WOULD I LIE TO YOU?

Hello - yes, I know it's still only November - just - but welcome to December's edition of The Autolycan. Two or three months ago we found out that a much earlier blogger on Alderney had experimented with writing stories which combined two news items, and I thought that if he could do it, perhaps I'd better give it a go as well.  Even though the subject matter of one of them - sheds - doesn't sound very promising.  And the subject matter of the other is lying, which means the whole thing could be very confusing.  Oh dear.

Anyway, here it is - hope you like it!

WOULD I LIE TO YOU?

2014 marks the centenary of esteemed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' birth. A replica of his iconic writing shed in Laugharne is coming to Hull for three days as part of the Dylan Thomas 100 celebrations.               Guide to Humber Mouth literature festival

LIES HAVE BECOME AN ACCEPTED PART OF BRITISH LIFE, POLL REVEALS

                                                                                   Daily Telegraph

To begin at the beginning.

I knew I'd made a mistake the moment I swerved across the pavement outside Sainsbury's in order to avoid the Big Issue seller. Looking back, it would have been so much easier to hurry past glancing importantly at my watch, feigned interest in the adverts on the bus stop or even parted with the quid.

Instead, I found my way barred. She had a clipboard and what I had to admit was a very engaging smile.

'Good morning, sir, and what a lovely morning it is!'

I shaped to pass her, but she was made of sterner stuff. She sprung her trap.

'I wonder if you have a moment to answer some questions about whether you tell fibs?'

Trapped! Say 'yes' and the interrogation would begin; say 'no' and there would be the inevitable follow up about whether that was a porkie and what I really meant was 'yes.' And the interrogation would begin.

I was wrestling with the logic of this when I noticed the Big Issue seller wink broadly at the girl. Her smile broadened. Surely I detected what in my youth would have been called a come-hither look......? No, I really wasn't kidding myself at all when I said 'Yes, truthfulness and evasion are subjects I've always found intellectually most stimulating. I'd love to take part.'

There were a couple of preliminaries about age group and ethnicity, and when she got to the question about gender and I quipped that there wasn't much point fibbing about that one her laughter rang out melodiously for what I later supposed to be the twentieth time that morning. Then she got to the one about occupation.

'Ah,' I said, 'I am a writer.'

Did I stand just a little taller? Puff my chest out, just slightly? Her pen hovered uncertainly.

'I'm so sorry, what was that?'

'I am a Writer' I said, dignifying the word with a capital W this time and hoping she'd notice.

'Really? What sort of things do you write?'

I was listening carefully but couldn't detect a capital W.

'Short stories mostly. I'm doing one at the moment about sheds.'

Her face fell.

'Sheds? Are they very interesting?'

'Well, there's a rather special one on tour – it's coming to Hull you know. It was Dylan Thomas's; he used it when he was Writing. Well, not his real shed of course, that's probably full of old bikes with flat tyres and pedals missing by now. No, this is a replica. With a replica desk and chair and even a replica jacket hanging on the back of the replica chair. You probably saw it in Replica Sheds Weekly.'

She frowned. 'No, funny, I must have missed it. And do you have a shed?'

'Me? Oh yes.'

'And do you use yours to write in?

'No. Dylan's had great views over the Taf estuary and the Gower peninsula. It's how he got his inspiration. Mine offers a rather less stirring view of a scrubby brown patch choked with brambles and goose grass. Oh, and he could watch lapwings and herons, otters and seals. Me, I've got pigeons and squirrels. I've tried, but it's not really the same.'

'But what is there to say about a replica shed?'

I tried hard to look like a poet. It wasn't easy.

'Well, I'm chucking in a couple of cultural allusions, Dylan Thomas quotes, that sort of thing.'

'He wrote about sheds?'

'No, but I'm starting with To begin at the beginning; that was his.'

'So you're just copying him.'

'No, I'm parodying bits of it as well. Listen. It is spring, moonless night in the small back garden, where the starless, bible black sky cradles a chill, squat, shed; a humble brown shed; a tumbledown, stumbledown, crumbledown shed..... It's better if you imagine Richard Burton doing it.'

I looked in vain for approval. There was none.

'Well, it might need a bit of tidying up, but I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when Dylan's had a few, which was pretty much all the time, and gets Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard in there by herself. Could be a whole series in that. Could be the start of 50 Sheds – Way-hay! What do you think?'

'Is that it, then?'

'No. I've got to develop the idea a bit from there. We Writers - (capital W and bold as well!) - we Writers do that, you know.'

Did she look ever so slightly impressed?

'One idea I had – if they can send his shed on tour, why can't I send mine? Find the right venues, could be a bob or two in it. There's somewhere called Shedfield down South I think, find a decent field there, tour could be off to a flyer.'

'Yes, but is there anything special about your shed?'

It was my face's turn to fall as my confidence drained. What with the sun, the girl, the smile, my tongue had perhaps been running away with me. I looked down at my feet.

'It has its quirks,' I ventured.

'Quirks?'

'Well, it's settling in one corner so the door sticks. If you shave a bit off the bottom it simply settles a bit more till it sticks again. Visitors would have to force it open.'

'And if they did?'

'The first thing to strike them would very likely be the old paint tins. Probably quite literally. There's quite a lot of them, each with a residue of paint that over the years has acquired a consistency roughly that of whale blubber. Once they've forced the door and the tins have cascaded out all over their feet they'll be able to admire one of the North's leading collections of surplus creosote, wittily offset by what was once a rack which doesn't quite support a range of garden forks with bent tines. Plus there's a cat basket pointlessly and poignantly kept for a long demised cat.'

She looked at me, not without pity.

'We were on occupation' she reminded me, 'I'll put you down as unemployed, shall I?'

There was definitely no capital U, no bold font. It might even have been in italics. I was losing ground.

'OK,' she said. 'on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is less than once a week and 5 is several times a day, how often would you say you tell a lie?'

'Oh one, definitely. If that.'

'And on the same scale, where 1 is not embarrassed at all, and 5 is extremely embarrassed, how embarrassed are you when caught out in a lie?'

Alarm bells were ringing, but I wasn't sure why.

'It's so rare, so five, definitely.'

I was starting to feel uncomfortable and needed to regain the initiative. I forced a smile.

'Unless of course that's a lie, ha ha ha!'

She shook her head.

'If it is, the computer'll sort it out. It's got a sort of algorithm thingy.'

'Ah yes,' I nodded, knowingly, 'algorithms. Dy over Dx, all that.'

'I thought you looked like the sort of man who'd know that.'

I preened.

'Did you? Really?'

She eyed me coolly.

'No, not really. You're talking about logarithms, calculus, not algorithms. Sorry, but I'm not being entirely straight with you.'

I was stunned. We looked at each other for some moments, neither of us now sure how far we could trust the other. The atmosphere grew more tense. It was the Big Issue seller who broke what was becoming an oppressive silence.

'I think you should both be ashamed of yourselves,' he began, 'I don't believe a word either of you are saying.'

Embarrassed and mortified I felt the colour rising, but he turned first to the girl with the clipboard.

'A survey on lying? Answers to that aren't going to be very believable, are they? This is some sort of con, isn't it?'

Then it was my turn.

'And as for all this nonsense about a touring shed, well, that's not very convincing either, is it, not for a storyteller, not for a so-called 'Writer.' Tell you the truth, I think I'm the only honest one here.'

Embarrassment was turning to ignominy, ignominy to humiliation. In that moment I would have done almost anything to escape the situation. What I'd said was true, mostly, so why did I feel so uneasy, so guilty? What possessed me to think of trying to regain some credibility by offering to buy a copy of the Big Issue? Why, above all, did I allow myself to be panicked into reaching for my wallet rather than my loose change?

I bought a magazine, told him to keep the substantial change and walked away quickly. Really, I shouldn't have looked back. But I did, and saw the pair of them high-fiving each other, huge grins on their faces. They waved my tenner at me as they shook with laughter.

Dylan would have approved. I raged – raged! - at myself for the rest of the day and went anything but gentle into that good night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ANAGRAM CORNER

                                                     DAVID MELLOR.........

                                               .........DIM LOVER, LAD!
                                              

AN ISLAND RACE

Well, The Autolycan is back!  An adventure story for you this month, loosely based - OK, extremely loosely based - on one of the classics.  Hope you like it, and if you're new to the blog it might be best to go back over the past two or three editions and read those before embarking on this one.  I don't suppose it'll make much more sense if you do, although it might just set this latest effort in context.

AN ISLAND RACE

The UK is full of heavy drinkers with bad eating habits who are ignorant, intolerant and too nationalistic – so it’s just as well that we are also very polite.

It might sound like a stereotypical list of national traits, but these are the views of more than 5,000 young adults from five different countries who were asked to give their opinion on modern Britain by the British Council.                                          The Independent

Jim's the name. Jim Orkins, if I've spelt that right, probably not. But who gives a stuff anyway? All I ever wanted was a quiet life really, never thought of meself as having adventures, unless I could get on X-Factor. I could do Land of Hope and Glory. That'd show 'em. You don't need to know how to spell difficult stuff like 'tallent' for that, though to be fair you probably need some. Pity.

Not too bad a place to grow up, really, a pub. The Admiral Benbow was its real name, near Bristol, though my Dad who ran the place used to call it the Amoral Bimbo. Dunno what the first word meant, perhaps he just couldn't spell 'Admiral', even if it was on the sign over the door. Wouldn't be surprising, none of us couldn't spell nothing, not even our own names, like you just saw, but he was dead right about the bimbos who used to turn up weekends. Most pubs in the area wouldn't serve Guinness and peach schnapps, but Dad says give 'em what they want and we made a killing, so to speak.

Anyway, one day all hell breaks loose. Bloke comes in, don't look well, orders up a double Jack Daniel's and vodka, says it always makes him feel better. Don't know if it was that or yesterday's chicken nuggets warmed up, but half an hour later he keels over and pops his clogs! Coppers everywhere. Me and Dad went through his stuff though, know what I mean?, and found a map of some island what was supposed to have buried treasure. There was an X showing where.

'Aye, aye,' says Dad, quick on the uptake, like, 'what we need is a few of the lads out the public bar to nip over and dig it up, they haven't got a match till a week Sunday, plenty of time.'

'Probably need someone who's got a boat then,' I said.

He looked at me.

'Good thinking, son,' he said, 'I'll give Smollett a bell.'

Smollett takes a bit of liquid persuasion like, specially when Dad says he knows a bloke who can cook a bit and when he turns up he's only got one leg and says to call him Long John Silver. Anyway, the lads from the public bar are up for it, and load this boat – the Hispaniola it's called - with as many cases of lager as they can squeeze in. Dad says I can go too if I want, and off we all go.

All goes well at first, but after a bit Smollett works out the lager isn't going to last and says we'll have to ration it. That's when things first start to kick off a bit, lads up in arms, Long John Silver winding them up like bloody Disraeli on heat. Smollett threatens the cat o' nine tails, all very commanding like, but looks a bit of a berk when it turns out Long John Silver has got it and has been using it to stir the porridge.

Over on this little island itself, it turns out, there's just one bloke lives there all alone, Ben Gunn they call him, probably gone a bit doolalley what with living by himself for years. Course, he's got no idea about Smollett and the lads coming his way. First inkling he gets is when lager cans start drifting in on the incoming tide. Hundreds of 'em. Then he notices all these seagulls on the island, all of them looking fat and content and getting stuck into pizza and chips, some of the pizza still in cardboard boxes. He puzzles over this for a bit, then the penny drops.

'Oh God,' he says to himself, 'Brits. Could be in for a bit of a barney here.'

Day or so later, his suspicions get worse. Sailing ship appears on the horizon, steering a zigzag course at best and going round in circles for much of the time, sails rigged – if that's the word – Grand Old Duke of York style, neither up nor down. Then he catches a kind of loud belching followed by a raucous bellowing on the wind, but the bellowing don't make no sense to him – 'Chelsea till I die!', 'In-ger-lund! In-ger-lund! In-ger-lund!' What can it all mean?

Back on the Hispaniola there's pretty much only me and Smollett what's sober and still remembers why we've come on this trip, and between us we manage to steer more or less towards the island. Fifty yards or so out, Smollett says we can't go no closer, they'll have to wade, and the lads start disappearing over the side. God knows what Gunn makes of them, yelling and hollering like a pack of bloody hyenas, plus shaven heads, tattoos, Union Jack shorts and baseball caps, sunburnt beer bellies, the lot. It's like the Sealed Bloody Knot re-enacting the first Battle of Magaluf. Smollett reckoned he'd never heard Rule Britannia sung so tunelessly, albeit lustily. Course, the lads have forgotten all about the treasure, they're hoping for bars and local women instead, but they're about to be cruelly disappointed. I thought that might be when things turn nasty, but Smollett just smiles and says 'it'll be fine, they're Brits, remember, models of old world politeness.'

To everybody's surprise, this bloke Gunn appears on the shore to meet them. Tall, unshaven but a big welcoming smile, he sticks out his hand to greet them. Long John Silver advances at the head of this alarming gaggle of dripping wet drunks and for a moment I think perhaps Smollett's got it all wrong about being polite. But no! Long John Silver grasps Gunn's hand and goes 'Good afternoon sir, delighted to make your acquaintance, thank you for the wonderful welcome, perhaps I could introduce the lads.'

'An absolute pleasure!' murmurs Gunn, relaxing a bit, and there follows a whole load of handshaking plus 'How do you do?', 'Lovely place you have here!', 'I say, what perfectly charming gladioli! Did you grow them from seed?', all that. The lads really turn on the courtesy, and one even presents Gunn with a Chelsea pennant, which – luckily – he accepts with due reverence.

And Gunn's just the same. He doesn't quite know why, but questions like 'Have you come far?' and 'And what do you do?' keep occurring to him, and it don't seem to matter that he don't get no real answers, largely down to the lads not having a clue by now.

Then Smollett looks at me cunning like, and says 'Look, there's still plenty of lager left, more than I let on, what if you and me ferry it all ashore, keep the party going, you rustle up a whole load of burgers, we're up to the ears in ketchup, even they can't get through all that. Then we wait for them all to crash out and while they're sleeping it off you and me nip out to where X marks the spot, dig up the treasure and disappear sharpish.'

'OK,' I says, but once the lads are well and truly plastered and we nip off we finds to our horror that there ain't no treasure, all been dug up years ago. Smollett turns purple and lets out this great bellow of rage.

'Well, well, well!' says this voice behind us, and we spin round to see Gunn, big smile on his face. 'No treasure here,' he says, 'used to be but it's long since gone.'

'But the bloke in the pub,' stammered Smollett, 'the one who died, he had a map, showed it all here......'

Gunn looks shocked at this, seems he knew the bloke.

'Died?' he says, 'Died?' and there's a long pause. When he looks up he says 'Well, that's the last bit of fun I'll be getting for a while then.'

'Fun?'

'Yes. We were working together - he'd lure parties of treasure seekers out here and we'd watch what happened when they found there wasn't any. I got plenty of material that way. Well, it rather seems the party's over and this is the final act in the story.'

'Material? Final act in the story?' repeated Smollett. 'I don't understand. Who are you? And where are we?'

'My name is Gunn. Ben Gunn. But I think I'm going to have to change it for something with a bit more gravitas. Something that suits a literary figure rather better.'

'Literary figure? Why? But.....'

'As for where we are, that is quite straightforward. I moved here to this tiny dot of land not far from the French coast some years ago. You see, until I gave up work I was the last Commissary of the Demesne of Sequelle on the island of Alderney. Life grew a bit too hectic for me there, and I retired here to the tiny island of Prequelle where I write stories. I find myself increasingly interested in exploring antecedents and origins, and have started to write about what has happened in the past to help bring great events about. I'm afraid this particular story now seems to have come to an end, and I shall have to write something which explains how I got here, how the treasure got here, what has happened to it and where you fit in. Think of it as a prequel – what happened before you got involved. I must think of a snappy title for it, though.'

'And what about your name?'

'I want something more imposing than Ben Gunn, something more fitting for a man of letters. Three names sounds distinguished, wouldn't you say? You know, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. That Arthur Conan Doyle is shaping up to be very good.'

'So what are you going to choose?'

'Well, I've been thinking. Robert Louis Stevenson sounds suitably grand, don't you think? But I still need a title for the story.'

Smollett is still furious over there being no treasure, and comes over all sarcastic like. 'I'd call it Unreal Disaster,' he growls.

A light comes into Gunn's eyes. 'Do you know,' he says, 'I think you've got it, sort of. I think there could be a decent anagram there.'                                                                                                                                                                                      

(BONUS) ANAGRAM CORNER

                                       NICOLA STURGEON

                            I URGE SCOTLAN' ON!

WIDER STILL AND WIDER

Hello....

......and welcome to September's edition of The Autolycan.  This month's story follows on from July's effort,  which was about a poor chap who'd ordered 2000 trains that were too wide for the platforms they were intended to serve.  Unwisely, I'd called that story Wider Still and Wider, but in fact that's a much better title for this story - you'll see why when you read it.  So I've re-titled the earlier one, which now trades under the name of Wide Boy.   If you're new to the blog, or if you would like to refresh your memory, do please go back to the July edition before embarking on this one.  Hope you enjoy it, because I now think it's pretty unlikely that there'll be an October edition since the Autolycuses will be exploring the USA!

WIDER STILL AND WIDER

Paris faces €6m bill to replace metro escalators made too wide

Thirty escalators in the Paris Metro system will have to be replaced because they are 'too wide' at a cost of millions of euros 

                                                                                                                        Daily Telegraph

When the last Commissary of the Demesne of Sequelle on the island of Alderney began writing a regular blog in 1824 he not unnaturally called it The Aldernican. He would take headlines from the public prints of the day and embroider tales round them which purported to tell the stories behind the headlines. Sometimes he would add an anagram or two which he hoped were pointed and witty.

The Commissary's main problem was that then – even more than now – not a lot happened on Alderney, and he was sometimes frankly stuck for material. The public prints themselves were clearly struggling – recent front page headlines had included

Alderney Man's Hedge Grows A Bit More

Alderney Woman Trips – Narrowly Escapes Grazed Knee

and

Royal Tour Set To Omit Alderney

So the Commissary had to make the most of what little he was given, and sometimes this meant that The Aldernican would include a second – alternative – story using the same headline. One such follow up story, for example, envisaged what might have happened had Alderney Woman actually grazed her knee. He also experimented with combining stories so that a third version dealt with the consequences of her tripping over a trailing branch of Alderney Man's uncut hedge and went on to thank God that His Majesty wasn't there to witness the carnage.

Back in 1824 there was no word to define a story that followed on from an earlier one, at least not on Alderney, so in his slightly aristocratic way the Commissary decided to name such a tale after his own office, describing his first attempt as a 'Sequelle.'

English visitors, of course, could not cope with anything sounding slightly French like 'Sequelle' and so the word was corrupted to 'sequel' and came to mean pretty much anything that followed something else. Later linguistic analysts, by the way, have argued – less than convincingly – that Eric Cantona's famous remark about seagulls and trawlers was evidence not so much of a deep and enigmatic personality, but rather of his imperfect command of English. Eric was in fact referring to his film acting career and trying to convey the fact that the star's scenes can be shown when sequels follow trailers.

Perhaps your first reaction when you came across this story about escalators on the Paris Metro was the same as mine. 'Hello,' I said to myself, 'Jean-Claude's got another job.' And then I thought about the last Commissary and his idea of a 'sequelle.' What did happen to Jean-Claude after his fiasco with the over-wide trains? I needed to know.

So I went to SNCF's train purchasing offices, which is where, you may remember, we left a mortified Jean-Claude. Friends and former colleagues were sympathetic to him, feeling he'd been unfairly vilified and that it hadn't really been his fault. Nevertheless he'd been severely chastened by the experience, and worked hard at redeeming himself. He showed initiative and took responsibility. He had so impressed the Maître with his new approach that the older man was pleased to allow Jean-Claude to handle the arrangements for his retirement.

The mix up over the Maître's leaving present really wasn't Jean-Claude's fault. The Maître had set his heart on a particular gas barbecue and had, with his own hands, built a patio in a part of his garden that caught the evening sun. He had added a brick built bay to house the barbecue itself. Owing to a small error in copying the model number, Jean-Claude had purchased a model that was not only superior to the one the Maître had requested, but also a few centimetres too wide for the bay. The Maître though was going on a long holiday immediately after retirement and had left instructions for the barbecue to be installed in his absence. Jean-Claude found a local builder to make the necessary alterations to the bay, and if the Maître ever realised what had happened he didn't say.

The relationship between the two men grew closer, and it wasn't long before Jean-Claude started dating the Maître's daughter. It really wasn't his fault that the name on the flowers he sent her was spelt wrong – Nicolle was after all an unusual spelling – and neither was it his fault that they were sent to the wrong address. The two villages with similar names were often mixed up, and fortunately the unintended recipients were good hearted enough to correct the spelling of Nicolle's name and redeliver Jean-Claude's romantic gift. If she ever realised what had happened she didn't say.

Nicolle and Jean-Claude became inseparable, and he determined that he would declare his love for her with a truly memorable proposal. A few of the more churlish souls in the village were inclined to argue that proposing to the wrong girl was a pas rather worse than merely faux, but that really wasn't Jean-Claude's fault either. He decided that the proposal should be broadcast live by her favourite DJ on her favourite programme, and in order to get his request noticed had inscribed it on a lavish card which he had sent to the DJ. Whether it was his handwriting or the DJ's carelessness was never quite clear, but his impassioned proposal to Nicola was not only read out live on air but breathlessly accepted a few minutes later in a phone call to the station by a former girlfriend. Happily, both Nicolle and the Maître saw the funny side, although that was more than could be said for a large tattooed man who very soon paid Jean-Claude a less than social visit claiming to be Nicola's current beau.

It was fortunate that the best man realised that there were two churches of the same name in the area, and was able to divert Jean-Claude to the right one on the morning of the wedding, but perhaps even more fortunate that the groom presented himself on the right day. It really wasn't his fault that his diary was one of a batch that was supposed to have been withdrawn and pulped because of a printing error, although the naysayers were inclined to argue that the penny should have dropped when he told the best man to turn up on 31^st June. Never has the term 'best man' been more apt.

His friendship with his father in law flourished, and when the Maître took a part time job as Non-Executive Director on the Paris Metro it was perhaps inevitable that Jean-Claude should find a job in the purchasing office some months later. Chastened by his SNCF experience he was for a long time a model of conscientious diligence, and it was a pity that it was he who signed the fateful escalator order because the débâcle really wasn't his fault. He had conducted the tendering process with meticulous care, and once the contractor – a British company - had been chosen, he was equally precise in drawing up the exact specifications. Indeed, it was because he was dealing with a foreign company that he was particularly concerned to make sure that the details were very clearly set out, which was why he had reinforced the printed order form with a handwritten instruction in English:-

OVERALL HEIGHT OF EACH STEP - 25cm

OVERALL WIDTH OF EACH STEP - ONE METRE 21cm

Poor Jean-Claude. That was his undoing. Jean-Claude was French. Jean-Claude had written '21cm' in the way he had written '21cm' all his life. Had Jean-Claude meant '27cm' he would have written '27cm.'  With a barred seven.  To distinguish it from a one.  The British supplier didn't know that. Six centimetres makes quite a difference when it comes to escalator width. So when the story hit the headlines he was held up to public ridicule all over again. Poor Jean-Claude.

There were no escalators on Alderney back in 1824, but if there had been there's no telling how many stories the resourceful last Commissary might have wrung from such riches. Falling women grazing their knees because the escalator jammed. Embarrassment when the King came to perform the official opening ceremony only to find the official ribbon six centimetres too short.    A more reflective piece on whether the Revenue Protection Squad would penalise passengers stuck on immobile escalators for failing to board trains stuck miles away? (Answer : yes.)  The Aldernican would have had a lifetime's material.

Except it wouldn't, because as he grew older the last Commissary found the pace and bustle of life on the island too much for him. He couldn't keep up with the burgeoning vegetation and minor mishaps that shouldered their way into his increasingly stressful days. He wanted somewhere quieter, and when his term of office came to an end, he moved away to a tiny dot of land some miles from the Alderney mainland. The tiny dot of land was called Prequelle, and in later years the Commissary found himself more interested in exploring antecedents and origins, and started to write stories about what had happened in the past to help bring great events about. He didn't know what to call such a story, but felt sure something would occur to him.

And occur to him it plainly did, or we wouldn't have the word 'prequel' today. Every story he'd ever written could now have an overture as well as a coda – a beginning, a middle and an end. To his astonishment, this made his writing popular. His fame grew as more and more people sat up and took notice of his endeavours. The consequences of his efforts were immeasurable.

Poor Jean-Claude had no such luck. His fame also grew as more and more people sat up and took notice of his endeavours, but in his case only because the consequences of his efforts were all too measurable.

ANAGRAM CORNER

                              SCOTTISH REFERENDUM

                         MUST I CEDE NORTH, SERF?                     

GREEK UNORTHODOX

Hello, and welcome to August's edition of The Autolycan which is based on another headline from The Independent - a paper which is proving to be quite a rich source of stories for this blog.  I hope you like it, in fact I hope you like it quite a lot, since there may well be a break in publishing the blog over the next month or two as Master and Mrs Autolycus take a holiday.  If I do manage to produce something I'll publish it, but if not enjoy the rest of your summer (or winter depending on where you are!)   In the unlikely event that you experience withdrawal symptoms you could always delve into The Autolycan's archives!

GREEK UNORTHODOX

PEOPLE WHO SAY 'LIKE' ALL THE TIME MAY BE DEEPER THINKERS.

                                                                                                                    The Independent

It was 424 BC and the post first night gathering at Socrates' house was turning into a pretty sombre affair. Sophocles had entertained high hopes of his new play - Oedipus Rex - but although the cast and crew had performed with passion and distinction, audience numbers had been desultory, largely consisting – Sophocles had noted bitterly – of middle aged and elderly representatives of that unhealthy stratum of Athenian society that took it upon itself to act as guardian of public morals. Many of those who had turned up had been outraged – a good number had left at the interval. There had been loud gasps of matronly disapproval at the notion of Oedipus killing his father and marrying his mother, albeit unwittingly. His gloom deepening, Sophocles knew that tomorrow's reviews would not be favourable; he still believed passionately in the play, but was fast coming to the conclusion that Athens was simply not yet ready for his searingly honest brand of social commentary.

Moodily, Socrates opened the inquest. Even more moodily he closed it again a few minutes later. Plato's instant diatribe on the subject of ethics and morality, far from lightening the mood, had imbued the gathering with a sense of mounting helplessness. Even Aristophanes, who could usually be relied on for a few risqué jokes, a card trick or two and some cruel impressions of leading Athenian dignitaries was unusually subdued.  Socrates realised that it needed both invention and decisiveness on his part if the play was to be saved.

'Right,' he announced briskly, and with considerably more confidence than he felt, 'we'll invent some excuse to delay the second night by a few days – perhaps put it about that there’s some technical difficulty – and in the meantime I will nip off to Delphi and consult the oracle about what is to be done.'

Very soon he was ushered into the oracle's presence with great solemnity and ceremony.

'Before you can consult with me' she began 'you must answer a riddle.'

Socrates looked uncomfortable.

'What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening?'

Socrates shifted his position awkwardly, feeling like a schoolboy sitting an exam for which he has not only done no revision but also failed to pay much attention to the coursework in the first place. Suddenly, inspiration flashed.

'Man!' he cried. 'Man who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs in mid life and uses a stick to help him in old age! It's man!'

'No' said the oracle.

'No? But it must be....'

'That is not the correct answer.'

'But....'

'But you are close' she conceded. 'The correct answer, which I shall give you in a moment, will put you on the right track to answer your question.'

'But I haven't asked it yet' objected Socrates.

'Haven't asked it yet! I'm a bleeding oracle, aren't I?' thundered the oracle. 'You don't need to tell me what your poxy question is!'

Socrates hung his head and mumbled his apologies.

'Right' said the oracle, somewhat appeased, 'the correct answer is 'Man lol.'

'Man lol? I don't understand.'

'IMHO' enunciated the oracle testily 'what you need is lots of lolz. Alternatively, you could have had 'Man ' but it doesn't lend itself to the spoken word as well.'

'But...'

'They're acronyms' she explained with exaggerated patience.

'Acronyms?'

'Abbreviated Coded Rendition of Name Yielding Meaning.'

'But...'

'Oh for goodness sake! For an intelligent man you seem to find it very hard to grasp basic stuff. IMHO means in my humble opinion; lol - laugh out loud. It's a young person thing. Your play will flop if you don't appeal to young people. That means familiarity with their grammar and idiom. Lol is a kind of clue that it's OK to laugh, even when – especially when in this case – the answer to the riddle isn't funny. Socrates, you gotta get down wid da kidz!'

'Down wid da kidz?'

'Look, I'm just like totes amazed you're not lapping this stuff up!'

'Like totes amazed?'

'ROFL!'

'ROLF? But he's...'

'No, that's different. ROFL – I'm rolling on the floor laughing at you! Look, take this Urban Dictionary, read it on the way home. Build the vocabulary and expressions into your play and you'll be fine.'

'Thank you, from the bottom of my heart' said Socrates, somewhat pompously.

He felt, rather than saw, the oracle raise an irritated eyebrow.

'...from the bottom of my heart, lol' he added hurriedly.

'No worries' said the oracle.

Socrates proved an able student, and by the time he got back to Athens he had developed a rudimentary mastery of this novel approach. Realising he would need a strong and charismatic lieutenant, he immediately took Plato, his first and best pupil, to one side, recounted the conversation with the oracle and insisted he too learnt this new language.  Plato's eyes shone – his enthusiasm was direct and tangible.

They gathered Sophocles and the team together.

'OK, boyz 'n' gurlz' began Socrates, 'like we got a block, yeah?'

'Tbh, we're in deep and gotta be cre8ive?' added Plato. 'Like these guys ain't rocking up enough and we ain't making enough bread?'

'OMG! Disasterville!' exclaimed Socrates, perhaps overreaching himself slightly. 'But listen up, I like laid it on the oracle big time and she was like just totally awesome! I was like.... WOW!!'

But Socrates was stopped in his tracks at this point by a loud bellow from Sophocles.

'Socrates!' he roared 'I don't understand a bloody word you're saying!'

'Trust me, dis bro's telling it like it is!' yelled Plato. 'This is like wicked stuff, blud, follow?'

Pandemonium. Confusion. Anger.

Summoning all his authority, Socrates restored order and, in his more customary flawless Greek, reported the details of his visit to the oracle.

'So you see,' he concluded 'our salvation lies in appealing to the younger generation.'

There was a long pause, eventually interrupted by Plato.

'Sooooo,' he began as though he'd just thought of the idea 'why not get two or three of our own kids to work with Sophocles – sorry, to LIKE work with Sophocles - on a re-write?'

It took some time for Sophocles to see the sense of this, but eventually he agreed. The outcome was brilliantly simple, simply brilliant and brilliantly successful. Within a couple of days they'd come up with DadSlayer! - subtitled Like, Don't Waste Your Dad! - and managed to persuade Sophocles that having a plague descend on Thebes as a backdrop to the whole play was, like, gross. The kidz don't want no plague, they argued, that's just like disgusting, but what if, say, internet connection like totally goes down? Maybe there's this like cosmic radiation? Nobody can get on FaceBiblio, like there's these delta rays from some like mystery planet? That'd just, like, faze everybody! And Jeez! If Oedipus is the murderer we don't want some blind old guy like just telling him - he'd get trolled, unfollowed, it would be all over Twitter, there'd be like stuff up on You Tube.

Their success was complete when Sophocles approved enthusiastically of their coup de grâce. This came towards the end of the play, and although many modern directors and publishers cling unimaginatively to Sophocles' original dénouement, Oedipus in the new version smacks his forehead and goes 'Duh! What am I like, like?' whereas previously - you may recall - he put his own eyes out.

'And like what about the sequels?' asked one. 'The trial? Like murder and incest? It doesn't like come much bigger. DadSlayer 2.... Mother.....well, we might have to think about the title for that one. You could like sell the rights, get a whole box set out of it!'

They even managed to get out a handbill promising A gr8 new mega-show from the dude who brought you Antigone, complete with endorsements from celebrities.

Crash hot! Like, totes amazeballs! - ARISTOPHANES

Seriously wicked, innit? - PL8O

Audiences flocked; money rolled in; Sophocles basked in unexpected adulation. But Socrates, as was his way, was only too happy to fade into the background and let others take the credit. He was wise enough to know that it wasn't he who had brought about the revival of the play's fortunes. The only true wisdom, he told himself, is in knowing that you know nothing much about anything. He was content. Years later, and by now a serious inconvenience to the authorities, he was charged with corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens. Deep thinker and wise man that he was, he didn't contest the charge, but calmly accepted his fate, smiling enigmatically as he drank the hemlock pressed upon him by an ungrateful state.

ANAGRAM CORNER

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