'Piglet?'
'Hmm?'
'What's that in your pocket?'
'Ah, it's a magazine--'
'Oh, not all that fashion again. How are we meant to be chivvying sartorially clueless Bretons now?'
'No, it's the Times Literary Supplement. Owl lent it to me.'
'And what might that be?'
'Owl says it's a Word Fancier's Guide to the latest Big Boys' and Big Girls' Hums.'
'Ah…fun for all the family.'
'Um, or perhaps none of same, if the letters page is anything to go by.'
'Oh, dear. Hum-factioning, eh?'
'Well, there's one here that Mr Dude, I think, would call a doozy. Typical of the species, Owl says.'
'What is it?'
'Hold on…ah, yes…"While one welcomes, with grace though not a little caution, the new edition of the poems of Thomas Cobley, Peasant-Farrier of Widdicombe, handsomely illustrated by J Stewer, lovingly though not faultlessly annotated by Pieter Gurney the Younger and with a detailed though by no means exhaustive introduction by Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon (of the Berkshire Contractions) and Harold Hawk, one must perforce tread tres doucement in the matter, endlessly absorbing but at the same time endlessly vexed, of garland bestowal. Neither Stewer nor Gurney nor Davy nor Whiddon nor Hawk acknowledges the, to one's mind, definitive Variorum Cobley, edited with a scholar's eye and a poet's heart by Thomas Pearce in the dark days when one could not obtain a decanter, a goblet or the merest whiff of Founder's Port in the College of which one was which one was which one and which (for one) remains, to one's mind, the final word, if that word 'word' does not seem too blunt a word for words, a shooting star, a wondrous flash of streaky beacon, in the world (congested, contested, at times from all sense wrested) of Cobley studies. Might one add a personal note here…".'
'Well, go on, Piglet. What's the personal note?'
'It ends there.'
'There? Where's he, she or it gone, then?'
'A and E, I should think.'
'Hmm?'
'What's that in your pocket?'
'Ah, it's a magazine--'
'Oh, not all that fashion again. How are we meant to be chivvying sartorially clueless Bretons now?'
'No, it's the Times Literary Supplement. Owl lent it to me.'
'And what might that be?'
'Owl says it's a Word Fancier's Guide to the latest Big Boys' and Big Girls' Hums.'
'Ah…fun for all the family.'
'Um, or perhaps none of same, if the letters page is anything to go by.'
'Oh, dear. Hum-factioning, eh?'
'Well, there's one here that Mr Dude, I think, would call a doozy. Typical of the species, Owl says.'
'What is it?'
'Hold on…ah, yes…"While one welcomes, with grace though not a little caution, the new edition of the poems of Thomas Cobley, Peasant-Farrier of Widdicombe, handsomely illustrated by J Stewer, lovingly though not faultlessly annotated by Pieter Gurney the Younger and with a detailed though by no means exhaustive introduction by Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon (of the Berkshire Contractions) and Harold Hawk, one must perforce tread tres doucement in the matter, endlessly absorbing but at the same time endlessly vexed, of garland bestowal. Neither Stewer nor Gurney nor Davy nor Whiddon nor Hawk acknowledges the, to one's mind, definitive Variorum Cobley, edited with a scholar's eye and a poet's heart by Thomas Pearce in the dark days when one could not obtain a decanter, a goblet or the merest whiff of Founder's Port in the College of which one was which one was which one and which (for one) remains, to one's mind, the final word, if that word 'word' does not seem too blunt a word for words, a shooting star, a wondrous flash of streaky beacon, in the world (congested, contested, at times from all sense wrested) of Cobley studies. Might one add a personal note here…".'
'Well, go on, Piglet. What's the personal note?'
'It ends there.'
'There? Where's he, she or it gone, then?'
'A and E, I should think.'
love this :)
ReplyDeleteThank you, Carol. For every thoughtful voice in the literary world, there's a dozen like this. Best wishes.
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