finds fun even in unlikely places
I’ve been to a marvellous party
With Newcastle’s lively front three.
We played drinking and snogging,
Spit r-roasting and dogging,
And other games quite new to me.
All the guests were invited to score.
First Kieron and Lee traded punches,
Then some girls swivelled nude round a pole,
While the manager sang in a chinchilla stole
To Jermaine, who wore stripes, being out on par-role,
I couldn’t have liked it more.
I’ve been to a marvellous party,
With Davina and Kirsty and Cat,
Who invented a game
For the mentally lame,
Called Big Brother or something like that.
Some apes were br-rought on to compete
While we watched from behind a locked door.
A gibbon broke wind with hysterical power;
An overweight chimp ate a tropical flower;
An orang-utan touched himself in the shower.
I couldn’t have liked it more.
I’ve been to a marvellous party
With Updike and Bellow and Roth.
We had to pretend
That we’d made a new fr-riend
In Salman, who came dressed as a Goth.
The shriek of the ego was bliss.
At midnight we heard from dear Gore
That de Lillo and Tyler were ter-ribly smashed,
But a naked Tom Wolfe was not one whit abashed
And at thr-ree in the morning, dear Salinger cr-rashed.
I couldn’t have liked it more.
RICHMAL CROMPTON
sees her ageless boy grown into an estate agent, in the Summer of Love
William’s clients were waiting for him at the house: a terrifying stout lady of about sixty and her son, a drippy youth with shoulder-length curls and frilly flower shirt. William opened the door on to a small, damp cottage.
‘Rather poky, isn’t it?’ said the stout lady.
‘Hmm …’ said William. ‘It’s got plannin’ permission.’
‘Permission for what?’
‘Anythin’. Library. Swimmin’ pool. Minstrels gallery. ‘Smatter of fact,’ William said, warming to his theme, ‘it’s haunted.’
‘Haunted by whom?’
‘The ghost of …’ William racked his brains. ‘Sir Hubert Lane. He was in the Crusades, you know. He came back here when he’d finished … crusadin’.’
‘I see. So he was against Saladin.’
‘Oh yes,’ said William, ‘Sir Hubert never done any saladin’.’
‘Hey, man,’ said the drippy youth. ‘You ever thought about becoming a, like … hippy?’
‘I’m not tunin’ in,’ said William indignantly. ‘I’m not turnin’ on and I’m certainly not droppin’ out.’
When William got home that evening the door was opened by his live-in girlfriend, Violet Elizabeth. ‘Thweetheart,’ she said. ‘I’ve got thooper newth. Every morning thith week I’ve been thick and thick until I’ve thcreamed.’
‘Mmm,’ said William. ‘Must be somethin’ you ate.’
‘No, you fool. I’m ekthpecting.’
‘Spectin’ what?’ said William.
‘The thtork!’
‘We’ll have to get married, then,’ said William. ‘That means no more Friday nights down the Old Barn with Douglas and Ginger.’
‘Oh darling, don’t look on it as loothing the Outlawth,’ said Violet, ‘look on it ath gaining thome in-lawth.’
ROALD DAHL
Sees Uncle Oswald update Little Women
One day in April I was driving my Lagonda convertible through the New England countryside in search of the rarest orchid in the universe, the Snotulosus flatulens, the distilled essence of which would ensure eternal virility, when I ran out of petrol. Taking my crocodile skin suitcase, I knocked at the door of a modest house, where I was made welcome by a Mrs March and her three daughters, Meg, Jo and Amy. Over a bowl of clam chowder, I tried to decide which one to seduce that night. Noticing my interest, the comely Mrs March struck a bet with me after the girls had gone to bed. She would send one of them to my room in the pitch darkness of the night; and if in the morning I could tell her which one it had been, I should have my pick of the rest; if not, then I should settle a million dollars on the poor family. To a swordsman of my reputation there was no choice but to accept the wager.
In the middle of the night, I heard the door handle turn. I shall not go into detail of what followed except to say that not since the battle of Gettysburg the previous year had the earth moved so violently. At the critical moment, the girl in question was seized by a violent fit of coughing.
The next morning at breakfast all three girls wore looks of radiant satisfaction – as did their mother. Just as I was about to guess the identity of my lover, I heard a fit of coughing from upstairs. ‘Oh,’ said Mrs March, ‘I forgot to mention my fourth daughter, Beth. She has a fatal illness. But pray do not alarm yourself. It is not infectious. Except … on the most intimate of connections.’
CHARLES DICKENS
has a shot at being concise
Now for yesterday’s weather in brief in the London area.
There was rain. Rain on the Thames where it seethed against the closed barrier at Greenwich, rain on the asphalt playground of the Winnie Mandela Infants’ School in Haringey and rain on the umbrellas of the barristers’ clerks as they ran from the coffee bars in Chancery Lane. There were showers on the Palace of Lies at Westminster and torrents on the Ministry of Procrastination in Whitehall; there were streams in the minarets of the mosque in Regent’s Park and floods in the bilges of the pedalos on the Serpentine. Grey rain dampened the collar of José Mourinho’s grey overcoat and drops ran down his neck; there were pools of water running from the meat pies of the lightermen at Shadwell. There was rain before lunch and storms after tea at Thomas Lord’s cricket ground in St John’s Wood such that the visiting convicts’ team rued the day that ever it left Van Diemen’s Land to visit. There was dampness in the feet of the secretaries running home in Tulse Hill, there was steam in the windows of the tailors in Penge. There were rainy tears pouring down the faces of the bare-legged young women in the alleyways behind King’s Cross, and there was water slashed from side to side on the windscreens of their panders, as they watched from their dripping cars. From Hainault to Epping, from Limehouse to Chiswick and from Downing Street to Coldharbour Lane, there was nothing but rain, rain, rain. In Whetstone, there were sunny periods.
Back to you, Alistair.
CHARLES DICKENS
sends Mr Micawber to Tin Pan Alley to meet
THE ROLLING STONES
‘I made the acquaintance of an inebriated habituée of licensed premises in the town of Memphis, in the New World, who attempted to escort me to the upper floors of the inn. I felt obliged to put up some species of resistance; until after the elapse of a short interval, when she had bestrewed my recumbent person with roses, then made as to evacuate the nasal membrane of the undersigned before going on to perform the same function for my intellect, leading me to the sad, though in the circumstances I think, Copperfield, you will agree, ineluctable conclusion that one invariably contracts dejection of the eponymous kidney from the female of the honky-tonk variety.’
‘When I am being conveyed along the thoroughfare in a Hackney carriage and am assailed by the sound of a coster-monger making ever more vociferous assertions of questionable utility and I find it hard to conceive that he is a man of the same corporeal or spiritual endowments as you or I, my dear Copperfield, I find myself obliged to confess that I have yet to experience, to any measurable extent or degree, a feeling that will be only too well known to a young gentleman such as yourself – to wit, that of satisfaction.’
ELTON JOHN
‘It is somewhat curious, this internal sensation – since, Copperfield, I am no
t the kind of fellow who finds it easy to conceal the movement of his heartfelt emotions, while my pecuniary situation, as you know better than anyone, tends at the best of times to the parlous – though by Jove, if something were to turn up, I should certainly purchase a substantial mansion where you and I should both be domiciled. If I were gifted in the plastic arts – but on second thoughts, I should more likely find useful employment selling snake oil in Mr Sleary’s itinerant circus! No, I know that what I have to offer is of small value, that it cannot be accounted more than a trifle, but it represents, alas, the best of which this unhappy man is capable. My endowment, such as it is, consists in compositions of a musical nature, and this one, my dear Copperfield … is for you.’
… and THE BEATLES
‘A mere twenty-four hours ago, Copperfield, the tr avails that beset me seemed agreeably distant; now, alas, they have assumed the guise of a more permanent residence. Of the reasons for the lady’s departure I remain ignorant, she herself having vouchsafed no explanation. I said something … inadvisable; and it would be the work of the merest supererogation to confess that now I long – in short, Copperfield – for yesterday.’
T. S. ELIOT
reflects that it might have come out better in limericks
THE WASTE LAND
Said a Lloyd’s clerk with mettlesome glands:
‘To Margate – I’ll lie on the sands.
The Renaissance and Dante,
Dardanelles and now – Shanti!
ASH WEDNESDAY
The weight of the past makes me pine
For a language that’s English, but mine.
No more hog’s-head and Stilton,
And to prove I’m not Milton,
I’ll compose with four beats to a line.
THE JOURNEY OF THE MAGI
We were freezing, ripped off and forlorn,
As we travelled towards a false dawn;
But the truth of the stable
Showed my world was a fable;
Now I wish that I’d never been born.
THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK
I once missed the moment to be
Someone not on the periphery;
But my second-hand life
Was too dull for a wife:
Now the stairlift awaits only me.
FOUR QUARTETS
For an Anglican, time is too vast;
A rose or a vision can’t last:
It’s a moment in history,
Our grace and our mystery,
And the future is lost in the past.
IAN FLEMING
thinks even James Bond goes shopping
Bond lowered himself through a ventilation grille in the ceiling above the savoury dips aisle. He brushed the dust from the coat of his midnight-blue worsted suit and lit one of his custom-made Morland cigarettes with the three gold rings round the tip.
‘What you think you’re doin’?’ said a bald Cockney, his paunch pushing at his ill-fitting nylon supermarket overalls. ‘You can’t smoke in ’ere, mate.’
Bond smashed his knee into the oafish man’s groin, then, as he fell moaning beside the soap powders, drove the steel-reinforced toecap of his calfskin loafer into the red gaping mouth.
Ignoring the selection of instant mashed potato (Cadbury’s Smersh, he thought ruefully), he walked through pet food and made for the wine selection, which was supervised by a young Mexican.
‘Tell me,’ said Bond, ‘do you have a Chateau Gruaud La Rose 1990?’
‘Eh, no, sir, but we ’ave the Sauvignon/Shiraz from Paraguay for £3.99.’
It was part of Bond’s profession to kill people. He never liked doing it, but, he reflected as he fitted the silencer to his .25 Beretta, regret was unprofessional. In any case, a cellar master without a decent Médoc did not really deserve to live.
He disposed of the body in the Healthy Lifestyle Options aisle, beneath a pile of jumbo grab-bag packs of ketchup-flavoured Hula Hoops, and made for the prettiest check-out girl he could see, a real honey in a pencil-line navy skirt and fresh white blouse with, he expertly assessed, a 38-24-36 figure. He eliminated the three people ahead of him in the queue by triggering a lethal dart from the adapted handle of his twin-exhaust wire trolley and found himself staring at a familiar face.
‘Ah, Moneypenny,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here? Are you licensed to till?’
‘Quiet, James.’ She giggled. ‘I’m under cover. Do you have a Sainsbury’s Reward Card at all?’
‘No,’ said Bond, ‘but I have a Goldman Sachs Plutonium card.’
‘A packet of M and Ms?’ queried Miss Moneypenny, looking up from Bond’s basket and arching one eyebrow. ‘Oh, James. Are they for me?’
‘No,’ said Bond, pocketing the sweets and dangling the keys to his grey 4½-litre Bentley convertible tantalisingly in front of her as he left. ‘A little souvenir for the Boss.’
SIGMUND FREUD
works his magic in time for Christmas
Fräulein Mary V came to me in the early summer of the year ad 3. A young woman of modest family, she was nevertheless a person of high principle whose character was described by those who knew her as ‘immaculate’. She was suffering from amenorrhoea, and discomfort from a mildly distended abdomen; she complained of matutinal nausea and of cravings for strange foodstuffs, such as pickled herring with coal. Fräulein Mary, presented, in short, an almost textbook case of … hysteria.
Although she was at first resistant to hypnosis, I was able to establish that in a dream she had been visited by a man called Gabriel, an angel figure who told her she would give birth to the son of God. Since she was, and remained in real life, virgo intacta, this was clearly the suppression of a wish for sexual union with an idealised father figure. The herrings for which she longed were manifestly symbols of the watery and innocent past of human kind – a past to which she longed to return, where she would no longer feel confused or ashamed.
After several consultations which included hypnosis, bran baths and electrical treatment with the faradic brush, I discharged her quite recovered in August.
PS In a touching letter of thanks that I received at the end of December she reported that the abdominal swelling had completely disappeared, as had the nausea and the desire to eat herrings. She was meanwhile happily married to a Galilean tradesman and had indeed given birth to a healthy child. Clearly the hysteria had somewhat shortened the usual gestation period, since when she came to see me in May there had been no symptom of pregnancy. But such somatic anomalies, I have come to understand, are entirely characteristic of the protean disease of hysteria.
GRAHAM GREENE
tries a story through a woman’s eyes
It was raining again when I reached his flat near the port. His landlady showed me through a hallway that smelled of gas and tapioca.
I knocked on the door of his room on the first floor; I found him sitting on the bed in his pants and vestments, darning his socks.
‘Rex,’ I said, ‘I’ve brought you a present.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a Life of Cardinal Newman.’
‘I’ve read it,’ he said. ‘My mistress gave it to me.’
I looked round the little room with its single grimy curtain at the window and the unlit gas fire. There was a gin bottle on the desk and the remains of a pork pie and salad on the table. The room needed loving.
I sat next to him and put my arms about him; I could feel his heart beneath his chasuble. There was a sudden hammering at the door, which opened to reveal the sweating figure of Lopez, the chief of police.
‘Had you forgotten, Father?’ he said. ‘The tramp steamer leaves at seven for the leper colony. I wait for you downstairs.’
‘My dearest,’ I said, as we heard Lopez clatter down the steps, ‘do you love me?’
He looked at me with his fixed grey eye. ‘Only God can love you,’ he said.
‘Go away then,’ I cried. ‘Go away and leave me alone for ever.’
&nb
sp; His eyes lit up for the first time since I had met him at the seminary in Valparaiso.
‘I hate you,’ he said, as he turned to go. ‘I think I hate you more even than I hate God.’
I heard the rain start up again outside on the cobbles of the dock.
THOMAS HARDY
writes a New Year letter after ‘During Wind and Rain’
The kiddies did well for a start,
He, she, all of them – yea!
Teenager, toddler and boy
And one on the way;
Their faces beaming with joy …
Ah, no; the year O!
How the long days claw my heart.
In summer we bought a new car
An Austin Allegro – wow!
And had a great day at the sea
With not one row,
While we had shrimps for tea …
Ah, no; the year O!
See, the salt waves left their scar.
My book came out, just like that –
A three-decker novel – neat!
Brimming with comedy plot,
A quite remarkable feat.
It was printed without one blot …
Ah, no; the year O!
On my work the foul scribes spat.
We moved to a house painted red –
She, me, all of us – cool!
It has orchards and flowers
A twelve-metre pool
The brightest things that are ours …
Ah, no; the year, the year;
Now each one longs to be dead.
THOMAS HARDY
is sent to cover the big match