"Robert Rankin - The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rankin Robert)

You see, I have wandered from the road. I followed a sign that said shortcut, and now I find myself
here.'

'It happens,' said the farmer. 'More often than you might suppose.'

'Asrarely as that?' said the lad, who was never one prone to extravagant speculation.

'At the very least, but mostly a whole lot-more.'

The travelling lad whistled.

'Please don't whistle,' said the farmer. 'It aggravates my Gout.'

'I am perplexed,' said the whistler. 'How can whistling aggravate Gout?'

'Gout is the name of my goat,' the farmer explained. 'I have a pig called Palsy and a cat called Canker.
Once I owned a dog by the name of Novinger's syndrome, but his howling upset my wife, so I sold him
to a tinker.'

'Oh,' said the lad once more.

'Yes, oh. And whistling aggravates my goat. As does poking him in the ear with a pointy stick. Which, in
all truth, would aggravate me. And I'm not easily upset.'

'Rjghty oh.' The lad shifted from one weary foot to the other, and his stomach growled hungrily. 'But
regarding these questions that I must ask.'

'Are they questions of an agricultural nature?' the farmer enquired.

'Not specifically.' The lad shook his heated head.

'That's a pity,' said the farmer. 'Because my knowledge on the subject is profound. I trust it's not a
question regarding clockwork motors. Because, for all the life that's in me, I cannot make head nor toe of
those infernal machines.' The farmer made a sacred sign above his treble chin.

'It's not clockwork motors.' The lad made exasperated sighing sounds. 'I was lately apprenticed in that
trade and I know everything I need to know regarding them.'

'Cheese, then?' said the farmer. 'I know much about cheese.'

'Directions only.' The lad blew droplets of bluely-tinted sweat from the tip of his upturned nose. 'All I
wish for are directions. How do I get to the city from here?'

'The city?'The farmer almost choked upon his chewable. 'Why would a lad such as yourself be wanting
to be going to the city?'

'I mean to seek my fortune there,' the lad replied, with candour. 'I am done with toiling in a factory. I will
seek my fortune in the city.'
'Fortune?' coughed the farmer. 'In the city? Hah and hah again.'