At this ungodly hour of the night, Trifle City was a damp and soggy pudding of a place, a city as sweet as Surstr?mming. Darkened, not a light on or curtain open, the tower blocks, scrappers, high rises and courts leaned like the limpest of proverbial icing; the gutters overflowed with a proverbial jelly-like congestion of leaves, rain, mucky-muck and moss; the pavements were glazed with puddles as slick as the proverbial custard; even the birthday candle street lamps (not proverbial – literal) glowed so feebly that the moths orbiting their lacklustre flames carried torches, wore high-vis jackets and were perpetually pained with rickets. Many of these moths were so SAD and depressed they were driven to throwing themselves before the oncoming headlights of Detective Pilchard's patrol car, their plump little bodies bursting like dejected raisins upon impact; cursing these suicidal bugs the detective leant precariously from the driver's side window and wiped the sticky mass from the windscreen with his sleeve; due to further cutbacks, the TCPDK (Trifle City Police Department – the K was silent...for some reason) could no longer afford windscreen wipers for their patrol cars.
Swerving onwards through the suicidal smattering – face pelted, moustache littered with wings, a sleeve sodden in bug juice and his headway only further delayed – a barrage of questions raced through the grizzled detective's mind: What infraction would await him this cold and dismal night? A robbery? A shooting? Another despondent moth to talk-down from a ledge? Need he call upon every inch of his cunning (1 1/8 ) to crack a case of the most fiendish?
“And is there anything to be said for this new craze of putting breakfast cereals on toast I've heard so much about?” the detective dribbled contemplatively across his sleeve. (The clean one.)
Foremost on the detective's mind however, fantasies of Weetos scattered atop ciabatta aside, was a question which troubled him constantly: Was he still capable of performing his duties? As a veteran detective, was he still up to the job? Truth often the harshest of critics he blinked away a tear; it sounded salty.
The first to admit it, Detective Pilchard's best days were unquestionably behind him; pushing 60, dragging 47, laden with a pot belly and a saucepan bum he was fast feeling himself out-dated, obsolete, forever playing catch-up against the TCPDK's younger recruits. (Followed by a quick game of Kiss Chase, Hop Scotch, and Conkers. Blah blah.) Yet unlike the aforementioned tree-nuts he did so often swing in combat the detective refused to be surpassed; in an attempt to enhance his flagging cardiovascular capabilities, should he find himself in pursuit of a fleeing suspect (or, more likely, if his hat were pocketed by a squirl) he'd intended to run from Pole to Pole; alas, during the third week of training his ladle knees had begun to ache, so he just did a quick jog around the clothes line instead, and called it quits.
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Forced into accepting that his body could not be improved, therefore, the detective had instead focused his endeavours on his mind, the old grey matter; to this end he'd pledged to teach himself every known language by listening to courses while he slept; again-alas, all he learned from this method was how to say 'turn tape to side two' in Swahili. (Geuza mkanda upande wa pili. You're welcome.)
However, these ventured furtherances were trivial when compared to Detective Pilchard's grandest enterprise; one which would ultimately – and literally – define him in more ways than one...
Years before said enterprise the then-struggling detective had guesstimated that at least 95% of all police work was listening. (The remainder involved 2% door-down-kicking-in-ing, 2% moth counselling, and a further 4% assigned to mathematics; there might even have been an additional percent dedicated to mediocre witticisms... Blah.) Like all competent officers who'd passed the force's fitness exam (albeit just barely) Detective Pilchard had 20/20 hearing; but what if he could upgrade that to 40/40 hearing?
What followed, dear reader, was a pioneering procedure, an eight-hour operation during which a team of stellar surgeons/veterinarians removed Detective Pilchard's eyes from their sockets, gave them a quick buff n' wipe with a flannel, before delicately squidging them into his ears. (The holes which the eyes had vacated, known technically as 'eyes holes,' were stuffed with cotton wool and sewn shut.) To the surprise of all, none less the surgeons, the operation was a resounding success; thanks to the uniting of eyeball and earhole not only could Detective Pilchard now hear if someone was telling lies, he could simultaneously see if they were telling lies! Yes! He could see sounds! He could hear pictures!
Not really. In truth, lumped with two bloodshot eyes poking out of his lugholes like a pair of semi-emerged Cyclops moles with conjunctivitis, the ageing detective was now effectively deaf, blind, plagued by both double-vision and stereo-tinnitus and could only see where he was going by turning his head ninety degrees. And the hindrances didn't end there:
Buying sunglasses was problematic.
If he wore earmuffs or a large hat he would be plunged into darkness.
Whenever he blinked his ears folded inwards like tortillas.
And passport photos... Don't get him started! On more than one occasion Detective Pilchard had been mistaken by customs for an actual pilchard! And one time a chameleon!
As you can therefore see/hear, dear reader, having eyes in his ears had failed to make Detective Pilchard a more competent officer or garner him the respect he so craved from his peers; much to the reddening of his earballs said peers only collapsed in hysterics whenever the detective sidled sideways down the corridors of TCPDK headquarters like a grouchy crab, bumping into water coolers and hatstands and anything else outside of his earline.
“And said peers don't have to sit sideways whilst driving to a crime scene,” the detective grumbled to himself, squinting an ear through the bug besplattered windscreen as he ploughed onwards through the night and moths.
