Monday, May 24, 2010

I Love the Smell of Manure in the Morning

My new short story runs the gamut from light comedy to stark tragedy. It's about a lady's eyebrows who 'fall in love' with a gentleman's mustache. Then tragedy strikes. The eyebrows announce their engagement to a nose hair. This drives the mustache 'nuts' and starts drinking heavily. In a drunken stupor the mustache sends an ambulance, a fire engine, a police car, an electric chair, a hearse, a rickshaw, a refrigerator on stilts and a dancing hedgehog to the home of the eyebrows. 

The plot acknowledges that the lady's eyebrows have a need for excitement, hence the sirens, emergency vehicles, dancing animals and men in uniform running in all directions, including sideways. The mustache then kidnaps the eyebrows. They drive off into the sunset in a car blazoned with the sign, 'Hair Today, Hair Tomorrow, and for the Foreseeable Future.'

In their haste to get away the car narrowly misses an elderly lady performing handstands on the sidewalk. The police issue a 'mugshot' of the mustache. However, the possibility that the mustache may be disguised as a beard can't be ruled out, rubbed out, or removed from unsightly moles.

This week an old school friend, Hedwig Hardwick, was officially registered as a "listed building." Now H.H. can't be demolished, or altered, without government permission. This news has gravely upset his bewhiskered hairdresser, Herrmane Von Follicle, who never misses an opportunity to cry out, 'It must be terribly embarrassing walking about with a naked head! You should be locked up!' when he sees someone with a bald pate.

While Hedwig is selfish and unfeeling and cantankerous he also has negative traits. His eccentric behaviour has involved inviting reindeer to tea in the drawing room of his home in Norway, and Hedwig turning up as a pair of black spectacles. He also has a habit of making outrageous statements which particularly irritate his wife: "All elephants enjoy gardening, don't you know." and "Some people are riddled with bullets and some are riddled with woodworm, don't you know."

Hedwig's most sensuous pleasure is lifting a book in his hand, sniffing its invigorating fragrance, fondling its pages with his thumbs and reading while naked. Due to this extravagant behaviour, Hedwig has been thrown off tube trains, buses and department store escalators, on numerous occasions.

Hedwig's favourite book is Animal Farm. When I asked him why, he replied, 'It's utterly compelling if one can read. The book greatly improved my understanding of myself, the human condition and, let us never forget, the secret network which exists between all animals. Above all, above all else! I love the smell of manure in the morning!'

Reflections: Sometimes the intense pleasure of reading comes from re-reading a piece of literary work. It is one of life's pleasures to return to a novel one has read to discover something new, something one may have missed on the first, second or third reading, for example, the title.