Here comes the Krummhorn Man.
He’s had a palaver.
He has to solve acrostics for his mother.
She is blind, and so is her dog.
The dog’s name is Spinach.
Spinach is a good name for a dog.
That’s what mother thinks.
She is ninety now, and every domestic pet she has ever had since she was a tiny tot she has called Spinach.
The donkey, the hamster, a kitten, several goldfish, certain other types of fish, rabbits and budgerigars, all Spinaches.
This might be called monomania.
The Krummhorn Man looks kindly upon his mother.
He is a good son.

Take a look at him now, a shopping list scrunched in his fist, prancing up the street.
He is on his way to the butcher’s.
The butcher is a caution.
He’s Cyclopean and bears duelling scars.
Lit by the moon, he howls, a proper butcher’s howl.
He keeps a vase of peonies on his mantel.
Oh for campions and oxlips!
Today it is sausages for the Krummhorn Man.
The sausages have the name of an English county.
The butcher, the butcher, the butcher with his meat-cleaver.
How sharp it is, and fearsome.
He whets the blade on a whetstone behind his kiosk.
You can hear the scree scree scree before dawn.
He wakes the town.

Sausages bought, on goes the Krummhorn Man, past the haberdasher and the aquarium.
Past all things.
Out into the gorse and nettles, followed by geese.
Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
But he is not pied and he has no pipe and it is not Hamelin.
It is an English county with the same name as the sausages.
Or it might be, if things fit neatly together.
He pops a boiled sweet into his mouth.
It is a spangle.
Invisible threads bind him to the past.
He smacks his lips.
The sound alerts an otter.
The Krummhorn Man shook off the geese and now he has an otter.
He sits down by the river.
He has to solve acrostics for his mother.

The wind is fair, the wind is foul.
The Krummhorn Man throws in the towel.
It is carried downstream towards the sea.
The otter follows him back to mother.
Dog and otter in mother’s parlour.
The one blind, the other not.
What a palaver.

Umbilically linked as once he was he makes a pot of tea.
He ties a knot in a dishcloth and chucks it out of the window.
And here comes Mister Snippage, toiling along the lane.
He is lame and pale and valiant.
What ho, what ho.
And tally tally ho too.
Then the Krummhorn Man makes himself scarce.
He takes himself to a place of defeat.
He leaves the sausages on the kitchen counter.

Where would he be if he were not here?
Over the sea and in a capital city loud with life.
Churning up the churnable, sparks and pangs, wearing a hat at a jaunty angle, getting into tangles, bumping things.
He peers into the distance through the mist.
The glue factory has closed down.
He keeps one arm in a sling for old time’s sake.
He was once the invalids’ invalid, just as the butcher is the butchers’ butcher.
It says so on a sign on his wall.
There is a red wax seal embossed on it of heraldic significance.
Red wax too in the Krummhorn Man’s hair.
A barber put it there for a prank.
Little gobbets, tiny orbs.
He is a very peculiar barber, shunned by many, and that is no surprise.
The barber is down a way from the butcher and the haberdasher and the aquarium, and around a corner, ever in shadow.
It is where they hold table-rapping meetings, with ectoplasm.
The Krummhorn Man sought his father there.
He is a good son.

Hedges flank the abandoned glue factory.
They have not been snipped for many a spring.
It is a place to pine.
There are still nozzles to be seen among the ruins.
The Krummhorn Man has his favourites.
He has snapped thousands of photographs with a long lens.
He used to use a Polaroid.
Polaroids and polar bears and polar wastes, he kept them together in his head.
It was a nice head, mother said.
It was the colour of curd.
The otter was gone from the parlour when he went back, bent on his sausages.
The fat sizzled in the pan.

Just then Mister Snippage came toiling back along the lane and began to pound on the door with his great hairy fists.
Spinach dragged his ancient canine bones to the doormat and dribbled.
At the same time the telephone rang and an alarm sounded.
It was pandaemonium.
The hospital helicopter was circling overhead.
There was gunfire coming from the hills.
It turned out to be a mock emergency, staged by actors.
Even Mister Snippage was not really Mister Snippage at all.
His part was played by an elfin amateur caked in makeup.
The sausages were burned black.

See, see, the Krummhorn Man has set out again, in the rain, in the rain.
This time he has taken a pipe.
Its bowl is in the lee of the brim of his hat so the rain does not douse it.
But the shutters are down at the butcher’s shop.
The butcher is gone for the day.
Where is he gone to?
That is what everyone is asking, in a huddle at his door.
Then the band strikes up that old traditional air “Butcher, Butcher, Where Have You Been?”
But until he comes back they will be in the dark.

Butcher, butcher, where have you been?
Until I come back you will be in the dark.
Butcher, butcher, what have you seen?
I have seen a swan in a pond in the park.
Butcher, butcher, why is it dark?
Because the shutters are down on my shop on the street.
Butcher, butcher, will you ever come back?
I shall return with contaminated meat.

The Krummhorn Man goes home sausageless in the downpour.
He must solve acrostics for his mother.
Spinach is asleep in front of the fire.
He is dreaming a dog dream of triumph and vinegar.

We can go over now to our reporter on the ground, Praxiteles Hubbard . . .  Prax, what is the situation there on the ground?

Well, Ulf, what the people on the ground here are telling me is that the situation is very fluid. That’s something you might expect of the sea, rather than the ground, but there it is. What I’ve been able to see here on the ground is soil, some mud, a certain amount of silt, sparse bits of lawn, sand, then large swathes of scrubland covered in gorse and bracken and nettles until you come into more built-up areas, where you’ll find grit and gravel and then great big paving slabs and flagstones, asphalt and tarmac and concrete. Also on the ground is a teeming myriad of insect life, tiny little ants and beetles, and all sorts of things that creep and slither and scuttle. You have to be very careful not to crush them underfoot. Obviously my boots are here on the ground, too, for the time being. Apart from in the very muddy parts where there has been heavy rainfall, it’s pretty solid, despite the situation being fluid, as I pointed out. Gradients vary. Parts of the ground are flat but then there are steeper bits, and in the urban areas you will find steps and stairs. I have yet to come upon any quicksand, but what people on the ground here are telling me is that there are patches of it, so one has to tread carefully.

And what are the people on the ground saying about the situation?

It depends who you speak to, Ulf, and whereabouts on the ground they are. Earlier I was on the ground just south of here, on an outcrop of limestone. There, I was told, the situation was very much what you’d expect, a real sense of limestone, no sign of quicksand, and certainly no paving slabs or flagstones. But come further north, travelling across scrub and moorland, and you can find yourself in marshland, which is barely ground at all. In fact it’s sopping wet, as I found out to my cost. Luckily I have a pair of wellington boots. What the people on the ground there told me is that it has always been marshy and boggy, so the situation is always fluid. And it gets even more fluid during the rainy season, if you can believe that. There’s a great deal of anxiety among the people on the ground, looking up for signs of clouds.

But clouds are in the sky, not on the ground, is that right, Prax?

That is absolutely right, Ulf. As a person on the ground here told me earlier, the sky is not the ground. But, interestingly, just as the ground is scattered with that teeming myriad of life-forms I was telling you about, so is the sky. It’s just that the life-forms tend to be different, things with wings, for example, and as well as tiny insects you get birds, some of which can be huge in comparison.

We know about the people on the ground, but are there people in the sky too?

Yes there are. Most of them tend to be in aeroplanes or helicopters, but you occasionally find a so-called bird-man, a chap with a pair of balsa wood wings attached by a kind of harness, flinging himself off a clifftop or promontory. What’s interesting is that they tend to become people on the ground pretty quickly, usually within minutes. There is one faction among the people on the ground who claim there are other people in the sky, what we might call ethereal beings, or angels, also with wings, but not balsa wood ones. They seem to have their wings already attached, and don’t need harnesses. They can also remain airborne, so I suppose we could say they really are people in the sky, unlike the bird-men.

And have you managed to talk to any of these people in the sky, Prax?

Not yet, Ulf, though I have been putting out feelers.

Feelers? Like the tendrils and antennae of certain insects and plant-forms?

That’s right, Ulf. I’ve been putting out my feelers trying to arrange to talk to representatives of the sky-people. They of course will have a different perspective to the people on the ground, and it will be interesting to find out what they make of the situation, whether they also think it is fluid. Much depends, I think, on whether it rains.

This rain, Prax, I understand it begins in the sky and comes down to the ground?

Not exactly. It actually begins in the sea, goes up into the sky, and then it comes down to the ground.

What are the people on the ground saying about that?

Well, again it depends very much on who you talk to. Some people put their collars up and unfurl umbrellas and say things like “Mustn’t grumble”. Others slosh about in puddles and they do grumble. And I’ve spoken with a few people here on the ground who dance strange jigs hoping to attract the rain.

Were they the people on the limestone outcrop?

No, Ulf, they weren’t. I think it’s important to note that there are all sorts of different people on the ground, depending on what patch of ground you’re talking about.

I’ll have to cut you short there, Prax, but before you go, you’ve told us about the people on the ground and the people in the sky, but are there any people under the ground?

There are. Some of them are miners or pot-holers, some are international women of mystery like Primrose Dent in her sinister subterranean HQ, and some are weird blind albino troglodyte beings who are really rather frightening.

Fascinating stuff. That was Praxiteles Hubbard there, our reporter on the ground. [Pause] To Jaywick now, where cows have wandered down the main street in the early morning dawn . . .

In yesterday’s cryptic crossword in the Grauniad, the solution to 10 across was CRETINOUS, to 11 across NEUROTICS, and to 27 across COUNTRIES. This was an extraordinary coincidence, as earlier in the day I had been thinking, and thinking hard, about cretinous neurotics’ countries. I hasten to add that these thoughts were not in any way connected to the Olympic Games. No doubt each country has both the cretinous and the neurotic among its participants, but that is a matter for the sports writers, not for me.

Though sport is a field in which the cretinous neurotic can, and does, excel, in the countries I was thinking about their purview is much wider. These are the lands where cretinism and neurosis are extolled as the ne plus ultra, where the cretinous neurotic is not merely coddled and pampered but sits at the top table, is given the keys to the kingdom, rules the roost. Countries like Tantarabim and Gaar.

Gaar – sometimes spelled Ga’ar or G’aar – is fertile ground for neurotic cretins. Once upon a time this land of marshes, moors, and mountains was ruled by a Sheila Parslow-like figure, a “nymphomaniacal moron” in Josephine Tey’s memorable phrase for La Parslow given in Brat Farrar (1949). But a coup toppled the old regime, led by a particularly neurotic cretin, or an especially cretinous neurotic, according to which sources you trust. Certainly Fab Slobber, who pronounced himself King, was a proper caution. His brain was tiny and curdled and often overheated, and the list of his neuroses would fill several thick leather-bound ledgers. A debilitating fear of badgers was just one of his derangements. It was the presence of a badger motif on the national flag that precipitated the coup. Fab Slobber’s first act was to banish the nymphomaniacal moron. His second was to replace the flag with one showing a badger trampled underfoot by a neurotic cretin’s boot. Not long after, it was redesigned again, and this time the badger was entirely obliterated, leaving the boot stamping on nothing.

The court of King Fab became a playground for cretins and neurotics. Anyone with a jot of sense, or an untroubled cast of mind, swiftly fell from favour and went into exile. Yet Gaar thrived. Exports of pig iron went through the roof. Nobody who remained in the country knew what the hell it was, so when foreign prospectors flooded in and offered to dig it up and take it away, they were given the King’s blessing. Civil strife became a thing of the past, and the past itself was abolished, as if it had never been, save for those whose neurosis compelled them to live in it, proffering outdated coinage, wearing strange pointy hats, and babbling archaic argot. It was a happy land, perhaps the happiest that ever was. Cretins gambolled o’er the marshes and moors and mountains, neurotics gave unbridled vent to their neuroses, and the cretinous neurotics were happiest of all, if a neurotic can ever be truly happy.

Several academic studies have been carried out to determine how a country under the governance of a neurotic cretin could be so prosperous, so successful. No firm conclusions have yet been reached, though it is instructive to compare the example of Gaar with that of Tantarabim. In the latter case, there was no coup d’etat. There was no nymphomaniacal moron to be deposed. As far as anybody has been able to ascertain, Tantarabim has always been ruled by cretinous neurotics, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of its populace are neither cretinous nor neurotic. Indeed it has been estimated that, by any measure, the typical Tantarabimer has greater brain power and a more equable temperament than the average citizen of any other realm, on earth as it is in heaven. Yet year after year, when the time comes to call on the haruspex to slaughter a chicken and cast its hot steaming entrails upon the civic square, and to read therein the name of the Potentate who will rule, tyrannically, Tantarabim for the following twelvemonth, the name is invariably that of a neurotic cretin, one who until they rule is kept chained up in somebody’s cellar or attic, drooling, and batting flies away from their misshapen pointy head. It is a unique system of government, so rare it has never been given a name. Yet it works perfectly, so much so that Tantarabim exports even more pig iron than Gaar, if you can imagine so bewildering a statistic.

For the term of his or her rule, the Potentate’s word is law. It matters not if the word, mumbled from a mouthful of drool, is cretinous or neurotic. It is at once transcribed by the Potentate’s amanuensis, the frizzy-haired so-called “Winterson” of Tantarabim, and multiple copies made on an old and creaking Gestetner machine, and the copies ferried out across the country by eager sprinters, who post the word up on every available flat vertical surface, not excluding those that are crumbling or due for demolition. And woe betide the Tantarabimer who does not follow these cretinous and neurotic edicts! Woe betide them indeed! Woe, woe, and thrice woe! And yet further woe, yea, unto every generation!

Perhaps the secret of Tantarabim’s success is the guarantee, according to the constitution, that precisely a year to the day after the Potentate’s accession, they will be taken back to their cellar or attic and chained up again. They will be given a pewter pot in which to catch their drool. Flies will be reintroduced through ducts and vents, so they can be batted away, thus keeping the cretinous neurotic fully occupied. And outside, life will go on, under the iron rule of a brand new Potentate, whose decrees will bear no relation whatsoever to those of the last one, nor indeed to reality, as apprehended by the citizenry. Thus is the body politic ever renewed and refreshed, and the pig iron exports increased.

I am told there are yet other countries where cretinous neurotics hold sway. I must get down to some serious research, and discover where they are, and pay them a visit, armed with my notepad and a camera and a strange pointy hat.

Back in February, in the piece On Certain Books I Have Read, I noted that “there is rarely any pattern or method to my reading. I flit from one thing to another, often jarringly”. Of late, my flitting has often been determined by recommendations from other blogpersons. Nige, for example, alerted me to the comic genius of Charles Portis, and it was by way of a comment by Gaw that I immersed myself in The Lion And The Unicorn, a double biography of Gladstone and Disraeli by Richard Aldous.

Peter Hitchens would probably baulk at being called a blogperson, but one of the advantages of Het Internet is that one can read his Mail On Sunday columns as a blog without having to fight one’s way through the rest of the paper. A few weeks ago, having spent the weekend in Lewes, Hitchens wrote:

I always have the country round Lewes in mind, and especially a certain old-fashioned hotel in Lewes, when I read Josephine Tey’s tremendous mystery novel ‘Brat Farrar’. I re-read it every few years, even though I shall never again have the disturbing thrill of suddenly realising the appalling truth at the heart of the story, which only first-time readers can have.

That was enough for me to trot off to the London Library to borrow the book. (I have already sung the praises of that paradise on earth, so shall not babble on about it yet again.) And I am very glad I did so. It is indeed a “tremendous mystery”, and I have not yet got as far as the “appalling truth at the heart of the story”, so I want to dash off this postage as quick as I can so I can return to it.

What Hitchens does not mention is that the setting of Brat Farrar is a stud farm, the characters a horsey lot. Had he done so, I fear I may have ignored his encomium and never bothered to read the book. Though I have read much more in the field of crime and mystery than in any other fictional genre, I have studiously avoided any sniff of horseyness. I have never read a word of Dick Francis and am confident that I never will. I am as far from a horsey person as it is possible to be. I have never sat on one, ridden one, or bet on one. The pleasures of the turf are a mystery to me. To be told a novel is set in a horsey milieu is a guarantee that I will not go near it with a bargepole.

Brat Farrar, however, is superb, in spite of the horseyness, crucial though that is to the plot (at least as far as I have read). Thus immersed in horses, for once, my mind turned to their appearances in Hooting Yard. For all that I care not a jot for horses, they do turn up in my fictional universe from time to time. Without bothering to trawl through the archives, I can say that generally speaking, Hooting Yard horses are divided into three main categories – (a) elegant, (b) inelegant, and (c) tubercular. In addition, some horses can be a combination of the elegant, or the inelegant, and the tubercular. How I arrived at these basic horsey types is lost in time. All I can recall is that the first time I wrote about a horse, I made it (I think) inelegant and tubercular, and having done so once saw no reason ever to consider any other type of horse, save for the elegant and tubercular. If you are going to apply adjectives to beasts of burden, choose them quickly and with determination, and try never to vary them, that’s my motto. Well, it’s one of my mottoes. There are others, about which I shall perhaps write on some other occasion.

I hope I am not about to contradict myself by stating that, more than once, I have referred to diseases of the horse other than tuberculosis, to wit glanders, headshaking, lethal white syndrome, mud fever, contagious equine metritis, rainscald, strangles, quiltor, hereditary equine regional dermal asthenia, choke, grass sickness, recurrent airway obstruction, cerebellar abiotrophy, lavender foal syndrome, pythiosis, and poll evil. I used to think withers was some kind of horse disease, given that withers, unless in the context of Googie, sounds like a disease. But a horse’s withers are something else again, though exactly what is not clear to me, and I am insufficiently interested in horses to find out. I know, or think I know, that horses have shanks and withers, and that is quite enough to be going on with.

Thus far, in Brat Farrar (I am up to page 176), there has been no mention of a single one of the horse diseases listed above. Either the stud farm at Latchetts is fortunate in having a paddock’s worth of healthy horses, or Josephine Tey did not wish to dwell on the maladies to which horses can fall prey. Or, indeed, she knew less about horses than she wants the reader to believe. If I were to write a whole novel set in a horsey milieu, I would find it difficult to bash out page after page without mentioning glanders, headshaking, lethal white syndrome, mud fever, contagious equine metritis, rainscald, strangles, quiltor, hereditary equine regional dermal asthenia, choke, grass sickness, recurrent airway obstruction, cerebellar abiotrophy, lavender foal syndrome, pythiosis, or poll evil, not forgetting tuberculosis. I would probably have to give my novel a title something like The Island Of Sick Horses.

There may be some of you who think I am more interested in horses than I claim to be, given that only the other day I was writing about crazy horses. But that piece wasn’t really about horses at all, and a careful rereading will show that one never actually sees a horse, from beginning to end. It could be argued that the teeth of the Osmonds are as salient a feature as the huge gleaming teeth of horses, but that would lead us into the topic of horse dentistry, best avoided I think.

Having said all that, it occurs to me that the nomenclature of racehorses is an intriguing subject, and one to which I would do well to turn my attention. But first I must finish reading Brat Farrar, and discover the appalling truth at the heart of the story. Thank you, Mr Hitchens.

Extracts from the journal of M. de Sorr, a literary man from Paris:

27 April 1854. Faffing about aimlessly, wondering how to celebrate tomorrow’s feast day of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716). As luck would have it I bumped into a vague acquaintance, M. Hardy, who said he was making a balloon ascent tomorrow, and would I care to join him? I replied that I would very much like to do so.

28 April 1854. I met with M. Hardy as arranged, in a field on the outskirts of Cannes. Beyond some palings, les vaches were mooing. We ignored them and clambered into the basket, or “car” of the balloon. Shortly afterwards, responding to a call from someone in the crowd of spectators who had gathered, the chap holding the ropes let them go, and we began our ascent. I noted that Hardy looked somewhat disconcerted, and asked him why.

“We have begun our ascent prematurely,” he replied, “The aeronaut who was meant to be with us had not yet clambered aboard. I myself am entirely ignorant of the management of a balloon. What about you, is that something you know of?”

“Not a sausage,” I replied, as we rose through the clouds. Below, the earth disappeared from view.

It seemed we were in a proper pickle. But an aeronautical pickle did not quite explain the expression on M. Hardy’s countenance, where disconcertment had now been replaced by abject terror. Deploying the interrogation techniques I had learned as chef d’interrogateurs for the French postal service, I questioned him closely. Hardy turned out to be a Muggletonian, and as such, he believed that when we got six miles up we would crash into the sky. I shook him by the lapels and slapped him round the chops in an attempt to knock some sense into him. He curled up in a pitiable ball on the floor of the basket, weeping.

Considering him a hopeless case, I busied myself by making an inventory of the basket. There was a hand-held rudder, a fan, a packet of biscuits, five bottles of champagne, a barometer, and an illustrated album of bird engravings. The air was growing thinner as we continued our ascent. I said a prayer asking Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort to intercede on our behalf, and then took a refreshing nap.

When I awoke, we were much much higher, and Hardy was no longer curled up on the floor. He was standing, leaning against the side of the basket, gazing out at the boundless firmament. I snapped my fingers in front of his face – foof-la! – but got no response. Instantly, I realised that he had suffered a complete mental collapse. We must have passed the six mile mark, I reasoned, and not crashed into a solid sky, thus utterly destroying the Muggletonian concept of the cosmos. Hardy’s brain had lost its moorings, and he could not comprehend the inexplicable new world he had entered.

Luckily for both of us, I could. I cracked open a bottle of champagne.

“Onwards to the moon!” I cried.

29 April 1854. Hardy seemed a little more composed today. I have been running through some of his theological difficulties with him, and giving him the opportunity to use my rosary beads. I explained that the Mariolatry of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort knocks Muggletonianism into a cocked hat. The air around us is thinner still, and no longer blue but black, and shimmering with stars. To my surprise, there are still one or two birds flitting around, though not ones I recognise, nor are they depicted in the album of engravings. Indeed, the only reason I call them birds is because they have wings. Come to think of it, they may be some form of high-flying insect. Hardy suggests they are angels. He may be right. There is one bottle of champagne left, and a couple of biscuits.

30 April 1854. As I suspected, we are heading straight for the moon. After two days of continuous ascent, it is a curious feeling to be descending. Hardy has made a grand recovery, though he will not let go of the rosary beads and thumped me on the windpipe when I foolishly attempted to retrieve them from his grasp. When I was able to speak again, I told him to prepare himself for our moon landing.

“Hold on to your hat!” I cried.

Ten minutes later, we settled gently on the lunar surface. It was all very exciting. We both peered into the distance, and were surprised to see a little trail of dust-clouds heading towards us. On closer inspection, we saw the billows of dust were caused by the footsteps of a man – or, we supposed, an angel, or a moon-being. But no, it was a man after all.

“What are you doing here?” he said, as he reached the basket. His accent was American. He was rather diminutive and weedy, with a little moustache and a haunted look in his eyes.

“Greetings good fellow,” I said, “I am M. de Sorr, a literary man from Paris, and this is my vague acquaintance M. Hardy, a Muggletonian recently converted to Roman Catholicism, who has developed a fanatical devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. As you can see, we arrived here by hot air balloon.”

“As did I,” said the American, “Five years ago. And I too am a literary man. I am also neurasthenic, and I do not wish to teeter over the edge into full-blown insanity by having to deal with you two. Please leave me alone.”

“You are a prickly little fellow to be sure,” I said.

“Prickly I may be, but at least when I have written of ascents by hot air balloon to the moon, and similar tales of unlikely adventure, I have taken care to be as scientifically accurate as the present state of knowledge makes possible. You strike me, if I may say so, as the kind of literary gentleman who takes no such care with your narrative. Even if you disguise it as a factual journal of events, it would not surprise me if you roundly ignore all claims of credibility.”

“I fear you are correct, sir,” I said, “And M. Hardy and I will leave you to your own devices. We shall once more ascend in our hot air balloon, though we are both entirely ignorant of its management, and go forth, wherever it takes us.”

As an afterthought, I offered him our remaining bottle of champagne as a parting gift.

“No thank you,” he said, “One drop of the hard stuff and I stagger around as if in the advanced stages of inebriation. It won me a rather unseemly reputation by the time I left the planet Earth in 1849.”

“Well, good luck to you, sir,” I said. And Hardy and I ascended once more, bound for who knows where?

Detective Captain Ford Madox Unstrebnodtalb was not related either to the writer Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) nor to his grandfather, the painter Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893). Ford Madox Ford was born Ford Hermann Hueffer, went by the name Ford Madox Hueffer, and in 1919, decided to ditch the Hueffer because, in the aftermath of the Great War, it sounded too German. Casting around for a new surname, he did not look far, and simply repeated the Ford. Similarly, there came a point when Ford Madox Unstrebnodtalb decided to get rid of the Unstrebnodtalb, allegedly because it sounded too foolish, and in choosing a replacement went for Madox, so he became known as Ford Madox Madox.

I have tried to discover if there are any notable persons named Madox Ford Madox or Madox Ford Ford, but so far without success. Nor have I found anybody called Ford Madox Green or Ford Madox Black or Ford Madox followed by any other colour on the spectrum. One will turn up eventually, of that I am sure.

As a Detective Captain with a clutch of exciting cases under his belt, Ford Madox Unstrebnodtalb had a vast amount of paperwork to do when he changed his name to Ford Madox Madox. He had to go back over all his old case files in the basements of several different police stations, crossing out Unstrebnodtalb and inserting Madox. This was in the days before Liquid Paper correction fluid had been invented by the mother of the Monkee Mike Nesmith, so the Detective Captain had to scratch out the Unstrebnodtalbs with a sharp pointy blade, without actually gashing a hole in the paper, and then gingerly write Madox in the resulting off-white space. How much easier the job would have been had Liquid Paper, or its rival, Tipp-Ex been invented!

Incidentally, there are those who claim Mike Nesmith’s mother invented Tipp-Ex, but that was a separate innovation devised by Wolfgang Dabisch in Germany. Dabisch was not related to any Monkee. Liquid Paper was invented in 1951, and Tipp-Ex in 1959. Quite what the difference between these two products is I have no idea, save that one is American and the other European. Nor do I know if Bette Nesmith Graham and Wolfgang Dabisch ever met, at some kind of correction fluid summit. Had they done so, it would certainly have been a clash of the titans. I must do further research on this particular point, and if I get nowhere, just make something up in lieu of facts.

Before leaving this absolutely fascinating topic and getting back to our main business of the day, which is Ford Madox Unstrebnodtalb aka Ford Madox Madox, it is worth noting that Dabisch is a splendid surname for an inventor of correction fluid, given that you sort of dab the stuff carefully on to the paper, or at least you used to, in the days when we used typewriters rather than these newfangled space age computers. Of course, some writers stick loyally to their typewriters, and some indeed even more loyally to pens and pencils. For all I know there may even be writers who still use goose quills. I have been tempted to do so myself, were it not that the logistics of creating a daily blog from scratchy goose quill manuscripts seems so fearfully complicated.

I apologise, by the way, for using the word “logistics”. It is one of those words much favoured by the kinds of people who like nothing more than to obfuscate and to make simple tasks sound complex. Coupled with “solutions” it is even more horrifying. Though I have to say if I saw a van passing with Ford Madox Logistics Solutions emblazoned on its side I would be very tempted to scribble down the telephone number or email address for future reference. One final logistics note: I have seen an advertising poster repeatedly in recent days inviting me to “Imagine the Olympic Games without logistics”. I have, and they were remarkably like the Olympic Games with logistics, but that is perhaps a failure of my imagination.

A few paragraphs ago we left Detective Captain Ford Madox Unstrebnodtalb, now Ford Madox Madox, in the basement of one among any number of police stations altering old case files, scratching out Unstrebnodtalb and inserting Madox. Now admittedly, this is not the most enticing of scenes. Even tiptop writers like frizzy-haired Jeanette Winterson and that equally frizzy-haired chap, what’s his name?, oh yes, Sebastian Faulks, would be hard-pressed to make something of it. Grunting detective, in basement, armed with sharp pointy thing, scratching away.

I suppose one could introduce a thrilling time-travel element, where a being from the future suddenly materialises behind the Detective Captain. Unstrebnodtalb / Madox spins around, a look of astonishment on his chops. The being from the future tells him to be not afeared, the way angels do in Bible stories, but then assures the Detective Captain he is not an angel.

“I am merely a being from the future,” he says, “1960, to be precise. And in that future which you must find as unimaginable as the Olympic Games without logistics, do you know what? We no longer need to scratch out writing with sharp pointy blades, for we have something called correction fluid! Look!”

And the being takes from one pocket a bottle of Liquid Paper, and from another pocket a bottle of Tipp-Ex, and says:

“Not only do we have correction fluid, we have two different types. One is American, and it is called Liquid Paper, and the other is German, and called Tipp-Ex.”

Ford Madox Unstrebnodtalb aka Madox is goggle-eyed. He reaches out his hands to take one, or both, of the bottles. But the being pops them back into his pockets and slaps the Detective Captain’s hands away.

“Sorry, but I cannot let you use them. Were you to do so, an anomaly would be created in the space-time continuum that could have cataclysmic world-shuddering effects on the very fabric of the universe!”

And with that, he dematerialises, leaving the Detective Captain once again alone in the basement of a shabby provincial police station.

Beat that, Winterson and Faulks, with your frizzy hair and Oxbridge backgrounds and publishing contracts!

And Mr Key softly and suddenly vanishes away, in search of a bottle of ink and a goose quill . . .

On this day, eight long years ago, I asked some questions about Gilead:

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Is the chemist’s shop shut? Has the clinic been boarded up? Why does the Ambulance of Gilead sit rusted in a locked and bolted garage, its siren broken and its tyres punctured flat? What happened to all that balm anyway? Was it stolen by a ruthless gang of aromatic resin smugglers? Did the gang abduct the physician as part of the plan? Was the local television station prompted to show Celebrity Balm In Gilead Sniffer Dog Challenge? Did the massed bloodhounds and their permatanned owners fail to find even the merest trace of resin? Did the gang succeed in carting off all the balm in Gilead to their mountain lair? What are we to make of the conjecture in the press that the physician’s abduction was a piece of fakery and that he was the mastermind behind the plot? How long did it take for a hack on the Daily Shackle to dub the affair Balmingileadgate? Will there ever again be balm in Gilead? Who is the young whippersnapper who has arrived, announcing himself as the replacement physician? Is there something reproachful and oily about his manner? Why does he keep referring to the missing balm as “gumme” or “triacle”? Is he unable to spell “treacle”, or is he up to something? Why does he refuse to divulge the recipe for the bandage paste he uses? Is he in league with his predecessor, and with his predecessor’s alleged gang? Is there any connection between the fact that the new oily physician has put posters up all over the place promising to rid the populace of “evil humours” and that “malign bile ad” is an anagram of “balm in Gilead”? What on earth is that stuff the new physician smears on his hair? Must it pong so offensively? Has he no shame? If you know the answers to any of these questions, or can assist the Gilead medical authorities in any way, please write to the Balm In Gilead Appeal c/o Detective Captain Unstrebnodtalb.

As I say, eight years have passed since I posed those questions. Today I found myself wondering if Detective Captain Unstrebnodtalb had made any progress. Some of you may recall the Detective Captain from the part he played in what became known as the affair of the immense duckpond pamphlet. For those of you who do not recall, here is an account of his arrival upon the scene:

The next day all hell broke loose. Early in the morning, as Blodgett polished the outside spigots, an ogre or wild man hove into view atop the southern hills. Its progress towards the House was implacable. It stamped through the bracken, vaulted the ha-ha with a single bound, negotiated the massive basalt wall with surprising elegance, and sprang towards the terrified Blodgett, whirling its hirsute arms alarmingly and making disgusting guttural noises. It was matted with filth. Flies, gnats, and tiny things emitting poisonous goo crawled all over its flesh. It seemed to be decomposing. It drooled. It picked up Blodgett, sank its fangs into his skull, and hurled him aside.

Pausing momentarily to spit out particles of Blodgett’s head, it smashed its way through the wall of the House, oblivious to the fact that there was an ajar door three feet to its right. Once inside the House, its rage seemed to increase. It rushed wildly from room to room, obliterating the furniture, tearing up floorboards, destroying chandeliers, bashing holes into walls and ceilings, sucking the wallpaper off the walls. It chewed up banister rails and regurgitated them, disgorging them with such force that each rail acted as a lethal projectile. At least one urchin was impaled as a result. Five minutes after the ogre’s arrival much of the lower part of the House lay in ruins. Small fires were starting, but they were doused by water spurting from uprooted taps.

Euwige and Jubble were still sprawled in the Room of Distressed Wooden Bitterns when the ogre eventually came upon them. It let out an inhuman cry. It picked at its sores. It became becalmed. Fixing it with a bemused stare, Jubble rose to his feet.

“You know, there might still be some dandelion and burdock left,” he said, “Would you care for a drop?”

The ogre pounded its fists against its own head. Then it blinked, shuddered, twitched. Jubble pushed a tin mug into its paw. It gulped the sweet muck down greedily, then threw the mug back at Jubble, missing his ear by a whisker, as they say. Something in its manner seemed to change. By now, blind Euwige too was on her feet. She sniffed at the violent pongs emanating from the ogre, then stepped towards it.

“Thank heaven! You have come!” she said, “Jubble, meet my dear friend Detective Captain Unstrebnodtalb! He comes from a far country, and his brain is hot.”

I knew that these days Unstrebnodtalb was based in some sort of new-fangled police kiosk perched on a promontory overlooking the wild and broiling sea. I caught a bus and then trudged the last mile or two until I was in sight of the kiosk. The Detective Captain was sitting in a deckchair outside, staring at the sea, a bit like King Canute but high on a promontory rather than down on the beach, and thus not in any danger of being o’erswept by the briny. As I approached, I hailed him.

“Any news on that balm in Gilead business?” I asked, getting straight to the point. Then I saw that he was weeping.

“Have you ever read The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford?” he asked, in his grunty way.

“Yes, I have,” I said.

“Then you will know it begins with the line ‘This is the saddest story I have ever heard’. Well, that may be true for Ford Madox Ford, but not for me, Detective Captain Ford Madox Unstrebnodtalb, for I have heard a story even sadder.”

“I didn’t know your first names were Ford and Madox,” I said.

He waved a paw at me.

“In pursuing the case of the missing balm in Gilead I have been driven to ruination and despair and sitting on a deckchair next to a new-fangled police kiosk perched on a promontory staring at the sea and weeping, because it is all so very, very sad,” he said.

“Yes, but have you answered any of the questions?” I asked, mercilessly.

“Come back in another eight years and ask me again,” he said, “And now leave me to weep.”

A gull swooped in to scavenge breadcrusts from the kiosk roof. I turned and trudged back to the bus stop. Instead of going home, I stayed on the bus as far as Gilead. There was still no balm.

There was a programme on the box last night called Gas Rig Strip-Down. According to the listings, “Tom Wrigglesworth and Rob Bell watch as a gas platform is pulled from the North Sea and taken to Newcastle to be disassembled”. This sounded quite exciting, but I didn’t watch it for two reasons. First, because from that description I feared that we would learn a lot about the, er, “personalities” of Messrs Wrigglesworth and Bell, at the expense of just watching a gas rig being dismantled. Second, because I would have preferred a programme in which, without the intercession of the presenters, we watch a gas platform being pulled from the North Sea and taken to Newcastle to be disassembled by monkeys. Actually, it would be even better if the gas rig was left where it was in the middle of the North Sea and monkeys ‘coptered out to it, to dismantle it in situ.

Alan Partridge was on to something with his idea for monkey tennis. Monkeys taking apart large pieces of infrastructure would make splendid television. I would place watching monkeys dismantling a gas rig pretty high on a list of things I’d like to see before I die, up there in the dismantling section with seeing a life dismantled of muffins.

Generally speaking, I think any large-scale sea-based construction such as a gas rig or an oil rig or even a huge rusting container ship is best taken to bits by animals. This is not without precedent. Years ago, at a time when the Chitty And Fagg coach company was still plying the coast roads of Kent, from Dover to Margate, there was an occasion when hundreds, or possibly thousands, of warthogs were let loose on a dilapidated and decommissioned hospital ship. The din of grunting was incredible, and drowned out the sound of foghorns. But there wasn’t much left of the ship by the time the hogs were ferried back to shore in a flotilla of motorboats. Wild animals will just get on with the job, in a frenzied manner.

Insects, too, can be utilised for dismantling purposes. Ants and beetles and other tiny scurrying things can overrun the largest gas rig in a matter of minutes, and can destroy it with surprising speed.

Monkey demolition was pioneered by Chitty And Fagg. When one of their charabancs or pantechnicons was ready for the scrap heap, they would drive it out to the seaside and park it by the shore, then go and collect some monkeys. They had one or two menagerists in their pockets. Left to their own devices, the monkeys made short work of the clapped-out coaches. A few elderly people in those parts can remember being taken down to the beach to watch monkeys dismantling charabancs, and will tell you all about it over a cup of cocoa, but their “carers” always think they are raving and delirious. Some of us know better.

The beach-based dismantlings were Chitty’s idea. Fagg, the visionary, wanted to have their redundant vehicles towed out to sea, and deposited on a specially-built platform, out of sight of land. Once in place, it was his intention to test out various beasts and birds and insects to see which would do the most efficient job. He had a curious mania about leafcutter ants, for example, and also otters. Chitty, who held the purse strings, vetoed the idea, on grounds both of expense and sheer common sense. Fagg went ahead and had the platform built anyway, using money provided by one of his uncles, a rascally blackguard with a suspicious moustache and a gap in his teeth, the spit and image of Terry-Thomas. But the menagerists who provided the animals were loyal to Chitty, who knew how to wrap them round his fingers with promises of Chitty And Fagg shares, debentures, and other financial inducements. The coach company founders fell out. Chitty had his monkeys and his beach dismantlements; Fagg had a useless platform rusting away in the sea, and no animals to tow out to it even if he had a means to get one of the old charabancs to it, which he did not, for his uncle had fled to Bolivia with the police in pursuit. I would like to say “hot pursuit”, but quite frankly Fagg’s uncle was small fry as far as the coppers were concerned, and they sent only one detective to Bolivia to run him to ground, a semi-retired and muddle-headed fellow called Simpkins.

Intriguingly, Simpkins came from a family of monkey trainers on one side and infrastructure disassembling experts on the other. I have not been able to find out which side was which, whether it was his father’s lot who trained monkeys and his mother’s kin who demolished large constructions, or whether it was the other way round. Nor do the extant records tell us why Simpkins himself followed neither trade, and became a copper instead. He did write his Memoirs, but they are so unutterably tedious that nobody has ever managed to get past page ten, by which point the future detective has not yet been born.

In spite of their differences, Chitty and Fagg kept the coach company going. Monkeys continued to ravage their unwanted vehicles, to the delight of parties of children taken to the beach to watch. As for Fagg’s sea platform, some say it is still there, a rusted hulk serving as a rest stop for auks and guillemots and skuas and terns and gulls and other seabirds. But no one is quite sure where exactly it is. What we do know is that, according to Fagg’s notes, it is as enormous as the most enormous of gas rigs, as yet undismantled by monkeys, out in the sea.

Above is a photograph of the pier at Deal, on the coast of Kent. It is the last pier built in England, opened in 1954, replacing a derelict nineteenth-century predecessor. At its far end, it terminates in a large platform, lower than the main pier, and from this platform, on either side, a set of metal steps lead down into the sea. I think I am right in saying this is an unusual construction for a pier. It is a feature that sparked an idea in the brain of the writer Rayner Heppenstall (1911-1981), who spent the last few years of his life as a resident of Deal.

Early one morning in the late nineteen-seventies, Heppenstall disembarked from a boat and clambered up the steps at the end of the pier. He had come from France, brought across the channel by a somewhat rascally French sailor, who would collect him from the same spot on the evening of the same day. Heppenstall walked along the pier to shore, and through Deal’s dawn deserted streets to his house. He was careful to ensure he was not seen. As far as friends and neighbours were concerned, he was on holiday in France. He spent the day, very quietly, at home, reading over his diaries of the last few years. Heppenstall was a diligent diarist all his life, and often used them as raw material for his fiction, after which he would destroy the originals. He had brought a packed lunch with him, so he would not need to prepare anything and thus create cooking smells. Similarly, when he smoked during the day he dispersed the fumes and removed the evidence from his ashtray. When the cleaner came, in the next few days, she would find no sign that Heppenstall had been there.

When evening came, and his neighbours had all returned home, Heppenstall took a loaded revolver, fitted with a silencer, and went next door, where he slaughtered the entire family. He then made his way back to the pier, where he was picked up from the steps at the end, and taken back to France.

Or rather, that is what he wished he had done. Many of the entries in his diaries of the time consisted of accounts of his neighbours’ behaviour. They were noisy. They were rambunctious. They were foul-mouthed. They were working class, or “common”. Beneath the cold forensic prose lies Heppenstall’s exasperation, his seething rage, his murderousness. These are the diary entries he transformed into his last, posthumously-published, novel, The Pier (1986). I suppose it is unlikely that the noisy rambunctious working class family in Deal ever read the book.

When The Pier appeared, it was taken as further evidence that Heppenstall had “gone mad”. Certainly what we read is the lethal fantasy of a man driven crackers by little more than whistling, games of kickabout football, loud conversation, and noisy bouts of DIY. One of the reasons he and his wife – who becomes his sister in the novel – moved to Deal was that their last home in London was a flat above a launderette, the din of which he found unbearable. Yet I suspect the real reason he was considered to have gone bonkers was the turn his politics took.

Originally from Yorkshire, Heppenstall had always been a tribal Labour voter, a “progressive”. Since the end of the Second World War, he had worked as a talks producer for BBC Radio. He lived in a literary intellectual milieu. In the nineteen-thirties he shared a flat with George Orwell. He was a regular drinking companion of Dylan Thomas’. He made the first translation into English of Raymond Roussel (with his daughter, Lindy Foord). He published several experimental novels and, in the nineteen-sixties was considered a sort of godfather by younger writers such as Ann Quin and B S Johnson. Both Quin and Johnson, incidentally, committed suicide in 1973. Heppenstall didn’t, but considered doing so. For more than three decades he kept concealed behind his bookshelves a phial of crushed pink pills diluted in water, which he regularly refreshed to maintain its potency. It was his guarantee that death was always in his reach. In the end, he never took it. He died of a stroke.

It was around the time of his retirement from the BBC, in 1973, and his move to Deal the following year, that Heppenstall began to describe himself as a “freelance reactionary”. Come 1979, he even considered voting Conservative, though he very probably did not vote at all. But the break from the world and the mindset he had inhabited is all too clear in some of his diary entries. It is unlikely his colleagues in the BBC canteen or the London drinking clubs would have taken kindly to his analysis of the Middle East, that “the Jews are a civilised race, whereas the Arabs are basically savages”. He came increasingly to loathe the modern world.

Was this madness? The reactionary views, the suicide phial, the murderous fantasy? Perhaps it was something in the air in Deal, home to other London exiles such as the alcoholic Charles Hawtrey (thrown out of every pub in town at one time or another) and Simon Raven. Hawtrey’s house bears a blue plaque, but there is no commemoration of Rayner Heppenstall. His neighbours, the annoying children now adults, may still be living in the same house, all unaware that the elderly, withdrawn, ill-tempered writer who once lived next door plotted to kill them all.

I walked along the pier at Deal yesterday, to the steps where ghost-Heppenstall came and went on his fantasy killing spree. I passed some loud, foul-mouthed, working class people, and also a few well-dressed elderly gents taking an afternoon stroll. I wondered if I might see a small French motorboat tied up at the end of the pier. But the steps were empty, descending into the sloshing sea.

Those of us old enough to recall the days when the Osmonds were titans of pop have probably blocked from our memories most of the mawkish drivel with which they assaulted the charts. One song, however, remains indelibly lodged in our brains. I speak of course of “Crazy Horses”, an unhinged classic unlike anything else they ever recorded. The circumstances of its composition make for an intriguing story, the details of which I have been able to exhume through a process which I am afraid I really should not tell you about.

It is New Year’s Day 1972. In the White House, President Nixon is having breakfast with the First Lady, the saintly Pat. In New York, the ex-Nazi officer Kurt Waldheim is preparing to take the reins of the United Nations, succeeding U Thant as the new Secretary General. Also in New York, a gang of half a dozen ne’er-do-wells is making final preparations for the Pierre Hotel Heist, which will net them approximately four million dollars from the hotel’s safety deposit boxes. Across the Atlantic Ocean, in Paris, the capital city of France, the entertainer Maurice Chevalier is facing his last hours. He will not see the morrow.

Meanwhile, at the Osmond family homestead, the Osmond family is gathered around in a conclave. Pa and Ma Osmond are sitting at either end of the table. On one side sit Alan, 22, Wayne, 20, and Merrill, 18. Facing them on the other side are Jay, 16, Donny, 14, and Marie, 12. The runt of the litter, Little Jimmy, 8, is squashed in at a corner between Marie and Ma Osmond. All the males are wearing their Mormon underpants, as you would expect. Pa Osmond has just finished reciting aloud a sensible and inspiring passage from The Book Of Mormon. The mood around the table is equally sensible and inspiring, yet also solemn.

“Well titans of pop,” says Pa Osmond, “What are your plans for today?”

Alan pipes up.

“Well sir, I was thinking it would be fun if I took Wayne and Merrill and Jay and Donny and Marie and Little Jimmy over to the paddock.”

“What is this paddock of which you speak, son?” asks Pa.

“Well sir, I have heard tell that over beyond the salt flats past the temple there is a paddock. It might be fun for us to go and investigate, to see what the paddockist keeps in his paddock.”

Pa Osmond rubs his chin thoughtfully.

“This paddockist, who is he?”

“That I don’t rightly know, sir,” says Alan, blushing slightly, “But perhaps while Wayne and Merrill and Jay and I look into the paddock, Donny and Marie and Little Jimmy can question the paddockist as to his bona fides.”

At this, Ma Osmond interjects.

“I would have thought it more appropriate that you older boys interrogate the paddockist and let the younger ones frolic in the paddock.”

“If you say so, Ma,” says Alan.

Pa Osmond thumps his fist on the table.

“No,” he says, like the forceful patriarch he is, “You should all interrogate the paddockist together, each firing at him one judicious question chosen to winkle out of him his bona fides. Then you can all go to the paddock together, to see what is in there.”

“Yes sir!” says Alan.

But Ma Osmond throws a spanner in the works.

“I like the plan as far as it goes,” she says, “But what if, upon their arrival, Alan and Wayne and Merrill and Jay and Donny and Marie and Little Jimmy find that the paddockist is already in the paddock? Then they will not be able to separate out the questioning from the seeing. And I would aver that he is very likely to be in the paddock. If I had a paddock out beyond the salt flats past the temple, that’s where I would be, and no mistake.”

“Good point, Ma,” says Pa Osmond, “This is something of a pickle.”

“I have an idea,” says Alan, his brow furrowing as he thinks, “What if… what if we lured the paddockist out of the paddock? Then we could fire our questions at him, establish his bona fides, and, having done so, we could enter the paddock to see what he keeps in it.”

Ma and Pa Osmond look at each other from either end of the table. Long years of Mormon marriage mean they are able to communicate without speaking. Gazing into each other’s eyes, they agree that Alan’s suggestion is flawless.

“Off you go then,” says Pa, “And we shall gather in conclave around this table upon your return, so you can tell Ma and I who the paddockist is and what is in his paddock.”

Later that evening, the Osmonds regather just as Pa decreed. This time Little Jimmy sits scrunched in a corner between Pa and Jay. All the males are still wearing their Mormon underpants, as you would expect.

“Tell me first of the paddockist’s bona fides,” says Pa.

“Well sir,” says Alan, “On our way to the paddock out beyond the salt flats past the temple we devised the questions we would ask the paddockist. Shall we run through them, each asking his, or in Marie’s case, her, question?”

“I think that would be a fine idea,” says Pa. Ma nods her assent too.

“OK, me first then,” says Alan, “Hello there, paddockist, what is your name?”

“Are you a Mormon?” says Wayne.

“Are you aware we are titans of pop?” says Merrill.

“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” says Jay.

“What brings you to these parts, stranger?” says Donny.

“Are you mad and bad and dangerous to know?” says Marie.

“What is that unholy and terrifying whinnying and snorting we can hear from within the paddock?” says Little Jimmy.

“A well-chosen set of questions designed to elicit replies sure to establish his bona fides,” says Pa Osmond, “What were those replies?”

“We could not hear them sir,” says Alan, “For he was a soft-spoken paddockist and was drowned out by the unholy and terrifying whinnying and snorting we could hear from within the paddock.”

“And did you enter the paddock to find out what it was that was making such a deafening din” asks Ma Osmond.

“No, Ma,” says Alan, “We ran away as fast as our feet could carry us.”

“All well and good,” says Pa, “Well, that’s New Year’s Day over and done with. It is bedtime. Don’t forget to include President Nixon and the saintly Pat in your prayers.”

And the Osmonds troop upstairs one by one to bed. And in the night, while Ma and Pa sleep soundly, Alan and Wayne and Merrill and Jay and Donny and Marie and Little Jimmy toss and turn in the grip of terrible dreams, dreams that will surely do cataclysmic and irreparable damage to their fragile young psyches . . . unless, when they wake the next morning, they can parlay those terrors into a pop song.

Last week I had reason to mention the German secret agent Weems. Since then, further information has come to light, which I shall share with you in the interests of robust transparency and transparent robustness. The first tranche of information concerns his mop and his patter and his flip-top lids and his submarine and his fixation and his ink and his piccolo and his other mop and his secrets.

His mop. Weems had a blond mop, sometimes tousled, sometimes flattened and primped and slathered in hair oil. Which “look” he chose depended on the mission he was undertaking. Where a mission called for a tousled mop, he tousled his mop. If it was thought prudent to have his mop flattened and primped and slathered in hair oil, he flattened and primped it and slathered it in hair oil. There were occasions where no clear guidance was available, with regard to his mop. Weems would agonise, up to the very last minute before embarking on the mission. Then he would either tousle or flatten and primp and slather in hair oil according to what he described as his “gut feelings”. These feelings were not truly in his gut, but in his head, directly below his mop. They were cogitations of the brain rather than feelings.

His patter. Weems was a polyglot, and could deliver his patter in the tongues of many lands. The patter was designed to disguise his true identity as a German secret agent. If he unleashed his patter on you, you would think he was a chocolate swiss roll sales rep, or a trainer of budgerigars, or a snippy man, depending on which patter he deployed. Those three were by no means his only patters, there were others, but they are given as a sample.

His flip-top lids. For ease of access and retrieval of the things he kept in containers, Weems insisted on those containers having flip-top lids. He argued that the time it would take him to unscrew a screw-top lid could prove critical, and he would be better occupied doing something germane to his mission rather than unscrewing a screw-top lid. Several containers had to be modified by lid boffins in the secret agency atelier. Weems liked to personally test the modified lids when possible, but if he was engaged on a secret mission and thus unable to visit the atelier he delegated the lid testing to a trusted minion.

His submarine. Weems travelled from place to place in a submarine. It was his HQ, his centre of operations, and he was the captain. Weems knew every inch of its piping and every individual valve. He could move about the submarine blindfold, and sometimes did, just to show off. He had a hand-picked crew who idolised him. He also kept a budgerigar in a cage hanging from one of the overhead pipes. The budgerigar’s name was Simon. Weems once blindfolded Simon, as a prank, but the bird panicked and suffered heart palpitations and the prank was never repeated.

His fixation. Dangerously for a secret agent, Weems had a Gwyneth Paltrow fixation. He did not go so far as to stalk the actress, but he had a compulsion to hack into her website, Goop, from the on-board computer on the submarine. For a long time he managed to keep his fixation and his hacking hidden from his handlers, until one day a keystroke mishap betrayed him. Hauled before a hastily empanelled panel, Weems tried patter. It worked, and he pulled wool over the eyes of the panel, ten eyes in all, one of glass. La Paltrow then subjected the on-board submarine computer to a viral attack, which seems to have sobered Weems up.

His ink. As a secret agent, Weems wrote all his communiqués in invisible ink. He kept the ink in small storage jars with flip-top lids (see above). The ink being invisible, it was impossible to tell which jars contained ink and which were empty. Weems could have solved this problem by feeling the heft of each jar in his hand, but the ink was weightless as well as invisible. He devised a method of injecting the ink with dye, made from crushed raspberries. This caused the ink to turn raspberry-coloured, and thus visible, so before writing a communiqué Weems poured the ink from its small storage jar into a bigger storage jar, also with a flip-top lid, and diluted it with sufficient water to render the raspberry dye so pale that to the unaided eye it was as good as invisible. The water he obtained by surfacing in the submarine, clambering out on deck, and scooping up seawater with a ladle.

His piccolo. Weems was an accomplished piccolo player, but had a limited repertoire. His playing becalmed Simon the budgerigar (see above), who seemed to enter a trance-like state when listening. Note, “trance-like”, so not quite a full trance.

His other mop. In addition to the mop of blond hair on his head, Weems kept in reserve another mop, one affixed to the end of a wooden pole such as might be used by a janitor. Curiously, a janitor was not one of the disguised identities he assumed, backed up by patter (see above). Weems had tried and failed and tried again and failed again to master the art of janitorial patter. Eventually he had given up the ghost. An unconvincing janitor was too risky a role, and if unmasked Weems’ usefulness to his handlers would be at an end. He would be put out to pasture, or executed. He kept the mop, however, in a cubby on the submarine, and sometimes mopped the decks with it, while blindfolded (see above). There were lowly submariners among the crew whose duties included mopping, but Weems was willing to muck in with menial tasks. This willingness was born of his sheer love of the submarine, a love that was boundless. It was sometimes said of Weems that a team of psychiatrists could have a field day with him, but he was too canny an operator ever to allow even a single psychiatrist anywhere near him.

His secrets. Never divulged. His Memoirs reveal nothing.