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 Strutting
Tuffty’s Diary
People tell me
politely that I am no longer the editor of the Fortean Times. When I
ask them who the editor is exactly, most say they do not know. Others
say there is just a Manager now. In order to resolve this situation I
ordered a search to be made for the said or claimed Manager. I decided
to choose Prod for the investigation. Since this mysterious Manager I
believe could possibly be a hoax, I chose our resident UFO
Annihilator, because he is one of the best investigators of hoaxes in
the world, if only because his stage Yorkshireman act is a hoax in
itself. Using a hoax to investigate a hoax is a bit of a Postmodern
idea for me, probably the sad influence of that lunatic buffoon
Bennett (spit) that I tell everyone to ignore.
Anyway, I set them
orft with their old Polytech butterfly nets and Scargill jam-jars to
find the facts of this mysterious Manager business.
As I have said,
I
don’t understand it at all. Once there were two editors. Now it
appears there’s one Manager.
I
decided to act.
First I quickly
terminated a telephone call from a rather twee Home Counties fellow
who always talked endlessly about the best hoaxes, deceptions and
con-tricks of past years. Secondly, I decided to ignore the advice of
my old nurse that I must never go out quite alone under any
circumstances. She I presumed based her advice upon the being aware of
the dangers of the increasing number of horseless carriages about in
the greater metropolis.
With
these two personal triumphs in mind, I made my way to the Commonwealth
Institute for Uncon 2004, intent on asking my fellow frog-watchers
about this mysterious Manager.
Unfortunately, since I had stayed up late last night at a bit of
jamboree in Bloomsbury, I felt rather sleepy and forgetful. The
occasion was a rather risque late tango tea dance at Fergus-Ponsonby’s
old place, and things got rather out of hand, what with today’s
gramophones and all that caper. I mean yes indeed, I have thrown a
bread roll or two in my time, but the people there were doing what
they call jiving. Jiving? What a thing to do! Can you imagine me
jiving?
But
this jiving appeared to be a kind of Fortean key to something or
other. Upon entering the main hall of the Commonwealth Institute,
just off Kensington High Street, I was astonished to find that the
place was full of whirling Dervishes, no less.
My
Gord, I muttered to myself, our jolly Fortean frog-watchers have gorn
all ethnic, and they didn’t tell me. Nobody tells me anything these
days.
Being
careful and polite (you don’t mess with your Johnny Dervish) I stopped
one Afro-British person whirling in his tracks by enquiring of him in
broken Tutsi if he was the said Manager I sought. I possessed also a
few fragments of provincial Swahili. Both consisted of
almost-forgotten words and sentences which I had heard on the knee of
my great Empire & Colonial Grandfather, old Forbes-Trout of the 11th
Hussars. He had described these things as possibly being useful in my
later life, and knock me down with a flintlock, he was jolly well
right.
I
remember the Colonel saying to me whenever you have trouble with
whirling colonials and the Gatling happens to be jammed, always before
imminent death, try asking them the score before tea at Henley. Many a
Dervish said he, has been stopped in his frenzied jiving motions by
such a question. The lives of many a subaltern have been saved said he
again, if only because Don Bradman and Dennis “Brylcream” Compton are
regarded as fertility gods in certain parts of the Dark Continent.
Whereupon I did this very thing, only to find that the jiver in
question was Pethers-Marchant, a blacked-up chum from my old school.
He was on an Empire and Colonial Awareness weekend, and Prince Harry
was expected at any moment, apparently done up as your proverbial
Hottentot, but he had promised to leave his swastika at home. The
event, said Pethers-Marchant (the first “a” in the second part of this
name was changed to “e” in the 19th century to prevent
being associated with Trade) was sponsored by the Mayor, Ken
Livingstone, one of those appalling plebian fellows who always seems
intent on making us all Aware of something or other.
Anyway, Pethers-Marchant told me that I must have made a mistake,
because all the frog-watchers as he called them were over at some
priest-hole in the Euston Road.
I
turned down Pethers-Marchant’s offer of a Get Involved weekend in
Brent, which to me didn’t sound very jolly.
Obviously disappointed, He wandered off, whirling to his wireless, as
was his wont.
To
tell you the truth, it all looked like a bit of an odd little caper to
me. There was only one black man proper there as it were, and he was
taking the money with a smile. Giving me a wink and a nod, he told me
that the said whirling dervishes were all blacked-up members of the
Arts Sections of the quality press and the magazine Time Out.
Apparently they were all participating in a “Getting it Together with
Afro-Britain” Media Scheme.
What
with last night’s jiving and all this whirling, I was a little
disoriented. However, I set orft down Kensington High Street to find
the priest-hole that Pethers-Marchant had spoken of.
It
was a sunny day and many people I noted carried those same said
wretched wireless sets. The damned things burst out from every doorway
and bus stop with their brainless plebian clamour.
Now
let me tell you something.
Of the three
arch-enemies of conversation the wireless is the most pernicious. Not
only is talk out of the question while its clamour goes on, but it is
quite impossible to read a book, at least any book requiring the
reader's attention. I have known houses where the wireless was, as it
were, nailed to the mast, or permanently on tap, from after breakfast
until late at night, when the household quite dazed, deafened, and
stunned, sought peace and quiet in their beds.
An over-cultured
male voice, of great volume and penetration, informs the room, empty
or full, of the current price of mutton at
Nottingham, the
results of professional football matches, or the state of the weather
between Iceland and the North of Scotland.
Suddenly a hot
jazz breaks in to throb or jar your eardrums. An SOS call maybe
interlarded begging that some devoted son who left home seventeen
years ago, and who has not been heard from since, should go
immediately to an address in
Liverpool,
where his mother lies dangerously ill.
The wireless is
all very well in the home if it is taught to know its place. I am not
sure that a wireless should not be like a good little girl, seen but
not heard. It would not be half or a quarter so bad if the programme
was studied beforehand and only a good concert or an interesting talk
switched on. Mr. Joseph Thorp, who is no enemy of the wireless, hits
the nail truly on the head when, in his book " Design for Transition,"
he asserts that what is " emphatically-needed is instruction in the
technique of knowing when to switch off the wireless. – as important a
branch of culture as switching it on.”
Roman games,
played with pencil and paper after tea in country houses where there
are children are useful to pass the time. But a really good game is
shove-ha’penny. Young or old, “Varsity blue” or “literary gent,”
highbrow or lowbrow, they all can play it, and have an equal chance of
winning.
Above all this
wireless din, thoughts came to me of last year’s Uncon. I remember
instead of hopping colonials,
I
gazed with great delight upon as staunch a collection of beautifully
fustian English antiquarians as ever I did see beyond Lemington Spar.
I have never seen anything like it since just before the Great War,
when during a delightful sabbatical in Bath, I came upon a memorable
collection of Lloyd Georges in Monmouth Place. They all made their own
clothes, with wing collars fitted by a little ex-corporal of the
Manchester Regiment in Potters Bar.
Gazing upon the Uncon hordes, for a moment I was back in time on
Monmouth Street, though an updated, as those computer Jonnies call it.
I usually hate updates of any kind, but on this occasion I was
impressed. There before my very eyes I remember, was nothing less than
the late flowering of the body of English conservative Bohemianism.
Thrilled, I gazed with delight on as fine a chorus line of gingerbread
tuffties as ever surely graced the native sward of Merry Albion.
There
were frogatts and toad-warblers, foxters, folk-macaroons, and dairy
maids; there was a scaramouche, three hobbits, and a leaping Don or
two. There was even some untermensche pongo no doubt fresh from
some God-forsaken old polytech, who claimed to have found what he
called Reality.
Rejoicing, like a good Fortean, I took notes immediately about what
must have been the finest collection of English walking-wounded as
ever graced native sward of Merry Albion.
I was
so proud by Jove. Here were truly the finest minds of plain honest
Wind in the Willows volk.
I was
proud too of the way we had managed to keep such a clean and worthy
crew over the yars. Not a tekkie, a cyber, or a Postmodern anywhere to
be seen. And none of that Bennett post-toastie rubbish. If I hear the
word metaphor again I shall stamp and scream and I last did that when
the great sow died giving birth in Wadsworth Hollow. Neither were
there any ufonauts, abductees, or people who think they can see
through a wall a thousand miles away, and no purple robed moonfaces
waving scrolls from New Age mountain tops
But
these are memories now.
Wereupon, with the sun on Kensington High Street, and a jocund air
about, I set out looking forward to finding the said priest-hole, and
joining our crew, of which more later.
Toodle-pip for
now,
Tuffty
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