This story is about two old Ladies who had been friends in Manchester, England, for more than forty years. Their names were Joan and Jean, and they were sixty-eight and sixty-five respectively. Both had long-since been widowed, and after the deaths of their husbands, they had both been forced to live on meager pensions. They received no help from their children who had meanwhile married and disappeared into independent existences. Nevertheless, they always somehow managed to save a few pennies here and there, so that by the end of the year, each had saved enough for their annual August outing to London which took them about four hours by rail. They always left on the early morning train, which got them to London before noon, and they always took the six o’clock train back to Manchester. This way, they could spend a pleasant afternoon on the town, walking in the spacious parks and taking tea and cakes at four in the same comfortable teahouse where the staff knew them well and still served them graciously. On one of these trips to London, it was a little hot in their carriage, and they decided to order something to drink. As they were forced to pinch their pennies, they decided to share a bottle of a well-known soft drink that came in a well-designed green-tinted bottle. Joan, who was the more assertive of the two, poured out two glasses which they drank with some dignity, rather than just summarily gulp the contents down, the way that young people are won’t to do. When they had finished, they noticed that there was still something left to drink in the bottle. So, once again they had decided to share. Joan poured half the contents into Jean’s glass and the other half into her own. As she was about to set the bottle down, she noticed that there was still something inside in the bottom of the bottle. To their horror, they saw that it as what was left of a dead mouse after it had partly decomposed in their drink. Both of them fainted right on the spot, and there was a great commotion on the train, until they were taken off in Coventry and rushed to the hospital, in an ambulance, where after an appropriate time to recover from shock and stomach-poisoning, they were duly released and allowed to return home. That would have been the end of the story, except that Joan in her indignation decided to sue the soft drink company, which shall remain nameless, because of the terms of the ensuing court case, in which the ladies were awarded damages of five-hundred thousand pounds each! Every year, they take their annual August train trip to London, but, now, with a decided difference. Now, instead of taking a walk in the park and sitting in the teahouse waiting for the afternoon to end, they stay overnight in a different five star hotel every time and shop at Harrod’s and reserve a box for a show or a concert in the evening, because they no longer have to pinch their pennies.
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