Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks (23 page)

Your loving niece,

er,

30
The Unacknowledged Legislators of the World

The Poetry Society is falling apart. Rows about personalities,
about money, about vanishing booze, fights over
control and future plans, mass accusations and resignations
have all played their part in what one of the poets has
described as the war between poetry and bureaucracy:
‘I can't remember when we last talked about poetry at
a council meeting' he told the
Guardian
. But wasn't it
always like that?

T
he meeting convened at 2.30 pm.

Mr William Wordsworth immediately rose to say, in his own defence, that there was a tree, of many, one, a single field which he had looked upon, both of them spoke of something that was gone; the pansy at his feet did the same tale repeat: whither was fled the visionary gleam? Where was it now, the glory and the dream?

Mr Andrew Marvell said that that was all very well, but it did not justify £28.40 return rail fare to Keswick, plus £14.26 overnight stay at the Come On Inne and £19.70 for a steak dinner for two, plus three bottles of Bulgarian Riesling. There were plenty of trees and fields within walking distance of the Society's premises perfectly capable of raising questions about the disappearance of visionary gleams and similar cod's wallop. Also, he would like to know why the steak dinner was for two people, and did it have anything to do with the pansy at Mr Wordsworth's feet?

Mr Wordsworth replied that he had found love in huts where poor men lie, his daily teachers had been woods and rills, the silence that was in the starry sky, the sleep that was among the lonely hills, and you could not get that kind of thing in Camden Town. As to the steak dinner, he did not see what business it was of anybody else's who had joined him for it.

Mr Marvell said that had they but world enough and time, this coyness, Wordsworth, were no crime, but some of them weren't bloody paperback millionaires and couldn't muck about all day nattering, also this was taxpayers' money and not intended for filling Wordsworth's poofter shepherd oppos with foreign booze. His, Marvell's, mistresses never required more than a bottle of Mackeson's beforehand and a Vesta curry afterwards, never mind a night at the Come On Inne.

Mr Wordsworth said that if he must know, the gentleman referred to was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, exemplar of an imagination, which, in truth, was but another name for absolute power, and clearest insight, amplitude of mind, and Reason in her most exalted mood.

Mr Marvell asked Mr Wordsworth to pull this one, it had bells on. No offence to the Hon Member S.T. Coleridge, but he had recently seen him with an arm round a Chief Petty Officer outside a mission near Albert Dock.

Mr Coleridge replied that it was an ancient mariner and he had stopped one of three. If the other two were here today, he continued, they would corroborate his story. The sailor had an idea for a poem and was looking for someone to go halves with him. Anyway, he had a long grey beard and a glittering eye and was probably old enough to be his, Coleridge's, mother. Father.

Mr John Milton rose to enquire about the sailor's idea: did it have anything to do with Man's first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe?

Mr Coleridge said no, he thought it was about a gull or something, why did Mr Milton want to know?

Mr Milton replied that the had paid good money for the idea about Man's first disobedience etc. and was buggered if he was going to see it come out in some tatty down-market form, such as rhyming bloody quatrains, before he had had a go at it. He was envisaging something in about twelve books, it could take weeks.

Mr Alexander Pope asked the Council if they intended subsidising Mr Milton's living expenses while he was knocking out twelve books on fruit. No slur intended, he went on, but he had always considered Mr Milton a bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, with loads of learned lumber in his head. Such laboured nothings, in so strange a style, amazed the unlearned, and made the learned smile. Pardon him, he said, but he spoke as he found.

Mr Milton said Mr Pope was a complicated monster, head and tail, scorpion and asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus and Ellops drear.

Mr Thomas Gray rose to say that this was all very well, but it wasn't getting the cracked pan in the Members' Gents repaired, which was why, so he understood it, the meeting had been convened in the first place. Only yesterday, he said, the caretaker had forbade the wade through water to the throne, and shut the gates of mercy on mankind.

Mr John Greenleaf Whittier enquired as to whether the crack was so wide, so deep, that no man living might this fissure weld?

Mr Milton replied that is was a gulf profound as that Serbonian bog betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, where armies whole have sunk.

Mr Pope said my God was he really going to go on like this for twelve bleeding books at public expense? Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot, to draw nutrition, propagate, and rot?

Mr John Keats said that, as convenor of the Plumbing Sub-Committee, he was looking into the whole question of the refurbishment of the toilet facilities. It would not stop at a new pan and lilac seat; what he had in mind was a bower quiet for them, full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Mr Pope asked Mr Shelley who his friend was.

Mr Shelley replied that he never was attached to that great sect whose doctrine was that each one should select out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, and all the rest, though fair and wise, commend to cold oblivion.

Mr Pope enquired whether Mr Shelley had met Mr Milton. It was his opinion that if they ever put their heads together, they would be able to come up with thirty-eight books on anything, Still, cold oblivion wasn't a bad phrase to describe the Members' Gents, if that was what he was talking about; better than a quiet bower full of people breathing, mind, though he couldn't, of course, answer for Mr Coleridge.

Mr William Shakespeare enquired of Mr Keats why they did pine within and suffer dearth, painting their outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, did they upon their fading mansion spend?

Mr Keats replied that they required an unimaginable lodge for solitary thinkings; such as dodge conception to the very bourne of heaven, then leave the naked brain.

Mr Shakespeare said that if he understood correctly what Mr Keats had in mind, were the walls of the new khazi not going to end up covered in verse jottings, and would this not be an irritation to those wishing to lock themselves in cubicles the better to read the small print on their contracts so as not to end up with three bloody tragedies running simultaneously on Broadway and not even a percentage of the gross after producer's profits?

Mr Keats said he couldn't help it, the stuff just poured out of him. He informed them that he had been taught in Paradise to ease his breast of melodies.

Sir Edmund Spenser reminded them that at the last meeting, he had sought an undertaking that the new lavatory would be painted in goodly colours gloriously arrayed, but had as yet received no word from the committee as to what these colours might be. Three months had now passed.

Replying, Mr Shelley said he rather fancied azure, black, and streaked with gold, fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

Mr Marvell said what about orange bright, like golden lamps in a green night?'

Or, interjected Mr Shakespeare, what about having the majestical roof fretted with golden fire? It might cost a bob or two, he added, but it would not half impress publishers.

Mr Gerard Manley Hopkins said that he personally had always rather gone for dappled thing.

Green, said Mr Walt Whitman, green, green, green, green, green.

The committee looked at him.

Mr Milton expressed the opinion, after a short silence, that they were not getting anywhere. Chaos umpire sat, he continued, and by decision more embroiled the fray by which he reigned.

Mr Pope asked God to help him.

Mr Wordsworth said that as he had opened the proceedings, it was only fitting, not to say nicely constructed, that he should sum up. He then invited the committee to remember that dust as they were, the immortal spirit grew, like harmony in music; there was a dark inscrutable workmanship that reconciled discordant elements, made them cling together in one Society.

Mr Pope said ho ho ho.

The meeting rose at 4.26 pm.

31
The Hounds Of Spring Are On Winter's
Traces, So That's Thirty-Eight-Pounds-Forty,
Plus Making Good, Say, Fifty Quid

T
his is the week, according to my much-thumbed copy of
Milly-Molly-Mandy Slips A Disc
, when winter officially knocks off for a few days, the swallows return from Africa to foul the greenhouse roof, and you and I be a-diggin' and a-stretchin' and a-sweatin' as we work away with that most indispensable of gardening tools, the wallet.

And, as no newspaper or magazine is currently worth its salt without a few inches of pithy advice to the dehibernating gardener, it has fallen to my lot to deliver this year's handy hints. And if you think a sentence containing both salt and lot has been cobbled together as a subtle augury of the doom lying just beyond the french windows, then you might as well stop reading immediately: anyone who has time to work out textual cruces of that convoluted order clearly has nothing more effortful to bother about than a window box with a plastic begonia cemented to it. This piece is for committed gardeners only; although those who have not yet been committed may, of course, read it while waiting for the ambulance.

FENCES

This is the time of year to get together with your neighbour over the question of repairs to fences, trellises, and so on, that have deteriorated or even collapsed during the winter. I have always found that the best implement for dealing with this problem is a small hammer. If you have a large neighbour, then take a large hammer.

BLACKWOOD

Similar to the above, and particularly satisfying for bridge-players. You creosote your fencing somewhat enthusiastically, with the result that your neighbour's herbaceous border drops dead. He then digs a large trench on his side, until light shows between the soil and your new fencing. This is known as the Small Spade Opening. The conventional reply is Two Clubs.

CORM, BULB, TUBER AND RHIZOME

Not, of course, the long-established firm of country solicitors they might appear to the uninitiated, but the business end of those perennial plants which we gardeners carefully took up at the first sign of winter. At the first sign of spring, take them carefully out of their boxes and throw them away.

Exactly why all perennial roots die during the winter is an issue on which botanical opinion has long been divided: many experts argue that those stored in garages have an adverse reaction to being run over, and that this, coupled with the frost coming through the window the sack fell off in October and that nobody's wife got around to putting back up, explains why so many bulbs go flat and black during the weeks immediately prior to replanting.

Many other things, however, can carry off the apparently healthy corm, e.g. dogs, children, dailies with empty tubs at home, but since the plants will be dead anyway, these do not call for the hammer treatment.

THINGS LIKE GERANIUMS

Now is the time to go and look at the things like geraniums which you left in the ground all winter, knowing that if you lifted them, potted them, and stored them the way the books recommend, they would all die of mould. Left in the ground, they die anyway but at least you don't break your nails. If they haven't died in the ground, they are not geraniums but merely things and your best bet is to burn them off with a blow-lamp (see below under BLOW-LAMP) because otherwise they will take over the entire garden by March 23.

BLOW-LAMP

Now is the time to take down your blow-lamp and run. Because of an extremely complicated chemical process it would take far too long to elaborate upon, much gets up blow-lamp spouts between Michaelmas and yesterday morning. When you attempt to prime and light the blowlamp, it ignites your suit. The way to avoid this happening is called £3.95.

MOTOR MOWER

The motor mower is exactly similar to the blow-lamp in principle, but rather more sophisticated, which means that after it ignites your suit, it takes your fingers off at the knuckle as well. The best thing to do is call in an expert, but make sure you phone before April 3, 1948, as they get pretty booked up at this time of year. You can always use a HAND MOWER if you want to lose the entire hand. This comes about through trying to remove last year's long grass which has become wound round the axle and, by an extremely complicated chemical process it would take far too long to elaborate upon, turned to iron. Again, there is a traditional country remedy for both these problems and your bank manager would be pleased to advise you.

LAWNS

Now you have your new lawn-mower, you will want to get something to cut, since all lawns are annual. A few tufts here and there may have survived the winter, but upon closer inspection these will turn out to be clumps of clover, sawgrass, couch-grass, and the cat. What your lawn needs now is feeding and planting. Many people ask me how I achieve a lawn like a billiard-table, i.e. no grass anywhere and full of holes, and I usually recommend any one of a dozen products now on the market in which various chemicals have been carefully blended to ensure that you will be back next year to try again. If you read the labels on these products, you will see that they may not be used either after it has rained or before it is due to rain, thus protecting the manufacturers from complaints lodged by anyone other than an astrologer with his eye in. Sprinkle these on the grass, watch them blow onto the roses, dig up and burn the roses, wait two days for the grass to be eaten away, dig over, pave, and sell the mower back. You can, of course, avoid this costly process by using lawn sand, a preparation used by experts wishing to turn lawn into sand, and there is much to be said for having a nice stretch of beach between your fences: put up an umbrella, a couple of deckchairs, and an electric fire on a long lead, and you could be in Baffin Land.