Hello, and welcome to the seventh edition of The
Autolycan. They seem to be working
out at about one a month, which I hope is fine because much more than that and
I think I’d be going off with stress.
Which in a curious sort of way is really what this month’s edition is
about. You’ll see from the press
cutting that ‘researchers’ have discovered that people – well, OK, men – tend
to put jobs off if they’re – OK, we’re – not sure how to do them or just not
very enthusiastic about them. Sorry if
this comes as a shock, particularly to The Autolycan’s women
readers. It does raise some important
questions though, such as who are these researchers, how do they get contracts,
who pays them and – most importantly of all – how can Master Autolycus get his
fair share of money for what looks like extremely ancient rope? Suggestions will be welcome, although I
don’t suppose I’ll do anything about them for several months.
….AND 99% PERSPIRATION. IS THAT
ALL?
The typical man
takes six months to get round to all the little jobs in the house, new research
has revealed. A lack of time, knowledge
or enthusiasm is often the reason for the failure to carry out simple tasks.
Daily Telegraph
The Writer stared at the piece of paper on the desk in front
of him. The piece of paper stared
back. He had been ‘getting round to
writing an article for a blog’ for days now.
No, don’t kid yourself, he thought, not days, weeks, but have I got an
article? Have I ……
The piece of paper did not display the hoped-for sympathy. Still less did it offer any positive
suggestions. The idea that the blog wouldn’t
write itself flashed across the Writer’s mind, but even in his current anguish
he doubted that the piece of paper had initiated the thought.
The paper was not, however, blank. Far from it. In fact it
was only one of a number of pieces covered with doodles, pictures of smiley
faces, pictures of cats (for some reason the Writer could do cats, if precious
little else) and hopelessly unsuccessful attempts to make an anagram out of the
name Luis Suàrez. The Writer had got nowhere with that, so he
tried ‘Luis Suàrez,
biter’. That was a bit more successful
– ‘Sure, I brutalizes!’ was OK if ungrammatical, but then Suàrez wasn’t a native English speaker
so did the inaccurate grammar perhaps confer some authenticity?
‘It’s that bloody z’ he complained loudly to nobody in
particular, ‘they’re as bad as j’s, z’s; if he’d been Garcia, well, if he’d
been Rodrigo….’
The paper made no reply.
Get up.
Coffee. Stare out of
window. Wander upstairs. Stare out of different window. Put jumper on. Take jumper off again.
Examine bristles in mirror.
Shave. And there’s blokes who
get jobs done inside six months! Back
to desk.
The Writer looked again at a story in the Telegraph he once
thought might offer possibilities – Police officers report theft from own
station after thief steals tin of biscuits.
Surely there had to be something there - the audacious raid on the
station kitchen, the rage of the Superintendent forced to come clean following
a Freedom of Information request, the…….. but wait! The Writer read further into the article. The very same force had also been victims of
crime to the tune of a lace dress and a pair of hair tongs! Could he plausibly link the three
items? Perhaps a thief who nicked the
biscuits, wondered if he’d been spotted and felt the need to disguise his
appearance? Or perhaps a thief with OCD who felt an odd compulsion to pinch
things in alphabetical order – biscuits, curlers, dress? The lads probably never even noticed that
the first thing to go had been the air freshener from their loo; nor did they
guess at the grave danger which now stalked the egg timer in their kitchen. But worse was to come. The coppers, according to the Telegraph, had
been forced to own up to the theft of an unwritten parking ticket as well.
He was aiming for 1000 words or so, he reminded
himself. Was there enough there? Probably not, and now he had to build in a
bloody unwritten parking ticket. How
the hell can that be stolen? He railed
against the injustice of it all.
Turn on the telly.
Racing. Not interested in
racing. Well, OK, perhaps it’s better
than trying to find a witty and amusing link between biscuits, a dress, a
parking ticket and so on. Change
channels. Some bloke affecting
astonishment that his house has been ripped apart and rebuilt while he was down
the pub. Panic rising. Switch off.
Pick up sports section of paper.
Put down sports section of paper.
Coffee. Again.
What about Richard III?
He’d wondered for some time about Richard III. There must be some fun to be had out of him being buried in a car
park for 500 and something years, unpromising though it sounded when put like
that. The Writer suddenly sat bolt
upright. The battle, the burial, the
search, the discovery and the subsequent arguments - could he do it in the form
of a Shakespearian play?
K. Richard. A
horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!
Catesby. Withdraw,
my lord; I’ll help you to a horse
Alarum. Enter
FINDUS, a supplier.
Findus. Well,
well, well! Looks like your lucky day,
squire! I got just the very thing –
lovely bit of prime beef, well, I say beef, just the thing to give the good
burghers of Bosworth a good burger after the battle.
K. Richard.
Horsemeat???
Findus. Well
let’s not say horsemeat, no. Not as
such. We’ll flog ‘em as Shergarburgers.
All groan.
Findus. It’s
that bloody Will Shakespeare, he never could resist a play on words.
Will Shakespeare. ‘Sright. Remember that bit
about ‘the winter of discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York’ what
I put right at the start, yeah? See
what I done there – sun/son? - he’s the son of the Duke of York, geddit? Do you want to do the one about tomorrow
finding you a grave man?
K. Richard. I
thought that was Romeo and Juliet.
Will Shakespeare.
Well, well! So it is, but
you can always go to the well a second time… see, I done it again.
The Writer sighed.
This was all very well but led nowhere much, and he couldn’t see how he
was going to segue seamlessly into an obstreperous car park attendant who
wouldn’t allow the burial of a corpse – even a royal one – on his field. Jobsworth, he’d be called, and the
altercation about burying Richard would go down in history as the Battle of
Jobsworth’s Field.
It was no good. He
had leads aplenty, but no conclusions.
Bloody Hilary Mantel and her sort, bloody Dan Brown, they made it all
look such a doddle.
At this point, the Writer’s wife took a hand.
‘Look’, she said, not unkindly, ‘you’ve been struggling for
ages, must be getting on for six months.
What about this story on Sky News about a giant inflatable Stonehenge in
Hong Kong? You could do that, couldn’t
you?’
He looked up at her.
‘You can bounce on it’ she added, uncertainly. ‘What would
your Aethelred Thwaite make of a bouncy Stonehenge?’
He smiled for the first time in weeks.
‘Do you think I could blow it up into something really big?’
he asked ‘Only if I couldn’t find a snappy ending it might be a bit of a let
down.’
Momentarily she looked deflated.
‘I wouldn’t want to puncture your confidence’ she murmured,
‘but a bouncy prehistoric monument has got to be a bit of a gift, hasn’t it?’
He nodded slowly.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ll try to tie it into a series of minor
thefts from a police station, Richard III and taking bloody ages to write
anything.’
She smiled. ‘Can you
get a thousand words out of it?’
‘Easy’ he replied.
She looked relieved.
‘It’ll take a few weeks, mind’ he said.
ANAGRAM CORNER
When it comes to Silvio Berlusconi, many Italians – and
others – have long felt the need of a choice.
So this month, Master Autolycus is happy to offer one with regard to the
lovable old rogue. Incidentally, the
phrase ‘lovable old rogue’, is itself a moral tale which tells the Berlusconi
story in a chronological and concise way – Rove; ‘ullo!’; bed;
gaol.
I, SILVIO BERLUSCONI
I SIN, 'COS I ROVE! I BULL!
or
I CLUB SON, I SO VIRILE!
