Prince Toby has started his own diary for National Novel Writing Month. You can follow his adventures here.
Sunday 27th November 2022
Weight: 1275g (lost 5g by doing absolutely nothing – think scales are broken), cucumber consumption: 0 slices (zilch, zero, nada, diddly-squat), escape attempts: 0 (no fun trying to escape when the humans are right here and it hardly inconveniences them at all), interruption of Very Important Human Tasks for No Reason Whatsoever: 0 (I’m an aaaaaaaaaaaaangel, they’re mad about me!), interruption of Very Important Human Tasks for Toilet-Related or Other Emergencies: 0 (what a clean tort I am!)
7.30 am: Am awake! Is very quiet without Human No. 3 here.
9.30 am: Was very quiet, until Human No. 1 put her washing on. Thought the humans were supposed to be abandoning me again today, but it turns out that Human No. 1 is under the weather again (she’s a sickly little thing) so they are staying at home.
9.43 am: Hope this doesn’t mean that they will be doing washing all day . . .
10.01 am: Haven’t had my bath yet. This is a bit odd because humans are here and awake enough to do washing. Come to think of it, they don’t usually do washing until I have had my bath . . .
10.37 am: Wendy’s House Bunnies have been doing some magic to drain the water from my bath. Think it might have worked because there is still no bath. Hurrah!!
10.49 am: Must not get carried away. Sometimes the humans tease me by lulling me into a false sense of security (a.k.a. Human No. 2 has forgotten to give me my bath) and then, just when I’m least expecting it, PLOP! In I go!
11.21 am: Still no bath. Am cautiously optimistic . . .
11.37 am: Surely bath would be here by now!
11.40 am: There is no bath! Unbathday is here! Bunnies have saved me. Thank you, bunnies!!!!
11.42 am: This is my usual bath day as well! So exciting! Perhaps there will be NO MORE BATHS EVER!!!! HURRAH!
11.54 am: Think it might be time to revive Sherlock Tobes once and for all to celebrate! Must read ‘The Empty House’ first to remind myself how it’s supposed to go before composing my infinitely superior version.
2.43 pm: Well, that took a long time. (Might be because I kept nodding off partway through. It wasn’t quite as gripping as I had hoped. Will be sure to make my version much more exciting.)
3.06 pm: Right, think I’m ready to start now.
Prince Toby Presents
Sherlock Tobes and Dr Tortson in
‘The Empty Shell’
Hi Folks. Dr Tortson again here. Remember me? So, you’ll remember all about the Tort of the Baskervilles, but that was actually ages ago, back in 1889. And you’ll also remember how Sherlock Tobes fell off a waterfall with the dastardly Tortiarty. Well, that was in 1891. Now it’s 1894, Sherlock Tobes has been dead for three years and my wife (who was so insignificant to me that I’m not sure if I even mentioned her in ‘The Final Cucumber’) is also dead. Anyway, she’s completely irrelevant to the story, so don’t you worry about that. The important thing is, it’s 1894, Tobes is dead and there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for me to pick up my pen to write anything else as, without Tobes, my existence has no meaning. (Let’s just ignore that this story belongs to a collection called The Return of Sherlock Tobes for now.)
So, there’s this tort called Ronald Tortair and he’s been horribly murdered – shot in the back of his head in his room, the door locked from inside, the flowers underneath the twenty-foot drop from the window undisturbed. Definitely the sort of case that Sherlock Tobes would have loved getting his beak into although, of course, he’s dead, which is particularly inconvenient.
Anyway, I still dabble a little bit in investigations myself, so I decided to go to Park Lane, where Tortair was horribly murdered, to see if I could pick up any clues. When I was there, I bumped into old tort carrying a pile of Specsavers catalogues. The catalogues went flying and I hurried to pick them up for him. He snarled at me and went on his way, which I thought was a bit rude.
The weird thing was that when I got back home the old tort was standing on the doorstep.
‘Hello, my dear chap,’ he said, stepping into my rooms uninvited. ‘I came to apologise for my rudeness and to thank you for picking up my Specsavers catalogues.’
‘That’s quite alright,’ I said, desperately trying to remember where I’d put my old service revolver in case this was, in fact, one of Tobes’s old enemies, cunningly disguised. It had happened on more than one occasion since his death and it was this that put me on my guard against the strange old man with the Specsavers catalogues.
‘I’m an optician,’ he said, as he saw me eyeing the catalogues. ‘Say, is that an unused Specsavers golden ticket on the bookcase behind you?’
I turned round to look and retrieved the Golden Ticket. ‘I’m afraid this voucher expired in 1889,’ I said. I suppose Tobes never did get those new sunglasses.
‘Not to worry, old chap. I got some lovely designer sunglasses when I was on my honeymoon in Italy.’
I started. Standing in front of me (where the old tort had been just seconds earlier), looking tanned and relaxed and super-stylish in his pair of Italian designer sunglasses, was my dear friend Sherlock Tobes.
‘I say, Tobes,’ I said. ‘I thought you were dead!’
Suddenly, I felt a bit woozy and the world turned upside down. When I came to, Tobes was looming over me. He continued the conversation as if nothing had happened, which was very good of him.
‘That’s exactly what you were supposed to think, my dear tort,’ he said, placing his sunglasses on my desk and giving me a long, hard look. ‘It’s good to see you, old boy.’
‘But what happened? When were you in Italy? Did you say honeymoon?’
‘All in good time, my dear tort. Obviously, I didn’t die. That letter I wrote to you was full of lies from start to finish. I wanted you to think that I was dead because you’re such a blabbermouth that, if I’d told you the truth, there would have been no chance whatsoever of faking my own death.’
I was about to defend myself, but then I realised that Tobes had a point. I am a bit of a blabbermouth.
‘But why would you want to fake your own death?’ I asked.
‘Oh, detective work is just so tiring, don’t you think? All that sitting around smoking pipes and playing the violin dreadfully to pass the time whilst my tortchins ran around London gathering information for me and putting their lives in danger on a daily basis was just too much. I had to get away. Plus, I really fancied a holiday.’
Really, this was too much.
‘Do you realise how depressed I was?’ I demanded. ‘You could have at least sent a postcard.’
‘I did think about it,’ he admitted. ‘I even bought one once – there was a lovely one of a dead dog in the ruins of Pompeii. But then I remembered you’re a massive blabbermouth and sent it to Tortcroft instead.’
‘Tortcroft? Tortcroft knew that you were alive?’
‘Well of course he did,’ said Tobes, rolling his eyes. ‘He officiated the wedding.’
‘You had a wedding?’ I shrieked.
‘A wedding traditionally precedes a honeymoon does it not?’
‘Who on earth agreed to marry you?’ I asked. ‘They’d have to be a complete maniac to put up with half your habits.’
Tobes smirked, turned towards the hallway and yelled ‘OH HUSBAAAAAAAAAAND!’ at the top of his voice.
‘Hello,’ said a soft, silky voice behind me. I turned to find Tortiarty sitting in my chair.
To be continued . . .
4.47 pm: How will Dr Tortson react to Tobes and Tortiarty’s happy news? Who was best tort at their wedding? Who on earth is Tortair and what relevance does he have to this story? Tune in tomorrow to find out. Same tort time. Same tort channel.
5.31 pm: Wondering how on earth you will all cope when I finish #nananono and stop writing my diary. What will you do for entertainment? How will you know exactly what I’m thinking and doing every minute of every single day? Where will you get tortoise retellings of Sherlock Holmes stories? (If anyone else tries writing one whilst I’m in hibernation, I’ll sue them. That includes you, Human No. 1!)
5.49 pm: Perhaps I will make a miraculous return, just like Sherlock Tobes. Although not until I’ve had a good long nap. And I’m definitely not writing a diary entry every day. It’s so time-consuming!
6.01 pm: Off for a snooze and to leave you to contemplate what you’re going to do with your empty little shell of a life once my diary has ended. Lalala!
 
You can follow Prince Toby on Twitter @PrinceTobyTort (and Instagram, where he is now frantically trying to learn the ropes in case of Twitter explosion, also @PrinceTobyTort). Also, play Tortmaster on Twitter!