Michael Praetorius ✒ with the sixth act in his satirical series.

Revelation No. 9

The sea was like a sheet of glass at Benderg this morning. Everything still. Sitting there, without a sound, alone in what appears to be a vast peaceful cosmos, I am, of course, still at two with nature. Brazenly, I contemplate the big questions:

why are we here ... ? Nobody knows;

how should we live ... ? Nobody knows;

why is there something rather than nothing ... ? Nobody knows;

what is 'reality' ... ? Nobody knows;

is our universe 'real' ... ? Nobody knows;

do we have free will ... ? Nobody knows;

is there life after death ...? Nobody knows;

can we really experience anything objectively ... ? Nobody knows;

what is the best 'moral' system ... ? Nobody knows;

what are numbers ... ? Nobody knows;

does God exist ... ? No; don't be daft.

Job done, I then call to Miss Lotte Lenya, go back home, and give her breakfast.

Consanguinity: the Kilclief model; an evolutionary anthropological perspective

1) We move to Amityville

One day, long ago, Donnelly snuck his acoustic guitar into St Colman's. We had a couple of free periods and were in the library. I was attempting Bob Dylan's take on Bukka White's Fixin' To Die, when Father Reid walked in.

Praetorius, he proclaimed, that racket is an abomination, a heinous assault on the ears.

And he sent Donnelly and I to the Dean's Office, where we both got six of the best.

Well, he's probably dead now, so it's a bit late, but here's a kick in the goolies for Reid and all the other naysayers and begrudgers who have perennially rubbished my ... er ... plinking and plonking, and ridiculed my chances of making the big time.

First there was Magherafelt. If you've been reading this column, you'll know that gig was rudely interrupted by a manic street preacher, and culminated in an indecorous public commotion. Nevertheless, it marked the start of something great.

For lo and behold, word gets around, and the only way is up ... I have just been booked to play at the big Family Fun Day in Kilclief ... !! Could be 30 or 40 people there.

On signing up, I immediately told the organiser that I'd like to donate my fee back to the organisers, the Harmony Community Trust.

Well, you could if there was a fee, she replied, but there isn't.

No expenses either, she added.

2) The horror

Tragically, my gig as musicianor at the big Fun Day in Kilclief has been scuttled. After a recent ruckus, I got a note from somebody saying, Toe the line or blow. And that was all she wrote.

Given half a chance, I'd have grabbed a handle off the top to score a bit of the old Lido Shuffle. But then I thought of Miss Lotte Lenya. The whole thing had kicked off because I’d been walking her in the surrounding fields, as dog walkers do. But, according to Kilclief ruling clan's Warrior Queen, Ginny O’ Fafia, Lotte’s shite.

So instead, I quoted a chunk of T S Eliot's The Hollow Men on a Facebook Stoic group of which I'm a member, claiming I'd written it myself. Then I attributed a snatch of Bob Dylan lyric to Oscar Wilde. Not one person called me out or corrected me for either faux pas. Rather, they went on quoting Marcus Aurelius to corroborate their posts of greeting-card-level profundity. What on earth do they teach them in school nowadays ... ?!? 

[The Kilclief O’Fafia mafia are an interesting study in what Elvis called Kissing Cousins, insofar as they’re living proof that keeping it in the family won’t engender an Earl Scruggs, but, instead, just a rain parade of warped, sly, vacant dullards. And, as with rats and insects, their sheer numbers trump wit ... ]

3) Transportation

When I was being given the bum's rush out of Kilclief the other day, by local ruling clan the O'Fafia mafia, a rainbow appeared. I got out of the car to admire it, but the head of the clan saw me and shouted, Keep goin’, yuh filthy tramp, we don't want stinkin' Gypsies 'round here ... !

She would have said more, but was already late for Mass.

Humbled, I jumped back in the car and left. But when I arrived back home in Armagh a rainbow appeared too ... !

Now for the spooky bit. I leapt out to have a good look. And, lo and behold, it was unmistakably the very same rainbow I had seen two hours previously when being kicked out of Kilclief ... ! These are the days of miracles and rainbows ...

Still in the game

Way back when I began cycling, it was just for fitness. Head down, same route, same distance, every time. Boring. Boys, was I missing out ... !

This morning I whizzed down the Shore Road. What a day to be alive and out on the road. Sky of blue, sea of green, I sang, God bless me, but not the late Queen ...

Because now I use these spins not for exercise, but to meet random chicks along the way ... ! And for that reason, I always carry 5 or 6 condoms in my little saddle bag.

Person of colour ballad

Shocking news here. My application to join the Armagh County Gentleman's Club has been declined. I had thought my election was a formality for the simple reason that I meet, and exceed even, what I assume to be the quintessential membership criterion.

Which is: I have nothing but supreme contempt for the common man of today - a moronic rabble of gum-chewing, unread, uninformed, celebrity-worshipping, idolatrous, sponging, tasteless, phone-wielding, porn-addicted, workshy, whinging, loud, bumptious, drunken, loutish, bearded, baseball-cap wearing, gormless self-abusers.

An explanation for my blackballing has not been given. I can't help but wonder if Jean, because she is a Protestant, slipped a heads-up to the Honorary Secretary that I am, though lapsed, a Taig. There may be sectarians there for all I know. If so, I was willing to overlook their need for a German Royal Family, and their heathen, sinfully misguided attachment to that odorous Protestant religion. But, as they wish ...

Bringing it all back home

Saturday last I was talking to two women, on holiday here, from Pennsylvania.

What kind of music is that you're playing? one asked, quite genuinely.

Well, you should know ... ! I replied.

Which she didn't. As I rhymed off the names of my heroes, neither woman gave any sign of ever having heard of them.

Goodness, I said, if I lived in the United States I'd make a pilgrimage every year to the grave of John Hurt in Avalon, Mississippi to pay homage to my main man ...

Some confusion occurred at this point as they mixed up the doyen of Piedmont style picking with that guy who had the baby monster in Alien. I explained.

Oh, we've never been down to the South, said one of them.

What about Chicago, I asked, to check out the joints where king of the red hot slide guitar Mr Elmore James used to blast it out ... ?

No, they replied.

In one sense I'm envious: I mean, if only I could live in Ireland and never hear Christy Moore, Mary Black, Sharon bloody Shannon, and the rest of that dreary, wet rag, music mafia ...

Just like Tom Thumb’s blues

As if it's not bad enough that Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg and Gotha is now on the wrong side of the grass, eh ... ? Even more tragically though, today I was kicked out of my favourite Facebook group - Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kafka, Existentialism, and Absurdism. [You'll notice I used the Oxford comma there, Therese Coffey.]

Look at the name of that group again. It has everything you need for a mature, sensible take on human existence. Kierkegaard, a basket case besotted with anxiety and despair; Dostoevsky, riddled with religious angst, and terribly afraid there may not be any real way to ultimately recompense the suffering of mankind; Nietzsche, the fruitcake Superman who understood that no absolute values exist, but lived with his mammy anyway; Kafka, continually tormented between the castle up above and the powers below, torn between hope and doubt; Existentialism and Absurdism, not only is everything desperately senseless and empty, but it's ludicrous as well.

Wow! What's not to like in all that ... ? Compelling reasons to get out of bed in the morning, knacker yourself trying to be something or somebody, all the while knowing that, for all the difference that'll make, you might as well have stayed in bed being pretty vacant.

Anyway, why did they blackball me ... ? Merely because I pointed out to some little woke freak that, while J K Rowling and Germaine Greer are women, Castor Semenya and Emily Bridges are men.

So the championess of diversity, who knows that free speech comes with a responsibility to toe her line, reported me to the Admins. The axe just fell.

A consolation though. Managed to get one last piece posted on the site. A perfect synthesis and elucidation (even if I say so myself) of the thinking behind above philosophers and their philosophies. In a poem. I said it was written by Aldous Huxley. Nobody challenged me on that either.


I'm beautiful, you're too beautiful,

and we can't get over it.

My my, I'm beautiful, you're so beautiful,

and we can't get over it.

I'm going down, all going down;

dragging you down, can't get over it.


Cut off my nose to spite my face,

sell my soul to buy me grace.

Or should I laugh or should I cry?

Or shall I part my hair behind?

Or should I laugh or should I cry,

as I become all I despise?


Got to get ahead, got to get ahead;

couldn't get ahead, couldn't get over it.


Call me Mr Malcontent ...


I live with a Protestant

Jean went to London. Camped out in a little solo pop-up tent, somewhere near Lambeth Bridge. She had a yellow wristband, so didn’t lose her place in the queue if caught short by a mad rush for the bogs.

She was furious when I said I couldn't travel across with her.

You are such a bloody Fenian! she snapped.

I tried to explain.

That has nothing to do with it, I said, you know as well as I do we can't get RTÉ Player, and that the Fair City Omnibus is on RTÉ1 every Saturday morning, so I simply daren't miss it.

Once a bigot, always a bigot! Jean said.

On another occasion, I chanced to remark, D H Lawrence was quite correct.

What ... to write dirty books? she replied.

To be fair, that's the kind of lowbrow response I've come to expect from her. Protestants are, after all, genetically predisposed to be unread Philistines, just as the GAA crowd are, inevitably, unreconstructable bogtrotting culchies.

No, I'd been alluding to Lawrence's remark that even though people have more and more now, they no longer know how to feel alive in their lives. My point being that he actually stole the idea from me. All my life, if ever asked where I live, I've always replied, I live here, but I don't really live anywhere.

Deep.

He was dead before you were born, said Jean.

That's not the point, I said.

The Queen: my part in her rehabilitation after Martin McGuinness allowed her to shake his hand

In my life - career, entertaining, and charity work - I was privileged not to meet the Queen on many occasions, and always found her to be the gracious epitome of someone I wouldn't have wanted to meet anyway, since the notion, so beloved of her proud 'subjects', that an accident of birth confers an innate superiority on someone, is strictly for the ninnyhammer forelock-tuggers and brown-nosers.

Nevertheless, her path and mine crossed a few times, with seismic consequences. Most notably when I was offered a 'gong'. Not many people remember this, but as a librarian I disseminated a lot of information. In fact, twice running, I ended up at no. 1 in the UK Librarys' Bulk Disseminator of Information of the Year chart. And that's a dump truck load of data distribution by anyone's standards.

Anyway, the Boss calls me in one day.

Stop dispersing facts for a minute there, Michael, he says, and listen to this. The Palace wants to give you an MBE ... ! Services to Information Dissemination ...

Well, you could have knocked me over with a copy of Walford and Winchell's Bibliography of Bibliographies ... !

But I told him it just wasn't on, and admitted that my preference would be that all Royalists, as they used to say during the French Revolution, should be invited to put their heads out of the Republican window.

And anyway, I added, MBEs are for proles. I'd have needed a Knighthood at least ...

I was joking, like, but wouldn't you know, a couple of days later he interrupted my diffusion of knowledge again.

They've upped it to a Peerage ... ! he said ... Phil the Greek's buzzword around the Palace this year is 'communication', and he's heard you're the big knob in that department. Plus, they'll throw in a ton of bits and bobs, like jam and so on, from the Duchy of Cornwall, lifetime supply. It's first rate stuff, apparently ...

I'd tried the marmalade. Tasty, but overpriced.

It'd be grand publicity for us too, the Boss said, Michael Praetorius, Lord of the Low-down. Could help make libraries seem a bit less spinster-with-a-bun-type places ... Think it over, while you're dissipating the word to our punters ...

Anthony Blunt (not yet unmasked as a Soviet spy) was Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures and Curator of the Royal Libraries at that time. She asked him to talk me round, librarian to librarian, like. He telephoned one evening, and, true to form, never mentioned libraries or gongs, but instead made a pretty good case for believing that we'll only be truly free when the last king is strangled by the entrails of the last priest.

I signed up, became a poputchik (fellow traveller) overnight, and soon the Ivans had an inside track on the Dewey Decimal Classification System, Library of Congress Classification, and Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. At last Soviet libraries knew in what order to shelve books so as they might be found again, and soon there were as many queues outside libraries as at supermarkets, hospitals, sweet shops, schools, lavatories, and so on. Putin's doing the same right now to restructure libraries in occupied Ukraine, so it's not all bad news from that quarter, by any means.

Blunt, like his chum, Kim Philby - then safely holed up in a lavish, tiny, unheated bedsit in Moscow - was keen on marmalade. He gave me a heads-up that night about a new variation on an old theme. A Pinko pal on the shop floor at Frank Cooper's in Oxford had let slip the news that they were about to target the hard-core marmalade zombies with a new extra Coarse Cut version of their Vintage brand.

So, says the Boss a few days later, what do I tell the Palace ... ?

Can't afford to do it, Boss, I told him. He was shocked, angry.

I tried to explain. Man of principle, me. Uncle Joe maybe a trifle vindictive. But Khrushchev a decent spud. Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, first woman in space. Women’s lib. Meanwhile, Robert Emmet; heart in the right place, but fail to prepare, prepare to fail. And ok, Padraig Pearse, bit of a mental defective, but James Connolly, a top man, genuinely worthy of a seat in the Lords, even though he'd have quite happily blown the bloody place up.

You're a Red, he gasped, wrapped in the Green Flag ... !
 
I was toast.

The blows fell in quick succession. Only 52, but enforced early retirement, generous lump sum, adequate pension. Cushy number, actually.

So I owe Brenda and Phil the Greek big time.

And that Extra Coarse Cut ... ? The best.

It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry

We went to the QFT by train. On the platform at Portadown I said to Jean,

We should go right to the front of the train for seats ... that way when we leave Gt Victoria Street we'll actually be at the back of the train, which is perfect for Botanic Station since the exit there is exactly where the rear of the train stops.

Ok, she said.

As we were boarding at platform 3 the Dublin Enterprise express pulled in at platform 1.

Did you notice, I asked Jean, the Enterprise had nine coaches there rather than the usual eight?

No, she said.

Anyway, I said as we left Portadown, remember that it's Sunday, so don't be surprised when we pull in at platform 3 in Gt Victoria Street, rather than platform 4, which is where Bangor bound trains usually halt.

I won't be, she said.

That's because, I added, there are fewer trains on Sunday so Bangor bound ones can use 3 but during the week and on Saturdays it's reserved for Portadown and Newry bound trains, and the slightly shorter platform 4 is brought into service for Bangor traffic.

Ok, she said.

And naturally, I said, on the way home we'll board right at the back in Botanic and so be at the front when we leave Gt Victoria Street, which will mean we'll get off right beside the exit in Portadown.

Naturally, said Jean.

Michael Praetorius spent his working life in education and libraries. Now retired, he does a little busking in Belfast . . . when he can get a pitch. He is TPQ's fortnightly Wednesday columnist.

Joy And Fun Are Fucking Killing Me ✑ Act Ⅵ

Michael Praetorius ✒ with the sixth act in his satirical series.

Revelation No. 9

The sea was like a sheet of glass at Benderg this morning. Everything still. Sitting there, without a sound, alone in what appears to be a vast peaceful cosmos, I am, of course, still at two with nature. Brazenly, I contemplate the big questions:

why are we here ... ? Nobody knows;

how should we live ... ? Nobody knows;

why is there something rather than nothing ... ? Nobody knows;

what is 'reality' ... ? Nobody knows;

is our universe 'real' ... ? Nobody knows;

do we have free will ... ? Nobody knows;

is there life after death ...? Nobody knows;

can we really experience anything objectively ... ? Nobody knows;

what is the best 'moral' system ... ? Nobody knows;

what are numbers ... ? Nobody knows;

does God exist ... ? No; don't be daft.

Job done, I then call to Miss Lotte Lenya, go back home, and give her breakfast.

Consanguinity: the Kilclief model; an evolutionary anthropological perspective

1) We move to Amityville

One day, long ago, Donnelly snuck his acoustic guitar into St Colman's. We had a couple of free periods and were in the library. I was attempting Bob Dylan's take on Bukka White's Fixin' To Die, when Father Reid walked in.

Praetorius, he proclaimed, that racket is an abomination, a heinous assault on the ears.

And he sent Donnelly and I to the Dean's Office, where we both got six of the best.

Well, he's probably dead now, so it's a bit late, but here's a kick in the goolies for Reid and all the other naysayers and begrudgers who have perennially rubbished my ... er ... plinking and plonking, and ridiculed my chances of making the big time.

First there was Magherafelt. If you've been reading this column, you'll know that gig was rudely interrupted by a manic street preacher, and culminated in an indecorous public commotion. Nevertheless, it marked the start of something great.

For lo and behold, word gets around, and the only way is up ... I have just been booked to play at the big Family Fun Day in Kilclief ... !! Could be 30 or 40 people there.

On signing up, I immediately told the organiser that I'd like to donate my fee back to the organisers, the Harmony Community Trust.

Well, you could if there was a fee, she replied, but there isn't.

No expenses either, she added.

2) The horror

Tragically, my gig as musicianor at the big Fun Day in Kilclief has been scuttled. After a recent ruckus, I got a note from somebody saying, Toe the line or blow. And that was all she wrote.

Given half a chance, I'd have grabbed a handle off the top to score a bit of the old Lido Shuffle. But then I thought of Miss Lotte Lenya. The whole thing had kicked off because I’d been walking her in the surrounding fields, as dog walkers do. But, according to Kilclief ruling clan's Warrior Queen, Ginny O’ Fafia, Lotte’s shite.

So instead, I quoted a chunk of T S Eliot's The Hollow Men on a Facebook Stoic group of which I'm a member, claiming I'd written it myself. Then I attributed a snatch of Bob Dylan lyric to Oscar Wilde. Not one person called me out or corrected me for either faux pas. Rather, they went on quoting Marcus Aurelius to corroborate their posts of greeting-card-level profundity. What on earth do they teach them in school nowadays ... ?!? 

[The Kilclief O’Fafia mafia are an interesting study in what Elvis called Kissing Cousins, insofar as they’re living proof that keeping it in the family won’t engender an Earl Scruggs, but, instead, just a rain parade of warped, sly, vacant dullards. And, as with rats and insects, their sheer numbers trump wit ... ]

3) Transportation

When I was being given the bum's rush out of Kilclief the other day, by local ruling clan the O'Fafia mafia, a rainbow appeared. I got out of the car to admire it, but the head of the clan saw me and shouted, Keep goin’, yuh filthy tramp, we don't want stinkin' Gypsies 'round here ... !

She would have said more, but was already late for Mass.

Humbled, I jumped back in the car and left. But when I arrived back home in Armagh a rainbow appeared too ... !

Now for the spooky bit. I leapt out to have a good look. And, lo and behold, it was unmistakably the very same rainbow I had seen two hours previously when being kicked out of Kilclief ... ! These are the days of miracles and rainbows ...

Still in the game

Way back when I began cycling, it was just for fitness. Head down, same route, same distance, every time. Boring. Boys, was I missing out ... !

This morning I whizzed down the Shore Road. What a day to be alive and out on the road. Sky of blue, sea of green, I sang, God bless me, but not the late Queen ...

Because now I use these spins not for exercise, but to meet random chicks along the way ... ! And for that reason, I always carry 5 or 6 condoms in my little saddle bag.

Person of colour ballad

Shocking news here. My application to join the Armagh County Gentleman's Club has been declined. I had thought my election was a formality for the simple reason that I meet, and exceed even, what I assume to be the quintessential membership criterion.

Which is: I have nothing but supreme contempt for the common man of today - a moronic rabble of gum-chewing, unread, uninformed, celebrity-worshipping, idolatrous, sponging, tasteless, phone-wielding, porn-addicted, workshy, whinging, loud, bumptious, drunken, loutish, bearded, baseball-cap wearing, gormless self-abusers.

An explanation for my blackballing has not been given. I can't help but wonder if Jean, because she is a Protestant, slipped a heads-up to the Honorary Secretary that I am, though lapsed, a Taig. There may be sectarians there for all I know. If so, I was willing to overlook their need for a German Royal Family, and their heathen, sinfully misguided attachment to that odorous Protestant religion. But, as they wish ...

Bringing it all back home

Saturday last I was talking to two women, on holiday here, from Pennsylvania.

What kind of music is that you're playing? one asked, quite genuinely.

Well, you should know ... ! I replied.

Which she didn't. As I rhymed off the names of my heroes, neither woman gave any sign of ever having heard of them.

Goodness, I said, if I lived in the United States I'd make a pilgrimage every year to the grave of John Hurt in Avalon, Mississippi to pay homage to my main man ...

Some confusion occurred at this point as they mixed up the doyen of Piedmont style picking with that guy who had the baby monster in Alien. I explained.

Oh, we've never been down to the South, said one of them.

What about Chicago, I asked, to check out the joints where king of the red hot slide guitar Mr Elmore James used to blast it out ... ?

No, they replied.

In one sense I'm envious: I mean, if only I could live in Ireland and never hear Christy Moore, Mary Black, Sharon bloody Shannon, and the rest of that dreary, wet rag, music mafia ...

Just like Tom Thumb’s blues

As if it's not bad enough that Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg and Gotha is now on the wrong side of the grass, eh ... ? Even more tragically though, today I was kicked out of my favourite Facebook group - Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kafka, Existentialism, and Absurdism. [You'll notice I used the Oxford comma there, Therese Coffey.]

Look at the name of that group again. It has everything you need for a mature, sensible take on human existence. Kierkegaard, a basket case besotted with anxiety and despair; Dostoevsky, riddled with religious angst, and terribly afraid there may not be any real way to ultimately recompense the suffering of mankind; Nietzsche, the fruitcake Superman who understood that no absolute values exist, but lived with his mammy anyway; Kafka, continually tormented between the castle up above and the powers below, torn between hope and doubt; Existentialism and Absurdism, not only is everything desperately senseless and empty, but it's ludicrous as well.

Wow! What's not to like in all that ... ? Compelling reasons to get out of bed in the morning, knacker yourself trying to be something or somebody, all the while knowing that, for all the difference that'll make, you might as well have stayed in bed being pretty vacant.

Anyway, why did they blackball me ... ? Merely because I pointed out to some little woke freak that, while J K Rowling and Germaine Greer are women, Castor Semenya and Emily Bridges are men.

So the championess of diversity, who knows that free speech comes with a responsibility to toe her line, reported me to the Admins. The axe just fell.

A consolation though. Managed to get one last piece posted on the site. A perfect synthesis and elucidation (even if I say so myself) of the thinking behind above philosophers and their philosophies. In a poem. I said it was written by Aldous Huxley. Nobody challenged me on that either.


I'm beautiful, you're too beautiful,

and we can't get over it.

My my, I'm beautiful, you're so beautiful,

and we can't get over it.

I'm going down, all going down;

dragging you down, can't get over it.


Cut off my nose to spite my face,

sell my soul to buy me grace.

Or should I laugh or should I cry?

Or shall I part my hair behind?

Or should I laugh or should I cry,

as I become all I despise?


Got to get ahead, got to get ahead;

couldn't get ahead, couldn't get over it.


Call me Mr Malcontent ...


I live with a Protestant

Jean went to London. Camped out in a little solo pop-up tent, somewhere near Lambeth Bridge. She had a yellow wristband, so didn’t lose her place in the queue if caught short by a mad rush for the bogs.

She was furious when I said I couldn't travel across with her.

You are such a bloody Fenian! she snapped.

I tried to explain.

That has nothing to do with it, I said, you know as well as I do we can't get RTÉ Player, and that the Fair City Omnibus is on RTÉ1 every Saturday morning, so I simply daren't miss it.

Once a bigot, always a bigot! Jean said.

On another occasion, I chanced to remark, D H Lawrence was quite correct.

What ... to write dirty books? she replied.

To be fair, that's the kind of lowbrow response I've come to expect from her. Protestants are, after all, genetically predisposed to be unread Philistines, just as the GAA crowd are, inevitably, unreconstructable bogtrotting culchies.

No, I'd been alluding to Lawrence's remark that even though people have more and more now, they no longer know how to feel alive in their lives. My point being that he actually stole the idea from me. All my life, if ever asked where I live, I've always replied, I live here, but I don't really live anywhere.

Deep.

He was dead before you were born, said Jean.

That's not the point, I said.

The Queen: my part in her rehabilitation after Martin McGuinness allowed her to shake his hand

In my life - career, entertaining, and charity work - I was privileged not to meet the Queen on many occasions, and always found her to be the gracious epitome of someone I wouldn't have wanted to meet anyway, since the notion, so beloved of her proud 'subjects', that an accident of birth confers an innate superiority on someone, is strictly for the ninnyhammer forelock-tuggers and brown-nosers.

Nevertheless, her path and mine crossed a few times, with seismic consequences. Most notably when I was offered a 'gong'. Not many people remember this, but as a librarian I disseminated a lot of information. In fact, twice running, I ended up at no. 1 in the UK Librarys' Bulk Disseminator of Information of the Year chart. And that's a dump truck load of data distribution by anyone's standards.

Anyway, the Boss calls me in one day.

Stop dispersing facts for a minute there, Michael, he says, and listen to this. The Palace wants to give you an MBE ... ! Services to Information Dissemination ...

Well, you could have knocked me over with a copy of Walford and Winchell's Bibliography of Bibliographies ... !

But I told him it just wasn't on, and admitted that my preference would be that all Royalists, as they used to say during the French Revolution, should be invited to put their heads out of the Republican window.

And anyway, I added, MBEs are for proles. I'd have needed a Knighthood at least ...

I was joking, like, but wouldn't you know, a couple of days later he interrupted my diffusion of knowledge again.

They've upped it to a Peerage ... ! he said ... Phil the Greek's buzzword around the Palace this year is 'communication', and he's heard you're the big knob in that department. Plus, they'll throw in a ton of bits and bobs, like jam and so on, from the Duchy of Cornwall, lifetime supply. It's first rate stuff, apparently ...

I'd tried the marmalade. Tasty, but overpriced.

It'd be grand publicity for us too, the Boss said, Michael Praetorius, Lord of the Low-down. Could help make libraries seem a bit less spinster-with-a-bun-type places ... Think it over, while you're dissipating the word to our punters ...

Anthony Blunt (not yet unmasked as a Soviet spy) was Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures and Curator of the Royal Libraries at that time. She asked him to talk me round, librarian to librarian, like. He telephoned one evening, and, true to form, never mentioned libraries or gongs, but instead made a pretty good case for believing that we'll only be truly free when the last king is strangled by the entrails of the last priest.

I signed up, became a poputchik (fellow traveller) overnight, and soon the Ivans had an inside track on the Dewey Decimal Classification System, Library of Congress Classification, and Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. At last Soviet libraries knew in what order to shelve books so as they might be found again, and soon there were as many queues outside libraries as at supermarkets, hospitals, sweet shops, schools, lavatories, and so on. Putin's doing the same right now to restructure libraries in occupied Ukraine, so it's not all bad news from that quarter, by any means.

Blunt, like his chum, Kim Philby - then safely holed up in a lavish, tiny, unheated bedsit in Moscow - was keen on marmalade. He gave me a heads-up that night about a new variation on an old theme. A Pinko pal on the shop floor at Frank Cooper's in Oxford had let slip the news that they were about to target the hard-core marmalade zombies with a new extra Coarse Cut version of their Vintage brand.

So, says the Boss a few days later, what do I tell the Palace ... ?

Can't afford to do it, Boss, I told him. He was shocked, angry.

I tried to explain. Man of principle, me. Uncle Joe maybe a trifle vindictive. But Khrushchev a decent spud. Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, first woman in space. Women’s lib. Meanwhile, Robert Emmet; heart in the right place, but fail to prepare, prepare to fail. And ok, Padraig Pearse, bit of a mental defective, but James Connolly, a top man, genuinely worthy of a seat in the Lords, even though he'd have quite happily blown the bloody place up.

You're a Red, he gasped, wrapped in the Green Flag ... !
 
I was toast.

The blows fell in quick succession. Only 52, but enforced early retirement, generous lump sum, adequate pension. Cushy number, actually.

So I owe Brenda and Phil the Greek big time.

And that Extra Coarse Cut ... ? The best.

It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry

We went to the QFT by train. On the platform at Portadown I said to Jean,

We should go right to the front of the train for seats ... that way when we leave Gt Victoria Street we'll actually be at the back of the train, which is perfect for Botanic Station since the exit there is exactly where the rear of the train stops.

Ok, she said.

As we were boarding at platform 3 the Dublin Enterprise express pulled in at platform 1.

Did you notice, I asked Jean, the Enterprise had nine coaches there rather than the usual eight?

No, she said.

Anyway, I said as we left Portadown, remember that it's Sunday, so don't be surprised when we pull in at platform 3 in Gt Victoria Street, rather than platform 4, which is where Bangor bound trains usually halt.

I won't be, she said.

That's because, I added, there are fewer trains on Sunday so Bangor bound ones can use 3 but during the week and on Saturdays it's reserved for Portadown and Newry bound trains, and the slightly shorter platform 4 is brought into service for Bangor traffic.

Ok, she said.

And naturally, I said, on the way home we'll board right at the back in Botanic and so be at the front when we leave Gt Victoria Street, which will mean we'll get off right beside the exit in Portadown.

Naturally, said Jean.

Michael Praetorius spent his working life in education and libraries. Now retired, he does a little busking in Belfast . . . when he can get a pitch. He is TPQ's fortnightly Wednesday columnist.

1 comment:

  1. Michael - I don't know about joy and fun fucking killing you but the Corgi IRA might after your dripping sarcasm!!!

    ReplyDelete