First thing in the morning I shave, always using my old fashioned shaving knife with the golden W embedded in the ivory handle and always doing it myself – sharpening the blade is as close as any Oompa-Loompa gets. I can't stand to see the stubble, see, it completely ruins my complexion. When I'm smooth as a… as a… batch of melted milk chocolate! again I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, and lift my shoulders accordingly. Then I like what I see, I'm not done yet, but I still like it.
An Oompa-Loompa gets to pluck my eyebrows. I snap at him when it hurts. It always does. And I even invented a cooling, slightly numbing, mint cream to ease the pain. "Dang it, do you want me to get all wrinkly like a raisin from frowning in pain?" I ask the little booger. Raisins… I need to do something with raisins! I have the grapes of wrath room and the grape nuggets room and the grape expectations room and the Gilbert's grapes room (gee, I must really love grapes) but not a single room for raisins. Perhaps I should call it the grape retirement home in the sky and build it as a sort of greenhouse-like glass room on top of the roof?
Now on the question I'm sure has been bothering all of you like a buzzing Whangdoodle locked in your head, trying to get out, smacking against your skull:
How do I keep so youthful and delicious and darn good looking?
Sssssshhh.
I have a portrait in the attic too. Only my attic is located in the free basement, logistics issues.
I notice my haircut is not quite razor sharp anymore so I call for my hairdresser Oompa-Loompa to fix it up as I do every other morning. That thing about me having my semi-annual haircut was a joke. Duh, my fringe would cover my eyes and my ends would grow all uneven if I didn't have my hair cut more than twice a year. They didn't get it though. Clearly shows poor people have no sense of style. Or perhaps they just thought I had perfected my anti-hair toffee already. Unfortunately it's only on the experimental stage as of yet and I reckon it will be for years. I think I'd have better luck with anti-hair gum but I hate gum. It's gross. Just look at what happened to that Violet kid! Well at least that was an entertaining kind of gross so I guess something good comes out of gum too. But me chewing chewing chewing… Uh-oh, never.
It was when I had my hair cut I studied myself in the mirror and discovered it was time. Time to go to the purple room again. What would be more suitable then than to dress all in purple? I put on my cool silvery purple satin shirt, my almost black but obviously also purple since I said dress all in purple didn't I? velvet pants, my plum coloured velvet frock coat and my reddish purple, oriental patterned necktie fastened by the silver W, and finish it off with a seemingly black top hat with purpleish highlights. And a pair of purple gloves of course, mustn't forget the gloves. Even my socks and shoes are purple, the socks more violet and the leather of the shoes of a very mute colour. I look absolutely splendid! It might sound like all these purple hues would be awfully mismatched but I have a very refined taste and I assure you I look splendid. There's just this one little detail which needs fixing and that's why I'm going to the purple room today.
The purple room is, why, purple of course! Come to think of it, it sort of clashes with my outfit, which is bad, but I'm not spending much time here anyway and no-one's here to see me, which is good. The wall (because circular rooms only have one, it's an interesting feature they don't share with many other rooms although I have a few) is covered by shelves and the shelves are covered by rows of little purple glass vials, like an apothecary's shop. The glass vials hold one little pill each, pills I've spent weeks trilling and am probably never going to use up anyway, but I think it looks just nifty! If you do something you might as well do it properly, that's my kind of business slogan. Otherwise you might just as well not do it at all and I like doing things, just lying around on my back all day staring at the ceiling would be dead boring!
Did I say the shelves were full of glass vials? That's not entirely true. The three and a half topmost shelves are actually empty, and a ladder leads to where the row of glass vials start. I climb that ladder and grab the first vial. Back on ground level (not that this room is actually on ground level, but as to it's exact location - ) I remove the lid and let the little pill slide into the palm of my hand. It's perfectly round and shiny and looks black, but that's only because it's so concentrated. I contemplate the beauty of it against my purple glove for a moment before picking it up and placing it on my tongue, where it starts to melt. It tastes like violets. Delicious! I wish I had the reason to do this more often, perhaps I should change the recipe? But the thought of trilling all those little pills again when there's so much other candy to be made!
I cross the floor to the glass vial-shaped and glass vial-sized garbage chute in the exact centre of the room and toss the empty glass vial down. In the meantime, the little pill begins to work it's wonders, and I take the silver hand mirror I brought out of my pocket and intently watch my face, keen not to miss this rare spectacle. Slowly, my irises gain a new brilliance, positively brimming with impossible colour. The dull, brownish tint I discovered this morning is replaced by the most mouth-watering, eye-popping purple.
I like chocolate brown alright. But it's so gosh darn common.
I like to keep this room a secret from everyone, even the Oompa-Loompas, who are not allowed in the glass elevator, which is marked "boss man only", which it's not but you get the point and they do too. That's really silly of course but a chocolate wiz needs to have some things he keeps to himself.