Some of the Naughtiest Daubings in the Erotic Arts

Despite being a deft exponent of full-length underarm weasel charming, Herbaceous Ptarmigan, is not as well-known to the general public as she ought to be. Her talent as a leading exponent of some of the naughtiest daubings in the erotic arts made her infamous in her day. During the inter-war years she made the town of Grimsby almost synonymous with a decadent hedonism that made Paris, Berlin and Tewkesbury pale in comparison.

Ptarmigan left school at the age of 13 to become an apprentice mackerel bucket carrier down at the Grimsby docks. Soon it became clear that she was growing into a strikingly good-looking woman. The mackerel-filled bucket she almost constantly had in her hands at the time added an air of mystery to her sultry sexuality.

A few years later, as she bloomed into full womanhood, Ptarmigan received an offer of work on the stage as an erotic dancer. There, her risqué routines wowed the sophisticated Grimsby nightlife audiences as Ptarmigan, naked under shifting chiffon scarves, danced languidly around her mackerel bucket. Ptarmigan’s act soon became the talk of first Grimsby, then the rest of the country.

Not long after, Ptarmigan was headlining bills at all the music halls up and down the country... and Wales.

However, the early fame awakened some latent desire in Ptarmigan to achieve something else in her life. Therefore, in a special headline performance at the Grimsby Empire she performed her last naked dance around the mackerel bucket. Then she packed away the chiffon scarves for the last time.

As war with a resurgent Germany under the Nazis threatened to break out at any time, Ptarmigan fell under the spell of Churchill, then in the political wilderness, and his warnings about the dangers of German rearmament. So, feeling it was her duty to her country, Ptarmigan immediately began taking lessons in underarm weasel charming. She instantly recognised how valuable people with such skills would become once war eventually broke out.

During the war, it was the vital work carried out by the underarm weasel charmers that first produced Britain’s revolutionary radar defences. It also led to the setting-up of the code-breaking facility at Bletchley Park, where Ptarmigan was one of the vital weasel programmers that did so much to win the Allied victory.

During this time, during the long night-time watches, she had to wait for the valves in the nascent computerised weasel charmer to reach operating temperature. So Ptarmigan began some sketches of underdressed young ladies languidly stroking their weasels, sketches that would later bring her yet more fame.

The heavy post-war censorship of the arts however, prevented Ptarmigan from showing her work in the UK. At least until after the Lady Chatterley trial made it possible to show erotica freely to the viewing public. Even then, though, Ptarmigan’s sketches and paintings of naked men and women engaged in fully consensual underarm weasel charming were regarded as outrageous. While her now-famous Nude with Mackerel Bucket No. 7, Nude with Mackerel Bucket Descending a Staircase and many others, still had the power to shock.

She next unveiled her sculpture, made of used and discarded mackerel buckets, of a naked man and woman engaged in explicit underarm weasel charming, called: Bert and Doris do the Naughty Thing. The art world itself reacted with shock, awe and a fair amount of furtive underwear readjustment. Disappointed with her fellow artists and their reactions to what she regarded as her masterpiece, Ptarmigan gave up on the art world and even underarm weasel charming too. In a fit of pique, Ptarmigan returned to her first love. From then on she could be seen every day, right until she retired at the age of 97, down on the Grimsby docks with a bucket full of freshly caught mackerel in her arms.

Ptarmigan died at the age of 103, living in a home for retired underarm weasel charmers in Droitwich. Ironically, it was just six months before the National Gallery put on a retrospective exhibition of Ptarmigan’s most erotic artworks. This exhibition went some way to restoring her reputation in the art world. It also brought the delights of both underarm weasel charming and a bucket brimming with fresh mackerel to an entirely new generation.