In the nineteenth century the poorly maintained state of its High Street led to Twiverton being known as 'Twiverton-on-the-Mud'. After being let home early from the village school on the grounds of feeling off colour the young 'Tubby' Lard gave onlookers an uncomfortable reminder of those distant horse manured, dirt-splattered days. As he strolled by Henry Fielding's glorious house (it was still standing then) a pent-up internal chemical implosion triggered a spontaneous 'Tom Jones'. A mysterious glistening substance (a "gift for the mother" is what Sigmund Freud called it) slid its luxurious way down the side of his leg and 'Tubby' experienced a mood of near Appollonian exaltation. He knew that the memory of the frisson-filled taboo-challenging open-air moment was going to stay with him until his dying day.
As always happens it was followed by a unsettling sense of deep foreboding reminiscent of the mood of post-coital melancholy at the brevity of human existence that was so poignantly described by the poets of Ancient Greece. It was only after he reached the fence of Mr Milligan's small-holding (which marks the southern border of the prefab estate) that 'Tubby' regained his composure. The day before the 'Metaphysics Today ' column of the Bath & Wilting Chronicle.
had asked readers what they made of a quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche. 'Tubby' saw that the very same quotation was now painted up in bright red letters on the small-holding fence behind the telephone kiosk. The International Situationists were operating in Twiverton years before they ever made it big in Paris!
'Tubby' sensed that the quotation related to his own euphoric 'Tom Jones' experience, but he could not put his finger on exactly why.

"A joke is an epitaph on the death of feeling."