Edna Pennywhistle was as bald as a balloon but for one solitary strand of sliver hair that sprouted from her chin. But what a hair it was. It grew at a phenomenal rate: six yards a day! Doctors explained: “In compensation for your otherwise baldness.”
In the summer giggling children would dangle from it whilst Edna swung them this way and that. Occasionally the hair snapped, dumping a child on its bottom or tossing it into the vegetable patch. But moments later, with tears dried and hair regrown, the game would resume.
Everyone agreed that such a remarkable hair should be put to good use. Uncle Eddie suggested Edna use it to abseil down to inaccessible cliff ledges and rescue stranded puppies.
Old Jack McPratt tempted her to tie a maggot to one end and use the hair as a fishing line. Reverend McVicar insisted her amazing chin hair was a sign from God-Almighty-Himself (though of what exactly he didn't say) and urged her to become a missionary in foreign lands, spreading the word and lending her hair as rope for various Anglican construction projects.
But years of living as a figure of fascination had their effect on Edna's mental wellbeing, and she developed darker ambitions. She took to using her hair to lassoo cats and fling them over walls, pull chairs away from elderly people in tea shops, garrott passing motorcyclists, and on more than one occasion she trained her chin hair into a dish, covered it in pasata and choaked an unwitting dinner guest.
But the hair that caused so much trouble was redemed when it one night it grew straight into an electrical socket and that was the end of Edna Pennywhistle.
Shocking!
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