Double Negative

Defying simple addition

Daughters and fun

You never get anything done

Projects begun

Remain so

Unless, and mathematically odd

There’re two of the little bleeders

Aunt Minerva, Number 84, 1987

Charlie Chaplin came here to browse, to read, to buy. That tickled Alf. Marks & Co had closed, he did not know why. He had worked with them, or for them, found a few works put away by his Pops back in the war. Marks & Co had been part of the book ring. An arrangement whereby certain sellers and collectors agreed what to bid on (or not). In advance, lowering the prices from outsiders. There had been a quiet little scandal. But that had been Marks & Co whereas this was 84 Charing Cross Road. This shop and that were both Marks & Co, they both had the same address on their letterheads. Had. But this was the gentler book shop. This was the quietly bumbling, distant gazing, softly hands-touching-across-the-sea of a post-war Britain with a faint sigh, with parcelled eggs and where a cake was not a treat, but something daring.

Alf knew all this because he had been to the film not the night before with a bit of soppy tail, and here it was. Right down to the Polite Bookseller, with his brown paper and string face. Alf said, “They’re harmless.”

“But they are dago-types?”

“Oh yes,” but harmless, like he said. In the film last night all this, just exactly like this, a not-love non-affair across the years and ocean, by letter, the only shock a cultural one. Like a horrid, doomed extra-marital. Just without the thin-benefit of the fucking.

Alf Bittersweet knew he dressed snappily, and two decades before everyone else would have known it too. Everyone else had done. Alf Bittersweet had enjoyed twenty birthdays with twenty-nine candles on the cake. Simon Dee had robbed his look, the bitch. Here and he was twenty years too early. This was austerity Britain four years after wartime rationing, so now it was just rationing. He had not been paying attention. The prize-bullish man that had come to meet him had taken to sizing up Polite Bookseller. “Harmless,” said Alf again.

“Thought in Aunt Minerva we were meant to put down dago-types?”

“You new?”

The man flicked a look at Alf. Alf winked. Alf knew the type. Good family, Guards officer, Welsh by the tie if not by the accent. Missed the Falklands, never missed an episode of The Professionals, newly introduced to Aunt Minerva. Still thought there actually was an Aunt Minerva. “I’ve been told what we do. I was in Northern Island, Armagh, my platoon was...”

            Alf scarce listened. Some dago-type had stepped out of some film, only not like here, not all sepia whimsy and frayed ribbon. Something bad.

            “It wouldn’t die, I almost did. So don’t tell me...”

            This time some bluster. Some sort of threat. Don’t play with the hard man. Aunt Minerva loved this sort. Rough and bold. Angry. Never missed an episode of The Professionals, again. “They only go away, they only die,” said Alf interrupting, “if it’s like in the film, or so bloody impossible to do otherwise that even Saturday serials couldn’t change it. Take him, take Frank Doel. Looks like Captain Bligh, dies from peritonitis, I looked it up. I can’t remember if it says that in the film, and it’s the film that counts. It’s lucky that the Polite Bookseller couldn’t hurt so much as a feeling ‘cause I’m buggered how we’d work that one.”

            “Then...”

            “Hardly, you’re not here for that. Not for him. Maybe he’ll endure. Maybe he’ll have a sequel, of sorts. Live on after this place fades. Wake up with his wife with a little bit of mirror. Have his twenty years. Manage an Our Price, or Athena. I don’t care. He’s not your concern. He’s not the threat. Your man,” said Alf, “is one Captain Peter Skellen.”

            The name was familiar to the well-spoken ruffian, just not quite enough. He said, “How will I recognise him?”

            “Trust me sweetheart, you’ll know him when you see him.” He looked and spoke like, and was, the one that wasn’t Doyle. Alf did not know how bad he was, but if he was half as awful as the film then Aunt Minerva was in for a stormy one.

Headless Model Lisle Prestzl Shocker!

Outrage at twenty-two inch waist model Ioana Spangenberg has died already in the follow up to yesterday's hype regarding a freak (and a bit of a frightening one at that) with the signing to the new Mrs Frisby’s lingerie range of Lisle Prestzl, a model with a perfectly normal waist but no head. Mrs Frisby’s have released a statement to the effect that Miss Prestzl’s work is not exploitative, and is indeed positively empowering to the no-headed - a genuine and mostly ignored affliction.

Not new to the scene, the headless Miss Prestzl has been modelling provocative lingerie for more than eighteen months now, only (the ranges aimed at men buying for wives and girlfriends) none of the target market previously noticed  

Happy Birthday, Charlie

They're queer folk in the Shire. Not pictured, Dickens.

Today we celebrate the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. Sadly such a mouthful is compulsory as there is no English version of the phrase ‘birthday’. Dickens a social commentator, author and shadowy avenger of the night was not in his time best known for bleak expectations and great houses so much as his efforts to right-wrongs in the name of social-justice. In these more sugary times we tend to forget that Dickens not only wrote ‘for shame’ a lot, but rather more militantly used to jump out upon unsuspecting mill-owners and startle them for their workhouse ways. It is indeed from this that we still enjoyed until 1956 the sound of Policemen saying ‘What the Dickens?’ when faced with A Clue.

Dickens is similarly less well known for his early genre pieces, specifically crime fiction, early whodunits in which in the first person we are invited to detect away, probably saying ‘What the Dickens’ at each startling revelation and try and beat the narrator in learning who was the villain all along. I remember as a young boy, when tired of Sherlock Holmes, being directed by my mother to the enthralling tale of Horrible Horror At Madness Mansion. There I pondered like the very boy-detective myself down to the last two suspects, Mr Flumsy, and Beadle Badsoreness. Of course you all know the twist, of which the works were famous, and which brought about Dickens only angry mob when in Oliver there was none.

So raise a cup of humble to Mr Dickens. Happy birthday sir, you with your giant hat. 

John le Mesurier Sighs, Snow, and Grand Designs

Hancock stealing le Mesurier's slot. No change there, the cad. 

“I rather felt I’d given the game away with Bod.”

Where elsewhere and the country is neck-deep in snow here in Tolly Maw it is, and I quote god here, all rather lovely. God (as you might remember incarnate as John le Mesurier) sits on the only sofa not being used as a big-shelf for many-dollies. This leaves me only with the hard wooden chair on which to sit but that’s less of a problem than one might think as I’ve scarce had the chance to sit down. For John le Mesurier is a thirsty god and I’ve rarely looked about to be seated without the deity rattling cup on saucer in such a charming way I have to be about kettle and teabag once more.

The birds are chirruping, the Will Selfs are gambolling on their lawn and all unaware of the Tracey Emin (now fitted with a bell about her neck – albeit a doorbell) that stalks them. We watch nature’s delightful cycle, that natural circle of everything but we being terrified, nervous and dead long before their time. Or right on time, as John le Mesurier decides. Or perhaps he delegates?

“I delegate,” he agrees. “Or rather being frightful, I leave it to others.”

He’s up here because he does so hate being angry. Back down south and Arch-Bishops are burbling about gay-marriage, and the middle classes are burbling about Bishops. And it’s none of it all a part of John le Mesurier’s grand-design. Or his Grand Designs, but no one listens and mention of his rather charmingly vague plans puts him in need of a cake, so I have to hunt up tin, slice and plate.

“They all point at me, the darlings,” says John le Mesurier. “You think they’d be more grateful? Or only a little?”

“Your Grand Designs?” I say. I have to do it from the work surface because his appearance rather startled. By rather meaning very-much, and by startled screeching like a stuck cat and vertically jumping my own height in surprise.

“I put it on the frightful box for them,” he says. He adds as I clamber down, “Kevin McCloud, earnest fellow. Programme to do with chaps building hobbit-holes, or all of glass, or the one made of straw?”

“I saw that one,” I say.

“Everyone saw that one, dear heart,” says John le Mesurier. Grand Designs is god’s grand design to make everything on television occupy the teatime slot on a Sunday. Albeit all the time. He’s tried to show the difference. A tired old jab at reality television, but one apt. After all it takes quite some talent, quite some effort. Throw ten balls in a crowded-anywhere and you will probably hit ten people that don’t argue all that much, get to know one another and given that all they have to do is one task a week – do it. So ten balls sucked into vacuity, then well...

He sighs.

I say, “Is that wise, sir?”

He at least pretends to appreciate the quote. But snow, and not here, because we’re godly folk in Tolly Maw, though our vicar is Ming The Merciless and god is John le Mesurier, and worship is best through a black and white film. On a Sunday, afternoon, before tea. And is there a black and white film on? Something Ealing, something holy? No, because if John le Mesurier is not an angry god then he is a sad god. And the best he can do is Carry On Screaming.

So it’s snowing everywhere else and it’ll be slushy, and icy, and filthy in the cities. Unless you sit down with tea, cake, and Carry On Screaming.

“And Bod?” I say, knowing he narrated.

“An anagram,” says John le Mesurier. A clue, and just like Dan Brown – no, it’s not.     

Nelson The Great

Pulling a bona trick

Those who wonder at David Blayne’s ability to stand on things for a few days would do well to turn their attention to the famed magician, Nelson The Great. Still stood atop a column in Trafalgar Square the noted illusionist is set to come down this Saturday after smashing all previous records with a frankly impressive one hundred and sixty nine years. Previously excluded from the record by a book-keeping error, (having been up there since 1843) representatives from Guinness erroneously remarked when last they counted ‘what, only since quarter to seven?’

Nelson The Great known for his naval-themed performances lost an arm during his set at Santa Cruz and is still the only known magician to ever pull off the catching-a-bullet-in-the-spine trick, after which for an encore he escaped from a sealed barrel of brandy after only three months at sea.

Often misquoted, commonly regarded to have said ‘England Expects’ by flag before that performance historians now agree a more exact translation would have been ‘Ta-da!’.

The Soup Is... People!

The film Apollo 18 is being released today in its original format. Edited at the last minute it was formerly a harder sci-fi story but early screenings showed that the moon people, all the more horrifying for resembling pink stuffed toys, would be unlikely to appeal to the kids market. The original story (based upon the documentary work of Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate) boasted beasts made more hideous by their seemingly cuddly appearance. Triggering the entirely reasonable ‘Aghghgh clowns!’ fear response the story followed the landing on the moon with the discovery of dustbin lids used as hatches.

Invited within by the seemingly innocent moon people the astronauts uncover a horrifying secret, the moon monsters serving a mysterious ‘Dragon’, the film ending with one astronaut screaming the oft-quoted last line itself from the Firmin/Postgate series – ‘The soup is... people!’.

Nice to see they kept in the Iron Chicken mind.