PHAUDE.com

For many people, one of the great pleasures in buying secondhand books is to find between the covers some evidence of a previous owner. Bookplates and carefully calligraphed names; inscriptions from friends or family; footnotes and angry annotations; opinions on torn pieces of paper hurriedly inserted at a random page or carefully pasted on to the endpapers; tram tickets and cigarette cards; reviews and author obituaries snipped from newspapers or journals; pressed flowers from some languid, long-ago summer afternoon when the book was last loved: such things somehow connect you with another time as well as another reader and offer an insight in to their past or perhaps even your own future in a way unique to this peculiar experience that causes certain book buyers to rhapsodise in similarly florid terms. Personally, I find it rather off-putting and annoying; if I want a book defaced I’ll bloody well do it myself. However, occasionally I will discover something that fills me with joy.

A couple of weeks ago I found a copy of The Moons Of Paradise [1], and I’ve been smirking ever since. It’s a book about tits. More specifically, as you will quickly deduce from its proper title, ‘The Moons Of Paradise: some reflections on the appearance of the female breast in art…’ by Mervyn Levy (Arthur Barker Ltd., 1962), it is a book about arty tits, a subject certainly ripe for exploration which, as far as I know, wasn’t tackled by the likes of EH Gombrich. (I could be wrong about that, of course; art historians are a notoriously rum bunch.) I’ve no idea how seriously Levy takes his subject either because I haven’t actually read the book, nor do I think it likely that I ever will. But then, I don’t need to; the previous owner of this copy has read it for me, and read it with a zeal and eye for detail that is little short of astonishing. Despite his obvious enthusiasm for the subject matter and the pains he has clearly taken in his annotations and additions, it seems he may have strayed slightly from the scholarly path on to the well-trodden promenade of seaside smut; but even if his amateur scholarship was academe’s loss (unless there is a secret Benny Hill Chair in Mammarial Studies at Cambridge), it is undoubtedly our gain. I think it best if I take you through the book page by page for a while.

We start with a quotation from Eugenio Coseriu [2], a mystic incantation and a bad French pun on the front endpapers:

sur les seins de l’epouse, on ecrase l’epoux.

A BRA, CAD, A BRA!

le seins-posium

Overleaf, the verso grants us further puns based around the word ‘seins’, whilst the recto gains two carefully-drawn papillary dots in each O of the word ‘MOONS’, the reflection that ‘Bust (bosom) is just sublimated bottom’ and the first hand-drawn bosom of many, labelled ‘From Great Divide to Cleavage’. I think you may be beginning to get the picture…

There are 31 further drawings of pairs of breasts on the dedication page (along with the inscription ‘tats for tits’),

and then the fun really begins. From here onward almost every single page of this 140-page book has a newspaper clipping, postcard, or picture inserted, each of which, as you may already have guessed, is… well… is like this:

and this:

and this:

You get the idea. Oh go on then; one more:

Several of the newspaper clippings date from 1970, and it seems fair to date this extraordinary endeavour of thematic archiving to around that point. From our hyper-sexualised vantage here in the early 21st Century, this book’s new contents seem rather innocent. Preserved for the last forty years as a memento mammary (I’m not going to apologise for that; it gets to you, this book; I’ve already had to stop myself talking about trips down mammary lane), it may seem little more than an oddity, a curious relic of one man’s unusual obsession, but I think that as an historical document (yes, really), this book might have some value. Discuss.

[1] Freudian typo: I originally wrote ‘mons’ instead of ‘moons’. Make of that what you will.
[2] No, me neither. Sorry. Google him.

This glorious letter to some unknown newspaper fell from a book I recently found in Oxfam, having been lovingly clipped and kept at, I’d say, some point in the 1970s. I think it speaks for itself.

“Days of laughter

SIR- As a very old woman, I often think of friends who were always happy, stimulating, joyous, radiant and ever-welcoming. The word which exactly described their spirits was gay and we used it constantly.

Now, alas, one almost shudders to say it. Surely it is not too late for homosexuals (almost unheard of in those days) to give us back our word gay and choose another epithet. I suggest “chummy” or “matey,” and there are many others, all fairly descriptive and quite inoffensive.

If so, I shall die happy and gay.

OLIVE ADHEAD-BRECKON
London, S.W.18.”

Obviously, I think of this:

And if you think this is an interesting thing to find in a book, wait till I tell you about the Moons of Paradise…

An illustration I did for an article by Chris Mullin MP in the Manifesto supplement of the 13th March 2010 edition of The Spectator. First time I’ve been properly published and I have to admit to having buggered it up. Spot the deliberate mistake, kids:

I was never an enthusiastic cricketer as a youngster. Incompetent, I suppose would be the word to describe my batting and bowling. Fielding, too, come to that. Actually I rather liked fielding if only I could sit in the long grass as far from the crease as possible like Vivian Stanshall’s odd boy and hope the ball was never thwacked in my direction. Competent cricketers would make demands like ‘middle and leg’ when stepping up to bat. I had no idea what they meant. They may as well have been as Jake and had an extra leg as far as I was concerned. I always hoped to be bowled as quickly as possible so I could go back to the pavilion for a doze. Lack of team spirit, that man.

Many thanks to lovely Sue for resurrecting this site from whatever dusty recess of the internet in which it was temporarily stored.

This time round there will be pictures. Lots more pictures. I have a lot of old stuff to stick up here. Stuff like this:

It has been said that conversation amongst dull, middlebrow, middle class folk will eventually and inevitably turn to the subjects of schools and property at some given point at any dinner party. These subjects having been exhausted, someone will then think themselves interesting to mention Desert Island Discs. “What will -” (the presumptuous ‘will’ rather than the all-too-realistic ‘would’ belies the arrogance of the questioner) “- what will your chosen records be?”

Being dull, middlebrow, and middle class myself I have of course thought about my answer. I don’t for a moment imagine that the occasion will ever occur when I will be invited to appear on the programme – and if I were to be asked to be banished to Plomley’s island I’d get horribly bogged down in technicalities as I decided on my choices. Should I opt for my actual favourites or those that would make me look cultured and interesting? Should I use the opportunity to choose neglected records that deserve airplay? I know I’d just get flustered and opt for some stupid mixture of Vivian Stanshall, angsty 90s ‘music for bedwetters’, 20s jazz, 70s lounge music and thumping, brassy, classical stuff before instantly regretting my choices. (Practically of course all this is rendered spectacularly irrelevant if one asks for an ipod as a luxury item. I’m surprised no one’s tried that yet.)

However, something that causes me more thought in idle moments (of which, embarrassingly, I have many) is this: what would my Desert Island Books be? If I had to chose eight books, and eight only, to last me the rest of my days what would they be?

There are dull technicalities relating to this too. My rules:

Series shall count as individual books. Thus, for example, Powell’s Dance To The Music Of Time, Raven’s Alms For Oblivion, Proust’s (God help us) A La Recherche de Temps Perdu will all count as one book each, even if spread over several volumes.

The current list (in no particular order) is:

1. Kyril Bonfiglioli’s Mortdecai Trilogy
2. Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities
3. PG Wodehouse’s Psmith books
4. Brewer’s Dictionary of Rogues, Villains & Eccentrics (William Donaldson)
5. Philip Larkin’s Complete Poems
6. The Compleet Molesworth by Willans & Searle
7. Anthony Powell’s Dance To The Music Of Time sequence
8. The OED

(Close contenders: Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual, Simon Raven’s Alms For Oblivion, Kingsley Amis’ Collected Letters, Julian Maclaren-Ross’s Collected Memoirs, Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose tetralogy, G.K.Chesterton’s Collected Essays, Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Dream Songs by John Berryman and many, as the old ads had it, many more…)

I reserve the right to change my mind in the morning though. Please give me suggestions. I need new stuff to read.

Anonymous blogging, eh? Pah, harrumph and pschaw. I mean to say, really. I’ve never read Dr. Magnanti’s [1] Belle de Jour blog (though I do enjoy ‘Stan Cattermole’’s Bête de Jour for all its opportunities for bleak schadenfreude), and only ever managed to sit through about ten minutes of Billie Piper’s telly version, a programme which just reinforced for me the claim that ITV has been “entertaining the stupid and undereducated since 1955” as I believe Dead Ringers once ever-so-slightly unfairly said, but the Daily-Maily reaction to her identifying herself has bemused me. The story was essentially:

‘Woman Chooses To Make Easy Money Fucking Strangers And Then Even More Easy Money By Writing About It’

and yet they reacted with typical mimsy outrage. All I thought was that if it was necessary for her to turn to prostitution to pay for her PhD then there was clearly something seriously wrong with academic funding. However, it then made me ponder anonymity and bloggery.

By my estimation about four [2] people read this blog of mine (when, that is, I bother to put anything on it) and they all know who I am anyway, but the casual visitor will have no idea. I’m not deliberately concealing my identity; rather, it strikes me as supremely irrelevant to trumpet information about myself that you won’t be able to glean from reading my blatherings. However, lest I seem to be hiding behind a domain name, here are five phaude facts to keep you going:

1. The first thing I’d buy if I won the lottery would be a stuffed grizzly bear wearing a top hat, positioned as if playing a sousaphone;

5. I can’t count.

Happy now? Goodo. I’m so glad we sorted that out. Until!

[1] ‘Magnanti’ sounds like Polari for ‘big nothing’ to me and made me listen to Julian & Sandy for a full half hour after having read of her real identity. I’m such a child.

[2] Possibly five, but I’m not going to check the stats. Most of my traffic comes from Russian spambots who send me bad jokes. It’s like being stalked by Peter Serafinowicz.

When Leg Transplants Go Wrong

Another scrawl. Neither useful nor edifying but it keeps me amused and that’s all that matters.

First Capital Connect

Dear Sir or Madman,

I’m not much of a complainer. Indeed, being rather stuffily British I tend, when faced with a customer service problem, to grit my teeth, try to cope, and, if pressed, will generally do little worse than make a sarcastic or faintly patronising comment or two under my breath before trying to forget the whole thing ever happened.

You, as a representative of a rail company, are presumably regularly inundated with complaints, and will take no pleasure in reading yet another one. But there are times when nothing short of a rant will assuage the frothing cauldron of irritation in your brain, so I ask you to indulge me, if you would.

If, however, you’d only like the pertinent part of this complaint, do skip to the last couple of paragraphs.

Rail travel is often annoying. Everyone knows this. Things go wrong, there are delays and cancellations, there are engineering works and rail replacement bus services: these are all things one has to accept. The one thing I don’t count on, however, is not being able to get a ticket in the first place.

My girlfriend bought two return tickets from King’s Cross to Huntingdon online using her credit card – one for her and one for me – for a Bank Holiday weekend visit to her parents. She travelled up on the Friday, I was to join her on the Saturday. All easy enough so far. Unfortunately, my tickets were lost in the post, and so, as advised to do in such an event, I telephoned the number given in the booking confirmation email. I spoke to a very pleasant and helpful woman who informed me that I’d be able to collect my tickets from the ticket office at King’s Cross if I had the booking number and some ID. Easy enough, I thought.

I was wrong.

At the ticket office at King’s Cross, the rude and aggressively unhelpful man behind the counter (who it must be said was the only unhelpful person I encountered that day and, funnily enough, was the only one not wearing a name badge, refused to tell me his name when I asked, and is otherwise unidentifiable and whom, for the sake of narrative clarity, I think I shall refer to as Arbuthnot) stared angrily at me when I asked to collect my replacement tickets. Not being the holder of the credit card on which the tickets were bought I was, according to him, not allowed to collect my tickets.

“I spoke to someone on the phone-” I began.

Arbuthnot cut me off and spoke to me slowly as if I were stupid. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“Which is why I’m trying to tell you,” I responded, foolishly thinking that explaining the problem might allow him to help me. He was unimpressed by this manoeuvre.

“If you don’t have the card you can’t get the tickets. You’ll have to go to the ticket office.” He then turned to the person behind me in the queue, ignoring my protestation that this actually was the ticket office.

I had by now missed my train so had more time on my hands. I called the booking line again. Again, a very helpful person told me that they’d faxed my booking confirmation to the ticket office so that I could collect the tickets. (Yes, faxed. I really do mean faxed. Staggering, isn’t it? Evidently as far as First Capital Connect is concerned, I mused, we are still in the early 1990s. If only their attitude towards ticket pricing were as backward-looking as that towards technology.)

If I could get the internal fax number of the machine in the ticket office, I was told on the phone, they’d send the document again, my tickets would be issued, and all would be well. Not trusting the intelligence of Arbuthnot – rightly, as it turned out – to grasp the complexities of this latest plan, I kept the man on the phone on hold as I approached the counter again. If there was no fax to confirm, could I have the fax number so that it could be re-sent? I asked. Alas not. He refused to give out the number because of – wait for it – ‘security issues’.

Now, I understand we live in sensitive times. The spectre of terrorism looms over us all, and ‘security’ is the word of the moment. I know that. Of course I do. We hear of little else from the government and the scare-mongering press nowadays. But the the thing is – and although I’m no expert I think I can be fairly confident about this – it just isn’t possible to fax a bomb to a train station. Documents yes. Bombs no. There is no way on earth that this can be done. What was the man worried about?

If he wouldn’t tell me the number, perhaps Arbuthnot would care to tell his colleague directly over the phone instead? Of course not. It could be anyone on the other end of the line. It could be a terrorist for pity’s sake! He could be being lured in to telling a terrorist a fax number who would then fax him a bomb and blow him up! That would never do, would it? No no no.

Arbuthnot was clearly getting angry with me for asking that he should do something so out of the ordinary as confer with people from the booking line of the very same company for which he worked, and I was getting frustrated with him for being so unhelpful. It was all rather a tiresome impasse.

Then inspiration struck him. In time-old tradition he dealt with this problem by passing the buck. “Go and talk to Gary the station supervisor,” he told me. “He’s on platform nine in an orange jacket.”

I went off to find Gary and started the process again. In a pleasant change, I found Gary to be very helpful, friendly, courteous and polite. He took me in to his office where we both sat by a fax machine as I called the booking line yet again, explained the situation yet again, this time was able to give them the coveted fax number and, some time later, was delighted as the fax finally turned up. I was ushered on to the platform where the next train was about to pull out of the station, an hour after my original, planned one, had departed.

What an absolutely unnecessary waste of everyone’s time it all was.

Interested readers may pick up the story here:

In the spirit of friendly suggestion then, here is something you might want to consider mentioning to those in charge of such things:

Please, please, please establish some form of system of communication between booking line and station. Not by a fax machine in a distant office, but a phone system, or if pushed an online system. This sort of thing must happen quite often and the provisions to deal with it are, frankly, useless. That is all. It seems fairly simple to me, but then what do I know?

A few years ago I started writing a version of Heart of Darkness in the style of a PG Wodehouse Jeeves story, inspired by someone more amusing than me gloomily intoning the following brief exchange down the pub one evening:

“The horror, sir, the horror.”

“Really, Jeeves?”

“Indeed, sir, the fascination of the abomination.”

I’m not a fan of Conrad and have always found him insufferably boring. Wodehouse, however, I love, and thought I could make an amusing story out of rather a grim one. I soon realised that I really didn’t have the talent or endurance to do anything of the sort and, as with so many pub-induced ideas, gave up on it very soon afterwards. In a spirit of self-indulgence here’s the beginning of it, supplied because, despite everything obviously at fault with it, I do still rather like the psittacine line.

AUNT OF DARKNESS

(A journey to the heart of Woostershire)

i

I was hacking in to a leisurely kipper when Jeeves shimmered in with the salver.

“A telegram, sir,” he remarked, with characteristic what’s-the-word.

“Well read it, Jeeves, read it,” I said with all the vigour of a chap who has enjoyed his full ten alloted hours of nourishing slumber.

“It’s from Mrs. Travers, sir. ‘Tom gone tonto stop. Urgent come Brinkley instanter. Love Travers.’”

“Rum, Jeeves.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The aged relation seems to indicate that my uncle Tom Travers has gone mad.”

“Indeed, sir, I had surmised as much.”

“I mean to say, Jeeves, old Uncle T., despite a certain thingummy – begins with a ‘Q’, Jeeves, you know, ill-humour and all that.”

“Querulousness, sir?”

“That’s the chap. Despite a certain querulousness when pondering the demands of the tax-man or Aunt Dahlia’s for Milady’s Boudoir, Tom Travers has never struck me as the sort of chap liable to go off his onion. I wonder what could have brought this on.”

“I could not say, sir.”

“Jeeves!”

“Sir?”

“You don’t suppose Anatole’s run off again?”

“It is of course a possibility, sir.”

“He is French, Jeeves. The Gallic race is noted for its over-excitability. He could have done a bunk, and Uncle Tom can’t cope without his cooking, we know that much.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Well then I suppose we should repair to Market Snodsbury with all speed.”

“I shall lay out our houndstooth suit for the journey, sir.”

“Thank you Jeeves.”

ii

I wasn’t exactly expecting to find Uncle Tom champing at the bit and frothing at the mouth, nor indeed lobbing flower pots at the under-gardener, but it was nevertheless a subdued Bertram Wooster who arrived at Brinkley Court that afternoon. Apprehensive, if you know what I mean. Aunt Dahlia’s icy reception to my cordial what-ho-ings only confirmed the worst.

“Don’t you ‘what-ho’ me, you foul young carbuncle,” she roared, with all the ferocity that had made her such a conspicuous presence with the Pytchley and the Quorn in her youth. (There are still occasions when I spy a nasty glint in her eye and expect her to come after me yelping ‘tantivy’ and brandishing a riding-crop. Stentorian, her voice was, as I think Jeeves once remarked with ref. to that other noisy, but decidedly less welcome, blot on the Wooster landscape, the abominable  Roderick Spode.)

“What’s all this about Uncle Tom mislaying his marbles? Anatole hasn’t given notice again, surely?”

“It’s much more serious than that, Bertie.”

“More serious?” I goggled. In the grand scheme of things few things could be worse than the great chef chucking in the ladle.

“This isn’t the time for your asinine parrot impersonations, Bertie.”

“Psittacine, aged A.”

“Whatever can you mean?”

“Psittacine, not asinine. Jeeves told me once. Psittacine is the word for parrot-like. Asinine would be asses. At least I think it would.”

“Well don’t be an ass either. Ring for Jeeves at once and kindly keep quiet until he gets here. We need every ounce of that man’s brain-power to help us now, and you won’t help by burbling.”

A gentle cough, like that of a venerable librarian clearing his throat in the reading room of the British Museum after a particularly noisome morning pipe, but aware of the requirement for dignified silence which his position demanded, indicated the man’s presence in the room.

“You rang, madam?”

“Jeeves,” began the old flesh-and-blood, “this is a very delicate matter.”

“Indeed, madam. I can assure you that I have some experience of dealing with many forms of mental aberration.”

They both glanced briefly in my direction and exchanged what could only be described as a Knowing Look. I can’t be sure of this, for Aunt Dahlia emitted a small squeal or snort at this point.

“During my time in Lord Brancaster’s employ, he once-”

“Never mind all that now, Jeeves,” I said.

“Forgive me, sir, but the tale I was about to relate does have some bearing on the matter in hand. His Lordship suffered some form of nervous collapse following the demise of his favourite parrot, and was thereafter to be found at certain times of the day sitting atop the pianoforte nibbling at a seedcake in a fit of ungovernable distress. All manner of means were attempted in order to induce him to come down and to his senses, but to no avail. Eventually Sir Roderick Glossop, the noted nerve specialist, was called for, and his Lordship was taken away to recuperate.”

“Well we don’t want that, Jeeves,” groaned Aunt Dahlia.

“Indeed not madam.”

“I take it you know all about what has happened then, Jeeves?”

“I’m afraid the talk below stairs is of little else, madam. Mr. Seppings was kind enough to give me a reliable account of recent events, however. A most lamentable occurrence if I may say so. What I would suggest-”

“But dash it, Jeeves!” I ejaculated, unable to stand the suspense any longer. “What has happened? You seem to forget as you go dashing off with your schemes that I’m very much in the dark in re. the actual course of events. What, Jeeves, if you would be kind enough to tell me, has happened? Eh?”

Aunt Dahlia gave him the nod and he explained. “Mr. Travers has recently become involved with a sinister group of men calling themselves the Victoria League Club, in whose possession there rests a valuable silver statuette which Mr. Travers desires for his own collection, sir. In order to gain their confidence in order to encourage them to sell him the item, Mr. Travers was forced to join their society and masquerade as an adherent to their ignoble principles. It would seem that his will is not perhaps as strong as he had at first thought. Mr. Travers has, as I believe modern parlance has it, ‘gone native’. All attempts at communication have thus far been rebuffed. It would seem to me that the only course of action now would be for someone to locate Mr. Travers and bring him home.”

Aunt Dahlia shot me a menacing look. “You, Bertie, are that ‘someone’.”

I felt like some unfortunate young chap who has unexpectedly been biffed about the back of the bonce by a brick lobbed by the Bishop during his confirmation. I was powerless to resist…