The Reginald Perrin Omnibus Read Online Free PDF Page A

gentle switchback. Above them the sun glinted on Vauxhalls and Fords. Below them the sun glinted on Fords and Vauxhalls. Here and there, among the cars, a few confused animals could be seen.
    ‘Look, Adam, giraffe,’ said Reggie’s daughter Linda.
    ‘Gifarfe,’ said Adam, her three-year-old son.
    ‘Look, Jocasta, zebra,’ said Linda’s husband Tom.
    ‘Szluba,’ said Jocasta, their two-year-old daughter.
    Reggie and Elizabeth sat in the front, and Tom and Linda sat with their children in the back. A merciless pseudo-African sun beat down on the pleasant English parkland.
    Reggie pulled up on the hard shoulder, the better to observe a yak.
    ‘Look. Yak,’ said Elizabeth.
    They stared at the yak. The yak stared at them. Nobody spoke. There isn’t much to say about a yak.
    Reggie gazed at the scene malevolently. The lower branches of fine old oak trees had been denuded by giraffes. The trees looked like huge one-legged women wearing green skirts. On the right, on the tired over-worked grass of Picnic Area ‘A’, a few young zebra were lost among the picnickers. On the left, beyond the yak, some llamas were neatly parked in rows, sated with safety and food. Beyond the parked llamas the great herds of Fords and Vauxhalls roamed, their hungry cameras ready to pounce.
    Reggie drove slowly on, past the yak, past the llamas.
    ‘What’s that?’ said Adam, pointing excitedly.
    ‘A waste-paper basket,’ said his father Tom.
    Reggie had been in a good mood all morning, but it was hot in the car, it smelt of children and garlic, and his good mood had gone.
    ‘What did you have for supper last night?’ he asked.
    ‘Squid, provençale style,’ said Linda. ‘Why?’
    ‘I just wondered.’
    Tom was highly regarded in the Thames Valley. He put witty house adverts in the local papers, brewed nettle and parsnip wine, smoked a briar pipe, made the children eat garlic bread, had a beard which stank of tobacco, home-made wine and garlic, and had built a stone folly in his back garden.
    They crawled slowly past the new Ministry of Transport sign for ‘Caution: Elephants crossing’. A herd of okapi came into view, and they stopped to watch those charming central-African ruminants. Hartcliffe has the largest herd of okapi in the Northern Hemisphere.
    ‘Look. Okapi,’ said Elizabeth.
    ‘They come from central Africa,’ said Tom.
    ‘What’s that?’ said Adam, pointing to a small bird.
    ‘A starling,’ said Reggie grimly. You brought them all this way to see the largest herd of okapi in the Northern Hemisphere, and all they were interested in were bloody starlings. That was what came of being progressive parents, and having bright red open-plan Finnish playpens, and not insisting on fixed bedtimes.
    Reggie moved on again. Ahead was lion country.
    ‘You are approaching lion country,’ said a notice. ‘Close all windows. If in trouble, blow your horn and wait for the white hunter.’
    A high wire fence separated the lions from the more reliable beasts. They drove into the lion enclosure under a raised gate. Above them in his watch tower the white hunter scanned the horizon with watchful eyes.
    ‘Lions soon,’ said Linda, who was running to fat and often walked around her home stark naked, so that the children wouldn’t grow up with inhibitions.
    ‘Lines,’ said Adam. ‘Lines. Lines. Lines.’
    ‘That’s right. Lions,’ said Tom.
    Jocasta was picking listlessly at the ‘We’ve been to Hartcliffe’ sticker on the back window.
    ‘Are the windows all shut?’ said Elizabeth.
    ‘Windows all shut,’ said Tom.
    The cars ahead had reached the lions, and traffic came to a standstill. It was sweltering. The damp patches under Linda’s armpits were spreading steadily.
    ‘Why are lines?’ said Adam.
    ‘Why are lions what, dear?’ said Linda.
    ‘Why are lines lines?’
    ‘Well they just are, dear.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because they come from other lions.’
    ‘Why aren’t lines ants?’
    ‘Because they don’t