Why American Beer is so Bad
Number 4 Privit Drive
Vernon Dursley was a man of pronounced habits. At 6:30 AM his alarm would go off, and he would lie in bed for precisely 10 minutes while listening to the news on the BBC. His wife Petunia rises, throwing on a patterned robe while taking the stairs to start coffee. At 6:40 AM he promptly finds himself out of bed, with a shower, shave, tooth brushing and a light wax of his mustache ahead of him. In fifteen minutes he reappears to pull on his shirt & trousers -- his socks & underwear already apparent so that he should never appear outside of his bathroom completely starkers. Vernon heads downstairs to the kitchen. At five of seven he promptly kisses his wife and sits down, taking a bracing of coffee which causes him to gasp in delight, uttering “Ahhh, that hit the spot, my dear, sweet Petunia”.
He normally prefers tea, but takes coffee on work mornings so that he could be suret to be more awake for his drive to work. It is in the small things that truly count, he often states, proudly mentioning pressed white shirts with starched collars, two pens in his shirt pocket, change for the tollbooth. That was the way to get ahead. The small stuff.
Petunia serves breakfast and he digs into with a gusto of a business-like manner, asking about her plans for the day, any news-worthy gossip, and whatever light conversation should occur between the two of them. At precisely a quarter past seven on this fine June day, he opens up a newspaper, taking in the headlines and his favorite editorial before a quick glance at the sports headlines. He mutters sadly about the state of cricket but is delighted at the news of a new kicker for West Ham; a good proper decent midland boy. But of course he takes the Telegraph.
At 7:20 he walks to his car, keys in hand, and is attacked. The attentive reader may note this is not consistent with his normal schedule as previously defined. He finds it quite annoying, soon then in stages rather alarming, and then quite frightening indeed. He is shocked!
“Boy!! What are you doing?” he shouts in anger and fear. While that scourge had long ago left his stoop, his cry out is from a purely counter-factual reflex, an ingrained habit.
Facing him, a masked man in a dark cloak, a mask alight with a painted rage of anger, its inhabitant furiously waving about a stick – no, it was a wand, he thought again, his recognition realighting. One of those horribly damned to blazes wizards as he understood them to be. It -- for he would never call such a thing a man, it was shouting, declaiming badly in Latin, a language justifiably reserved only for the sacred church. For any any other usage would be either a sacrilege, a theological seminar, or perhaps quite then even a year 10 secondary school class full of sleepy littly Vernon clones. Bastardized, he though: the gerund case was all horribly mashed-up and wrong.
Vernon's legs felt wobbly as if filled with his sister's Jello molds, and he felt as if he were walking in a heavy molasses. A moment bought the recall of the great Boston molasses flood of January 15, 1919, a documentary he had remembered watching before coming back to his senses.
He fell down. "Oy! I have fallen down! HELP!!" he shouts, in a compartmentilized recognition of the fact.
