If there were a label for this post it might be: Contemplation of, and The Removal of Fluff From, The Author’s Belly-Button – an overt signal to the blogging community that the engine set in motion in September 1951 with a four-line paragraph about a jumble sale at St Barnabas Church, Heaton, is tending towards entropy, that the flywheel is juddering, that there’s little coal left in the tender, and that a blow-torch awaits on a quiet stretch of track in the Trafford Park rail depot. In fact there have been earlier signs: choice of unworthy targets (Huw Edwards) and an increasingly desperate search for source material (renting a plane in a foreign country).But not quite. Note the punctilious use of commas in the proposed label and the caressing way with verb tenses. Perhaps there’s one more chuff left so let it be over the Ribblehead Viaduct (Note to ed: an easy pic here).
While BB was in Brittany Lucy took photos of him and published them on Box Elder – trampling on his grave, as it were, chortling about breaking his rules. In fact he approved (especially since his three-quarters rear resembles Orca surfacing to shake off marine parasites). The sneakiness echoed BB’s former profession, almost a left-handed compliment.
But (and here comes the piece of fluff) why should Works Well resist full frontals of its progenitor? Vanity? Shame? Apprehensions about BB’s version of “besides the wench is dead”? Explanations have been half-hearted. The need is for what the French call an apothème and the answer came, as it usually does, at 3 am.
“I write better than I look.” Vanity of course but it’s cleverer than it looks. Try disputing it. There is a good put-down but that’s for a later post, assuming such occurs
