loverlyviolets | The Causeway to Mallard Lane and Back, Laaaaaaaaaaaaate Wednesday Night

In the upstairs flat at 35 Mallard Way, the only inhabitant was sleeping the deep and unshakable sleep of the well-fed and satisfied with life -- but this isn't about her. It's about them:

How the decades old delivery van managed to make it across the causeway to the wee parking area was not nearly as interesting a question as would the poor engine start again once its death rattle was ended? It was probably due to the answer to this last question that the driver simply set the noisy claptrap of a van to idle (there would likely be complaints in the morning) and proceeded to unfold himself from the cab.

	"Right! 'Ere we are, 'Orace, me lad!" The thin beak-nosed driver stretched to his full height and slapped a hand against some papers he held with a coarse laugh. "Tolja we'd find it. Just where the map says it is." Pocketing the papers, he went round to the back of the van and leaned in to rummage.
	The passenger door opened and a smaller and rounder but equally beaky-nosed man dangled for a minute from the passenger side of the cab, then tumbled to the ground. "Jasper, I been thinkin'" He reached up and straightened his cap. "Why we gotta deliver this 'ere sign at this time o' night? It don't seem right. I thought we went straight."
	"That's why I do the thinkin in this 'ere partnership, 'Orace." Jasper poked his head around the back of the van and glared. "We didn't go straight, y'bloomin fool. We're just taking odd jobs 'til the boss pays us. 'Ere." He held out a prybar.
	"Ok, Jasper. Wot's this, then?" Horace took the prybar, still confused.
	Jasper pulled his own prybar and a hammer from the van and sighed, pulling the pile of papers back out of his jacket pocket and waving them. "Accordin' to the many-festo, 'ere, the wrong sign got deee-livered an’ we've got to take it back in exchange for the one we brung." He shoved the papers back into his jacket and hefted the prybar and a parcel wrapped in brown paper and string. "An 'ow else are we gonna do that but wif the proper tools, 'orace, eh?" And with that, they set off into town.
	When they'd reached the tidy little flower shop on Mallard Way, though, Horace glanced down at the paper version of the shop's sign, placed inside the window on the other side of where Jasper was already working away at the big wooden one, one foot planted on the wall for better leverage. "Jasper, I don't think that this is the wrong sign..."
	Jasper didn't stop trying to work his prybar between the sign and the wall. "'Orace, wot--” Grunt. “--does this sign say?"
	"Covent Garden Flowers."
	"An' does this look in any bloomin' way like Covent Garden?"
	"No, Jasper. But I was thinkin' what if..."
	Jasper reached out to smack Horace in the back of the head. "I do enough thinkin' for the both of us. Now 'elp me wif this sign or there ain't gonna be no dinner tonight fer neiver of us."
	Horace rubbed his head and resettled his cap, then added his prybar and weight to the effort. After only a few minutes, the wall (tearfully) released its hold on the sign and the two men tumbled backwards.
	"Right! Now for the new one, an' we're off!" They set to work hanging the new sign and stood back to admire their handiwork. It was only a wee bit crooked.
	"A nice tidy bit o' work for a nice tidy sum, eh, 'Orace?" Jasper said when they'd reached the causeway again. He threw the tools in the back of the van and headed for the driver side door as Horace struggled with the old sign.
	He finally reached the van and lifted the heavy sign onto the floor. Horace then secured the tools in their proper places against the wall, and closed and locked the doors. "Jasper? Can I drive the van on the way back?" He scrambled up the cab and into the passenger seat as if he already knew the answer.
	"'Ere, after I done all the 'ard work, now you want to take the easy part o' the job?"

Then the van somehow shifted out of idle and set off coughing and spitting down the causeway, as the pair drove away from Fandom leaving behind a small amount of dust and debris and a bright and shiny new sign for the flower shop: