Good Lord!

That's Not Just A General Expostulation
I'll have you know. For Lo!  We are back on the subject of Lord Peter Wimsey, crack sleuth of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, and if you dared snigger at my use of "crack" then THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY! <points>.
     "Tallboys" is the last story that Dorothy L. Sayers wrote of our hero (others have taken up the pen since she passed on) and I find the critics dating of this one a touch - how can I put it?   Wrong.  There you go.

Sorry, Pete old mate, but there it is.

     A touch apposite, this, since it concerns the outbreak of the Second Unpleasantness and here we are, at it's anniversary. 
     Here an aside.  The Poles and the Teutons are, as usual, squabbling about this even as I type (I think it's in their genes), but you we have progressed as a species because they're   using words, rather than guns, this time.

A source of much bother

     Anyway, we are told that Lord P. was born in 1890, and his wife Harriet mentions that he's fifty-two in "Tallboys", so the critics naturally jump to the conclusion that it's set in 1942.
     Maybe so, yet it's a 1942 that hadn't happened by the time Ol' Dot scrawled it out, because the short story collection it comes from is dated 1939.  Lord P. doesn't mention The War anywhere in the story, and the allusion some critics make to a reference about "Prestige" and the Second Unpleasantness can apply to any time period going back to the fifteenth century.  In fact no characters at all mention The War in "Tallboys", which is a bit of a stretch, since 1942 was a crucial time for the armies of Perfidious Albion.  Singapore, Tobruk, El Alamein, all that.  It is thus highly probably that Ol' Dot wrote it whilst the storm clouds were still gathering on the horizon, rather than being overhead.
     Bad critics!  Naughty critics!  No biscuit at bedtime for you!
     There you go, a bit of literary detective work for you, done by Your Humble Scribe so you don't have to.
     You're welcome.
               
                                                              Tallboys!

How Much Do I Hate Shakespeare
That's not a rhetorical question, Your Humble Scribe - who's a whole lot humbler than that sonnet-writing bumbler - loathes the man and all his works with a passion.  The only work that comes within a mega-parsec of acceptance is "The Tempest" because "Forbidden Planet" is based on it*.

Shakespeare?  Never mind shaking it, he should be introduced to the sharp end of one!

     So, there I was at the bus stop, waiting for a bus (just to be clear), idly contemplating that patch of waste ground that has transformed into a thing of beauty thanks to flowers, and, just to be constructive, I began thinking of a list of insulting names for the <ahem> "Bard of Avon".  You may have seen some of these before, but don't expect an apology from me - I'm horrid that way.

The Barb Of Avon

The Barf Of Avon (one for our South Canadian cousins there)

The Bark Of Avon (woodn't you know it)

The Barm Of Avon (A barm is a roll here in the North of the Allotment)

The Lard Of Avon

     Which is as far as I got before the bus came, interrupting my train of vindictive and venomous thought, thank you First Bus - if I hadn't been on a roll nothing would have turned up for another 20 minutes!

Hello William.  Say hello to some of my little friends ...

Speak Of The Devil And He Shall Appear.  First Bus, Not So Much
From yesterday, the 24 bus service from Rochdale to Manchester has been permanently ended.  Oh, it also went from Manchester to Rochdale, otherwise all the buses would be left on Lever Street, wouldn't they?
     This has been on the cards for a good while.  Originally an all-day service, First cut it down to only nine buses per day - I mean, who wants to go to Rochdale, right?  Then, because Rochdale is a haven only for scum and villainy - that sounds oddly familiar - they cut the number of buses to seven per day.  Theoretically, because the ones from Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell frequently failed to turn up.  So some cynics will ask "How do you tell the difference?"

Rochdale Bus Station!

     A good question.  So today's journey to work was in the nature of an experiment; a bus in to Oldham bus station -

CAUTION!  Reality may be different

     - and then another bus from there to the sinful big city.  This takes well over an hour as opposed to the 45 minutes on a good day for the 24, which is reason to be grateful for me having a couple of books and a crossword to do. 
     Getting home tonight is equally in the way of a dangerously exciting adventure***.  First Bus - bringing excitement and drama into our boring, humdrum lives!  Thank you so much, First Bus.

From One Extreme To Another**

O lord indeed.  I refer to "The Two-Bear Mambo", the third novel in the Hap and Leonard series by Joe Lansdale, which is the polar opposite of Lord Peter Wimsey and Golden Age detectives of his ilk.  Leonard has some pretensions to taste and class, but Hap has none whatsoever, in fact about as much as his ambition.  Art?

You'll have to guess who's who

     And whilst the novel is laugh-out-loud funny in places - oven-cooked roast Chihuahua, anyone? - it's also quite horribly bleak in others, which kind of balances things out.  The violence, for one thing, would have shocked bally old George Orwell, who took a particular dislike to LP.  If he'd lived to read this he'd be fainting in coils.
     I loved it.  I'm going to get me some more.

     And with that, time fer lunch.




* A Parsec is a unit of astronomical distance, a contraction of "Parallax of one Arc Second" and it was a big thing in sci-fi back in the Thirties, until it got displaced by light years.  Sorry, parsec.
**  Thirteen Senses reference for you there.
***  So I exaggerate, sue me.  "I caught the bus" lacks any sense of drama, you carpers!