Afterthought
By ALAN BRIEN
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some friend or relative of the teller who as present at the time. This article is 'an attempt to burn them out at the roots and provide space for new anecdotes, no more lively or informative perhaps, but at least different.
There is the story about the war-time English family, with distant cousins in Australia. who receive a gift parcel, beautifully wrapped, with a Sydney postmark. They invite in all the neighbours to share the lovely grub and are astonished to find an hour before dinner that all the package contains is a grey dust. After much debate, they decide that what they have here is some ingenious, antipodean, instant soup. They add hot water and HP sauce, but the broth is a foul mess and undrinkable—though one or two of the group, either out of hunger or politeness, mop up their plates. Two weeks later. there arrives a letter from a Sydney undertaker informing them that old Uncle Jasper has passed away and that, in accordance with his last will. his ashes have been posted back to the old country. Has the parcel, he wonders. aver arrived?
The second story is about the woman whose cat dies. Knowing the reluctance of dustmen to remove corpses, even of furry Tiddles with the funny white spot on his nose, she decides to leave the remains under a bush on the common. She places the animal in a gift box, left over from Christmas (or, some say, in an old hand- bag), and sets out late at night to lose the body. As she passes under a lonely lamp-light, a car draws up. Out leaps a ruffian who snatches the box (bag) and drives off with the pitiful booty. Pic- ture his face when he and his criminal friends make merry over the swag in their underground hide-out!
The next tale is about the connoisseur of Indian (Chinese) food who boasts to his friends about the little restaurant down the road. 1-le takes a party there one night for dinner and the meal is even more delicious than he promised. Everyone is delighted until the host goes to the gents at the rear of the kitchen and returns green and sweaty with nausea. in the yard behind the restaurant, he cries in horror, there are about 300 empty tins of some well-known cat-food.
And the fourth example concerns a kind- hearted American who sends a box of tea bags to the old English lady who was so kind to him during the war. He receives in return an effusive letter praising the blend of tea and particuldrly the cleverness of American manufacturers in sorting it into little packets just right for a single cup. But, asks the quaint old fossil, is there some patent, easy way of opening the bags be- cause they are so difficult to slit with a butter knife? isn't that just like the English!
Three of the four are about eating or drinking; three are about relations with foreigners; two are about cats; two are about corpses of some kind.
But I do not think these coincidences are significant. It is possible that I have chosen to remember from the hoard only those which fit sonic private obsession of my own. All of this sample may once have happened to someone. But it is impossible that they can go on happen- ing over and over again. Yet the hearer of the anecdote grows angry if his veracity is ques- tioned. Are you calling my Aunt Ethel, my old CO. a man I know in Fleet Street, or, dammit, my lady wife, a liar? Well, depending on how big you are, old fruit, yes I am. I do not wish to be shown • a photograph of Tiddles, or the outside of the restaurant, or the exact spot on the verge of the common. These stories are in- vented and, moreover, invented by someone with no great talent for invention.
should be interested to know from readers other tedious folk tales in the same genre. We may as well plough in as many of these weeds as we can while the fit is on us. Mean- while. in the spirit of free inquiry, I would like to throw a little unholy water of scepticism on one of everyone's favourite Churchill stories.
This is an aphorism rather than an anecdote-- hi, description of the appointment of some
dunderhead (Sir Thomas Inskip?) to Chamber- lain's government as 'the worst political appoint- ment since Caligula made his horse a Consul.'
I am sorry to see it go because I like to follow it up. when I tell it, by the observation that Caligula 'of course' did not do so. According to Suetonius, he made his horse a member of the Equestrian Order of Knights. Only after his death did the danger arise that. Buggins's turn leading to Dobbin's turn, it was next in line for the consulship. And the Emperor Claudius cun- ningly avoided this mishap by unearthing a rule that all knights must have independent means— after which it was the work of a moment to cancel the horse's pension and make it ineligible for promotion.
The trouble with this tribute to Sir Winston's wit is, I have been told by an excellent source, that the aphorism is older even than its putative father. My informant was for several years a close aide of Sir Winston. He remembers re- peating the remark in the late Thirties to his father. At which, his father claimed that he had heard it attributed to Lloyd George before the First World War and that when he had told it to his father, he in turn had claimed to have heard it as a young man attributed to Disraeli. I trust that M r. Randolph Churchill will include somewhere in his official biography an appendix on 'the Churchill Apocrypha,' and provide us with the definitive version of this and many other disputed sayings.
Another mystery I would like cleared up is the meaning of °Sheri Lancaster's cartoon in the Daily Express for Tuesday, February 2. Unless this is a rather crude joke suggesting that Ethiopian princes wear on their persons, as souvenirs, the testicles of Italian prisoners castrated in 1936. it seems exceptionally pointless. And if that is what he means, has Mr. Lancaster considered the grave danger to the well-being of his colleague, Mr. Rend MacColl, which might result from this ill-timed instill? If my interpre- tation is confirmed, can we also look forward to the immediate resignation of the EkpreNs's resident purity-crusader. Mr. Robert Pitman, in protest?
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