Urgggghhhh. Great Expec-bloody-tations. Don’t get me started on that. Too late. A tsunamic tirade is about to envelope the peace of Gad’s bloody Hill and Beardy Chaz is going to get a kicking for inflicting that SoSET (sack of steaming elephant turds) upon us in the third form.

Personally I think that if Magwitch had just strangled that bumptious little tit Pip in the churchyard at the beginning the world would have been a much better place. But no. The beardy bastard had to put us through a tour-de-force of pleonasm and overblown magniloquence for a hundred and eighty-seven thousand words, didn’t he?

How big is that? Ever read Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche? No? Lucky you. That’s only about sixty-six thousand. Agatha Christie usually weighs in around fifty to sixty thousand (bit short for a novel but long for novellas). The chuffing Iliad is only about five thousand words longer than Great Expec-bloody-tations and the former depicts the last few weeks of a bloody big war.

Right. This is what happens in Great Expec-bloody-tations.

Pip meets Magwitch in a boneyard and doesn’t get bumped off. Pip (the little bastard) steals from his kindly guardian a file and the Christmas dinner and brandy and gives it to Magwitch. Another convict gets the blame for the missing pie, Pip doesn’t own up to theft and aiding and abetting. Because he’s a little bastard. Magwitch gets caught again because he gets into a fight with another escaped convict. Honestly, Chaz, did you think gaols had revolving doors and no guards or something?

It’s years later. Pip gets a bit of a job visiting Miss Havisham, a misandrist, who wants Pip to fall in love with her daughter Estella, so that she can break his heart. He probably deserves it, because now he’s a slightly bigger bastard. Pip gets into a fight with another kid and gives the other kid a proper thrashing, which gets him a snog off Estella.

Miss Havisham, on Pip’s last visit, gives Pip some cash and off he goes to be a blacksmith’s apprentice. Joe’s wife gets attacked with a leg iron. Pip is worried that it might have been Magwitch’s. Little bastard.

It’s another four years and Jaggers the Lawyer tells Pip he’s been given a pile of cash. Pip is not only a little bastard (well, not as little as before, but still a bastard) he’s also as thick as my Aunt Lil’s gravy because he assumes that this large pile of tin has come from Miss Havisham. Yeah, Pip, like that dotty old bint is going to do that, you blockhead. Still, it’s enough for Pip to say “bugger blacksmithery!” and run off to be a gentleman.

Pip gets a shock when he realises London isn’t the Edenic place he thought. He moves in with Pockett, the kid he beat up years ago (in fairness he didn’t know that beforehand but he’s still a bastard). Pip’s a gentleman now, and doesn’t want much to do with Joe, which now makes him a snobby little bastard. He gets word that Estella will be visiting Miss Havisham, and goes to visit, hoping presumably to get another snog off her. He tries to get Orlick sacked, because he’s a little bastard.

Pip and Pockett get into debt. Pip gets Pockett a job with a shipbroker, by paying for it, and starts seriously trying to knock off Estella, but Drummie gets in the way a bit, and Pip throws a tantrum. Because he’s a spoilt bastard.

Pip finds out a week after he turns twenty-three that it was Magwitch that gave him the loot. Magwitch is supposed to be in Australia, but he turns up in England to see Pip.

Pip stops taking Magwitch’s money and starts plotting Magwitch’s re-escape from England. Magwitch tells Pip that the other convict was Compeyson, the reason for Miss Havisham’s misandry. Pip goes to Miss Havisham and Estella tells him she’s planning on marrying Drummie, who now has Orlick as his servant. Broken-hearted Pip returns to London and finds out that Compeyson is looking for him.

Pip goes to Jaggers’ house for dinner and learns a bit about Jaggers’ maid Molly. Miss Havisham has an uncharacteristic change of heart and then her dress gets on fire and she pegs it. Pip, having heard the story of Molly, realises that Estella is the daughter of Molly and Magwitch. Look, don’t blame me. I didn’t write it. Oh, and Estella’s now hitched.

Orlick tricks Pip into going into a sluice house just before the planned escape of Magwitch. Pockett and somebody else I forget now turn up and stop Orlick from bashing Pip’s head in with a hammer. Boo.

They try to get Magwitch on a ship to Hamburg. They get stopped by a police boat carrying Compeyson. Magwitch and Compeyson have a dust-up in the river, during which Compeyson buys the farm and Magwitch is terminally injured. Pip visits Magwitch in the prison hospital and tells him Estella is still alive. Pockett’s moving to Egypt, because of shipping, and gets Pip a job there. Pip falls ill and nearly gets arrested for debt, but Joe nurses him back, and pays it off, at which Pip says sorry to Joe, and promises to pay him back, but on finding that Joe has married some bint called Biddy, Pip buggers off to Egypt.

For eleven years. He comes back well to do, visits Joe and Biddy, finds Estella widowed, and finally gets his rocks off with her. The end.

A hundred and eighty-seven thousand words. Bloody well come off it Charlie. You could have done that in half that count, you over-verbose bearded baboon you, but I know why you didn’t. You put it in a weekly mag first, didn’t you? Ten months it took to conclude, and that’s forty odd weeks of copy isn’t it? And you owned that mag, didn’t you? Yes you bloody did. So that’s a lot of copy you didn’t have to pay a writer for, isn’t it, you cheapskate? I’m on to your game, Dickens.

I blame the EU. Urscheapto write a Longone.