Picture, if you will, a little small town lane. It is beset on both sides by houses of various sizes that the city folk would invariably call 'cottages', despite any technicalities associated with such a label, and would proceed to exclaim over how 'positively quaint' they are. This will, of course, not endear them to the locals at all, but they will utterly fail to notice this and take the rather stiff smiles of said locals in stride as that refreshing brand of 'country friendliness'. These city folk who seems to utterly condescending would never notice the house at the very end of the lane, for it is small (closer to actual cottage proportions) and quite run down. It is also quite grey. As such, in no way does it conform to the pastoral rustic idyll that the city folk have deigned to visit the countryside to see, and thus they ignore it. But these city folk are as unimportant to this story as the house at the end of the lane is to them, and thus let us all promptly forget them. Quite conversely, the house at the lane is very important to us, for it is the abode of the man about whom this story has been written. For a clue as to how important both the house and the man are to us, notice that both of them have been mentioned in the title (for future reference, this can be an significant indicator as to the importance of things).
The man who lives in the house of the end of the name has a name, but it is not very critical to the telling of this story. However, for expediency, for your own comfort and titillation, and to aid in differentiating him from the other persons that lived on the lane, let us call him Reginald Whittlesby II (that is, the second, for he was named after his father), or Reg for the sake of simplicity. He is is a small man, bent over by the weight of his life and by his threadbare grey coat. He has a bald head punctuated mistily by a few threads of grey hair and the occasional grey liver spot, grey fingernails at the ends of grey hands, and watery grey eyes. In fact, Reg Whittlesby is almost entirely grey, from his lips to his hands to his grey felt shoes. He even walks and talks in a manner that implies grey, a show, waffly shuffling and a slight soft wheezing. Similarly, his cottage at the end of the lane is grey also. It has grey shingles atop grey brick walls, and grey curtains hang either side of the grey door. In the village wherein this lane resides, which is resplendent in emerald greens and ruby reds, it would stand out were it not so ugly and decrepit and thus ignored universally as one tries to ignore a quietly disgusting relative (such as an aged uncle with a propensity for picking his nose). But now we must briefly depart from the man (Reginald, not the uncle from whom we shall be departing permanently) and his house, and consider the other denizens of this country lane.
In a slightly sprawling salmon-pink house midway down the lane, with bright purple curtains and terracotta-red roof tiles lives Annabelle Jocelyn Pumphrey, who does not know how to decorate but who very much likes colours. She is currently in the kitchen, which surrounds the bright yellow back door. It is quite a large kitchen, as it was built to accommodate quite a large woman. Mrs Pumphrey loves baking, and must often sample her cooking to ensure it is of the highest quality and quantity so that it may fulfil her second love, which is feeding people. She is cheerily rotund, and is hardworking and efficient in both her chores and in gaily gossiping about the townsfolk. Currently she is mixing up a giant loaf or five of her best banana bread, which she intends to take to the Sunday Church Picnic, for Father Frombles has been looking rather peaky and thin of late, and her banana bread does wonders for both the tummy and the complexion. Being able to multitask quite comfortably, she is chatting to her friend Miss Matilda Heathery, who is currently leaning on the kitchen counter. Miss Tilly Heathery, despite being half the age, is just as cheerily florid and bosomy as Annabelle, and just as enamoured of sweets and gossip. Pursuant to our story, their conversation is about our Mr Reginald, and features a large number of dropped 'haitches'.
'Ere now, 'ave you ever been inside 'is 'ouse? It's amazing it is. Not a single mote of dust or cobweb to be seen. You'd think it would be all dirty inside, considerin the outside state of it and 'im bein a gent an' all, but there's not a single speck inside that 'ouse, I'm tellin you. I don't know 'ow 'e does it, 'e moves so slowly all the time. An everything in there is grey it is, just like 'im. Like the 'ole place has been left too long in the washbasin an 'as all just faded out.
An 'e doesn't hardly eat anything! Why, I 'ad 'im over for tea with old Mrs Buttershop (you know 'ow we've been trying to fix them up, for years now it seems like), an despite me putting out teacakes an beef cucumber sammiches and God knows what else all 'e et was a single sugar biscuit! 'E never smiles, and 'e hardly ever speaks, an that only a whisper. It does me 'ead in, I don't mind tellin you!
At this very moment, completely unaware that anyone at all is talking about him, Reginald is shuffling about his grey decrepit living room, with a limp grey duster clutched in one limp grey hand. On closer inspection, if anyone dared to do a closer inspection of such a thing in such a place, one would find that this duster is, or once was, half an underpant. His eyes, the only part of him that is moving quicker than his known shuffle, dart from corner to corner, earnestly searching. He polishes each surface in the room, resulting in the uncanny cleanliness spoke of earlier by our Mrs Pumphrey, all the while searching, searching. At last, with a small cackle that would certainly surprise the good mistresses in their large kitchens, he spies the makings of a spiderweb. A single strand of grey, from which hangs a rather large and enterprising spider (whose name I'm sure neither you nor I could pronounce, were we even to know it) that has delightfully decided to settle here after observing the plentiful real estate through the kitchen window (which it had some considerable difficulty navigating, I can tell you). With uncharacteristic swiftness Mr Whittlesby snatches the poor unsuspecting spider from its line, grey lips peeling back to reveal a startling mouthful of strong white teeth. He crunches down on the arachnid with unconcealed relish, in much the same way that the kiddlins of the lane devour their hard candies, until only one erstwhile orange-striped leg is left hanging outside his mouth like a smear of iced lolly left behind on his lip. His vividly crimson tongue, the only part of him that retains colour (perhaps through its lack of use) flicks out and scoops up the leg. Mr Reginald Whittlesby II, or whatever his name is, who lives in the little run-down cottage at the end of the lane, smiles a rare toothy grin, and then sets about his cleaning once again.
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