Gone to lunch in East Lothian. Back next year. Happy New One.

signs of misfortunes to come

"I can’t find it Sir," said Crabtree.

"Find what?" asked Sir Reginald, interrupted from his musings.

"The pen sir."

"What do you mean you can’t find it?" snapped Sleeping. However, remembering his haste he went on "Well it doesn’t matter. Go and ask Captain Fitzgerald for a quill. And be sharp will you!"

Such impatience was most unlike Sir Reginald and could only mean that something very important was on his mind. He paced up and down for several minutes, the squeaking of his leather-soled shoes accompanying the creaking of the ship as it rode the swell.

"What the devil has happened to that boy?" complained Sleeping as Crabtree failed to return immediately.

At last, Crabtree reappeared, carrying an extremely large feather.

"What on earth is that Crabtree?" asked Sir Reginald in astonishment.

"The Captain didn’t have a quill Sir so I had to shoot a long-winged, stout-bodied, petrel-like bird of the family Diomedeidae," explained Crabtree.

"Oh my God Crabtree!" exclaimed Sleeping aghast, raising his hands to his head, "you don’t mean to say ...!" he whined hysterically but quickly changed his tone of voice for one of apparent serenity.

"Well, we are men of science after all, and what’s done is done."

"No one saw you, did they?" he asked as an afterthought.

"No sir," replied Crabtree.

"Good. Quick give me my quill knife"

Sleeping sharpened the end that had once been attached to the bird's body, dipped it in the inkwell and, forgetting that the ship was not to land for a couple weeks, began to write hastily.

"My Dearest Celia..."

It took three paragraphs of excuses for his wanting embroidery skills and justification of the use of non-woven communication media for Sleeping to get down to the nitty-gritty of his message .....

a scientist deals with desamour

"Quick Crabtree, there’s not a moment to lose!" urged Sir Reginald.

"Bring me my iridium-tipped, gold-nibbed, hard rubber, reservoir-chamber free-flowing writing device!" he ordered, in reference to a "fountain pen" he had recently been awarded by the RGS for his ground-breaking work on the Egyptian Banded Solifugid (Galeodes granti).

The reading of Celia’s net had caused Sir Reginald to spend seven weeks in an uncharacteristic state of lugubriousness, out of which he had eventually snapped when the Basset finally crossed the invisible Tropic of Capricorn on its southward journey around the Cape. Upon fresh examination of the embroidered muslin, Sleeping’s moroseness gave way to perplexity.

Although his wife’s yearning for company was certainly quite a natural response to her long periods of solitude, it had seemed strange to Sir Reginald that she had not used one of his own mosquito nets for stationery purposes. Celia was quite aware they were kept in the expedition sundries room to which she could easily have gained access by asking Jenkins the butler for the key.

Upon careful inspection Sleeping observed that in one corner the initials P.S. had been somewhat slapdashly embroidered in navy blue. This he had not noticed when he had read the net the first time, probably because of the unfamiliar emotional territory that Celia’s message had led him to explore.

"P.S.?….,"P.S, … I wonder", murmured Sleeping.

He initially assumed that PS stood the word postscript and that Celia had forgotten to embroider one. Yet why would she have sewn the initials in the corner of the net and not under the main body of the stitching?

"You know Crabtree" Sleeping asserted Sherlock Holmesèdly, "I have a suspicion the letters P.S. must be the initials of the person to whom the net belongs..."

They could have been Sir Reginald Sleeping’s own badly-embroidered initials from which the oblique bottom right stroke of the "R" had been omitted. However, this was very unlikely. For centuries, the Sleepings had employed only quality embroiderers and anyway, his own nets were worked in the red and gold of the family heraldry.

"...and that can mean only one thing," continued Sir Reginald enigmatically.

Crabtree meanwhile rummaged to no avail in the top drawer of the cabin’s writing cabinet.

Hell. Circle 8, ditch 1.

In Fra Angelico’s "Christmas Lunch with the Family" (1432-35) elephant-skinned elderly relatives, impervious to the unbearable tedium to which they are subjecting captive younger family members, assert their prerogative to recount, ad infinitum, tales of visits of whole communities to the chiropodist and other such stories.

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Outdoor wear from the Rangifer tarandus collection for Inuit trainspotters.

Celia's letter

"Do you believe in love Crabtree?" asked Sir Reginald, emerging from his reverie and glancing at his cabin boy. Crabtree looked at Sleeping quizzically but remained silent.

Shortly before the departure of HMS Basset from Portsmouth, Sleeping had received a package from his wife, Celia, that contained a mosquito net upon which she had embroidered a long message. It read:


My Dearest Reginald,

I embroider this net because the study notepaper has been used in its entirety for the purposes of your scientific work. I hope the bulky nature of this missive causes you no inconvenience and that you may be able to put it to good use upon your arrival.

Reginald, I feel that the time has come to bid you farewell; this time, however, not the ephemeral farewell of a spouse with only needlework to distract her while her errant husband is away, but rather a separation never again to be interrupted by renewed acquaintance.

A long time has passed since Capparis sandwichiana inflamed our passion and united us in mutual lust in the west wing conservatory. However, your persistent absence has left that passion unkindled and extinguished our love. It seems that you, Reginald, when faced with a choice between your devoted wife and an unquenchable thirst for scientific endeavour, opted for the latter.

Initially, when you travelled the earth in search of truth I patiently bided my time and longingly awaited your reappearance, in the hope that we should reencounter the feelings that had accompanied our early farewells. Yet time and distance have taken their toll.

Such is the loneliness I have felt in my husband’s absence that not even the children’s presence in the holidays and Nanny’s constant companionship have filled the aching void left by my loneliness, a solitude so intense that I have found it impossible to ignore the growing attention of a number of single gentlemen, among whom the charms and handsome features of a certain Sir Godfrey Newhouse are particularly noteworthy.

Sir Godfrey has made little secret of his wish, which I have welcomed, to seek my favour. I have encountered the solace for which I have yearned for so long in his affection for and kindness to the children and Nanny, and in his enormous (Sir Reginald smoothed out the fold in the netting to enable him to read the embroidered letters more clearly) capacity to comprehend the melancholy of a lady whose distant husband’s heart lies with another.

Therefore, my dearest Reginald, it is with great sadness that I hereby take my final leave.

Fondly yours,

Celia.

Sleeping rested the net on his knee. He looked at young Crabtree, shook his head and uttered "But I don’t suppose you would understand."

Salesnun of the month Sister Dot (bottom right) gives a trotters-on demo of how to close a sale properly, vindicates 100% commission-based salary policies and signs up naked new Broadband subscribers by the dozen. 

Crabtree's tale: early life and background

Little was known of Crabtree’s origins other than rumours that he and a twin sister had been born in secret in a north London asylum, to which a wicked Lord Percival had committed Crabtree's mother, who died in labour.

Some years later young Samuel's father, a drunken tanner from Nottingham, looked on in inebriated indifference as Sir Reginald Sleeping, having casually encountered Crabtree at the city's goose fair and thoroughly impressed by the boy’s natural wit and intelligence, took the lad into his service as cabin boy aboard HMS Basset, which was shortly to set sail for India on her maiden voyage.

Upon arrival in the subcontinent Sir Reginald requested that Crabtree should become his personal dogsbody on a scientific expedition to the Thar desert in Rajasthan. There, Sleeping was to study the khejri (Prosopis cineraria) tree, a bountiful drought-resistant legume that was known to enhance soil fertility and reverse the onset of the desert in extremely dry regions.

Sleeping had been commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society to lead a team of non-naturist scientists from all disciplines to investigate the possible transfer of khejri trees from India to the Libyan desert in Sudan, where William Gladstone’s government was planning to establish plantations of cabbages, cauliflowers and Brussels sprouts. The implications of transplanting the khejri were resounding. Should the cultivation of Brassicaceae be possible, the British government would thus be able to deliver a severe blow to French designs to become the first world power to provide their troops with daily greens, a victory that would prove a morale-boosting milestone in England’s mission to dominate Africa.

The Empire builders were of course aware that the water requirements of such veg were unlikely to be fulfilled in the arid conditions of northern Sudan. They therefore contracted the services of Pieter Martens, a civil engineer from Ghent, who at the time was working on the construction of the Suez Canal under Ferdinand de Lesseps, the famous Belgian engineer whose public prominence and salary Martens greatly envied. The British government planned to build a series irrigation canals from Dongola on the river Nile to Akashah, the site chosen for thwarting French colonial ambitions in Africa.

But enough of ag(g)ro-political history and back to Crabtree

Crabtree's tale: Lorna's dissatisfaction

"I demand to see the manager!" Lorna Partridge insisted for the third time.

After several minutes and various telephone conversations between Sharon, the Pricefighter check-out operator, and a mysterious third party on the other end of the line, during which a broad range of repressed "haven’t got all day"-type expressions and looks were issued by other shoppers, Lorna was eventually told what she wished to hear.

"Mr Hardacre is extremely busy at the moment but he’ll be out to attend to you as soon as he can." Lorna’s recent purchase and study of a snappily-entitled "Be yourself, feel yourself" teach-yourself assertiveness course, was obviously paying off.

She was ushered through some double doors into a gloomy no person’s land that appeared to serve as an interface between the brightly-lit safety of the shoppers’ area and the nitty-gritty reality of the behind-the-scenes world of Pricefighter’s.

As soon as he can proved to be a long time. Lorna was fuming. She had recently paid a considerable amount of money for a Gulabgarnath-brand snake charmer’s kit, the punji (or flute-like gourd instrument) of which had proved of quite unsatisfactory quality.

Although the kit had been on special offer and was neither a latest nor top-of-range model, according to the instruction manual, when played by an expert the punji would undoubtedly produce dulcet enough vibrations to tempt even the shyest Russell’s Viper (Vipera russelli) or Indian cobra (Naja naja) out of its basket.

Lorna had been drawn to charming after she had come across one of Sir Reginald’s old notebooks in the garden shed, a structure known by neighbours as Hurricane Hattie. One entry in her grandfather’s notes gave a detailed description of how his man Crabtree had attained expert charming skills when he had accompanied Sleeping on the naturalist’s mid-nineteenth century expedition to the deserts of Rajasthan, India.

infant in swaddling blister pack

In "Nativity Night" or "Christmas just ain’t what it used to be" (1484-90) Geertgen Tot Sint Jans foresaw the disappearance of spiritual values, the resulting attempt to celebrate matter and the inevitable despair ensuing from the decadent futility of upholding tradition for reasons long forgotten.

nativity, lactation, three wise men and sister dot

Virgin and Child portrayals from different periods in history (see figure 1) give a clear idea of developments in lactation techniques over the ages. The same traditional methods were used for many centuries yet it was not until the second half of the twentieth century, when social developments and changes in gender roles led to the introduction of timesaving devices to enable modern women to lactate while performing dozens of other actions at the same time, that breastfeeding facilitating technology appeared.

Ever growing innovation in this field has prompted experts to predict that the twenty-first century will see the disappearance of time-wasting babies and that humankind will witness their replacement with manual and automatic breast suction devices (fig. 1, far right) to meet the strict demands of modern mothers for efficiency and speed.

Figure 1 (far right) shows a portrayal of Virgin and Children taken from the fifth, hitherto unknown, Gospel according to Saint Dorothy. Unlike its four predecessors, Dorothy’s version of the life of the Messiah (thought to have been written nearly two thousand years later) tells how the infant Jesus was the dominant child of a set of non-trichorionic triplets.

Although Saint Dot states that the baby Jesus’ slightly younger siblings were female and thus posed no serious threat to Roman client-king Herod the Great* (c.74 BC – March 4 BC**) after the monarch had been bamboozled by the three oriental sleight of hand tricksters, some versions of the Bible (e.g. King James) suggest that Herod’s infant slaying policy was based on a no-nonsense disregard of child sex (in other words a willy-nilly approach)***. This may mean that the Messiah was indeed a woman.

* "When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under." Matthew 2: 16 New International Version

** give or take a few years

*** Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under ...Matthew 2: 16 King James Version

Roobin's (1639) all-girl hip hop trio (WG, Princess and Maisy), winners of Batley Towns Women's Guild prestigious Most Improved Breakfast Marmalade Award, celebrate their victory with a naked romp and mutual cellulite approval while three distant ghost ruminants feign disinterest by nonchalantly and uninterruptedly munching Gramineae.
 

virtual history: from CEO to emperor

Part II

And so it was that on 23 August 2005, Dearing, aided by his right-hand nun, Sister Dot, and a battalion of crack Proboscis Monkeys, seized control.

Despite initial opposition from belligerent elements such as Willy the Muc, who was subsequently banished to Dearing, Kansas (population 415, in 2000), Premier Consul Dennis Dearing was soon able to consolidate power and eventually routed hardliners by the coffee machine. He thereupon deemed it the right moment to appoint himself blog Lord Protector, a title which shortly afterwards he upgraded to His Imperial Specialness, Emperor of bob’sbarnablog.

The coronation took place by what had now become the symbolic centre of the new empire; the hot drink vending unit. Sleeping, the blog’s new Grand Vizier (and not the reputedly Grigori Rasputin-like Sister Dot who, Dearing knew, was very much mistrusted by subjects), carried the crown with pomp (some might say pompously) towards the shiniest, swiveliest executive throne on the premises while Dearing glared menacingly at former (albeit now amnestied) opponents during the rendition, on recently purchased kazoos and combs/tissues by the blog's Philharmonic orchestra and Choir, of a Champions League-like version of Zadok the Priest.

Slowly, in an effort to look imperial, Dearing took his seat on the throne whereupon Grand Vizier Sleeping solemnly placed the crown on the new emperor’s head. The crowd held its breath.

The music stopped. Silence reigned. Had a small thin pointed piece of esp. steel wire with a round or flattened head used (esp. in sewing) for holding things in place, and attaching one thing to another, etc. fallen to the floor, one would have heard it. The Emperor raised his white-gloved left hand as if to hush the multitude into squeezing ever greater quietness from the already silence-impregnated absence of sound. He carefully arranged the epaulettes on his Emperor’s new uniform, cleared his throat and addressed his new subjects.

virtual history: from CEO to .....

Part I

Dearing carefully arranged the epaulettes on his Emperor’s new uniform for the fifth time and cleared his throat prior to delivering his enthronement speech.

Perhaps the revolution had failed because of the rebels inability to devise a tenable compromise between the romantic ideals of the Crazy Horstist apologists (whose attempts to make Scottish Gaelic the blog’s official language met with the derision of the Ayatollah Khomeini look-alikeists, who preferred Allah’s own lingo, Arabic - with Farsi as second choice) and the no-nonsense approach to revolutionary moneymaking of the Pricefighterists. Or perhaps the mysterious disappearance of erithacus, the reasons for which are unknown to this day, so undermined the revolutionaries’ morale that the insurgency was doomed from the outset. We shall never know.

It is nevertheless clear that the chief beneficiary of the infighting was bob’sbarnablog CEO Dennis Dearing, whose innumerable hours thumbing Rod D. Steinberger’s best-selling classic "From Two-bit Company Manager to Imperial Swaggerer: How to Drive Wedges between Your People and Establish Total Control" stood him in good stead for this moment to which he had so looked forward.

Dearing had taken full advantage of the now famous counterrevolutionary stand next to the photocopier (1 and 2 August 2005) by "turncoat" Sir Reginald Sleeping and ghost of his man Crabtree. He had ruthlessly exploited the equally renowned and bitterly divisive dispute between Pepa and Wayfarer’s Hotel bar manager, Mr Ian Wilmslow, regarding the true colour of liquid oxygen. Dearing, moreover, had shown precision Machiavellian anticipation of the eagerness of the sans couilles movement of Northern Renaissance painters not to get involved, and had meanwhile exploited lovers of things as they've always beens' (despite the oft faecal nature thereof) fears that changes produced by a revolutionary rabble would yield nothing but anarchy and hardship.

Something therefore had to be done by someone who represented both strength and fairness. Stability must be sought by a figure with integrity, up to whom bob’sbarnablog staff could look and seek assurance that the blog was not Canis lupus familiarisward-bound. Dearing, Dearing asserted, embodied that person.

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*Offer ends on 7 December 2005
 

In Orazio Gentileschi's "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" (1628), TSA (Temptation of Saint Anthony) Airways' overworked Captain Joe Carpenter leaves the plane on auto-pilot while he sleeps off that one for the flight path. A wimpleless hostess meanwhile indulges a pensioner-like Messiah's nipple-craving in a statutory yet brief moment of cabin crew repose, prior to the distribution of courtesy bacon sandwiches to pilgrims on their way back from the Haj.
 

bob'sbarnablog on-the-spot investigator Sister Dot hacks into protected CIA files to get to the bottom of the Mystery of the Missing Pricefighter Own-brand Hamster Bedding Pack Discount Vouchers.

 

I'm back