Free Bleak Expectations by Mark Evans

Brunel’s ill-fated ‘Goose Rail’ project, which failed because starving peasants kept stealing and eating the geese that were key to its functionality.
    4 Such restaurants existed in Victorian London, going by the name ‘Good Day, Sir, Raw Fish Shop’. They saved money by having no cooking expenses, but ultimately lost more money in compensation paid to customers they had poisoned with raw fish.
    5 Many servants of this low standing had their vocabularies removed as children.
    6 As an experiment, the author originally wrote this sentence in Latin, then translated it back into English, hence the strange sub-clausal nature.
    7 After the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria took to comfort eating in a major way. At one banquet she visibly expanded by eight inches in one hour. Stamps had to be reprinted almost daily to keep up with her hyper-inflation.

CHAPTER THE NINTH
In which good news is definitely not heard
    If thoughts are like animals, which they are not, then my thoughts were now like a hectic livestock market, full of jostling mind-cows, brain-sheep and think-pigs as my head teemed with the moos, baas and oinks of potential servant-aided escape.
    Yet shortly after dinner, to my mental livestock was added a ponder-horse with all its concomitant neighs and whinnies as I was summoned to the headmaster’s study where a visitor awaited me. Would it be a good visitor, such as my re-saned mother, come to take me from my schooly misery? Or a bad visitor, come to offer yet more pain for my young and frankly disappointing-at-this-moment-in-time life?
    Alas, it was the latter. ‘An anxious gale breezes not fine silks but bad stones,’ they say, 1 and they are not wrong. 2
    As I approached, I heard laughter, a sound which in that place of misery was as incongruous as a vicar at an orgy or a seagull in a waistcoat. But then I realized that the laughter was cruel, malicious and very definitely aimed at and not shared with, thereby making it far less incongruous, akin more to a vicar at a prayer-swapping party or a seagull in spats, which, as everyone knows, is a common seaside sight. 3
    On entering, I saw the producer of this laughter: my guardian, Mr Gently Benevolent, in all his sharp-featured, black-clad and slightly scary glory. He and Headmaster Hardthrasher were sharing a glass of brandy, each sipping from one side of it, which made it awkward to drink from and look a bit like they were kissing.
    ‘Ah, young Pip. You seem well. By which I mean not yet dead.’
    Though my guardian was a harsh man, he was still my guardian, and if he heard the truth of my plight surely he would, as his title of guardian suggested, guardian me from it.
    ‘Mr Benevolent! How glad I am to see you! This school you have sent me to is intolerably cruel!’
    At this, the headmaster’s eyes blazed like a furious fire. ‘Such insolence! You dare accuse me of cruelty? Then you must be beaten, boy. Beaten to within an inch of your life. Possibly even closer. Now bend over!’ He raised his cane high, like the stick-wielding maniac he was.
    ‘No, Headmaster.’ Mr Benevolent raised a restraining hand. ‘Let us not beat him.’
    ‘Very well.’ The headmaster lowered the cane. ‘We’ll move straight to the hanging.’ He headed to the corner, where stood his personal portable gallows, Old Noosey.
    ‘No.’ Again, Mr Benevolent raised a restraining hand.
    ‘But . . .’ The headmaster emitted a plaintive whimper, like a sad puppy or a whoopee cushion that has been sat upon by a person not heavy enough to make it work properly. He tried once more to reach his gallows, forcing Mr Benevolent, the possessor of only two hands, to raise a restraining foot, making him wobble slightly as he tried to balance.
    ‘Time enough for beatings and hangings later. But now I wish to tell young Pip the good news.’
    Good news? That was good news. And the good news that it was could surely only be one thing.
    ‘I am to leave this school? Oh, that is a