died. Bert, where's that old one? Old bill? Where's that old bill you once found at the back of one of the drawers? Now, if you're an antiques dealer, having an original bill, like a proof of purchase or a proof of manufacture or something like that, a piece of paper which marks the history of that item, that again adds more value to the property. To the property? No, to the item. Property would be a house or something, but we're talking about furniture, okay? So that would add more value to the furniture if there's actually a bill and there is one for this Cipadelka mode. And Bert says, what, you mean this? And he lifted out a piece of folded Yellowing paper, right piece of sort of yellowing. So the paper is going yellow, which means it's old. He lifted it out from one of the drawers and carried it to his father. You can't tell me this writing ain't bloody old. Ain't is basically sort of colloquial English. It's not strictly correct but people say it a lot and you see it in song lyrics and stuff like that, don't you? Ain't means isn't, haven't, aren't. Right. You can't tell me this writing isn't bloody old. You can't tell me this writing ain't bloody old. Rumin said, holding the paper out to Boggess. And Boggess is again can't believe his eyes that there's actual a real bill of sale that goes along with this thing. An original one and bogus. His arm is shaking as he takes it and it was brittle. So if paper is brittle it means it's very old and it breaks easily. So it's definitely the original bill. It was brittle. It cracked slightly between his fingers. So it's old. It's the original one. The writing was in long sloping copperplate hand. This means the handwriting. So the note is written in handwriting in a sloping style. So that's a very old fashioned style of handwriting and probably Boggess would identify it and would know that this comes from the 18th century and the note is written in sort of fairly old fashioned language. Edward Montague esquire Debtor to thos Chippendale thos. Very old fashioned. We wouldn't say that these days. You know this is clearly original, maybe from the 18th century. A large mahogany commode table of exceeding fine wood, very rich carved. The spelling of carved C A R V D not ed Carvd So not ed, not ved which again shows that this is from centuries ago. Set upon fluted legs, two very neat shaped long drawers. Anyway, so the note is original. Boggess was fighting to suppress his excitement. Trying to suppress excitement is keep it down. So he's obviously, whoa, this is the real thing. But he has to, okay, keep. Suppress the excitement. With the invoice the value had climbed even higher. What in heaven's name would it fetch now? Fetch meaning, get. Meaning what amount of money would it get if he sold it now? Maybe £12,000, 14, maybe 15 or even £20,000. Remember £20,000, that would be £600,000 in today's money. It'd probably be worth a lot more as well because no doubt a Chippendale commode in 2023 would be worth even more than that. I mean, as we know, one got sold in 2010 for nearly 4 million, so it wouldn't be surprised if it went for about 5 million or something now, anyway. He tossed the paper contemptuously on the table. If you have contempt for something, it means you don't give it any respect at all. You think it's worthless. He tossed the note contemptuously on the table. It's exactly what I thought. A Victorian reproduction. Okay, so the Victorians, okay, people who are around during the reign of Queen Victoria at the end of the 19th century, they did a lot of reproductions, a lot of copying. They copied things like furniture and architecture from previous periods, and sometimes they did it kind of badly as well. Right? In that sort of modern period, a lot of stuff would have been copied and done quite quickly, maybe using machines, and as a result those copies would have been worthless. So. Oh, just. No, it's a Victorian reproduction. This is simply the invoice that the seller gave to his client. Listen, Parson, rumin said, how can you be so sure it's fake? You haven't seen it underneath all that paint? Has anyone got a knife? Asked Boggess. Claude produced a pocket knife and Bogges with apparent casualness. So again, he's pretending to be all casual, like he doesn't care. He chipped off paint from a small area on top of the commode. Take a look. But it was beautiful. The. The original wood underneath was beautiful. A warm little patch of mahogany. Very valuable hard wood, glowing like a topaz, rich and dark with the true color of its 200 years. Oh, what's wrong with it? Rummins asked. It's process. He's lying, of course. Without the slightest doubt, this wood has been processed with lime. Now I don't really know what that means either. Can wood be processed? I suppose if wood is processed with lime, it means it's people have someone's used lime on the wood to protect the wood or something. Maybe to make cheap wood look like more expensive wood. You rub lime into it or something, I don't know. But he said no, it's been processed with lime. Lime? That's not lime. The fruit. But that's lime. A kind of mineral like chalk. Okay, an alkaline mineral. How much would you give in Rumins accent How much would you give? Rumins asked. Boggess looked at the commode, frowned with his, you know, made an expression with his eyes to make it look like he was thinking or Seriously. And shrugged his shoulders, like lifted his shoulders up and down. I think £10 would be fair. Okay, so he's a very, very unbelievably low offer. It's about £300 though, by today's standards. £10. Rummins cried. So Rummins is not a fool, okay? He's negotiating. He knows it's worth more than that, but he's got no idea of its real value. Ten pounds. Rummins cried. Don't be ridiculous, Parson. Look at the bill. It tells you exactly what it cost. £87. Now it's antique, it's worth double. So Boggess has got Rummins exactly where he wants him. Where Boggess is trying to negotiate for something like 180 pounds when this thing is worth, what was it, 60, I can't remember, 20,000. So Bogges has got him where he wants him. The margins here that are being negotiated are all wonderful for Boggess and this is just cruel what he's doing. It's just mean spirited and greedy to try and negotiate from, from that point all the way down to £20, which is what he gets it for originally. He could have just said, okay, fine, he could have paid romans, you know, 180 pounds. And rummins would have been very happy with that, right? £180 in today's money, I don't know. But Ramen's gonna use that, right? But no, he's not. Bogus isn't satisfied with that. He wants to push it as far as he can go, which is really not, not fair at all. And Bogges said, if you'll pardon me, sir, it's not, it's a secondhand reproduction. But I'll tell you what, I'll go as high as 15 pounds. Make it 50. Ramin said, My dear man. Boggess said softly, I only want the legs. The rest of it is firewood. That's all. Make it 35. Rumin said, I couldn't, sir, I couldn't. What a performance. I'll make you one final offer. £20. I'll take it. Rummy snapped. Oh dear Bongis, I shouldn't have started this. You can't back out now, Parson. A deal's a deal. So Rummins is all in here. Yes, yes, I know. Perhaps if I got my car, you gentlemen would be kind enough to help me load it. To load the car would be to load the load of the furniture onto the car. Bogges found it difficult not to break into a run, so he's walking back to the car. Quickly finding it difficult not to start running to the car to break into a run. Walk slowly, Boggess. Keep calm. There's no hurry now. The commode is yours. Back in the farmhouse, Rummins was saying, fancy him giving me £20 for a load of junk like this. If you say fancy that, or fancy something happening, it's like, well, who would have expected that to happen? Oh, what a surprise. It's amazing, isn't it? Fancy him giving me 20 pounds for a load of junk like this. You did very nicely, Mr. Rummins. Claude told him, you think he'll pay you. So they're convinced that they've done a really good job here in the negotiation, which is quite sweet. We don't put it in the car till he do. No, we don't put it in the car till he do. Meaning we don't put it in the car until he pays us. And what if it won't go in the car? Claude asks. He'll just say, to hell with it and drive off. So they're concerned that Boggess is not going to follow through on the deal. They want to make sure that he'll be able to get it in the car so that they'll get their money. Rumins paused to consider this alarming prospect. Worrying. Alarming means worrying a prospect is a potential thing that could happen. Hmm, I've got an idea. Claude went on. He told us that it was only the legs he was wanting. Right, it's only the legs he wants. But in this case, he told us it was only the legs he was wanting. So all we gotta do is cut him off and then it'll be sure to go in the car. All we're doing is saving him the trouble of cutting them off when he gets home. A bloody good idea, Rumin said, looking at the commode. Within a couple of minutes, Claude and Bert had carried the commode outside and Claude went to work with the saw. So a saw is something you'd use to cut wood. When all the legs were severed, meaning cut off, Bert arranged them carefully in a row. Right. Claude stepped back to survey the results. Survey mean? Look at the results from. From above. Just let me ask you one question, Mr. Rummins, he said slowly, even now, could you put that enormous thing into a car? Not unless it was a van. Correct. Claude cried. And Parsons don't have vans. All they've got usually is piddling little Morris 8s or Austin Sevens. So these are both types of car? Old English cars that are small. Piddling means small and not very powerful. So, oh dear, the worm has turned. And Bogges act, his act of deception is now working against him in the most satisfying way in this story. Ah well, you know, we wouldn't be able to get that in, into his car. He's probably got a small car, right? The legs is all he wants. Roman said if the rest of it won't go in, then he can leave it. He can't complain. He's got the legs. Yeah, fair enough. That's true. He did say he only wanted the legs. Now, now you know better than that, Mr. Rummins, Claude said patiently, you know damn well he's going to start knocking the price if he don't get every single bit of this into the car. So why don't we give him his firewood now and be done with it? Fire. We firewood of course is wood that you would use to burn on the fire. So he's. So Claude is kind of being cautious and saying, look, you know, I think that if he can't get that in the car then he's going to try and reduce the price if it's just the legs, right, so why don't we give him the firewood so he, so he can't complain. Fair enough. Rumin said, Bert, fetch the axe. An ax is a, is a large tool that you would use to chop up wood. You chop a tree down with an axe, you swing it and thonk, chop, chop, right? You chop something up with an axe and you can, you can break something to pieces with an axe. Fetch the axe, meaning get the ax. It was hard work and it took several minutes. Hard work because this is, this is a incredible piece of craftsmanship, a really, really, really well made chest of drawers. Not just some think something from Ikea which you could kind of smash to pieces with your, with your feet and hands. This is a, this is a virtually priceless item of furniture. So it was very hard work. It took them several minutes but they had the whole thing more or less smashed to pieces. I'll tell you one thing, he said, straightening up, wiping his brow. If you wipe your brow, it means you wipe the front of your head after you've been doing heavy work or doing exercise. I'll tell you one thing, that was a bloody good carpenter put this job together and I don't care what the parson says, yeah, it was a bloody good carpenter. It was Thomas Chippendale himself. A carpenter is someone who builds things out of wood. I'll tell you what it was a bloody good carpenter put this job together. I don't care what the parson says, because the parson has led them to believe it's a crude copy made in the Made, you know, only a few decades before. Ah, we're just in time. Rummins called out. Here he comes. And this is where we imagine the parson rushing back over with the, with the money and the car and to discover his precious Chippendale commode reduced to pieces, smashed up. And then these three guys looking very proud of themselves. We'll put that in the car for you now if you want. So there you go. That's the. That's Parsons Pleasure by Roald Dahl. Good story, isn't it? You can let me know what you think in the comments section. That's the end of the episode. I just wanted to say at the end here that this story was actually turned into an episode of a TV show. So they made a TV series called Tales of the Unexpected. It was a very popular TV series and each episode was an adaptation of one of Roald Dahl's stories. Okay. And so there is an episode of Tales of the Unexpected for Parsons pleasure. And it's definitely worth a watch. It's really good. I mean, it was made in the 80s probably, so it looks kind of old fashioned, but it's still really good and you can find it on YouTube. I highly recommend it. I'll, I'll add it to the page for this episode on my website. You can actually see Roald Dahl, the author himself. He introduces the episode. You see him sitting in a nice leather armchair and he, he introduces the, the, the episode. And the acting in the performance is excellent, particularly by Sir John Gielgud who plays Bogges. Now, Sir John Gielgud is one of the most famous names in British acting ever. One of the UK's most famous and highly respected actors, both on stage and on film. A proper stage actor with an excellent reputation. So we get to enjoy the wonderful acting of Sir John Gielgud as Boggess. And also the other actors are excellent too, the farmers and stuff. It's really, really well done. So I highly recommend that you watch that TV version of this story as well. You'll find the video on the page for this episode on my website. Okay, but that's it. That's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for watching and I will speak to you soon in another episode of my podcast. But for now, it's time to say goodbye. Bye bye. Bye bye, bye bye bye. 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