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The Pink Lady of Duddenhoe
End
 Rarely
glimpsed around the village, the Pink Lady was first spotted in 1995. She makes
a regular but low key appearance each year at the Harvest Supper taking great care
to remain concealed until her new paramour becomes apparent.
Much of her early life is shrouded in mystery; rumor has it that in her youth she
was one of dozen or so young things who sparkled with the anticipation of what life
could offer. Unfortunately, she found no takers for her cheap and cheerful charms;
until one day she was grasped firmly by the waist and lifted from the shelf she
had begun to see as her maidenly future. Sadly her suitor was not the handsome and
gallant sommelier of whom she had dreamed. The man was a dilettante and used her
cruelly to gain admission to a gathering where finer charms were on offer. Abandoned
in minutes, she left that party with another guest feeling cheap and not a little
degraded, like a runner up’s prize; from this low plateau her existence declined
into darkness and bitterness entered her soul.
She felt her life was being decided by others with an uncaring randomness, like
numbers being plucked from a hat. At some point her despair and obsession that numbers
were shaping her future, she had her décolletage adorned by a suggestive but quite
tasteless tattoo. This just served to diminish and disfigure her slim neck and curvaceous
body, the things that, until then, had been her greatest (and said by some to be
her only) assets.
Many think she came to Duddenhoe End after a short and unsatisfactory affair in
another village. The depression brought on by this unrequited romance left her dull
and deeply introverted. This melancholy has led her into a life dominated by her
search for love and so insecure that she has to sneak her way into the lives of
others.
Sadly, it seems she can never find anyone to reciprocate her feelings; most find
that the fear of what really lies in her tinted and perhaps tainted depths prevents
any chance of a full and consuming relationship ever developing.
A year seems long enough for anyone to endure her company, by early autumn parting
becomes inevitable. She will sit quietly, unnoticed, at a small table for most of
the harvest supper until that moment when she is drawn, seemingly by chance to a
new prey.
Tradition has decreed those she leaves behind can only achieve closure on such a
daunting period of their lives by creating an ode or message of warning for their
successor. This warning is read publicly by the new cohabitee, to cleanse the souls
of those she leaves behind and prepare the neophyte for what is to come.
You can read the odes and messages
here
This is just one of many versions of the Pink Lady's story;
if you can supply further information or variations on the myths surrounding Her
Ladyship please let me know. It would be interesting to devote an area of the site
to these stories and of course it goes without saying that truth and protection
of the innocent should not get in the way of a good tale. |
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