In a whimsical moment, I wanted to set a quiz in which readers were challenged to identify a quotation. But one drawback of what in Flemish is known as het internet is that pretty much any phrase can be tippy-tapped into Google and instantly (or within 1.7536284 seconds), there is the source blazoned upon your screen. It is all very well pleading with you not to cheat, but the fact that you can discover the answer for yourself after whatever brain-wracking time you choose to allow inevitably puts a dampener on things.
Anyway, my not-quite-a-quiz is as follows:
Who wrote ” I am you. Yes, you – that whole great majestically startling mentally epic burning model of heaven.”?
The first time I read that string of adjectives I gasped with glee.
ADDENDUM : “His eyes are bulging like the belly of a hungry chaffinch!” Do, please, follow the link provided by Outa_Spaceman in the Comments.
But it is the recording of Swelling Valley that has me drag the cassette out on a regular basis.
Lewis Carroll’s ‘First Voice’ warns that ‘The good and great must ever shun / that reckless and abandoned one / who stoops to perpetrate a pun’ (www.infoplease.com/t/poetry/phantasmagoria/the-three-voices.html)
But – to wave such admonition aside – surely a lighthouse keeper should enjoy Cow, Henry … given that he is seldom without his Sow, Esther …
Easy.
It was Sid Waddell.
For more Sidisums go here:
http://www.xlab.co.uk/extras/quotes/?source=waddell
O.S.M. B:52
Lighthouse-keepers, of course, are frequently pestered by a trio of sea-birds – Al, Bert, Ross…
Googling “great majestically startling mentally epic burning model of heaven” lean me to “Peel’s foe, not a set animal, laminates a tone of sleep” to Peter Blegvad’s Leviathan cartoons, so I’m quite pleased that I cheated.