The Professor Peregrine Papers

This year I accompanied the Professor on his annual visit to Grammersow Hall, the crepuscular stately home in Moreton on Lugg. Following a bracing constitutional around the grounds, I came across the Professor deep in thought at the entrance to the Ice House. After some minutes had passed, he spoke:  "I come to this place on every Saint Jude The Uncertain day. It was here that I last set eyes upon my great friend Admiral Quilkin  * . He marched into the Ice House, giving me a cheery wave as he disappeared. But he did not return. Some say he's playing glockenspiel in a reggae band on the outskirts of Tromsø. But I recently received an anonymous letter claiming that he'd been spotted buying blotting paper and safety pins in a shop just outside Wrangle Lowgate. That does sound the more likely option." "But Professor," I felt compelled to ask. "If he failed to return, then could he still be in there somewhere?" The Professor's expression became ind...

The Professor and I were greatly honoured last year to make the acquaintance of Dr Twanketen Overmorrow, visiting Solivagant Scholar and noted exponent of the contrabass clarinet. Her discourse on the inference of quantum effects in the elegies of Sextus Propertius will never be forgotten in these hallowed halls and surrounding parishes. However, late one evening, following a notable dinner based upon a series of variations on Battenberg cake, she confided to us that she had been troubled and intrigued by dreams relating to the works of Guillaume Apollinaire. She described a recurring dream as “debout devant le zinc d'un bar crapuleux designed by James Ensor”.  The Professor recommended an increase in jasmine tea consumption and a reduction in the amount of liver sausage prior to retiring for the night. However, on subsequent evenings, we did hear plaintive notes of the contrabass clarinet drifting through the air in the early hours. Shortly afterwards, at the end of her sojourn, D...

Eventually, having allayed his initial and understandable doubts, we met with the Inspector Diddlecum in a small, private bar close to Elva Hill Stone Circle. At first, the conversation was faltering and the Inspector remained reticent, but once the Professor realised that they shared an interest not only in early Scandinavian mead halls but also in variants of the White Lady cocktail, we were able to begin a useful dialogue. It seems that, despite our best efforts, the jockey's adventurous spirit together with a troubling fascination for the works of Schopenhauer were still causing him to seek out the most complex locations and enigmas without a single thought for how to find his way back again. We left the bar with heavy hearts shortly after the Inspector began a karaoke version of Wittgenstein's Tractatus (abridged). In the taxi on the way back to the railway station, the Professor confided in me: “I've never trusted Schopenhauer. I believe that he kept poodles as pets a...

Early last Absolu, Daglet Scribacious was convinced that he had seen Dorothea Tanning on a passing train. To his considerable regret, he failed to attract her attention.   That night, he dreamed of dancing with Ann Radcliffe to the music of Mozart.  The next morning, the Professor and I insisted on buying him a double espresso or three at his favourite coffee shop. We conversed at length on the weather, our favourite umbrellas and the best way to cook toad in the hole.  It was so much safer that way.

Some years ago the Professor's work “Sylvan Ascendance” caused a considerable amount of perturbation almost amounting to a prototypical brouhaha. The question of how apparent levitation could be achieved was discussed at length by art critics, aeronautical engineers, savants and other rampallions.  In preparation for this work, the Professor was known to have instigated a process of non dualist meditation and trampolining but was also rumoured to have been seen installing a system of wires and hoists. He now refuses to discuss this brief period of his life in any way. Although one night shortly before the last winter solstice, following a tasting of aged Calvados, he did disclose to me in confidence that, “I'm damned if I could remember how to get the unfortunate participants down again.” Shortly after this mystifying spectacle, the Professor moved on to take up the post of Principal Curator of Unexplained Trinkets at the Pudleston Bauble Museum.

While, once again, trying to establish some degree of order in the Professor's papers, I came across a number of old postcards of Paris concealed beneath a biography of Evelyn Rockley Wilson.  The Professor leafed through the fading cards and, of course, began one his anecdotes:  “These cards remind me hardly at all of my meeting with Daniel Brereton in Paris one autumn evening. He'd just finished working his shift at ‘Le Maillot de Lumière’, the bar somewhere in Le Marais.” “He's no bartender,” I suggested. The Professor ignored my interruption and went on, “We strolled though a local park of fountains. As we walked on we became so deeply absorbed in a discussion concerning the diligence of lightning that we paid no attention to our surroundings. Eventually we looked around and were surprised to find ourselves facing a castle that had no meaning at all.” “He's no bartender,” I repeated.