There you go, Conrad cementing his reputation as a pseud and a poseur par outrance*. I was struck by this phrase early today, looking at the untidy, patchy brown carpet that leaves were making on the ground at the 24 bus stop in Royton town centre.
It's the opening verse of a poem by Verlaine, a French poet of the 19th Century, and I wouldn't know it from the contents of Poskrebyshev's laundry list if it weren't for that epic war film "The Longest Day". The French Resistance were given these code phrases as instructions to get ready to wreak mayhem on the transport and communications systems across Normandy. "John has a long moustache" was another, and there were dozens of nonsense phrases sent out to ensure the eavesdropping Hun was thrown off the trail. Sadly Conrad was born at least forty years too late to join in these little language games.
| "Phew!" said the Resistance forty years ago. |
Anyway, back to Verlaine. He might complain about Autumn but he was writing about it in France, where it's easy enough to toddle off to Nice or Biarritz or even Marseilles if you want a bit of seedy glamour, from the dank and over-moist environs of Paris. If he had chanced to live in England, those violin strings would be mildewed and green, as our Autumn doesn't so much sob as weep, and weep copiously. We dream of sobs as our rain falls in gobs*.
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| Weepy English weather |
Well, enough of today's Intro. I worked on it at lunch, can you tell?
"Right Ho Jeeves"
As Bertie himself would say, you might want to down a snifter or two of g. and t. before perusing the prose that follows, as there is - er - quite a bit of it. I worked on it whilst on the bus, can you tell?
Anyway, this novel ought to act as a stern corrective to those who 1) Underestimate Jeeves and 2) Endow Bertie with any great intellect. Or any intellect at all, I'm afraid. Pleasant, generous and affable young Mister Wooster might be, but he will never rank amongst those mighty in thought.
Most of the action is set in Brinkley Court, which itself is in the countryside of Worcestershire***. Punny, that, eh?
| Wooster Booster |
Bertie, at the point I had gotten to, has really over-reached himself, attempting to mend the rift betwixt Tuppy and Angela, which he has 1) signally failed to do, 2) had Angela fail to rise to Tuppy's defence and 3) made himself a target for an extremely suspicious and hostile Tuppy. Who is brawny, aggressive and not very forgiving.
Nor is that all. Dear me, no! When Bertie sticks his oar in, he manages to make it count like the oars on a quinquireme. Gussy Fink-Nottle, press-ganged to give a speech in Bertie's stead, is not sanguine about it. Bertie, being the silly ass that he is, deems it wise to spike GFN's orange juice with gin. This does not bode well! Nor to Gussie's abilities to woo the fairer sex, as he is a prattling prating panegyric on the subject of newts, and little else. Which does not win the female heart!
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| A Newt. No, hang on a minute - |
Then there's Aunt Dahlia, the hearty ex-hunting-to-hounds relative. She blew this quarter's allowance for her weekly magazine "Milady's Boudoir" on baccarat at Cannes, and now has to face asking her husband for MORE money, at a time when the old skinflint is woe-stricken over an income tax bill of £58.
| A baccarat table Reminds me of Cloudbase's control panel |
Nor is that all. Oh no. No, Bertie can spread chaos even if he were pouring oil on a troubled duck-pond. In fact he'd probably set the oil alight, roast the ducks and poach the fish. He thought to recommend to the lovelorn and baccaratted that they refuse to eat their divinely appointed dinner as cooked by that most remarkable of chefs, Anatole.
Food uneaten, Anatole beaten - his torrid Provencal blood driven to distraction by the non-consumption of his best dishes, he - gives notice. This is bad for Uncle Tom, Aunt Dahlia's husband, as his stomach is a most delicate instrument that Anatole alone can feed without disturbance.
A pretty pickle indeed!
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| Anatolia. Close enough |
Oh Irony, Irony, Must You Mock Me So?
As seen on the side of a First bus this morning:
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| "Refuelled"? |
You would need a nuclear-powered fission engine, 100 Mission Control staff and railway tracks to ensure that First buses ran on time to their correct destination, so forgive my hollow laughter at the above poster.
Also, where is The Stath? And - why do we need a reboot after only 12 years?
"Z Nation"
Ah, back to the more usual mocking, Grand Guignol^ humour and thrills. Again, we have a couple of variants on the usual Zombie iterations - zombies riddled with anthrax (not sure how that works if they're long dead), whom you don't want to get too close to. TK and Addy manage to get too close, and come down with what must be Film Anthrax, coughing up blood and breaking out in sores. Real anthrax doesn't strike in minutes and the symptoms are flu-like, actually. Bad scriptwriters! Lazy scriptwriters! No biscuit!
Second new zombie type - Zombaby! Pie Girl, after howling in the background for what seemed like hours, finally birthed a baby zombie, Murphy's unholy progeny. This combination of howling and baby draws unto the barn of the birth a whole slew of zombies - zombie sheep, zombie camel, zombie horse, zombie donkey. Why, it almost feels like Christmas!
No Citizen Z this week and only a few minutes of him last week, gone from omnipotent eye in the sky to barely-surviving - where are they going with this?
Oh, there's that comedy again, this time with the Monster Cheese. Which is most emphatically not a Cheese Monster, although it does power along crushing zombies. We see it just before the end credits. It may still be rolling!
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| First kills to the Cheese |
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| Still going strong. Given a month - it'll solve the zombie problem! |
Nice to see Kellita and Vasquez exhibiting moral conflict when they try to cure TK and Addy of anthrax ...
Oops. I accidentally wrote a lot again. Sorry!
* A pseud and a poseur, Big Time - translation courtesy Mister Hand
** "Gobs" = "Lots"
*** Confusing English again. Not pronounced "Workestershire" but "Woostershire"
^ "Bloody"
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