GUEST POST! By the Legendary Frank Key, of Hooting Yard!

Today I have an astonishing treat for you! If you haven't read Frank Key before, you will want to after this! I've known him years and years, and he has only increased in wordy madness and hair fuffliness. He put this essay in excellence up on Monday at Hooting Yard, and look at my BlogList for a link to his whole site, where you will probably end up the rest of the day, reading, chortling, sniggering and generally Smiling in Joy. This sort of writing is the antidote to all that ails us. Enjoy!!!

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On The Wellspring Of Debauchery

Perhaps the most neglected work of the Renaissance scholar Gabbitas Hatpinne, the thousand-plus pages of Fons de luxuria (1549) have been newly translated as The Wellspring Of Debauchery. This is a significant academic achievement, and one which should rescue Hatpinne from the oblivion that beckoned. Few read him in his lifetime, and in the four hundred years since his death those few have dwindled still further. Indeed, his new translator, Desdemona Snodgrass, suggests she may be the only person alive to have read Fons de luxuria in its entirety, and even she admits there were several occasions when she nodded off and had to go on a brisk hiking expedition in order to wake herself up so she could continue with her important task.

The Wellspring Of Debauchery attempts, at great length, to answer the question “does salacious knavery, untrammelled sauciness, and inappropriate hobnobbing in sinks of vice lead, inescapably, to the excesses of high debauch?” I will not give away Hatpinne’s conclusion here, for fear you would use that as an excuse not to read the book yourself, and in the time thus saved, you may be tempted to acts of salacious knavery and untrammelled sauciness and inappropriate hobnobbing in sinks of vice. It is much better for your moral fibre, and indeed for the fate of your immortal soul, that you have your head stuck in a very fat book. It will keep you out of mischief.

But though I do not wish to divulge the contents of this lengthy and by no means untedious work, it is perhaps worth recalling the circumstances in which it came to be written. If we have but world enough and time, we may even look into the circumstances in which it came to be translated, here in the twenty-first century space age, but let us not jump too far ahead of ourselves. In any case, Desdemona Snodgrass may not want her motives to be inquired into too pointedly. She is a sensitive soul, with many a skeleton stacked up in her closet, or so I have been told by perfidious rumour-mongers and her rivals in the groves of academe. So even if we do have time, we are not going to be discussing that episode with the siphon and the pastry cases and the Chris De Burhg [sic] bootleg tape. I have taken legal advice and I shall not be swayed.

Unlike his translator, Gabbitas Hatpinne himself is safely dead, and can be impugned without fear of litigation. Shall I therefore impugn him? It would be easy enough to do, not because he lived a life of high debauch and naughtiness, but because the likelihood is that you know nothing about him. I could thus make up all sorts of stories about his salacious knavery and untrammelled sauciness and inappropriate hobnobbing in sinks of vice, and you would soak them all up, o! credulous reader. Tempting though it may be to wend my way down that particular path to perdition, lined as it is by lightning-blasted pine trees and shrivelled lupins and blighted potato patches, swept by fearsome gales and battered by hailstones, patrolled by ravening wolves and stampeding half-starved bison, it is a path I shall turn away from, in my prissy mincing morally upright manner, I shall turn my eyes instead upon the glorious light shining atop the mountain of saintliness and piety, and begin to clamber up towards the summit, there to grasp in my unworthy paws the halo of virtue.

You see how, even without reading The Wellspring Of Debauchery, I am become a model of sanctity? For it is indeed the case that I have not been able to concentrate my mind on this hefty doorstopper of a book, with its seemingly endless paragraphs of hectoring prose. I have better things to do with my time, and, no, they do not involve salacious knavery and untrammelled sauciness and inappropriate hobnobbing in sinks of vice. Would that they did! I have occasionally wondered if I might abandon myself to a life of high debauch. Though perhaps when I say “occasionally” I ought truthfully say “often”. Indeed, just before sitting down at my escritoire to pen these timeless words, I was weighing up in my overheated brain whether to contact Desdemona Snodgrass and, under the guise of academic rigour, to seek an assignation with her, in some leafy arbour, far from prying eyes, bent on sin. Fortunate indeed that I averted the besmirchment of my soul by leaping from my escritoire and plunging my head into a pail of icy water, and then embarking on a hike through the hills in wind and rain, until such time as I had cooled my phantasmal ardour, and was ready once more to sit, and to write, and to banish all thought of Desdemona Snodgrass from my brain.

Now, with regard to the circumstances in which The Wellspring Of Debauchery was written, as I seem to recall that is what I was intending to write about before I got carried away. We have only fragmentary details of the biography of Gabbitas Hatpinne. We know neither the year of his birth nor the year of his death. We do not know where he lived, nor what he lived on, and we know nothing of his forebears or any progeny he may or may not have had. The sole traces of him that survive are a few widely-dispersed and unreliable references in fusty musty damp and dog-eared unauthorised documents found wedged in the walls of crumbling parish churches. And such references as there are may well relate to several different Gabbitases, several different Hatpinnes, and have nothing whatsoever to do with our man.

It is all a great historical conundrum. The only way it might be solved is if someone were to devote themselves to the research required to write a proper biography. It is the sort of job ideally suited to, let us pluck a name at random, Desdemona Snodgrass.

I think I shall contact her to suggest this course of action. I will arrange for us to meet, in a leafy arbour, far from prying eyes, bent on scholarship,  bent on sin.

The Senses: I'll Show You Mine...

At the moment I am still enthralled, so I have no concentration.  But hush now, loyal (all 4 of you!) BlackberryJuniper Readers – I will be out of enthrallment material soon…and no money to get any more, so I shall be back. To bore you at a greater frequency than now.

In the meantime, I am filled with joy the last day or so, in a quiet way (no reason).  Which also doesn’t make for writing concentration.  Also, simply hardly any time.  A lot of family stuffs are occurring. 

So!  Since when I am full of joy I feel the need to pay particular and real attention to things, here, for your delectation, are 3 more writing exercises from the past, when I really did (sigh) have time to pay attention to things, and then also write about them. 

The world can be so VIVID.  So particular.  Have some senses!

Closed Eyes Glass – 2006

It’s cold to the touch.  I have to reach farther than I thought to get to it.  It’s a lot further along the table than it seemed before I closed my eyes.

It’s not as cold as I thought it would be, but I’m overwhelmed by its smoothness.  And then its bumpiness.

From the top rim – which is where I catch hold of it first – its got a nick in the top of it, where some glass must have chipped off, but I don’t remember ever seeing this or noticing it.  I am only feeling it now.  I run my finger round its edge, and it amazingly makes that sound you hear about: the slight singing, humming; the thing you see people do on TV.  I grasp it with both hands, having got a feel for its small dimensions, from touching its top.  It’s full of coke, so I know that’s why it feels so cold.  It’s dewy round the sides, about a third of the way from the top.  Then I hit the bumpiness.

Eyes closed, its impossible to tell what the pattern on the glass is.  I know what it is, as I’ve seen the glass before; but blind – it could be anything.  It feels like a flaw in the glasses making; a really interesting flaw.  I imagine the glass being blown, like you see on school trips, and that the bearded man who blew this glass (don’t ask me why he’s bearded in my imagination), paused to take a breath and then just blew the tiniest bit too hard, and this created the weird lumpiness under my fingers here on the glass.  It feels like one round raised bump, domelike; then smaller echoes in perfect harmony round its centre.  And a long thin wiggled line underneath, with one small less raised lump bumping out of the side.

I feel the wetness on my fingers, where the coldness of the coke, straight from the fridge, has made the glass show condensation (its all science, why the glass is wet on the outside) – but to me, all it is, is a delicious smooth sensation of cold, and a slight hint of whispery sound.  My hands hit the table, I have found the base of the glass.

I pick it up and raise it to my lips.  Maybe because I’ve been concentrating on it, it feels even colder on my lips; the coke tastes sweeter.  I open my eyes, and look at the glass.  It does have a large chip out of the rim – almost dangerous; I’m going to have to throw this one away.  Surprised I didn’t cut my finger on it as I explored its smooth sudden deviation from that perfect circular rim pattern.  I swallow, and only then realise how thirsty I made myself, exploring the glass.  I created an anticipation I never usually feel.

Outside, Closed eyes, vision the last sense to be portrayed – 2007

I step outside of my parents’ bungalow, and sit on the front step.  My son has helpfully blindfolded me with one of my mother’s chiffon scarves she wears to church.  It smells, very lightly, of her soap and deodorant – simple and plain.

The step is chill under my jeans; it’s early – maybe 6.30 a.m.  There is immediately a mass of sound around me, I’m shocked by it.

There’s an airshow next week, and planes are practising already.  I don’t know anything about planes; but the noise is loud, and they sound old.  They sound scary – without being able to see, all I can hear is what sounds like distressingly close swooping.  It sounds like the pilots are having fun.  I’m worried by it, distracted by it.

Then it fades, and I’m left with birdsong, from the row of trees off to the left.  I feel a sudden chill over my arms, and hear wind shushing through the trees.  They sound a lot leafier and thicker bodied than they look usually.  It’s an absorbing sound. 

I reach down to my right side and find the cigarette and light I placed there.  I feel carefully around the cigarette, make sure I’m putting the soft end in my mouth.  Eyes blind like this, I am a lot more conscious of the smell of the tobacco in the cigarette than I am usually.  The click of the lighter is hugely loud in the silence that has temporarily fallen.  I listen to myself breathe it in, feel surrounded by the smell of ashtray momentarily.  I remember why I want to give up (again), before the smoke hits me inside, and then I remember why I haven’t yet.

Simultaneously, what sounds unmistakeably like a milk van rounds the corner at the end of the drive, and I drop the lighter, which clatters down the steps with the noise of a small paperweight of heavy glass.  The sound is out of proportion to the size of the lighter. The milk van stops a few doors away and idles.  It sounds like a pretend van, a remote control van; just on a larger scale.  I’ve thought this ever since I can remember – same with ice cream vans.  It’s like they aren’t real vans at all.

Footsteps crunch across gravel and then shimmer over grass, with the clink of bottles, as I see in my minds eye the driver delivering the milk. He crunches back to the van, I can hear his jacket making that shushy sound artificial fibres make when they rub together.  It sounds like an old anorak, very old and well worn.

I’m conscious of the cold getting to me now, and I put out the cigarette on the stone of the drive floor, listen to my boot grind it dead.  Birds sing again, softly this time, different ones; a breeze lifts the edges of my hair. It feels very sensuous.

I take the blindfold off, more conscious of the acrid taste of old smoke in my mouth, and echoes of toothpaste mintyness quickly being smothered, than I am of anything I’m seeing.

Funnily enough, when I take the blindfold off, there’s no sign of the van – he must have been around the corner in the next drive, and it was just so still that I heard him really clearly.  It’s darker than I thought it would be, and seeing it look so dark, I’m aware of feeling even colder suddenly.  The trees look barer than they sounded.

Project 3: Eating and Cooking, waiting for Stanley to come home, 2008

I was smiling as I ground the pinenuts with my pestle and mortar.  They blended with the olive oil and basil already there, and sent up a fragrance so fresh and persistently real, it made me wonder why I would ever buy any bottled pesto – why did I not always make my own?

I licked my thumb, where a basil leaf had stuck to it, glued on with the pinenut and oil paste.  The radio was still giving me Vivaldi, one of the more joyful concertos, and I felt myself quicken in my movements, keeping to the tempo.  Beyond that I heard the heavy ticking of the clock, tickling at the edges of my senses and reminding me of my need to be ready before Stanley arrived.  It would not be good to be unready when he arrived; I was determined to make the evening perfect for him, he deserved it for being him this week.

Going over to the oven I opened it, light from the spot in the corner glinting across its none too clean surface, heat washing over me thickly, as I inhaled the strong scent of lemon and cinnamon.  The tart was nearly done.

The cheating part came next.  I moved to the fridge, nearly tripping over my long skirt, heavy and velvet, green and decadent.  More smiling: dressing up was almost as good as the cooking.  I lifted it, feeling the fabric bunch in my fingers: rich and tactile, warm and weighty. Deeply satisfied already, I lifted the freshly made pasta from the fridge, so much heavier than the dried kind, and tipped it whole into the bubbling saucepan, hobbed and ready.  Immediately, crackles and hisses rose up, and I stirred the whole thing with a large wooden spoon, gripping it carefully over the pull of the swirling water.  It lifted a sweat on my forehead, standing in the steam, and I went through to the bedroom to get a scrunchie to get my hair out of the way.  Quarter of an hour to go, and all was nearly ready.  Good, good, good.

The bread was already laid out, butter warming in the edges in its sparkly glass dish.  I couldn’t resist cutting myself a tiny slice, and hazelnut and rosemary reached my nose before it broke over my tongue.  I watched the flame licking the air in the centre of the table; the wax dripping in a quick spurt the way it did with non-beeswax candles, the shaft thickly and darkly forest green.  I steadied it in its silver holder, seeing it slightly at an angle.

The doorbell rang.  Perfect – he was home.  I pulled the scrunchie out of my hair, shook it about, picked stray hairs from the bodice of the dress, and went to the door.  As I opened it, I could see him already smiling at the smells, before he even admired the dress (or was it just my bust?!).  I grinned at him back, and we held it for a moment, before I went to his arms, and disappeared  into the hug, feeling the thick blackness of his overcoat, spotted with rain that cooled my kitchen hot cheeks.  He smelled of cold outside night.