The latest issue of the weekly magazine Doings Of Pebblehead – The Weekly Magazine Devoted To The Doings Of The Paperback Potboilerist Pebblehead contains a fascinating interview with the paperback potboilerist Pebblehead. In it, he announces a brand new work in progress, which he is currently bashing out on his typewriter in his so-called chalet o’ prose, pipe clenched between his jaws.

“As you know,” he says, “I have written a tremendous number of police procedurals, many of them featuring maverick detective Detective Captain Cargpan. The other day, I was about to embark on another one when the thought occurred to me that perhaps it was time I wrote a different type of procedural. After all, why should the police be the only public servants whose procedures are examined in forensic and, let us not forget, thrilling detail by fiction writers? God knows how many paperbacks and television shows have been devoted to following police procedures. Well, I decided to break with convention and write a paperback potboiling blockbuster which, while decisively procedural, focusses on different procedures. As yet untitled, it will be a lollipop lady procedural, the first, I hope, of many.”

Outside of Britain and Australia, readers may not know what a lollipop lady is. Helpfully, then, the editors of Doings Of Pebblehead – The Weekly Magazine Devoted To The Doings Of The Paperback Potboilerist Pebblehead provide a footnote explaining that a lollipop lady is a lady armed with a circular placard, resembling a gigantic lollipop, who strides into the road and causes traffic to halt so that gaggles of tinies on their way to their schools self esteem ‘n’ diversity awareness hubs can cross the road without being squashed to death under the wheels of cars, vans, trucks, lorries, buses, coaches, and huge sinister smoke-belching tankers such as the one featured in Steven Spielberg’s second film, Duel (1971), starring Dennis Weaver.

The magazine also includes a picture of a lollipop lady, similar to the one below, so the more dimwitted among the readers can grasp what Pebblehead is talking about.

“It seems to me,” continues Pebblehead in this fascinating interview, “That there is a great deal of thrilling fictional potential in a lollipop lady procedural following the procedures of a lollipop lady. She is a lone figure, striding out into the menace of the open road, into the path of cars, vans, trucks, lorries, buses, coaches, and huge sinister smoke-belching tankers such as the one featured in Steven Spielberg’s second film, Duel (1971), starring Dennis Weaver, and causing them to put on their brakes and slow to a halt through the sheer force of her personality, not forgetting her circular placard resembling a giant lollipop, so that tinies, who without her would almost certainly be squashed to death under the wheels of the speeding cars, vans, trucks, lorries, buses, coaches, and huge sinister smoke-belching tankers such as the one featured in Steven Spielberg’s second film, Duel (1971), starring Dennis Weaver, can safely reach their schools self esteem ‘n’ diversity awareness hubs. At the moment I am tussling with the name to give my heroine. I think I might call her Mrs Cargpan. Then readers will have the added frisson of wondering if she is the wife of the hero of many of my police procedurals, maverick detective Detective Captain Cargpan.”

So saying, the indefatigable paperback potboilerist clenched his pipe between his jaws and dismissed the callow cub reporter from Doings Of Pebblehead – The Weekly Magazine Devoted To The Doings Of The Paperback Potboilerist Pebblehead with a lordly wave of his surprisingly dainty hand.