Cabinet of Curiosities

Tags

cabinet of curiosities, Calypso Carol, Carmen, Daily Mail, Easter Island, Financial Times, Hawaiian shirt, huzun, Istanbul, Moai, Monteverdi, Nobel Prize, Orhan Pamuk, oxymoron, Panama hat, Rolls Royce, Royal Yacht, Simon Schama, Singer sewing machine, The Longs Arms, Weekend Magazine

I always feel guilty when I destroy the barista’s carefully created fern on the

top of my coffee, but, then, one has to drink the frothy arrangement.

Goodness knows, one has paid enough for it, especially at Costamuchamoulah

must-seen cafe.   At least The Financial Times Weekend magazine can be

appropriated from the public wall rack, to compensate.  The Yummies always

go for The Daily Mail, I find.

Oh, the ecstasy of finding Simon Schama and Orhan Pamuk in the same article.

I loved the novel Istanbul and was fascinated by the concept of huzun, a state

of collective memory.

Pamuk has gathered a series of objects which he stores and displays in

cabinets and these items resonate with memory traces of significant moments

in his characters’ lives.  Once these memories are categorised, they can be

stored and owned.

I wondered if I could rent or purchase a building in Suttonford where I could

collect objects connected with the narrative of my characters’ lives?

Re-winding some of my posts, I could imagine the first vitrines exhibiting a

crystal ball which belonged to Sonia, the medium who lives in Royalist House.

An empty bottle of Dewlap’s Gin for the Discerning Grandmother would

represent Sonia’s neighbour, Ginevra.  The latter’s e-novel based on a meeting

of geriatric hearts and minds could be referred to by a mobility scooter, which,

of course, would take up a large glass box on its own- something like the one

which protected HM’s Rolls Royce on The Royal Yacht, Britannia.

Doomed romance would be conveyed by the original Valentine, complete with

its proposal of marriage (never received) which the youthful Augustus

Snodbury slid under the nubile lax mistress, Diana Fotheringay’s door all those

troubled years ago.  The diamond ring which fell down the cracks in the

floorboards at The Longs Arms, but which was recovered, though not without

embarrassment, would also speak volumes to the tender-hearted.

Perhaps there could be an unmade bed which still belongs to Tiger-Lily and a

string of knitted women bishops which was removed from the cathedral

railings in Wintoncester, having been yarn-bombed there by Juniper, the

increasingly famous, gender-fluid, street graffiti artist.

The town’s canine lovers might donate a diamante pug collar belonging to

Pooh-Bah and the ever-present risk of animal vandalism might be portrayed

by the photograph of the priceless Pre-Moai figure from Easter Island, which

Andy, the Border Terrier so thoroughly digested.

Academic life could be shown by the Hawaiian shirt which one of the

Willoughby twins wore when he played the solo marimba in The Calypso Carol

at the end of term concert at St Birinus, and which provoked a caution

regarding the upholding of school rules regarding uniform.

Staying on a musical theme, the programme notes for the Monteverdi concert

in Bath which so riveted Drusilla, Diana and Gus would be interesting to study

in future years, as the cast list so clearly displayed Geoffrey Poskett and Nigel

Milford- Haven, of whom much more has to be said in future posts.

Snod’s battered Panama hat, which he sat on inadvertently at the

aforementioned concert and which Nigel effectively ruined by wearing it

when painting his mother’s bathroom ceiling, should be juxtaposed to set

up a dialogue with the alternative headgear which Nigel’s mother fished out

of her black sack and gave to him to wear to the opera, Carmen.  Placed side

by side, the museum-goer should be able to detect that this hat which Nigel,

or Caligula as he is affectionately called by the children in his care, is going to

return duplicitously to his older colleague in lieu of the original- oh, drat, I’ve

given away the plot..- will be seen to be a size seven and a quarter, and not

the seven and three quarters which Snod has always sported on his rather

large dome of a head.

History, and family history at that, will be brought to life by the inclusion of a

Singer sewing machine which belonged to Jean Waddell, Carrie’s maternal

grandmother.

I am excited by the prospect of making the intangible tangible.  Oxymoron

creates such dynamic tension!

Thank you for the idea, Orhan.  I won’t expect a Nobel Prize for it as it would

be akin to plagiarism, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

(To understand the exophoric references and intertextuality of this entry,

please refer to previous posts!)

If The Hat Fits

Tags

Augustus Snodbury, avocado bathroom suite, Bradford on Avon, Carmen, Drusilla, Katherine Jenkins, Kathleen Ferrier, Monteverdi, Nigel, Panama, papier mache, Shanks, Sully sur Loire, Toreador song, UVA, UVB

Nigel Milford-Haven sighed as he painted the bathroom ceiling of his mother’s

Cornish bungalow.  He supposed that White With a Hint of Asparagus

complemented her Seventies avocado bath ensemble. Probably retro lovers

would die for a suite like that, but he preferred a clean white Shanks.

Sweat was dripping into his eyes as he used the roller, so he had utilised

the battered Panama which Augustus Snodbury had carelessly left behind

at the seemingly interminable Monteverdi concert he had attended the

previous week.

Nigel intended to produce it with a flourish to the ageing schoolmaster on

their return to St Birinus Middle School at the start of term, but now he had

managed to decorate it with a few paint drips and he wasn’t sure whether

turps would remove them, or would turn the whole item of headgear into a

sort of mushy papier mache mould, redolent of some rare rainforest bird’s

nest.

His wretched mother came in from time to time to inspect the progress.  She

gave him a running commentary on how well other members of their family

were doing and subjected him to lengthy panegyrics concerning the academic

success of his nieces and nephews.  He counted the seconds until she would

commence on her eternal theme as to why he did not have a girlfriend.

This focussed his thoughts on Drusilla.  He wondered if she was

experiencing a similar trial, in that she had been burdened with two parents

this summer.  Would Snod still be hanging around, or would he have moved

on? Not in any transcendental fashion, he corrected himself.  For indeed, Mr

Augustus Snodbury had never been concerned by the vagaries of style and

la mode.  Some men would sport a Panama with a degree of loucheness,

affecting the pose of a lounge lizard who finds himself inadvertently thrust

like a mad dog into the midday sun. But Gus merely donned his particular

straw hat as a shade against contracting any of these nasty scabs which

seemed to irritate his pate and which his GP said were caused by too much

exposure to UVB rays- or was it UVA?  In any case, he wasn’t taking the risk.

Nigel climbed down the ladder, anticipating a cup of tea.  As he stepped off the

final rung, he noticed that the post had arrived and stooped to pick up one or

two letters-mostly junk mail.  To his surprise, he recognised the handwriting of

the school secretary, who had re-directed a postcard which had been

addressed to him. His heart leapt when he saw that it was from Drusilla.  It

featured a chateau- Sully-sur-Loire- and in French was printed the phrase:

Jumelee Avec Bradford-on-Avon, which might explain why they were there.

Dear Nigel,

Having a wonderful time and the parents both in good form.  Something to do

with the house wines?!

Unfortunately Daddy- (!)-has had some sort of sunstroke, so wondered if you

could retrieve his favourite hat and bring it back to school?  He was so

absorbed in the lovely music that he left it on his seat at the interval and,

as you know, we had to rush off as we had left something in the oven.

Thank you so much,

Drusilla Fotheringay.

Hmm, analysed Nigel.  No ‘wish you were here’.

Then he took off the hat and panicked.  How could he return it in that state?

I told you to wear my shower cap, Nige.  Oh, who sent you the postcard?

I do hope it is from a girlfriend..and his mother handed him a china mug, while

simultaneously inspecting his day’s oeuvre.

I doubt it, said Nigel ruefully.  How all things do conspire against me.

Nonsense, retorted his mother.  It’s just a matter of making a bit more effort.

That’s what your school reports always used to say, didn’t they? You just

need to get out and about a bit more.  I’ve got us two tickets for that opera

you were banging on about.  You might meet a nice girl like that Katherine

Jenkins there.

What-Carmen? Nigel was really surprised.  But I’ve got nothing to wear!

He wasn’t entirely sure that Katherine Jenkins was all that his mother

supposed.  Sometimes the mater was not such a good judge of character

as she thought.  Probably she was getting the singer mixed up with

Kathleen Ferrier. More her era.

As to character analysis, Snod usually nailed a miscreant in one damning

report.

Nigel tried to rein in his wandering thoughts.

You can wear your father’s linen jacket.  It was a bit crumpled when you

brought it down from the attic in that old suitcase I asked you to carry, but I

ironed it and the smell of mothballs is not too bad now that I’ve aired it. You

can throw that old thing out, she said, snatching the flattened mess on his

head and putting it in the kitchen bin.  Dismissing his protestation, as if it

was an irritating boy who had finished a rather late detention, she added:

There’s a practically unused hat of your father’s, identical to that one, in the

black sack.  I was going to give it to the charity shop, but you might as well

have it.

And no one was more surprised than Mrs Milford-Haven when her somewhat

reserved son hugged her and danced her round the ladder, humming the

Toreador song.

 

Close, But No Cigar

Tags

Carmen, castanets, cigar coffin, Cretan gift, Culebras, cummerbund, Habanos, humidor, lector, Mantilla, matadors, Mulatto, Placido Domingo, Port Isaac, Royal Mail, Special Delivery, Spotted Dick, St Endellion, toreador

Nigel Milford-Haven, Junior Master at St Birinus Middle School, was enduring

the purgatory of his quarterly visit to his mother in Cornwall.  The harmony of

the previous week, when he had taken part in musical workshops in Bath,

had been transposed into all-too-familiar familial discord within a few

hours.

Geoffrey Poskett, Choirmaster, was enjoying full participation in the St

Endellion Music Festival.  He had been very keen to take part in its current

opera: Carmen, ever since he had read that the plot was set in a cigar

factory.

Once a sycophantic and subsequently threatening parent had been

insistent that his son should have the solo in the Wind Band concert

and had successfully bribed the Choirmaster with a humidor of plaited

cigars, of the genus Culebras, individual examples of which resemble

a naked woman whose arms are entwined above her head.

Apparently the flexible form of these cigars meant that they would not

snap when carried in the breast pocket of a worker who had to continually

bend, presumably to pack cases of Cuban Habanos.  The cigars’ suppleness

came from the oiliness of having been rolled on the inner thigh of a Mulatto

maiden, or so it was alleged, by Augustus Snodbury, who took ownership of

this Cretan gift, as he termed it, almost as soon as Geoffrey had deposited the

wooden box of goodies in Snod’s pigeon hole.

Geoffrey had reacted fairly positively to this bribe, but his motivation in obliging

the belligerent barrister was influenced by a somewhat sinister implication

in the fact that the curved smokers’ delights came in a container which was

technically termed a coffin.  He worried that if he did not give full parental

satisfaction in the matter of promoting this tone deaf and arrythmic child, then

he might have the disturbing experience of having the legs of his beloved

Steinway collapse during Assembly, having been sawn through, thus sabotaging

his lively rendition of Stand Up, Stand Up For Jesus.  After the gift

would come the threat and after the threat, extermination.

No matter that Geoffrey was a non-smoker. He would give Old Snod a

treat, just prior to the End-of-Term report readings.  By dint of this

generosity, Geoffrey hoped that he would not be hauled over the coals

re/orthography, in quite so thorough a manner, by the ancient, proof-

reading pedant.

Geoffrey had auditioned for the minor operatic role of factory lector, or

reader, and had been successful, mainly owing to his magisterial  in the

Classical sense, credentials, rather than to any vocal skills.  He had

accepted that a role as toreador was unlikely, given his expanding

waistline.  Even a cummerbund had not disguised the physical consequences of

his termly addiction to nursery fare and to Spotted Dick in particular.

Now he was desperately writing to his aunt who wintered in Benidorm every

year, as there had been a run on castanets in Port Isaac gift shops.  The

lacquered percussion instruments were as rare as Spanish mortgage payments.

Surely his aunt still had a pair of the aforementioned clackers hanging up in the

dining room, beside the Flamenco doll with the nylon lace ruffles and mantilla,

who faced down a moth-eaten, gored bull with the haughty expression Aunt

Margaret had directed towards her now mercifully deceased spouse.

Placido Domingo would have had to change his name and character to have

survived the basilisk glare from Aunt Margaret’s Spanish eyes, which had

mutilated more than a few matadors, leaving her triumphantly elevating

ears and tails, metaphorically speaking.

So, Geoffrey was relying on The Royal Mail, or whatever it called itself

nowadays, to come up with the necessary stage props for his committed

performance.  He hoped Aunt Margaret would spend the extra postage

compensation he had sent her, to ensure Special Delivery of the coveted

item.

It was a pity that his musical talents had not been recognised.  However,

perhaps he was lowering himself after his immersion in Monteverdi

the previous week.  This was purely for fun and even Bizet had stated that

they asked for ordure and they have got it.

It was a pity that his friend and colleague, Nigel, had had to respond to the

maternal summons and had been denied the opportunity to wallow in the

musical mire with him. He missed his company and thought of him with

empathy every time they rehearsed Parle-moi de Ma Mere.

However, it would have choked him if his companion had stolen a more central

stage role than himself, purely on the strength of his narrower waistline.

He also hoped that Nigel was not going to come between him and that rather

interesting female teacher from St Vitus’ that he had spotted at the

Monteverdi concert.  This had been a rare occasion when he had thought that

there might be the possibility of compatibility between himself and a member

of the opposite sex.

Nigel had better back off, or he, Geoffrey Poskett, would see to it that Nigel’s

school bed was made up in apple-pie order for the whole of the Autumn term.

If he didn’t take the hint, it would be drawn conductors’ batons before dawn.