The Napoleon of Bibliographical Crime!

Professor McQueen is missing his cat, so decides to leave the Duodecimo Club (in London's Bibliography Quarter) and return to his lodgings at Timor Mortis College, Noxford. But on the train he meets his nemesis, the worst man in the world, the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in the city of books, the Napoleon of Bibliographical Crime. There is, however, still no sign of Cherrytop the Sarcastic Horse!

Transcript

The Adventures of Donald McQueen, Bibliographer

Chapter 10: The Napoleon of Bibliographical Crime!

Announcer: The adventures of Donald McQueen, bibliographer … Chapter 10: The Napoleon of Bibliographical Crime!

DM: Donald McQueen is my name, and bibliography is my passion and profession. At the end of the last chapter of these, my adventures, I determined to the leave the richly-decorated corridors of the Duodecimo Club in Pall Mall and return to my rooms in Noxford, to Timor Mortis College. My sojourn at the Club had been a pleasurable one, and I had even managed a little work on my great study of the mystery of the Codex Assinorum of Scrotus. But I had found it impossible to resist the temptations of the ear-trumpet of Death, which had come, quite by accident, into my hands; and was, after only two days away from Noxford, missing the company of my cat, Doggerel. After breakfast – kippers served with Dairylee dippers, and chips served with asparagus-tips, sherbet-dips and walnut-whips, with a generous helping of Schickle’s tomato ketchup, the favoured condiment of bibliomanes of all nations – I packed my small bag and said my farewells to those friends who were still staying at the Club. I was sorry not to be able to trace Daniella Oz, whose story of passion and death I had still not managed to squeeze out of her. Joanna Lumley too seemed to have gone to ground. But I valed Peter Pinkelmann, Gaston Paninabutt, Anne-Marie Crinkle, John Double-Jones (the leading expert on the lower-right-hand corners of the back boards of publisher’s bindings from the period 1846 to 1896), Jeremy Whistle, Jonathan Thistle, Helena Bristle, Gorvang the Magnificent (the Club’s only evil wizard) and Ginger the Sapient Pig. 

I stepped through the door to the club’s anteroom (known as the ‘prelims’) to find the giant custodian, in his harlequin costume, chatting to another member, Russ Abbott, like Lumley an accomplished amateur bibliographer whose main source of income lay elsewhere. I greeted him … Professor Abbott. Leaving, I see …

Russ: Oh Queenie … it’s you. Yes, I am leaving the Club today. I am not really a professor, you know, that’s something Telemachus Wee made up to tease me.

DM: Really? How very unkind.

Russ: Yes, I am afraid a lot of the members here laff at me. It’s because I am an amateur, you see, and they think I am … amusing.

DM: Then why do you come to the Duodecimo Club?

Russ: Oh, its for the atmosphere … I love a clubhouse with a happy atmosphere …

DM: Not very happy at the moment, what with Ribright’s untimely demise.

Russ: And the news of Wellesley’s death this morning.

DM: Budgeridoo Wellesley? I had not heard about that. What happened?

Russ: Oh, he was stabbed in Noxford late last night, apparently by an evil dwarf, with no trousers on …

DM: Could it be? Surely not? I regarded Abbott closely. Was he joshing? He had been known to josh. But he looked perfectly in earnest, indeed seemed rather downcast, lacking the twinkle which usually danced in his left eye (his right eye was, of course, artificial, following that brawl at the Folger Library in ninety-two).

Russ: I am seriously thinking of giving up bibliography, and handing my notes on the early editions of Thackeray’s novels over to Philip Schofield … or the surviving Chuckle Brother …

DM: No don’t do that. You must stick at it. Bibliography is the most noble calling a man, or woman, or any creature, can possess. I am just returning to Noxford, to resume my studies of the Codex Assinorum … Why not come with me? There must be lots of early editions of Thackeray at the Bibblybobbleian.

Russ: No … Thank you. I have been there, done that. That library can only be called a madhouse … and I don’t feel comfortable in a madhouse.

DM: I waved goodbye to the poor fellow, hoping he would not eschew the beautiful science, and was shortly able to flag down a four-wheeler in Pall Mall. I instructed the driver – a wizened fellow with a huge orange moustache – to take me to Paddington station.

I had already bought my ticket using an application on my mobile telephone, so was quickly admitted to the station. I had no fear of bears. The Paddington gang had learned that there was nothing to be gained by demanding marmalade sandwiches and other sweet foodstuffs, from passengers boarding trains, who were almost invariably looking for an excuse not to leave the metropolis. At one time a great many meetings across the British Isles were said to have been abandoned due to the activities of bears at Paddington station … The gang soon found it much more fruitful to practice their thuggery on those arriving in London Town, who would be every bit as anxious to leave their compartments as those departing were to be prevented from making their journeys. I found what I thought was my train, its locomotive steaming and hissing like a captive dragon, and boarded one of the second-class carriages.

I settled down in one corner, but soon discovered I had made a mistake.

Announcer: Welcome aboard this the 10:47 Great Western service to Hell. We will be calling today at Purgatory, Limbo, Diss Junction, Orcus, Pandemonium Central, Pandemonium Parkway, Hades and due to arrive in Hell at 12:22. Return tickets are valid only as far as Purgatory. If you have bought a return ticket for any station beyond Purgatory, I am afraid you have wasted your money. 

DM: I quickly gathered myself and vacated that unhappy conveyance. It was but the work of a minute to locate and board the correct train.

It was rather crowded, however, and I walked through seven carriages before I found, at last, a compartment which appeared to be entirely unoccupied. I tried the slide the doors open, but at first they would not move. I noticed that they were held together with a piece of black string, which had been looped around the two handles several times and tied with a decorative knot. My French Army Knife (like a Swiss Army Knife, but with two cork-screws, a cheese-fork and a snail-hammer) actually had a blade dedicated to cutting string, so I took it out and removed the impediment with a single stroke, contrived to leave the length of string in one piece. I slipped this into my pocket, with the idea that I might employ it to amuse Doggerell when I returned to my lodgings, and opened the doors to the compartment. Someone had clearly been there before me, for there was a small attaché case in one of the racks, and a sherry-glass containing some deep red liquid on the little ledge between the windows. I sniffed at the liquid. It smelt like blood … but was probably port.

I took out my notes on the Codex Assinorum, and the ear-trumpet of Death, which I laid carefully on the ledge beside the sherry-glass. As the train gathered speed I began to relax and glanced through my notes, wondering where next to go in my exploration of that great and abiding mystery. Did I dare to use the trumpet now? I hesitated to do so, fearing that the owner of the glass and the attaché case might yet put in an appearance. And I was quickly proved right. A low and sinister musical sound reached my ears.

I had noticed a wind quintet in the next compartment and, it seemed, they had begun to rehearse. After a short while a ladies choir, which must have been occupying the compartment on the other side, joined in with their rehearsal, quite by chance in the same key and metre … What was going on?  …  I listened to this sombre music with a gathering sense of dread. Then I heard another sound. It was a dragging and a clumping, as of an approaching cripple. It was a sound I knew all too well, and which set my internal organs ajangle and my teeth at odds with my jaw. What remains of my hair stood erect on my pate, and my mouth twisted into an involuntary scowl. The door flew open. 

Bunce: My god! McQueen!

DM: It was Cornelius Bunce. Bunce. Bunce. My mortal enemy and bibliographical nemesis. He clumped forward into the compartment, his wooden stump grinding angrily against the floorboards of the compartment, his face a picture of fury and ungovernable hatred. Behind him he dragged a gigantic dufflebag, which he allowed to crumple onto the floor, where it occupied most of the space between the two rows of seats. Then he threw himself heavily the seat opposite and glowered at me for a moment.

Bunce: Did you not observe the cornelian cord upon the door? I have reserved this compartment for my own, private use!

DM: I did see a piece of black sting on the door handles. But I am not sure that is the approved manner of reserving a compartment. I think you have to do that through the railway company when you buy your ticket … His eyes narrowed. Let me describe Cornelius Bunce to you as best I can. He was once a handsome man, like myself, but a life of debauchery and bibliographical roguery has told upon his face until he looks like nothing so much as a great blotched toad in an inverness cape. He cannot sit still, and oscillates his head constantly from side to side, while he watches you with his cold, almost colourless eyes, like a cobra following the pipe of a fakir. His body is both tall and bulky, and his hands very thin and long, almost skeletal, while he has, as you will have gathered, lost the lower half of his left leg, from the knee, which has been replaced with a wooden peg. He is said to remove this prosthesis in moments of profound anger, of which he suffers many, and to strike out with it any man, woman or child who is unfortunate enough to be at hand. I was present when he lost his leg and will one day tell you the story … it is not a tale which casts Cornelius Bunce in a role at all heroic. For now I will say only that parts were played by both a beautiful maiden and crocodile … His hair is perhaps his most attractive feature. As a young man it was long and golden, like that of Mr Rick Wakeman. Today it is still long and luxurious, but of a snowy white, cascading about his repulsive face like folds of white linen around a rotting fruit … Don’t you think it rather eccentric behaviour, Bunce, to bring a handbag and a glass of vimto into a railway compartment, and leave them there, sealing the door with your inky cord on your way out?

Bunce: It is not Vimto, McQueen, but crusted port! And I performed none of the actions you mention myself. The very idea! I have a manservant for such tasks.

DM: A manservant, really? Where is this manservant? … He grinned horribly and kicked the great dufflebag with his peg-leg. He’s in the bag?

Bunce: It saves my having to buy him a separate ticket.

DM: He must be … a very little fellow.

Bunce: He’s an Andaman Islander. A savage race of pygmies, but fiercely loyal once their trust has been won …  I saved little Dave Wilkins here from being eaten by a mountain gorilla, and he has been my faithful servant ever since.

DM: What’s that little Dave Wilkins is saying? I think he may be objecting to your characterization of his noble race.

Bunce: Not at all. I am fluent in Andamanian and can tell you he was agreeing with me and thanking me again for my bravery in the face of that mountain gorilla.

DM: I suppose he is handy with a blow-pipe and a poison-dart.

Bunce: No … actually he missed that day at school. But he has many other warlike powers, powers which every white man should tremble to imagine, powers which are, through our unshakable bond, now at my disposal.

DM: I don’t imagine he could help you to compose an accurate collation formula.

Bunce: What? You dare to insult my collational formulaics! That’s rich, from a man who would call the unopened pages of a book ‘uncut!’

DM: Take that back, sir! I know the difference between ‘unopened’ and ‘uncut’, which is more than can be said for you … where vellum and parchment are concerned!

Bunce: Vellum and parchment are, essentially, the same material!

DM: Poppycock! Only a man with a poppy for a cock could think such a thing!

Bunce: You contrive to insult both my bibliographical knowledge, and my manhood! Were this another age I would demand satisfaction. But as it is, I will say only, that where my poppy is concerned … fifty years ago … fifty years ago, McQueen …

DM: His long hands coiled themselves into clenched fists, and his face seemed to grow shorter and wider so that he looked more than ever like a malevolent toad ... What are you trying to say, Bunce?

Bunce: Minerva!

DM: Ah, Minerva Columba, the sweet dove.

Bunce: Yes, Minerva Columba … You thought you had won, didn’t you McQueen? You thought her heart and hand were yours … And so they were … for a while, a very short while … I was there, you know … At the end.

DM: You mean?

DM: Excuse me, Bunce. That’s my phone.

Bunce: Curious ringtone, McQueen.

DM: It derives from the soundtrack to The Venus probe.

Bunce: Oh yes, I remember you liked that rubbish when we were doctoral students.

DM: I should take it … It seems to be Michael Ribwright.

Bunce: What? I thought he was dead.

DM: So did I … Hello?  Michael?

MR: Hello Queenie. Yes, it’s Ribright here.

DM: I thought you were dead.

MR (on phone): I am. I am calling from the afterlife.

DM: Really? … What’s it like?

MR: Well, it would be very easy to give you a flippant answer. I could say ‘indescribable’ or ‘don’t be in such a hurry … you will find out for yourself soon enough’. Or I could say something Woody Allenish. Do you remember the toilets at the old British Library, before it moved to St Pancras? Well, the afterlife is worse! But I will try to give you a realistic idea of what it is like to be here. There are seven …

DM: Hello … Ribwright … We’ve been cut off.

DM: Donald McQueen?

MR: Sorry about that, Queenie. I was cut off by the operator. They don’t like us making phone calls at all, especially if we start giving away the secrets of the afterworld. So I had better be quick, and get to the point, which is this, Queenie. You must stand for the Presidency of the Bibliographical Society, against Telemachus Wee. It would be a disaster if he were to be my successor.

DM: Well, I am very flattered, Michael, but I really don’t want to be President just yet. In another decade perhaps …

MR: I could threaten to haunt you if you don’t do it. But that would be unkind. And beside, these days, we are discouraged from haunting, moaning, manifestations, that gooey stuff … what’s it called?

DM: Ectoplasm?

MR: That’s the chap … If only you would stand, McQueen. I am sure you would beat Wee in any sort of free election.

DM: I wonder if a better approach would be for you to do a little bit of that haunting you mention, aimed at Telemachus Wee. You could appear before him wringing your hands and warning him not to stand for the Presidency on pain of some supernatural punishment which you need not specify …

MR: You know, I have tried that.  The bastard doesn’t believe in ghosts.  He just dismissed me as a bad trip caused by the medication he is on … Apparently he is taking Humilitol for his chronic pomposity and one of the side-effects is hallucinations, especially visions of late Presidents of the Bibliographical Society. He was absolutely unhauntable.

DM: I have another idea. Is it not high time the Bibliographical Society had another lady President?

MR: Well, possibly. But we did swear ‘never again’ after … Anne Robinson. That was an utter disaster. And then there was Professor Cecilia Seagrave, who turned out to be a man in drag.

DM: I have a lady of quite another stamp in mind. What about Daniella Oz?

MR (warmly): Daniella? Oh yes … She would make … A lovely President. But would she be willing to stand?

DM: Well, Ribwright, if anyone could persuade her, it would be you.

MR: Perhaps … Thank you, Queenie, it is most certainly … a thought.  I will give her a ring.

Bunce: Who was that on the phone?

DM:  It was Ribright. At least I think it was … My mind had not been quite so bewildered, when sober, for many years. I was sitting in a railway compartment with the worst bibliographer in the world, who kept his pygmy manservant in a bag, and had just implied something terrible about the only woman I have ever loved. And at that moment, I had been telephoned by a dead man, trying to persuade me to stand for the Presidency of the Bibliographical Society … In truth there was a further reason for my discomfiture. This mobile telephone call was disturbing enough in itself, but it also raised in my mind the question of insipient insanity. And inherited insanity. My beloved father, Dougal McQueen, had suffered a period of mental illness during which he believed he had received telephone calls which no one else could hear. Dougal was not an academic, like myself and Starwheel, but an artist and a printmaker, born in the beautiful city of Aberdeen. For some years he scraped a living there, painting portraits of local poodles and kittens, and selling silhouettes in the street; he had a great facility for cutting these quickly, with a pair of sharp scissors, and was proud of his ability to capture any likeness in outline while, at the same time, flattering the customer by reducing large noses, chins and brows, and omitting unsightly protrusions – boils, horns and the like. But in 1946 he was lucky enough to secure a job in America, working for Mr Walter Disney, and my parents thus emigrated to Burbank, California. My father was employed as an animator, and was allowed to draw the feet, both feet, of Donald Duck. When I came along, a couple of years later, I was, not unnaturally, named Donald after the main source of my father’s income at this period. However, Mr Disney, who was by all accounts a bit peculiar, made a decision at this time to allow my father only to draw the duck’s left foot, saying that his skills were not equal to drawing the right. He thus suddenly found his workload, and his salary, cut in half. My poor father always said that it was this inexplicable blow which drove him first to drink, and thence to mental breakdown.

His illness took the form of a delusion in which he heard the telephone ring. My mother could not hear it, and indeed it did not ring. By my father was convinced that it was ringing, and knew who it would be. These calls came from Walt Disney’s henchman, his enforcer, a character known to my father only as ‘The Mouse’. When he answered the imaginary ringing of the telephone, my father would hear the sinister squeaky voice of this rodent …

Dougal (hesitantly): Hello?

Micky: Hi there, Dooggie, this is the Mouse here! I have one word for you Douggie, and that word is failure! Your hand is unsteady, your lines are wavy. No wonder you are only allowed to draw the left foot of a cartoon duck! How much longer will you be able to do even that, I wonder? Why don’t you go home, back to Auchtermuchtie or wherever it is you come from, and admit that you will never be an artist, you will never be a success, you will never amount to anything …

DM: And so forth. This voice came, of course, from inside my father’s head, not from any real mouse. Sometimes, when he answered the telephone, the voice seemed not to be that of Disney’s enforcer. It had a Welsh, Scottish or Irish accent and my father thought, at first, that this was some harmless, common caller …

Doug (hesitantly): Hello?

Micky (Scottish accent): Can I speak to Dougal McQueen, please.

Doug: This is he.

M: Is that Dougal McQueen the artist? I would like to commission you to paint a portrait of my poodle, Pluto …

Doug: Who is this?

M: It’s me! Mick McMouse, the Scottish cousin of your nemesis! Ha ha! I shall never commission a portrait of Pluto, for what skill you once had is lost, lost, lost! Your brush is limp, and your pencil-lead is broken. You could not draw a fair circle to save your life, or that of your wee bairn …

DM: And so forth. If the call was not from Micky himself, it was from Mick McMouse, or Michael O’Mouse, or Mihonjel ap Mouse, or even, on one occasion, their classical Latin cousin Michaelis Mus (although this was a blessed relief, as my father could not understand the Latin gibes of the classical rodent). In 1949 my father was obliged to resign his post with Disney, and returned to Aberdeen with his small family. Here he again tried to establish himself as an artist, concentrating this time on the printmaking side of his work. He imagined he received a few telephone calls from the dreaded Mouse in his first few months in Scotland, but soon enough his health improved, and his reliance upon the bottle diminished. His work began to be collected and he was able to make a modest living by his etchings and aquatints by the end of 1950. A year later my brother was born, and named Starwheel after the most picturesque component of my father’s etching-press.

From this point onwards, Dougal McQueen was sane. But, to the end of his life, he always looked a little fearfully at the telephone apparatus when it rang, although he never again found himself abused, when he answered it, by fictional anthropomorphic vermin. I only understood why he looked thus at a ringing telephone when I reached man’s estate, and he told me the story of his time in California, and his persecution by an imaginary mouse.

Thus, when I received a telephone call, apparently from a dead man, it crossed my mind that I too might be suffering a delusion, the thin end of a wedge of madness, hammered into my skull by the presence of the detestable Bunce. But no. This was quite different. Bunce had heard my ringcall too, and my caller had hardly set out to insult and belittle me, rather the opposite … I had to conclude that this had been a real telephone call. But could it really have been from Ribright? 

Bunce: I shall, of course, be standing for President of the Bibliographical Society myself.

DM: You? … Bunce reached for his glass of port and took a dainty sip. I followed his movements and saw to my horror that the ear-trumpet of death lay still upon the little ledge where the glass also stood.

Bunce: What’s that, McQueen?

DM: I quickly pocketed the instrument … It’s an ear-trumpet. I confess, I am growing a little deaf … But I can still hear you, perfectly. Your voice is like a foghorn.

Bunce: I shall need a plangent voice when I address the members of the Bibliographical Society as their President.

DM: In your dreams, Bunce. Telemachus Wee may have a certain following among the members, and there is a real danger that he will be elected, but you stand no chance at all, I am glad to say. The members know you for what you are … a bogus bibliographer.

Bunce: What?

DM: Remember Ribright’s review of your monograph on Catalonian seed-catalogues? He found forty-seven separate errors in your paginary formulae, and your quasi-facsimile transcriptions were, he said, so imperfect that it would be positively misleading for any reader to consult them!

Bunce: You scoundrel!  I’ll … I’ll … 

DM: He reached down and began to unbuckle his pegleg. I searched through my pockets for something with which to defend myself, but could find only the trumpet, and Bunce’s black string, neither of which seemed a promising weapon. But at that moment the train began to slow and the ancient tannoy to warble …

Bunce: Damn you, McQueen. This is my stop! I will have to kill you another time!

DM: You, Bunce, and whose army? Are you not going on to Noxford then?

Bunce: No! I have an appointment at Windy Castle to see some of the looted aboriginal dung-pellets in the Royal Collection …

DM: Oh yes. I read that you had received an unpopular bibliographers’ grant to go to Australia to look at the pellets there … Why are you not in Melbourne?

Bunce: I have just returned from Melbourne. Would you believe that all but three of the seventy-eight dung-pellets in the library there are forgeries!

DM: I am astonished that you were able to tell!

Bunce: To be frank, I did not detect this myself. The librarians at Melbourne noticed certain anomalies when they fetched my orders from the stacks.  But just you wait, McQueen, wait until I publish my monograph on these pellets – it will be called The world’s first books – for these dung-pellets are nothing less than books, the earliest known form of written record produced in multiple copies and disseminated around the continent centuries before a clay tablet was inscribed in cuneiform or a sheet of papyrus was written on with reed-pen. It will be a triumph, and will make my name! But now … I must go.  Come … Dave Wilkins … Windy Castle awaits …

DM: And, so saying, the loathesome fellow swallowed down the last of his port, popped the glass into a pocket of his inverness cape, took down his attaché case, picked up the strings of his duffle bag, and stumped out of the compartment with a look upon his face which suggested that he would have made an obscene gesture, had he had a free hand.

This encounter had, as you might imagine, unsettled me rather. The worst of it was Bunce’s suggestion that he had been present when the beautiful Minerva Columba, the sweet dove, breathed her last. What could he have meant? A hundred horrid possibilities crowded into my mind, like stinking urchins into beautiful library. Could the ear-trumpet help me to unravel this mystery? Could I travel back to that dreadful day in 1971 when Minerva … Could I bear it? I knew that I could not, at least at that moment. I took out my hip-flask and had a healthy slug of brandy. What I needed now was not introspection but distraction and, to that end, and since I was now alone in the compartment, I took out the trumpet and fitted to my ear, allowing my mind to wander …

My pre-occupation with darkness and the past of Noxford must have had its effect, for I was carried back almost twenty years to a curious and tragic incident which had affected my brother Starwheel, shortly after he had been made head of the Department of Chemistry at Noxford. It was Saturday evening, at the end of the Department’s annual Easter closed week, and he was dining, not at St Frederick’s but in Botticelli’s, Noxford’s poshest Renaissance- and buttock-themed restaurant, his favourite haunt, when he received a telephone call …

Waiter: Excuse me, sir, there is telephone call for you.

SM: Really, who could be calling me here, and now?

Waiter: It is a gentleman called Samuel Earnshaw, the Chief Janitor at the Department of Chemistry. 

SM: This must be serious. 

Waiter: Here is the telephone, Sir.

SM: Thank you … Hello, Janitor?

Earnshaw (on the phone): Chief Janitor, if you don’t mind.  I am afraid there has been an incident, here at the Department.

SM: Oh dear, what can the matter be?

E: I regret to inform you, sir, that seven old ladies were locked in the laboratory.

SM: Really? When?

E: It seems they were there from Sunday to Saturday. Nobody knew they were there.

SM: Well, this is dreadful. What have the ladies said?

E: Nothing sir, for three are now sadly dead

Three in a coma and one of them off her head 

Nobody knew they were there!

SM: When did they get in there? 

E: During our open day

On Easter Sunday when you were some miles away

Knocking back cocktails in Marseilles or Santa Fe

Nobody knew where you were!

SM: I told you, Sam, that I was in Ilium

Giving a paper on ores of beryllium

Spending my nights with a rent-boy named William

Surely, you knew I was there?

And where were you, our Head of Security
 Don’t pretend to innocent purity

You should have checked, with rigorous surety
 You should have known they were there?

E: No, sir! I will not be taunted! 

I dared not go in – that laboratory’s haunted

I locked it securely and then off I jaunted

Off with my wife to Southend

SM: So, Sam, your fear of ghosts was the root

Of this disaster, from which only one old coot

Came through, not a vegetable but a fruit

While you lay drunk in Southend

Do ghosts exist? The point, I suggest, is moot

Your dereliction of duty was most acute

I suggest you’re destined to get the boot

‘Nobody knew they were there’ indeed!

Was no-one watching the closed-circuit cameras

While the Southend sun made you amorous?

Did no-one hear those old ladies grow clamorous?

‘Nobody knew they were there?’ you say!

E: It wasn’t my fault – I’m entitled to holiday

Nobody else was available on that day
 Fearing the ghost, I locked up and dashed away

Nobody knew they were there!

I broke down the door, after some little ditherin’
 Seven old ladies had shat in the litter-bin

Three were rottin’, and one was blitherin’

Can you imagine the smell?

There was evidence too of dreadful debauchery 

One of the corpses that came to the mortuary
 Had been carved up like a duck or a torturee

What had they suffered in there?

The mad old bag is now in the funny farm

Those in a coma can’t say how they came to harm

Now the police are here – all is absurdly calm

Nobody knew they were there!

DM: At this point I slipped into a troubled sleep, and the trumpet dropped from my lughole.

Announcer: That was The adventures of Donald McQueen, Bibliographer. Today’s chapter was sponsored by the Bibliographical Society of London, and by Schickle’s Pickles, purveyors of tomato ketchup to the bibliomaniacs of the world. It was written and performed by Paul W. Nash.

Next time, in The adventures of Donald McQueen, Bibliographer …

Paul Cheese: Hello, and welcome to Celebrities who Hate Vacuum-Cleaners. My name is Paul Cheese, an American, or perhaps Canadian, disc-jockey who has worked in England for over thirty years, for no very obvious reason. On today’s programme we are examining the particular phobia of German philosopher Fredrick Neechee.

Klaus (German accent): That’s Friedrich Nietzsche.

Cheese: Fredrick Neechee, thank you. I have with me Neechee expert Professor Klaus Maushaus of Basil University. Professor, we read in the journals of Neechee’s friend Cosima Wagner, the widow of the brilliant composer … Wagner, that ‘Neechee abhors a vacuum’.

Klaus: Blimey O’Reilly Cheese, is that all you’ve got? It doesn’t even work as a pun if you pronounce it wrong. ‘Nietszche abhors a vacuum’ – you see? It works if you say it like that. But it’s just a joke. It makes no sense in the context of Nietzsche’s life and philosophy. The first mechanical vacuum-cleaner was marketed in 1901, the year after Nietzsche died, and at that time he had been completely off his nut for eleven years, so if he had abhorred any of the primitive proto-vacuum-cleaners available in the United States during that period it would have been a remarkable feat, and also a perfectly worthless bit of abhorring, since his brain was completely addled. I think, perhaps, your brain also is completely addled.

Cheese: Thank you Professor Maushaus of Basil University. Next week on Celebrities who hate Vacuum-Cleaners we’ll be discussing the life of Novak Jokovitch, who was named Novak because he never owned a vacuum-cleaner and refused always to use the Henry Hoover in his mother’s house.