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Flushed Grollings
A favourite of mine from "A Bit Of Fry And Laurie". Stephen Fry comes into a hardware supplier - the sort that professionals go to, with a man in a brown coat behind a counter. Lots of shelves and cabinets of little drawers. The sort of place where I would be completely baffled... Stephen has a list in his hand.
- Hugh:
- Help you sir?
- Stephen:
- Um, a dozen grollings please.
- Hugh:
- Flushed or galvanized?
- Stephen:
- Flushed.
- Hugh:
- Right. That be it?
- Stephen:
- A copper flange-pipe, braced, two jubilees, seven nipples...
- Hugh:
- Greased?
- Stephen:
- Greased nipples, yeah. Five olive-spantles, jigged and onioned.
- Hugh:
- Twelve or seventeen mil?
- Stephen:
- Twelve. Metre of fleeling wire, co-axial, twenty UJs and a parping couplet.
- Hugh:
- Male or female?
- Stephen:
- Male. No - second thoughts - one of each.
- Hugh:
- Do you want the parping couplet standing proud?
- Stephen:
- No... embarrassed, I think.
- Hugh:
- An embarrassed parping couplet. That it?
- Stephen:
- Two rolls of spowling tape.
- Hugh:
- Double-sided?
- Stephen:
- Do they do single-sided?
- Hugh:
- Only in Viennese lengths.
- Stephen:
- Better go with double then. Six sheets of gruddock paper.
- Hugh:
- Parkinised?
- Stephen:
- No.
- Hugh:
- Right.
- Stephen:
- Nearly there. Four felching pens and a bevelled spill-trunion.
- Hugh:
- Only got one felching pen left. Got some frotting pencils though.
- Stephen:
- Will they do?
- Hugh:
- Well - you know the thrush-plate?
- Stephen:
- Yeah.
- Hugh:
- You can use a frotting pencil on that, rude to the lookout-valve on the fumpspoke, and you can cut out the felching altogether... as long as you rim the satchel-arm properly first.
- Stephen:
- Right - four frotting pencils then.
- Hugh:
- So that's it, is it?
- Stephen:
- Yup.
- Hugh:
- You've already got a clip-jawed double lock brace, have you?
- Stephen:
- D'you reckon I'll need one?
- Hugh:
- Well, are you going straight or curved?
- Stephen:
- Straight, then curved.
- Hugh:
- Ah. Well you should be all right then, as long as you remember to suck the clenching pin tight to the arc thrust.
Stephen fetches Hugh one across the face.
- Stephen:
- How dare you!
- Hugh:
- Sorry.