As he sipped his glass of Madeira, the professor entertained us with the tale of his attempt some years ago to break the world record for staring at chickens.
ChopChop has an intensely irritating propensity for somewhat cryptic practical jokes and, as his sojourn in this version of reality dragged on, he began to indulge in this pastime. The first report I received was from The Ashby Puerorum Ghost Museum, where an unaccredited, seagull guide had been causing considerable disquiet and turmoil among the visitors and exhibits with his specious attempts to explain quantum theory and his unauthorised cocktail mixology. (Incidentally, I've always been a little disappointed by the gift shop here and can only award it 2 out of 5 stars). By the time I arrived at the museum, ChopChop had disappeared, of course. Shortly thereafter I received a call from Lord Acnestis, owner of the Victorian country house Lickpenny Hall. It seems that, after summoning a number of guests in mysterious circumstances, ChopChop had arrived during dinner in the guise of Inspector Toucan and solemnly declared that there had been no murder or crime of any kind, that the ...
The Professor was in a pensive but loquacious frame of mind recently following a particularly agreeable game of pitch penny in Wickham Skeith. There wasn't a dry eye in the house when, once again, Arthur 'Toad-in-the-Hole' Shellbottom was declared Champion Pitcher and Foremost Penny Ruminator. Taking a long draught from his pint of Dringey Forplaint Special Ale, the Professor began his solemn tale: “Shellbottom's great-grandfather was the principal reason that my own ancestor became an academic and funambulist. The two men were great rivals in the hatting business, vying for the role of principal supplier of doubtful hats to the Federation of Minor Cricket Umpires and Croquet Mallet Makers. My great-grandfather thought he had the edge on his opponent with his use of the finest gutta-percha in his much-admired, multicoloured trilbies. But there was no way he could compete with Shellbottom's development of a range of ventilated hats named after British politicians of...
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...
Comments
Post a Comment