The Story That Ends & Begins Again (no word limit)

[Roger]

Poor Tige! When he went to school all the other puppies made fun of him for not being a TIGER. He was almost as badly off as poor Christopher Robin's BACKSON, who was a distant cousin. Christopher never had a problem with his feet and shoes size because he always wore Wellington boots…


…just like his great grandfather the Duke of Wellington taught him to do. His other old relative was the Duke of York, a most decisive leader of men who had a statue of himself erected at the top of the steps leading up from The Mall to Waterloo Place at the bottom of Regent Street:

Oh, The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.

Buster Brown and Tige loved singing this jolly ditty.

[Preston, Moderator]

Of course Buster Brown and Tige had no idea who Wellington was or even what a duke was. The only York they cared about was New York because it had so many potential customers for Buster's shoes the kind that came in sizes unlike wellington books which apparently one never removed no matter how much Christopher Robin's feet grew as he aged.

They knew Stonewall Jackson and Aunt Jemima and Thom McCann who was their rival and Uncle Ben who made good rice. But they never knew a duke or earl.

He knew the first person to reach the North Pole was the American Robert Edwin Peary, Sr. and the naval vessel to reach it was the USS Nautilus. He knew American products were the best in the world.

[Roger]

It must have come as a shock, then, when Tige led Buster into an eatery which boasted "Boeuf Wellington tenderer than any boot you've ever eaten, enrobed in a delicious butter puff pastry coat!" For a starter there were giant Mediterranean prawns, chilled over ice, served with a garlic mayonnaise sauce, torn lettuce leaves and hot buttered toast.

This, the proprietor explained to a baffled Buster Brown was the "surf’n’turf special".

"You don't surf enough of it, I turf you out," the jolly proprietor joked. And slapping his substantial sides in mirth he went off to the kitchen to "slap some pastry into shape."

[Preston, Moderator]

Buster was allergic to shellfish and his face turned purple with green spots. Oh no. I can't sell shoes looking like this, he sobbed.

But what's this? News was just coming in over the wire. Buster Brown Shoes stock was up a habbagabbazillion points on the stock exchange.

it was all the British people in Wellies. They discovered Buster's shoes came in sizes and were delighted to have footwear that fit. Buster didn't have to go out with a purple face with green spots and sell shoes because the shoes with sizes were selling themselves. This also lowered Buster's costs increasing profit by cutting out the middlemen. He was the richest boy in the world.

Now if they only had gluten-free pastry he could have tried the burf williewang that was tenderer than boots. He wasn't allergic to gluten but he was on a campaign to Free The Glutens! The glutens had been enslaved long enough it was time to stand up for glutens everywhere and be counted.

And counted he was. Counted by the hidden cameras of the CIA, MI4, the toll collectors on the M4 in the Midlands, and a certain traffic light in Ludlow.

[Roger]

Talking of Ludlow… it's a lesson in town planning. Until the mid-1980s the town's only traffic light was the one guarding the narrow medieval bridge across the River Teme at Ludford (which name tells you that before the medievalists came along, the only way to cross the river was by the ford).

And then the town planners built Station Road to meet Gravel Hill and Upper Galdeford at the top (there was never a ford up there) and desired to put traffic lights on the intersection. And then because with the stock market moved out of town and a Tesco store erected on the open space, they decided to keep the traffic lights at the top company by placing a second set at the bottom by Tesco where Station Drive meets Corve Street. And of course that meant having a set of pedestrian/single-way traffic lights right up at the Bull Ring cross roads.

Before the mid-1980s there were never traffic jams in Ludlow, not even in the rush hour. After that point in time traffic jams became regular occurrences.

Isn't progress a truly wonderful thing?

[Preston, Moderator]

Especially when progress snaps a photo of your license plate.

[Roger]

It wasn't my license plate, it was Oliver's. I only pay for the car, he's the legal owner, so bah sucks to that!

[Preston, Moderator]

The owner didn't make the violation.

[Roger]

No, but he was an accomplice after the fact. Besides, I don't call 3 mph a violation. If a policeman saw it, he/she wouldn't even have known. That's what you get for having computers.

Christopher Robin would never have minded 3 mph, after all that's slower than Pooh Sticks.

[Preston, Moderator]

Pooh Sticks are what they use in Roman crap-a-topriums. Did they change the water and use a new stick every time or was it a major cause of the spread of disease? We will never know because A.A. Milne never documents this in any of his stories of Winnie the Pooh.

[Roger]

A.A. Milne didn't know about how Roman patricians even had slaves for the specific function of attending the forica, pl. foricae ahead of his master for the sole purpose of warming the chilly marble seat in the crap-a-torium. This slave, of necessity, had to be a bit rotund so his bottom covered more of the chilly marble than would his master's.

Whoever said slavery was a bad thing?

[Preston, Moderator]

Moses for one. Although throughout the ages it was mostly it was slaves that said slavery was a bad thing.

Zaki never said it using those words in relation to his brother the sex slave but it was implied by the author that it wasn't a good thing. Gregby seemed to agree with Zaki but didn't he always.

I don't think the Rainbows would have said it although when Edward was a slave he wanted to escape so I guess he didn't consider it a great vocation. Harry told me he felt that among the indigenous population their holding slaves was none of his business. "What else are tribes going to do with a captured warrior?" he asked me. Given his talent for the lance and other weaponry I choose not disagree with him.

Felix told me he had some fun adventures that included masters and slaves. I cannot repeat his claims in the detail he told them to me for fear of corrupting our under eighteen year old members. Although, from their talk I'd say the under eighteen crowd know much more than their parents on some aspects of sexual exploration. What else are you going to do in high school? Attend class? Hardly an option nowadays.

Marco didn't seem to understand the issue but of course he was busy fighting off an assault by Roman soldiers at the time I caught up with him. I didn't get to investigate the Nubian point of view because they only one I knew was busy fight by Marco's side.

I knew it was hopeless to ask any of the leading men in TCCOTEOR. I did get one Roman viewpoint and that was from a youngster of color mating with Rufio and he said he loved being a slave to love. I wondered if he'd still think so as he became older and no longer desirable in the eyes of his customers. He might find his duties a few years down the road to be less pleasurable being more arduous than amorous.

[Roger]

This is a most erudite exposition of the nature of slavery. There have been those anthropologist-type people who hold that if Romans had never kept slaves, and therefore had to work things out for themselves instead of relying on those untrustworthy (and wordy) Greek geeks, they would have gone on to discover electricity…

But they did keep slaves, who did all the work and so it had to be left over 2,000 years for Elton John to discover it…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tze8K...

[Preston, Moderator]

Everybody knows Thomas Alva Edison discovered electricity when he sent Benjamin Franklin up in the air on a big kite during a thunderstorm with a lightbulb. Franklin came down dead as a door nail (why door nail?) but the lightbulb he was holding was lit up like a Christmas tree. This is why you never see photos of Edison and Franklin together. But there is a photo of Edison and his friend Henry Ford together.

Ford was a friend of the bankers which is why your savings account earns .07 percent interest but when you get a loan to buy a car the interest rate is 7 percent or more.

Speaking of the Rockefellers and all their money, The Rockefeller family has kept offices at 30 Rockefeller Center—the Art Deco centerpiece of the complex that John D. Rockefeller, Jr. developed during the Great Depression—since its opening. That’s due to change in the coming months, as the family vacates the offices referred to as “Room 5600,” and heads to the slightly less impressive 1 Rockefeller Center.

The move, which may seem nominal to those less captivated by the city’s folklore, is in a sense a story about the ongoing death of what the nostalgia-happy refer to as “Old New York.”

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. chipped in to the pot what, adjusted for inflation, would now be $1.2 Billion for the building of Rockefeller Center. And that was just just pocket change to him.

Oh yeah, there is a photo of John D. Rockefeller (Senior) with Edison and Ford but not Benjamin Franklin who had been killed discovering electricity with Edison, remember?

Speaking of all those Rocky fellows, Nelson Rockefeller Governor of New York State forever and briefly Vice President of the United States of America died en flagrante with a woman, not his wife. There were varying opinions on this ranging from praise to jealousy.

[Roger]

The only Rocky fellow I remember is the one Esther & Abi Ofarim celebrated…

You're the fella
You're the fella that rocks me
Rockefella, Rockefella
You're the fella
You're the fella that rocks me
Rockefella, Rockefella
You're my Rockefella
I'm you're Rockefella
Ooh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjHst...

[Preston, Moderator]

Preston's 63 year old 'father' was at a wedding of a co-worker and a prominent republican commentator/author back in the 1970s. It was a very tasteful wedding. It was also a very elite wedding in a small church in rural upstate New York. People noted it was a rather small church with fewer guests than one woulds expect. The only reason I was there was because my beard was a good friend of the bride. I had be her date in exchange for beard services.

The program said "The bride will be piped in." I thought at the time that such a thing would be very unseemly in such company. Of course I knew it couldn't be that the bride would slide down some plumbing but couldn't guess what it meant. The bride will be piped in made a lot more sense when she entered the church with a small group of bagpipers as her musical escorts. That is all I remember until the wedding reception when I was in the hall where people were standing around chatting. To my surprise I bumped into billionaire banker David Rockefeller. It was to his surprise also that I bumped into him. The jolt caused a bit of the wine he was holding to get on his clothes. I just left as quickly as possible without running and without stumbling and bumping someone else.

David Rockefeller is still alive as the moment I write this. If he makes it to his next birthday on June 12th next year he will become 100 years old. I think it would be fair to say it's safe now as I'm almost certain he doesn't remember the bumping incident wouldn't stick me with the bill from the dry cleaners.

Yes, it's true. Unfortunately.

[Roger]

"I know I spilled Wine On You Last Summer" — in fiction, of course, such an unfortunate incident would lead to a tentative understanding gradually flowering into full-blown friendship, perhaps even in time love (I wish Chris Evans on BBC Radio 2 would not play Glen Miller when I'm writing).

Wine splashed on a great man's tux by a younger man is always an opening to receiving a low-paid job, in which the persistent young man persists so admirably that by the end of the book (major motion picture) he's running the global corporation to the undying gratitude of the great man.

Unfortunate, then, that it was true and not fiction :-)

[Preston, Moderator]

It was the late 1960s and time for what newspapers and magazines euphemistically referred to as young people 'experimenting' with drugs. I didn't like chemistry in high school because the teacher talked about everything being broken down into atoms which were supposed to be the smallest particles but then atoms were made up of things like electrons and positrons and neutrons and protons and if they made up an atom they had to be smaller right so that smallest thing made no sense.

I asked the chemistry teacher what makes the positively charged stuff positive and what makes the negatively charged stuff negatively charged and he finally admitted that no one knows. It is just that they "act" like they are negative and positive. "So nobody is positive actually knows about this for real and science is just a guess that if they act this way they might be this way and then you see if that fits what's already in the chemistry books?" The answer was a much reluctant yes. So chemistry was a sham. That made it easy. Just memorize the stuff because it was not real. Chemistry was a bunch of guesses on how invisible things appear to be reacting to other invisible things.

Mr. Heitkemp was young and really tall and cute despite his beard. But still he was teaching us stuff nobody has seen and has no idea what they are only how they fit into the scheme of how things act. It's no wonder young people started experimenting with chemistry on their own to figure it out.

So at fifteen I started with weed only it was called grass back then. There were uppers and downers. I don't know what this says about me but I much preferred the downers. We were lectured that if we started out on marijuana we'd end up drug addicts on heroin because marijuana was a stepping stone. Well it was a stepping stone because by the time I was 17 I decided to try acid. Two good trips were pleasant enough (wow the road looks like it's rolling like waves and that's cool and it's not scary.)

The third didn't turn out so well. It was a much more potent product and I don't remember the scary parts but it took much longer to come in for a safe landing because although I timed it to be over by the 11:00 o'clock church service on Christmas Eve I was still tripping.

The family usually went to that church service and then since it was midnight by the time church was over it was officially Christmas. My mother usually made fruit cocktail from fresh fruit and we'd open our gifts allowing time to sleep late the next day ands still be ready when friends, neighbors, relatives and strays arrived for a day of festivities culminating in my mother's intricately planned Christmas Dinner complete with a map of where everything went on the table so helpers knew where to put stuff.

There was no way I could trip through the anglican rituals which involved more kneeling than done by a praying mantis. I came out of my room where I had been holed up long enough to say I wasn't feeling well. It was great fortune that my father wasn't feeling well either so that made it seem possible that we had a slight father and son bug since he actually looked forward to going to church so he couldn't be faking illness. Perhaps he had too many beers but I don't think so because he was really good at drinking.

So I went back into hiding in my room while I rode out the rest of the trip. I looked out the bedroom windows. Our house was at the tallest spot in the typical suburban development. The height meant the nighttime view out the windows was of the Christmas lights and decorations of the neighborhood houses and the TV and radio towers on the Helderberg mountains which had red and white lights on them to discourage aircraft from hitting them.

Just after midnight I looked out at this dazzling display of lights as swirling and pretty as Van Gogh's Starry Night. I looked down and found I had the infant Jesus in my arms. I was holding the baby Jesus. Well I cried bittersweet tears with it trending more toward the sweet than the bitter until it was was a very nice time of slightly tearing, maybe just moist eyes and holding the star, the top actor of this evening's show.

I did try acid once more in college to please a suite mate in my dorm and that turned out very badly for both of us. We walked really far down Bloomfield Avenue and decided to hitch back. The folks who picked us up must have noticed we were out of it and tried successfully to spook us by taking us the wrong way and then going back but driving so slow it was eerie. They sped up and wouldn't let us out but when they pulled into a parking lot they had to slow for the turn and I opened the door jumped out pulling my friend with me. We got up and ran.

We eventually got back to the University and made it to our safe place, the art school. We got down on the ground next to some nice evergreen trees and laid back viewing the night sky. Those pines would have made nice Christmas trees but It was September.

Whatever length of time passed I don't know. We got up and walked down the campus road over the bridge crossing the creek and up to our dorm. I don't remember anything after that. I never did lysergic acid diethylamide again. In fact I was so turned off by psychedelics I never even smoked pot again.

The moral of this Christmas Story is, despite what Dow and Dupont may say, the advertising slogan Better Living Through Chemistry is a bit of a generalization.

[Roger]

I never touched LSD, I reckoned my brain was weird-wired already.

[Preston, Moderator]

You reckoned correctly.

[Roger]

Thanks!

[Preston, Moderator]

By the time I got to college everyone was doing drugs. I started when I was just 15 so I was over it and only did it once in my freshman year. I guess that made me queer that I wasn't doing dope-y stuff. I didn't care because being in a class of fellow artists was exciting and took up all my time with studio classes. We had a life model who posed naked. Her name was Bonny and for some reason she took a shining to me. She wanted me to be her lover. I know you know why that wouldn't have worked out. She was crazy sad and cried. She was a royal pain to get rid of. It was not nice to make her go away. But what's a gay boy supposed to do?

[Roger]

It's always a problem and was even more so back in those unenlightened days. My siren was a fellow student from Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Geordie accent you could cut with a knife), who was pregnant with a baby of her Foundation Course tutor up there. She wanted a father for her baby and I was to be he. She was a right royal pain as well, especially after—predictably—it turned out to be an hysterical pregnancy because the poor girl was a fantasist of an extreme order.

Fortunately (for me) there came the revolution and everything dissolved in chaos and I left to become a famous film-maker (that was the idea anyway, but then I'd wanted to be a commercial airline pilot when at school, inspired buy the same Nigerian airport experiences as drove a fellow expat called Arnel to become one).

The trouble was that at the time, lacking literature, social context, the Internet, as a gay boy I really didn't know what I was supposed to do.

[Preston, Moderator]

Well gay boys frequently go to film school where they fall in love with Swiss comic book artists. But the chances of that happening to you weren't good.

So for your sake I hope you had Arnel fly you back to Lagos where you would fall in love with the beautiful Ijeoma and go "straight for you" then live happily ever after once you cleared up your big misunderstanding and laid the groundwork for a sequel.

Soon to be available in Kindle and softcover at Amazon.

[Roger]

I've never worked out the odds of going to a film school and falling in love with a Swiss comic book artist who might actually have feelings in return, but I imagine they are astronomical. I remember the day like it was yesterday when I woke up one morning and thought, know what? I'm going to a film school to meet a Swiss comic book artists and fall in love. Why Swiss, after all? I'd never been there (flown over the Alps en route for Lagos), but I had tasted a Swiss chocolate once (yum) and I owned a Swiss Omega Seamaster wristwatch, so Swiss meant "exotic" to my late-teenaged brain. And I liked Dan Dare in Eagle comic for boys, so why not? I thought. Of course, the chances of what I woke up thinking coming true were about as remote as a man landing on Mars and saying, "take me to your leader" to the first cute little green, bug-eyed monster that approached him.

But it happened, so just as well I hadn't made a vow to eat my hat or run naked around Leicester Square.

[Preston, Moderator]

Yeah but what are the chances of you and the Swiss hottie and his brother going into business together and publishing a computer gaming magazine that people preferred over the one put out by the computer company and starting up another magazine with pretty much the same results with your staff reviewers being teen residents of a medieval town with city walls and a castle and 17th Century church with a higher concentration of tudor buildings than any other town in England?

Plus you finding out 35 years later that you are famous for being the publisher of computer gaming by people who are into a thing called retro-gaming and the art on the covers of the your magazines being exhibited at The British Library and your Swiss lad, the artist involved, being interviewed at The British Library and major events held by retro gamers not to mention being flown to Milan Italy to speak at another such event because you are internationally famous.

Yet you had the opportunity to show bullied and closeted young people how things get better, how change can happen by marrying your Swiss sweetie but you selfishly think just having a civil union which represents second class marriage instead being a married gay couple is good enough? All you have to do is fill out some form but you think it's such a pain in the butt you refuse to represent normalization of marriage for all. What are the chances of that happening?

What if ironically you happened to be the author of gay historical romance books where the lovers had to struggle to survive let alone remain together while risking imprisonment or worse if found to be gay yet you just take a pass on the normalization of marriage for all which you have been granted by the hard work of activists and m/m romance reader ladies? Tell me the odds on that.

What are the chances anyone will ever read this?

[Roger]

Depends on how many "lurkers" there be out there, Jack m'lad [thumps his peg-leg on the deck and scratches the parrot on his shoulder behind its ear].

Do parrots have ears? I hear you ask. No idea. But the thought of prancing down a church aisle dressed all in white with all the lads on either side crying into their hankies just doesn't appeal.

I'd better return to the kitchen to check on the turkey curry…

[Preston, Moderator]

Can you imagine just how hopelessly bored one would have to be to read our tripe? Yes parrots have ears but they are covered by feathers. Church aisle? You are confusing marriages with weddings. Marriage is just a contact, no more. But it would put the end to this business of writing or saying they are partners and not knowing if it's a business arrangement or domestic union or both. Husbands and partners would best describe you and your beloved Oli.

Don't be in a hurry with the leftover Christmas turkey made into curry. You have until New Years.

It's too bad Lula can't visit too.

[Roger]

Oh I think Lula's visiting as well, and disappearing down the bottom of the garden where the fences on either side are non-existent. Fortunately there's no swimming pool, since to Lula the temperature is of no concern… aah, but wait. There are the two newly cleaned out ponds. Well, if she thinks she's getting me in one of those, she has another think coming. We'll just have to wait until a summer break in Palhais!

[Preston, Moderator]

I'm glad that Lula stayed in sight and Jonathan brought great insight into things hotelier. I'm glad that New Years went well and Davey Eastern came alive like right out of an Everwending Story. It's just I'm kind of jealous you see of such high-toned and famed company you get!.

No one from 'The Story That Ends and Starts Again' visits me. It's beyond my ken how you end up with these visitors again, and again year after year. It must get to be a bit repetitive. Did you all shout Happy New Year and throw confetti or were you too drunk from the Cabernet Sauvignon? Yes I noticed the bottle. You think having such highfalutin, hoity toity guests you might buy wine with a cork instead of a screw cap.

Of course the only one I could wish a happy new year has paws and a tail. He's a not a la-di-da posh labrador and can't roam over over a country estate. He's just a mutt I picked up at the humane society who they were going to kill if nobody took him. Yes and he can only roam about two inches where I have him chained up in the alley. He can't even get to a fire hydrant to pee on.

Yeah and what I had on New Years was no fancy French stuff. I had Made in the USA drink it out of the bag where you hide the pop top can so the cops don't arrest you for public intoxication and it was malt liquor not wine.

So you think you are so much better than me just because you are rubbing shoulders with characters out of books. Well there are better things than rubbing shoulders but not living in a dark alley like me you wouldn't know about where to really rub even if you have to do it yourself which you don't of course you being unionized with a mate.

Well the next time you have a party I hope your pancakes catch on fire!

[Roger]

Aawww, that's sweet… you're jealous :-))

[Preston, Moderator]

I don't know which is sadder, that I will never taste Harry’s Bar Pancakes or even watch them set aflame or that you will never have an English muffin with cream cheese and jam.

As for jealousy Oliverius drawing his various Roman Empire naughty boys is the one to be jealous because ours is the love that exceeds the love between husbands or even unionists because in your dotage I recognize the beauty of your mind! Oh come into my alley my ancient, wrinkled love and meet your me, your Roman godlike youth, behind the trash bin and you and I will light our love which is so passionate it will outshine the fire the homeless set in the old oil barrels. We'll picnic here with rat on a stick (did you bring the dipping sauce?) and then entertain ourselves throwing garbage at the tomcat who frequents our blessed alleyway.

Don't thank me, you deserve this paean.

[Roger]

Aw shucks, I'm just a nipper of tucks to spread a few words over the jam and cream cheese topping of your English muffin. It's a shame indeed, but I doubt the pancakes would survive the trans-Atlantic trip or the ravenous appetites of the US Customs service. It was they on their curious website that allowed for a free transition of a parcel containing "Cookies", so that's what you got. I suppose I could have marked it "Wolverhampton Special Orange, Date, and Walnut Loaf" but that might have resulted in the parcel being seized, opened, and devoured (all to keep the US of A safe).

[Preston, Moderator]

Well who would believe a cake so hard didn't have drugs in it? Besides what panforte cake? There is no cake here. Not a crumb left of cake has been here. Besides you are such a scrooge you wouldn't send anything but a lump of coal. Which came in very handy keeping warm over Christmas.

The usual elves came to hide out with me in the dark alley as they tried to escape children who thought they made toys in Santa's workshop. Ha! Made toys to give away. Made out with virgin boys maybe but other then briefly giving the boys their elfin cherry popper, they never gave anything away in their parsimonious lives the damn cheapskates. If they had prostate cancer and needed an orchiectomy they wouldn't give their useless nuts away without a price. Why an orchiectomy? Because it's cheaper than the daily pills and the monthly injections required to do it chemically. That's how cheap elves are!

[Roger]

I've never understood why people consider elves to be nice, or why the adjective "elfin" is used to describe a nice, cute, cuddly kid. Santa would not employ elves if they were really nice creatures. After all, it's damned cold at the North Pole (though not as cold as Maine, achieving -36ºC last night). But perhaps the explanation lies in a nugget of truth in the above post, that boys do like elves because it's well known that their cherry-poppers are indeed very big choppers. And that's why E.F. Schumacher was so wrong.

[Preston, Moderator]

E.F. Schumacher was pithily weaving together threads from Galbraith and Gandhi which were some of the finest threads to be found in his small world. He took the weaving to his little shop and placed them in the tiny window display in the small shop. E.F. was not a tall man, in fact he could hardly reach his little loom but as Walt Disney said, "It's a small world after all."

A few potential customers stopped short when they saw the fine threads of Galbraith and Gandhi woven into a spectacularly diminutive shawl which would look magnificent on any minuscule lady's wee outerwear.

Further on down the scanty street was the diminutive shop of Thomas whose compact English Muffins were the finest in the teensy-weeny world. As he set out Thomas' English Muffins on display a minor queue began to form until it was a significantly peewee line of little people.

Poor Adeline Addell couldn't afford a Thomas' English Muffin and had to settle for the store brand at the insignificantly super supermarket.

News was spreading from the scanty City Planners that they had found as a way to make Smalbany even smaller. In fact they had announced that their plans could make it absolutely microscopic. It would mean floating a city bond that would raise taxes to unparalleled heights. In the end the pint-sized Mayor of Smalbany declared while the taxes would be larger that any other thing on the planet, that would be insignificant compared to the economic benefits of being small, smaller, smallest.

Soon all the homeowners were leaving Smalbany because they couldn't afford the taxes. So many left that houses where a glut on the market and when house sales tanked so did industry, most of which had switched their headquarters to towns with little taxes. The decline of Smalbany was rapid but nobody noticed because after all the place was microscopic.

[Roger]

It seems a shame that the Smalbany Central Library carried no copies of that wonderful elixir of lexicography by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland because then the pint-sized mayor of Smalbany might have learned about the strange properties of wittles marked DRINK ME or EAT ME.

One by one every teeny-weeny citizen of Smalbany could gulp down something to make them bigger and bigger and bigger—though there was always the danger that the ingredient of a DRINK ME or EAT ME might shrink them with fatal consequences. (Have you heard the pop! of a person disappearing?)

Nevertheless, setting a few necessary casualties of inappropriate food groups aside, the experiment proved to be a tremendous success… "tremendous" being the operative word, so much so that they renamed the town Giganalbany.

[Preston, Moderator]

But the only thing that was giant was the Mayor's ego.

I live in a teeny tiny little town. It's so small you can hardly turn around. I'm so crowded I sleep standing up. Not me alone, I mean me and my pup. There's a Capitol and state buildings but, there's no room for a squirrel to get a nut. They didn't do any expansion. They just squeezed in the Governor's Mansion. We don't have room for a piazza 'cause we're crushed in by the Empire State Plaza. Homeowners wallets have been squeezed to the maxes, paying for sky high property taxes. I'll just add one more complaint to this verse. The property tax is a horror but the school tax is worse.

[Roger]

I really enjoy a good prose-poem, especially when the lawn don't need a-mowin'. But now I've an Ad problem, thanks to Google—I searched for Trilby hats and Fedoras, just a doodle, which I needed for background, some hats for my characters. Now all I see are ads for hats and it's driving me bats. Maybe I should make my character a soda jerk, then I'd be Googled with ice cream. That'd work.

[Preston, Moderator]

You could delete your browser's history, then the new ads would be a mystery. Or browse for a hula hoop ,cause that would keep you in the loop. You'll never miss the latest fad, with a hula hoop in your ad. When you browse men making nookie, the browser tracks that with a cookie. Then you see lots of hunky men, having sex again and again. I think you;ll find that in the end, the browser's tracking is your friend.

[Roger]

I really have no answer to that, I've learned to live with a hat. But I don't have a nookie-cookie cos I'm such an internet rookie. I don't want to become a Facebook flunky and become a social media hunky-monkey.

[Preston, Moderator]

Without Facebook how will you know how to dress in the latest fashion? Or what your friends did to celebrate St. Swithin's day? You will miss the photos of your second cousin twice removed and his husband's wedding. When there's gossip how will you know what rumors to spread?

When your 3,457 friends decide to spread hearsay, without Facebook they will pick you. How could live without up to the minute reports on your American friend's total misunderstanding of British life? And who would tell you the hippest insults of France? Without Facebook you'll never know whether you're a social success or pariah?

So reconsider being a Facebook flunky and a social media hunky monkey.

[Roger]

If I want to really witter on, I'm happy with 140 characters and I'll go on Twitter. Too whit too woo, I'll tweet and tweet, and I can hashtag with the best of men. I'm sure the part-work novels of Charles Dickens would have been immensely popular if Twitter had been in existence in his day. Avid readers would be able to start Great Expectations at age 12, very much in expectation of hopefully reaching the spellbinding conclusion before their natural end.

Doris Day is just singing "The Deadwood Stage" which is a headin' on over the hills…

[Preston, Moderator]

Was Doris Day in Great Expectations?

[Roger]

It's not widely known—for instance IMDB hasn't a clue—but Martita Hunt (Miss Havisham) had a stand-in named Doris Day. Doris was so good at her job of standing in while David Lean and director of photography Guy Green lined up Miss Havisham's scenes, but she got terribly bored of all that standing-in-around that to entertain herself she started to hum (a bit like Winnie-the-Pooh, but much more tuneful).

Before you could take a light meter reading, the camera and sound crew joined in and before David Lean could say "Aqaba!!" the entire sound stage was a-rockin' and a-reelin' to numbers like "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", "Hooray for Hollywood", "Makin' Whoopee!", "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah", and of course that rollicking number for any sound stage: The Deadwood Stage.

Alaas, poor Doris Day never had her day and remained chained to being a Miss Havisham stand-in whenever Martita Hunt performed in repertory. At least her singing brightened up no end of dreary end-of-pier stagings of Great Expectations.

[Preston, Moderator]

That's great I love happy endings.

[Roger]

Once Upon A Time, there came a strange cultural phenomenon to the land of Italee… The Renaissance.

After rediscovering the architecture of ancient Greece and Rome and the perspective paintings of the Romans, four artists led the way to become the maestros none could touch.

The were the artistic giants Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

Collectively they were known as:

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

[Preston, Moderator]

Where's Raphael? I only see three turtles. I bet he has run off with some boy toy. Gone to South Africa to hide away. That's not the way it is in Knowing Felix but I think he just disappeared. I wonder how it was when he was old and single because he never settled down. Sad old guy dying alone. As Sir Richard Thompson sings A Heart Needs A Home

[Roger]

I like to think that Raphael put aside violence and pointless ninjering to devote himself to his art. After all, think on this, were it not for the being and the art of Raphael, how on earth could there have been Pre-Raphaelites in the late 19th century?

As for Felix's Raphael, he ran off to South Africa to become that country's leading stage director, though nothing is known about his relationships and whether he ever got the boy toy or not…

[Preston, Moderator]

Indeed I cannot argue against the solid fact that Raphael is needed if we are to have pre-Rapaelites.

I still think he went through a series of boy turtles toys but not even Felix was around to comfort him in his final years.

He did sneak a likeness of Felix into his masterpiece the epic war painting The Siege of Ladysmith Black Mambazo starring General Joseph Shabalala and Colonel Paul Simon. View at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmf9Z...