Welcome to Acerbia; population: π
This is the archive of the many and fabulous adventures of . Like a hard-bitten son of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius taught to write by William S. Burroughs; continually reincarnated, debated over by intellectuals and literati at cocktail parties the author can't get invited to, the target of scorn and ire from women everywhere, frequently mistaken for a former member of the Warsaw pact, named after the Italian explorer Giuseppe Acerbi, slowly rewriting the Book of Cataclysm, this is postmodern fiction at its most playful and creative.
Wrap It Up
Somewhere in the mists of time, if you search long and hard enough, oo, look, that pen you lost a few months ago, save that its a good one. Anyway, if you delve far enough back through the murky... and that widget that fixes onto the vaccum cleaner to make it reach into corners, you've been looking for that for ages. Yes, anyway, the convoluted and twisty pathways of my past, somewhere along the way I was branded as incapable of wrapping a present.
I feel that I'm being treated to a gross injustice with the term "incapable", I feel that the general attitude should be more of "uncaring" or "indifferent". The object of covering a gift in paper is to obscure it from the receiver's view long enough for them to give you yours, right? I mean, that is the point isn't it?
So here's a quick lazy-bastard's guide to wrapping a present the Acerbia Way.
1) Put object at center of large square piece of paper, either side up, who cares?
2) Bring corners in.
3) Wrap tape around assembled corners.
4) Spin package to take up the slack.
5) Tape down any sharp edges that could cause papercuts, more for your own safety in transporting the gift to its final resting place, er, I mean receiver, than for theirs.
6) Hold hands out expectantly. Should a bird poo on them, bring out a shotgun.
Easy, simple, concise, its like a Zen guide to getting to New Years without having to become an origami champion.
If it helps at all, I tend to make it even more exciting by pretending that I am in fact gift-wrapping a bomb. This however has worn thin with my parents who now employ a sniffer dog each year to ascertain whether or not the presents are safe to open. Bah, humbug.
Finality
I slump into the corner of the bus shelter, my mind swimming in that delightful bliss of slight alcohol-poisoning. I've been here for what feels like hours already and still no sign of a bus. My temperature is running a few shades higher than normal and the cold doesn't seem so biting but the promise of a warm soft bed is the tease on my mental horizon so I stay awake, if not lucid.
She moves to alleviate a slight discomfort and I realise for the first time that I'm not alone in the shelter. From the corner of her eye she has noticed me gaping at her. She's somebody famous, she's used to this sort of reaction. My brain is downshifting into the lower levels of knowledge, trying to find some purchase in the muddy depths of all those faces you tell yourself you'll recognise when the time comes.
"Scuse me"
As opening lines go it's hardly "Call me Ishmael" but it breaks the ice like an obese polarbear; cold, wet and bedragled.
"Yes, its me, I am she."
My mind does grammatical blackflips for a few cycles as it tries to work out if she has just confirmed or denied her identity. The comforting shadow of the last cocktail slips over my worries and decides that even if she's said no it would still like to undress her mentally.
"Stop that" she says indignantly.
I look away. And realise that I haven't seen a car pass in all the time I've been sitting here. Isn't this one of the main roads of London? Shouldn't there at least be people staggering home? An idea bobs up and down in the waters of my stream of consciousness, it is seriously entertaining an attempt at capsizing, its efforts seem to be in vain until my ventromedial prefrontal cortex responds to the stimulus and hauls it out for a taste.
"Hey," I slur, "have you seen, like... any other humans or cars or any sort of human activity around here since we've been sitting here? I mean... I haven't. I'm sure I would have noticed. I staggered across what should have been some pretty busy streets to get to this shelter and yet... where is everybody? I've seen no evidence of people for hours now, not since I left that party... and that was a pretty good party."
The idea tastes good so I go with it.
"And like, come to think of it, that party was the best party ever, that was the party to end all parties. Maybe we were celebrating something pretty big. Y'know? Big like... like the end of the world or something... and it occurs to me that maybe that's what it was all about, and maybe the world ended for everyone but me because I left early, y'know... and I was just thinking..."
She gives me a horrified look.
"Honey, even if you were the last man on Earth, you're too drunk and I'm not nearly drunk enough."
She'd have to be the first fussy porn star I ever met.
Ennui Du Jour: the diary of the Acerbia Babe
December 2nd
Having spent almost two years now posing for his silly pictures in all manner of outrageous outfits (and occasionally naked), he replaces me with squirrels. Special Forces Squirrels. I ask you...
So when he finally says I'll have a triumphant comeback that will finally have some shock value to it I'm all over the mofo. He even teases me that I'll have a full facial and the chance to eat some pussy, and that's exactly the sort of thing I get off on.
But what do I find when I actually arrive at the studio? He's got a cat in a basket, it looks like its been drugged too. He starts trying to give me the cat while I'm fully clothed, telling me to try and swallow it whole. I've never felt so awkward in all my life. He started taking pictures and I had to stop and tell him I just wasn't comfortable with trying to munch on a pussy.
I had to take a fag break and compose myself. I mean I've had no problems with showing a bit of skin, but this sort of fetish strikes me of a disturbing perversity never before attempted. I mean, I even lay on a table like a slab of meat for this guy once in the hopes of a marriage proposal and yet he continues to treat me like some sort of abstract two-dimensional representation of the ideal woman.
This will be the last time I pander to his sick twisted fantasies for the sake of a cheap pun. At least this entry will get some extra Google hits from the perverts.
The Daycare
While we were living not far from Primrose Hill I was asked to help out for a few days at a nursery school for gifted children. Rich folk's kids basically, reared in the womb to be brain surgeons and rocket scientists with those audio tapes the mothers place on their bellies, all that affirmative parenting bullshit the rest of us never consider worth doing because we haven't the time.
I started my first day at "Smartypants" badly by stepping on one of them. A little girl sitting in one of those moulded plastic-chairs the size of one of my shoes, I trod on her toes. She had her hands folded primly in her lap and she looked up at me scornfully.
"One would think that having had so many years to deal with being so tall one would have mastered the art of watching where one put one's feet."
I had a terrible urge to poke her in the eyes and kick her chair over but instead I crouched down to her level and held her hands comfortingly.
"I'm sorry about that, it was terribly clumsy of me. Did I hurt your little toes?"
"Don't patronise me, grown-up. My father's an international litigator, he'll chew you up for breakfast and spit out your remains."
"Can't we be friends?"
"You'll be hearing from my father."
She turned her head to one side to snub me and I decided it was perhaps time to make a hasty exit. I trampled two more children (the son of a CEO and the daughter of a Middle Eastern ambassador, they informed me as I ran off) on my way into the classroom.
The woman sitting in the middle of the room looked like the final victim in a horror movie; surrounded by smartly dressed mini-persons with intelligent glints in their eyes. She stood up briskly and deftly avoided piercing any of the children with her heels as she stepped over them. She grabbed me by the arm and gurgled through gritted teeth to me;
"Tell me you brought a workbook. They've read everything in the room and I've run out of ideas. If you've got any class A drugs on you I'll reward you handsomely with whatever you want for them."
I could see that the wardens were not running the asylum. She spun to face the children with a smile that would have dazzled Disney and spoke in syrupy tones that would keep the British Dental Association in business for a few more years.
"This is David, he's here to assist me today. He's going to start assisting me by helping you all put on a play while I go and speak to Mrs Mason about some paid leave time in another part of the country."
She vanished like a mirage and thirteen sets of eyes sized me up. One girl stepped forward.
"We know what we're doing. We've done plays for people like you dozens of times."
The kids huddled together behind the half-stack bookshelves and there came sounds of cardboard being cut, crayons furiously being worn down to stubs, sticky-tape binding the whole endeavour together before two of them walked out from behind the cases made up like Japanese Black Pine trees.
Four kids draped in swirls of blue and white cloth came out carrying a fifth in leopard skin robes holding a white blanket, this child proclaimed himself to be Fujin, the Japanese Wind God. I realised the kids underneath him were supposed to be clouds.
The precocious little girl who had informed me she knew what she was doing strode onto the 'stage' in white robes, holding two large fans, her face covered by a decorated mask. She wailed something in a language I couldn't recognise and struck a pose. Another child in similar garb appeared behind her striking a different pose before intoning his own little chant.
All I could do was sit back and watch as they made what sounded like haikus behind impassive masks and continually struck awkward poses. That is, until the door opened and the teacher walked back in again. With weary eyes she took in the whole scene and simply said:
"Oh Noh".
Deleted entry
This entry was removed at the request of the original author and I dearly apologise for the abuse my commenters left for them. Had I realised that my audience felt so strongly about the issue of imposing an immediate death penalty on cute little fluffy-wuffy puppies who foul on the pavements of London I would not have put the article up on this site.
I would especially like to apologise for Cutezilla's comment regarding the author's parentage and how the author should have felt the sharp stab of a knitting needle as he floated in his secure womb of amniotic fluid. I used to read her site every day but now I feel that I simply cannot as her comment was heartless and cruel.
DickDockDiary's input was also unjustified and I don't believe that sodomy with blunt sports paraphenalia is called for to support an argument. Humminatune and BarneyTheBigGayDinosaur managed to invoke Godwin's law within minutes of one another by calling the original author a "deathcamp puppy fascist" and "anti-caninite Nazi" respectively.
My opinion on the matter is no longer available either. I think it's best if we all just pretend that this entry didn't exist. I've reset the comments to 0 again. Thanks for reading.
Five Dolla
As I lay on the table with my face pressed into the small opening that allowed me to breath I suddenly felt the padding beside my head shift on the left, then on the right. Her hands were still working on my lower back but I felt sure that she'd just climbed fully onto the massage table. Another shift of weight and suddenly I felt her bare feet on my back.
I've heard it said that the human body can be played like a musical instrument, the trick is knowing which buttons to press, which valves to adjust and where to stroke. Miki certainly knew how to do all those things as my consciousness ascended to a higher plane within seconds.
"Oh its you again."
I turned to see my spirit animal waiting for me beside the pool. He put down his Eucalyptus Margarita and padded over on the cool white tiles to sit beside me as I dragged myself out of the swirling waters of reality.
"Towel?"
Yes please.
"They're over there"
I'd forgotten what a crap spirit animal I was blessed with. I'm amazed the little koala bastard hadn't tried to give me rabies yet.
"Hang on, you'll be wanting all that motivational crap. Got the holiday blues do you? You pathetic worm, you disgust me"
Actually I'm doing okay. Got a good flat, good job, making money, still with a wonderful girlfriend, got nothing to really complain about. I'm just here because some Vietnamese girl is currently trying to tapdance on my spinal column and the endorphins have all gone to my cephalic receptors.
"Well blow me. The winds of change have breezed through and blown away all your problems. I feel so useless suddenly you could knock me down with a gust. It's not enough that you have to come here and trumpet your good fortune, you're so relaxed and here I thought I'd have to be the one to pump you full of enthusiasm. Well, you're under no pressure to return if you don't feel like it. Just let it all out."
At that point my subconscious mind must have agreed with the mangy runt as Miki kicked me in the back of the head for farting.
Pachalafaka
Azize was something of a pioneer when it came to coffee houses, and I think he thought he was sparking some sort of Seattle revival by employing me to play an accoustic set during my lunch hour. Considering that this was the man who invented the pre-soaked biscotti there were obviously going to be some pitfalls to this arrangment.
Rule number one was that at all times I should have a full cup of Turkish coffee beside me, rule number two was that I had to give up my guitar and play a Baglama instead (similar to a mandolin).
These rules brought about two rather disturbing side-effects. Turkish coffee requires that you leave the coffee grounds to settle in the bottom of the cup. Constantly refilling it would make the contents progressively more solid as the lunch-hour wore on and the liquid became more and more like pure caffeine sludge. The other side effect was obviously that I would start to play faster.
I'm sure if you've seen the scene in Deliverance with the Dueling Banjos you'll understand what the continuous ingestion of very strong coffee will do to you. I began to play fast enough to beat the devil for my soul every time. I would walk back to the office with my legs crossed, bladder horribly bloated with coffee and eyes spinning like fruit machine wheels, my fingertips raw bloody pulps.
All of this couldn't last of course. In a small coffee house full of youngsters constantly drinking strong coffee and being subjected to frenzied Baglama-playing there's only one possible outcome; spontaneous combustion.
We started attracting a more gothic crowd when word got out that patrons of Azize's were nine times more likely to burst into flames than at the nearest Starbucks.
Claim
When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie...
...you might be able to participate in a class action lawsuit against assault by lunar bodies. Call Celestial Claims Direct now, our operators are standing by.
How to Craft A Joke
Anyone who knows me, knows my watch joke. Its the same joke I've been retrying for a few years now in various guises and I'd like to share with you, using the watch joke as an example, how to craft a joke.
To begin with you have the set-up. If you're a fan of one-liners such as: The windmill was always Don Quixote's biggest fan. then this will be something new for you to try, it involves eliciting a response with your audience and allowing a break in the joke for the elements to be digested.
For effect, the more believable your set-up, the more likely you are to be given a satisfying, genuine reaction. In the case of the watch joke I start off with a tinge of tragedy:
This is my grandfather's watch. It stopped the day after he died.
This is highlighted by me showing off the watch, a silver Seiko analog with a tiny crack in the face, and furrowing my brow. The pantomime of the joke is just as important as the oratory recounting.
Only the most insensitive people would remain cold to this mix of faithful grandson preserving the memory of his grandfather and the fuse of interest should be lit with the second half of the introduction to the joke, igniting all manner of thoughts within your audience regarding strange X-Files type phenomenon they've heard of or read about before. It's this manipulation of two disparate emotions that will lay the ground-work for the punchline.
At this point you may want to wait for a member of your audience (the watch joke works best on a limited 1-3 person audience) to say something like "the exact same thing happened to my Great Aunt Beatrice, she had a pocketwatch that just died the day she did" or you may wish to compound the spooky aspect of the death with an addendum:
The coroner was able to establish the time of death thanks to the watch.
Be sure not to make the joke top-heavy though as you may engender a bitter response rather than the short outburst of mixed laughter and relief you're hoping for. Give the audience just enough hook and line to let them imagine the worst without spelling everything out for them.
When sufficient time has passed and nobody has spoken for a few seconds innocently deliver the primary punchline.
Its a kinetic watch.
You're taking a risk here, or at least I do with the watch joke, you'll likely find ways to avoid the risk. The chances of everyone knowing what a kinetic watch is are not always good, some people will need it explained to them, undermining the whole joke and situation, leaving you investing more effort than you should for a two-liner.
I have therefore developed the secondary punchline, which works specifically in the context that some people won't understand what a kinetic watch is. With the comforting placing of your hand on their shoulder and friendly smile you deliver the secondary punchline.
I was just winding you up.
This has the benefit of being a double-meaning punchline which adds flavor to both the story of a watch and the premise that you were jesting with them.
I think you will find that a little study of your own pantomimes and puns will pay off handsomely if these simple techniques are integrated into your own routine.
For further posts about my grandfather and his watch see below:
Ghost Writer
The poll continues for what format Acerbia should take if it makes it into print and I've filled in the two blank days where I had nothing new to post with ideas I had on those days for posts I wanted to write but didn't. Monday and Tuesday.
It might interest you to learn that my previous foray into publishing couldn't really be considered a massive success. I was asked to ghost-write an autobiography by a ladyfriend of mine whose name I can't disclose because of the subsequent gag order and impending courtcase.
In my defense I should point out that I did thorough research and I did ask her to confirm her plastic surgeon's version of the facts before the galleys went off to the publisher for final printing. She was simply too busy on a promotion tour to do it. Its just some sort of cosmic coincidental mindfuck of the highest order that there were not only two Doctor Meyers in plastic surgery but that they both had patients at one point in their lives called Alicia.
I can only imagine what the look on her face was when she was asked to sign the first run and she saw the first line of chapter one...
"Alicia XXXXXXXX was born in June of 1977 in Huddersfield as Allan William XXXXXXXX. His ambition from the age of three was to become a woman and to conquer the stage..."
Bounty
I'm suddenly a slave to the muse. I'm the blinking cursor's bitch. Inspiration has fled me despite a notebook full of scrawlings and ideas. Whenever I sit down to type one out I'll suddenly convince myself that its nothing but a big pile of shite and delete it all. Call it a mental block, call it holiday blues, maybe Troubled Diva's departure has had a more profound effect on me than I initially realised.
So, instead of wallowing I'm going to do something positive. I'm going to attempt a small run of published copies of selected content from this site and my other online endeavours, I can guarantee you there would be content you'd never read before, no matter how devout a reader of the site you've been. Maybe 150-200 pages spanning back three years, proper binding, color cover, my name on the cover.
Not sure how much it would cost, probably between £5-£10 a copy, costs depend on quantity, quality and how many people you persuade to also buy a copy. I can promise you that I will make every effort to make it as accessible to people who have never read a blog before as possible.
Ahab's Jazz Curry Quest
As I sit here in my smoking jacket and slippers, my faithful old hound at my feet, sipping from my evening glass of sherry I occasionally like to ponder the times of great difficulty in my life. These musings hold particular importance in that I feel almost as if I was trying to make amends for the more prominent mistakes I have made and the choices left unmade.
In the winter of aught-three I was a cocky young man capable of the snappiest glimmers of wit at the drop of a hat, and let me tell you, many were those who wished they hadn't dropped their hats when they realised I was simply brimming full of comments to make. Few could stand it and I often found myself banned from their company.
And yet I was a haunted man, plagued by the pun that got away. Like Ahab hounding his white whale to the ends of the earth I was a man obsessed with one objective: to find the perfect pun that would meld Jazz music with Indian curry dishes. Over those final months of the year I became more and more convinced that it simply couldn't be done, there was no quintessential pun that could combine Tarka Dal with Miles Davis, Charles Mingus with Lamb Korma or Diana Krall with a Shami Kebab.
I began to worry that puns, like heartbeats, were only available in limited quantities and that perhaps I would be doomed to recycle the same tired jokes and quips I had spent a childhood collecting and refining. I would sleep in fitful bursts, muttering about Duke Ellington and Peshwari Nan bread; awakening distraught that it simply couldn't be done.
Friends would look at me and offer me pity puns like Vindalouis Armstrong and Thelonious Murgh, but it was obvious to them that I was being slowly consumed inside like a King Prawn Phal gradually melting away my internal organs. The pun persisted to tickle the underside of my brain, never daring to show itself before my synapses for fear of being written down.
One night after a fairly tame Tikka Masala and some Ella Fitzgerald I fell into a deep slumber on the couch. I dreamed of a room with floral wallpaper and a sitar player struggling hard to make the instrument sound moody and deep, his brow furrowed with each twang and I could tell that the range of emotions he was trying to convey were unfortunately being sabotaged by the disarming lack of soul in the instrument.
A black woman wearing a sari approached through the floral haze, a sable and white collie dog padded alongside her. When she spoke, her voice was like powdered almonds in yoghurt pouring forth over full luscious lips. Her eyes were dark and smokey like a New Orleans club.
"Has it occurred to you D, that the reason you can't come up with anything is because so many curry dishes sound as though they already are jazz singers? Can't you just imagine Bindi Bhaji on the trumpet as King Prawn Shorba lays down a mellow backbeat on the drums before Chana Dal steps up to the microphone?"
Sometimes you just have to let it go. I'm glad Nina Simone and her dog came to me in those final days of 2003 and put my demons to rest, it was good to see Lassi one last time.
Non Sequitur
My phone rang and I didn't recognise the number displayed on Caller ID but decided to answer it anyway, sometimes you can blag free stuff that way.
Hello.
"Oh hi there, I'm just calling to say we'll be arriving in a few days."
And you are?
"This is Bruttia Africanus, chief of Hannibal's contingency phalanx. Sorry we got lost, the lead elephant got a limp and we kept going round the mountain in circles without ever actually crossing the Alps. But we're on the way now and thats what counts."
Aren't you almost 2,000 years overdue?
"Well there's some very good skiing up here. Unfortunately the locals say that's all coming to an end because of global warming. They keep spraying on more and more deodorant to hide the fact that they don't wash."
I just realised something... if you're the contingency group and Hannibal led the main attack, surely that makes you guys the B-Team.
"Yes, very funny, haven't heard that one in a while. Anyway, just calling to say we'll be there in a few days, sorry about the delay, hopefully there's still plenty of raiding, pillaging and general chaos that we can join in on."
Times haven't changed much.
"Thanks Pietrus, see you soon."
Pietrus? I think you've dialed the wrong number.
"This isn't Rome 6698 8333?"
No, this is London 7983 4003*
"Me ineptum, Index Querius nulla fides"
And then he hung up. It all left me with a very un-Cannae feeling.
*don't even think about it
Lost Boys
I received an urgent phonecall yesterday afternoon from my friend Tim. Tim works in the Lost Properties office in Paddington station here in London and he needed someone to cover for him for a few hours yesterday evening while he went and picked up his daughter from his ex-wife's house. I figured it couldn't be too hard, I mean, its mostly just sitting in one place and giving people back whatever they've lost.
How wrong I was.
Tim greeted me, grabbed his coat and ran off down the concourse without a word. I went behind the raised desk and looked around me. I had been expecting to find shelving units festooned with umbrellas, mobile phones, briefcases and baby-strollers. Instead there were no shelving units and a single phone sitting on the desk with a dog-eared typed out script.
No sooner had I sat down than the phone rang and I answered it, glancing down at the script, hoping to find some indication of what I was supposed to say.
"I've lost my holiday home in San Gimignano"
I looked down at the crumbled script and read the first bulletpoint.
1. Establish where the property was before they lost it and where and when they saw it last.
Where did you see it last, I asked.
"Tuscany of course. You know, in Italy. Its the town with the tall stone towers."
How long ago was that?
"Over the summer. I really miss it... it was a fantastic little time share arangement with the Wilsons from the other side of the street and a silent partner..."
2. Establish a connection with the caller, lie if necessary, be creative but...
That's terrible. I used to visit San Gimignano in the autumn, its a lovely place, isn't it?
...be careful not to depress them.
Eh, but you're much better off rid of it. Have you considered Spain instead? You can probably get a lovely beachfront flat on a Costa Del Somethingorother.
3. Be sure and end on a positive note.
Pretty soon you'll have forgotten all about Italy and freshly squeezed olive oil directly from the branch...
"Thanks, I feel much better for talking to you."
And then they hung up. I sat there for a few minutes looking round, wondering what had just happened when the phone rang again.
"Uh, yes, hello. I appear to have misplaced my ancestral home. It was a 16th century French chateau designed by Philibert Delorme and Jean Bullant and I simply can't for the life of me remember where I put it."
Ho-boy.
Smooth Criminal
I read with interest in the paper this morning that Mossad have finally caught up with Gunther Weisser in Argentina. Although he could really only be considered a minor war criminal he did play for the wrong team and is subject to the Nuremberg rulings all the same.
For those of you not familiar with Weisser's work, he was raised in Britain where he was constantly the subject of schoolboy taunts and the brunt of every joke because of his apparent lack of a sense of humor and Germanic stoicism. In the early 1930's he returned to Germany and became a laboratory assistant. He was always a firm believer in eugenics and elasticity.
In 1937 he set up a factory in Obergammergau where he went to work on his ultimate revenge on the British. He vowed to prove to them once and for all that the Germans had a sense of humor and to right the injustices visited upon him countless times by public schoolboys and commoners.
Gunther worked tirelessly in his Obergammergaufabrik ensuring he had the correct ingredients and proportions and delivered his first shipments of ordnance to the Luftwaffe in December of 1940. Britain was ill-prepared for such an assault.
On the morning of December 4th 1940 Britain was littered with Gunther Weisser's Obergammergauerübergummihuhn fresh from his Obergammergauerübergummihuhnfabrik in Obergammergau. Gunther would live in infamy forevermore as the Obergammergauerübergummihuhnerfinder, otherwise known as the progenitor of the rubber chicken master race. Der Übergummihuhn wreaked havoc on the small villages and hamlets of south England for years until suddenly no more were dropped and the Obergammergauerübergummihühnerkreig was pronounced over (badly).
Little did the people of England suspect that Weisser had shifted production to Plüderhausen where he was putting the finishing touches to his latest creation; the Pupskissen. Due to a lack of petrol derivatives however the Plüderhausnerüberpupskissen (or Whoopee Cushion as the Americans eventually called them upon cannibalising Weisser's designs after the war) were never unleashed in sufficient quantities to worry the Allies.
Snippet
She was a vet, he was a taxidermist, can I make it any more obvious?
She fixed up animals, he stuffed them with sand, what more can I say?
Everything would have been fine if she hadn't left him alone with Mr Snookums on the operating table...
Digitalis Purpurea
It might help to explain why last night's dinner party was such a disaster if I first explain how we came to be in possession of the table.
At the turn of the century a Spaniard by the name of Jose Victoriano Gonzalez went to Paris and began to emulate the works of Pablo Picasso through various mediums including painting and the occasional piece of furniture. One of his unsung triumphs of the era was a design for an apothecary table hailed by Picasso and Georges Braque as the purest possible distillation of Cubism in a physical form.
With the assistance of Picasso and Braque and some rather unorthodox carpentry techniques Jose would spend the occasional weekend working on the table. It was hinted that he built in secret compartments to stash various illegal substances which may have leaked into the wood.
Upon his death in May of 1927 the table had taken on so many hinges, keyholes and spring-loaded bolt assemblies that it was more of an eyesore than a piece of furniture and was sold in auction to Yusuke Ishikawa, the Emperor's representative in Paris. Yusuke was also the world's greatest artisan in Sashimono and Yosegi-Zaiku Marquetry, the Japanese arts of puzzle-box making and pattern decoration.
Yusuke sealed himself in a room with his tools, materials and enough food to last him for two weeks and set about deconstructing and reconstructing the table, removing a lot of the extraneous parts and integrating hidden switches and sliding sections to replace the locks and bolts the Cubists had used decades earlier. His wife reported after he came out of the room that the table had stolen part of Yusuke's soul, perhaps due to the noxious and beguiling fumes the table gave off, as he was incapable of producing another puzzle-box.
At a dinner function held in 1937, the French artist René Magritte painstakingly scored into the tabletop "Ceci n'est pas une table" with a knife, believed to be in protest of the second Sino-Japanese War. Yusuke killed himself later that year and the table was put into storage by his widow for twenty-two years before it was sold to the Barker family in England. It didn't stay there for long.
The Barker's son, Clive, complained about hearing voices from the table and was on the brink of stepping inside one of the compartments when his father stopped him. That night Clive was found sleeping atop the Aohada and Keyaki-Jindai wood surface of the tabletop, fighting demons in his dreams. The Barkers sold the table the next day to my uncle Morris who bequeathed the table to me upon his death.
Which all goes to explain just exactly why when Geraldine's jewelry caught on that tiny slotted divot last night and she tried to pull it free, the whole table unfolded like an MC Escher nightmare and swallowed all of our guests before reforming into a perfectly innocent table. Luckily Pix and I were in the kitchen when it happened...
Tis the season...
It's the first of December and my loathing for all things Christmas'y knows no bounds. As such you can find me guest posting on Ho Ho Holy Shit as Randolf the Perfectly Normal Reindeer for this month only. Expect much bitterness and sniping.
Also, Tis is back, brought to you by the Pickard sisters, the letter epsilon and the imaginary number (3+5i).
Curioso
So why if we were such a perfect match, you might ask, did I break up with Alice?
You might argue that all the warning signs existed long before that fateful day, that very important date when we met in the waiting room of our shared therapist, that our burgeoning affair was being punctuated by all sorts of curiouser and curiouser moments. Like the way she would stare into mirrors and grip the frame until her fingers went white and numb, or her inclination to keep live flowers and make fun of my pet turtle. Stranger still was her hatred of British passports and yet she was one of the best female drummers I had ever met.
I came home to find her, one evening, dressed in her light blue pinafore dress with a white apron on, she was chopping vegetables with the set of stainless steel Global knives I'd bought her for her birthday. They had such a refined balance with the blade and the hilt all part of the same piece of metal that it was always a pleasure to use them. I did worry, however, when I came home one night to find her throwing them at the skirting board but she ferverently proclaimed that she had seen "a dopey dormouse".
This night in question though she seemed perfectly well behaved, humming a tune under her breath as she chopped up vegetables and dropped them into the massive turreen that bubbled and steamed away on the stove. I gave her a kiss on the cheek and she stunned me with a request that we play cribbage later, she normally hated card games and it was almost like coming home to a completely different person.
I took off my coat and complimented her on the wonderous fog of smells that had filled the house and asked what the special occasion was. She wiped the blade of the 5 1/2 inch vegetable knife on her apron and gave me a smile that reminded me of Felicity Kendall in The Good Life; sweet, but slightly unhinged.
"I finally got the bastard" she said and turned back to remove a tray of strawberry tarts from the oven.
My eyes moved of their own volition towards the chopping board where I saw a badly shredded tiny blue coat stained in blood. I rushed over to the stew and looked inside. Sure enough, she'd boiled Peter Rabbit up for dinner.