......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 31st
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?
