Strutting Tuffty’s Diary Part 2
I
must admit I left the pseudo-Dervishes at the Commonwealth Institute
with some concern about the state of our nation. Just as I turned left
to go up Kensington High Street, my mind still ful of colonial
misgivings, I was struck by a thought of the late Hon. Charles
Rothschild, the banker. Apart from the making of money, he had for his
other preoccupation the collecting and study of fleas; now I call that
a true Fortean interest if ever there was; it is what our beloved
Charlie is all about. Moreover, Charles Rothschild, was no dilettante
with his fleas, but before his death had become one of the greatest
living authorities on that branch of entomology. His agents searched
the whole habitable and uninhabitable globe for specimens of these
wingless insects for his collection. A man I met in France during the
War, who was in charge of a school of sniping at Mont-des-Cats, told
me of an experience he once had with Mr. Rothschild.
In
civil life my sniping instructor was an animal and bird painter and
professional collector of natural history specimens in the north-west
of Canada. One day, while he was skinning a bear which he had shot, he
saw and captured an enormous flea the size of a sixpenny piece. It was
the largest flea he had ever seen, so he preserved it in spirits and
dispatched it by registered post to Mr. Rothschild as he felt it must
be a unique flea.
In
due course he received a warm letter of thanks from Mr. Rothschild
stating that the bear's flea was indeed a treasure,
being unknown to
science, and the writer enclosed a cheque for the sum of five
shillings in payment. My friend from Canada told me that:
he never cashed that cheque with the famous signature on it, but had
it framed to hang up as a memento on the wall of his log hut.
With the fading of
that fine Fortean, memory, the present came back with a bit of a
shock. I suppose there’s nothing like a crowd of blacked-up white
“whirling dervishes” from the Creativel Arts sector to leave you in a
bit of a liberal funk. Well, I sat down for coffee in Ken High, and
looked again at my notes for my Paper for the Fortean Unconvention.
Here are some of them.
The Virgin Mary's
face on a toasted sandwich
prompted a bidding war on Internet auction site eBay. By Sunday it had
reached £15,000 and the sandwich had been checked out by more than
400,000 people. But eBay bosses have now removed the item, saying it
could be a prank. Florida housewife Diana Dyuser, 52, claims she
grilled the holy toast ten years ago. She said last night: "I have had
blessings since she has been in my home – I won 70,000 dollars at a
casino. Its preservation is a miracle.”
 Now
press the blue tit above and read on!
Madonna and Child in
Pork Scratching.
Devout Catholic Aaron Dodgson, 26, was in a Coventry pub in 1997 when
he found this snack in the shape of Mary cradling baby Jesus.
Tory leader William Hague
-appeared on a slice of toast in Aldingbourne, West Sussex, shortly
before the 2001 election. Hague was soon toast himself.
The Scream in a Spud
Balti
takeaway owner 37-year-old Sunu Miah found a copy of Edvard Munch's
painting The Scream in a spud. “It’s definitely a magic potato,” said
Sunu at his South London restaurant in 1998
 Jordon
on a naan bread.
The busty model materialised in naan bread served to 28 year old curry
fan Tony Cox, as he celebrated his birthday in Wolverhampton three
years ago.
My
hobby is tricks, hoaxes, and deceptions. I like to find the jokes.
They’re most amusing. There’s a Bennett in every woodpile. It all
reminds me of an age of parlour games by gas light. That’s why I like
Charlie Fort. He’s a parlour game man, is Charlie. The things he found
are all jolly spiffing fun. You can play these funny old Fortean games
even these days, finding odd little things, that’s what Scrabble-board
Charlie (as I call him) is all about. Hippy antiquarians and real-ale
folklore gurus love him to death.
But
let me tell you now about the very first Fortean Unconvention. One
summer during the Phony War as it was called, I decided that the
cricket club needed a new pavilion. I decided to hold a Fortean
Carnival and Fete (it was not called Uncon then) to raise funds to
build a new pavilion. Various people were invited to organize
side-shows, swings, roundabouts, coco-nut shies, and all the other
attractions which are so popular at country fairs.
Inspired by the ideas of Charlie Fort, I (perhaps rashly) decided to
run an exhibition of unusual pets. A marquee was hired with trestle
tables for the cages and glass aquariums.
However, my attempts to induce the townspeople to lend their pets for
exhibition met with poor response. After a week’s hard work, I had
only a goose named Jim, two cream-coloured guinea-pigs, and a green
parrot. I cast my net a little wider, but it proved no light task to
capture, pack up, and transport by car enough of a menagerie to fill
the tent. Threepence was charged for admission, and as each
visitor was handed a card on which was printed:
Fortean Unconvention Number 1
Theme: Unusual
Pets
Date:
Spring, 1940
please place the number here ..............of what you consider to be
the most unusual pet exhibited.
Signed..................
At
the end of the show the votes were to be counted and the pet that
received the largest number was to be presented with a prize.
Contributions to the exhibition included the following:
Giant
toads from Trinidad.
Edible frogs.
Green
wall lizards.
A
pair of English sand lizards (which produced five lively offspring
during the show, to the great concern of the local inspector of the
R.S.P.C.A.) Fire-bellied toads.
Venus
and Adonis-changeable toads.
Geckos.
Bull
frogs. Water terrapins.
Newts, crested, Alpine, and marbled. Giant water beetles.
Smooth-clawed water frogs from the Zambezi River.
Green
tree frogs. Slowworms. Salamanders. Stick insects. Midwife toads.
Minnows. Sticklebacks. Golden rudd. Fancy goldfish. Sun-fish.
Bitterling carp. Common roach.
Unfortunately, George the phalanger, (our one small pouched marsupial)
being asleep all day, could not be exhibited. If he had he would,
without doubt, have been a hot favourite for the first prize.
We
had some filthy language from the parrots, and our badger escaped to
cause terror amidst the assembled wheelchairs, but altogether our show
was an unqualified success, and a constant stream of visitors poured
in, only one of which demanded his money back, and he was in liquor.
Like a good note-taking Victorian Fortean, I started to compare in
detail the character and habits of our exhibits with the dispositions
and social status of the owners. I was about and finding a truly
remarkable set of Fortean correspondences, When the Beadle, the Squire
and Lady Forbes-Bishop called me over to decide on our prize-winner.
At that very moment, an unsporting Nazi bomber flew over our heads,
guns ablaze.
I’ll tell more about this swinish Bosche intruder next episode.
Suffice it to say that the vicar was found with his head in a rabbit
burrow, old Miss Prentice-Smythe fainted through trying to put her gas
mask on the wrong way around, and the squire got his face slapped by
the nubile Miss Prentice for jumping on top of her for her
“protection.” All the toads escape in the melee, and it took days to
track down the parrots. Our phalanger and badger were a never seen
again, but there were reports of pouched marsupial sightings for well
nigh months after VE day.
Such were the Fortean days of yore.
More on this wretched event later.
Swallowing the last dregs of my Cappucino, and 65 years later, full of
Fortean nostalgia, I took up my copy of the Independent and set
out to find the wretched priest-hole in the Euston Road those
blacked-up Anglo-Dervishes had told me about.
Cordially yours,
Tuffty
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