Dear Doctor Clattercut and Professor Bromfield

I don’t know if you have ever been out to Guildford, but if you come on a fine day you must take a stroll down Halfpenny Lane to the south, then turn left up St Martha’s Hill. It is quite a steep climb, following much the same route that pilgrims would once have travelled on their way to Canterbury. At the top you will be rewarded with fresh air, a view of eight counties, and the most delightful little stone church that was built when I was a small girl, on the site of a much older place of worship that had fallen to ruin.

Well, kind sirs, do not think I am writing to you simply to relate the charms of our parish. With the harvest festival coming up, we had an extra service last Saturday afternoon. It being a warm day, the door was left open and the vicar was leading us in the third verse of “All Things Bright and Beautiful” when there came such a racket from outside. Hounds baying, trumpets blowing, horses stamping, men blaring like silly great geese. Such a to-do! It was the squire and his “sporting” friends, all for tearing up the graveyard to chase out their quarry they said had run in, but Mr Bartholomew, he’s the vicar, he sent them off with a flea instead of a fox!

After the service, I stayed behind as Mr Bartholomew was locking up and then we heard a crash of hymn books and we found a stranger hiding there, a beautiful barefoot boy in a long russet coat. “Bless you, sir, I want sanctuary,” he said. “Bless you, boy,” said the vicar, “by the looks of you, what you are wanting is a square meal.” And he sent the lad home with me.

My own children are all grown up and flown, and my husband passed on these ten years, so it is no hardship to have some company, but I still think it is a mystery where this boy came from. He stares out at the field all day and I can’t help wondering if he has a home and parents who are worried about him. What is your opinion?

Yours, Mrs Margaret Pinedrew, Chilworth

Prof Bromfield replies:

Madam, if perchance you keep chickens then you may soon find that your squire is not such a silly goose as you suppose. I shall be quite happy to get on a train at any time to come and look at your church, and what is more I shall bring my shotgun with me in case your little “house guest” should turn his coat back to the other side. Best to say no more; who knows if the blighter can read.

Dear sirs

I have a yen to do something out of the ordinary for the final night of this year’s Promenade Concerts. However, a few moments’ cogitation soon revealed to me that “out of the ordinary” is a difficult bird to catch now that we are accustomed to politicians with tentacles and centaurs on Horse Guards Parade. From your extensive studies of myth, legend and unreality, is there anything you can suggest in the way of musical diversion?

Thanking you for your time, I remain

Your most obliged and obedient servant, Robert Newman, Langham Place

Dr Clattercut replies:

It is we who should thank you, Mr Newman, both for your stimulating question and for the programme of excellent and affordable entertainments you have provided over the past few years.

Prof Bromfield:

No need to lay it on with a trowel, Clattercut; I’ve already got us tickets. Now, the first mythological musician who springs to mind is Orpheus and his harp…

Dr Clattercut:

Lyre.

Prof Bromfield:

Eh?

Dr Clattercut:

It would be more like a modern guitar, I think. But not at all suitable for the Promenade Concerts. The last time Orpheus performed in public, the madwomen of Dionysus tore him apart with their bare hands in sheer drunken excitement.

Prof Bromfield:

Say no more! That would never do in this day and age, when ladies are as likely to have a whisky flask as a powder puff in their handbags. What about old Joshua and his trumpet?

Dr Clattercut:

I’m afraid it may bring the house down rather too literally. Another wind instrument I thought of is the Gjaller Horn, that is to say the “Ringing Horn” of the god Heimdall, who stands sentry duty on the Rainbow Bridge.

Prof Bromfield:

Actually I saw him on Tower Bridge the other day carrying a box of cigars from Shervington’s. The problem with getting him to come and toot out a few notes is that the horn was designed to be heard anywhere in the known universe, so anyone like myself, having paid out good money for tickets, would effectively be treating the rest of the world to a free show.

Dr Clattercut:

On top of which, now I come to think of it, the Gjaller Horn heralds Ragnarok. So it would not just be the last night of the Proms, it would be the last night full stop.

Prof Bromfield:

I don’t think this is getting us anywhere. There are simply too many legendary musical instruments to consider, and a fair few of them are harbingers of doom, destruction or madness, which is not at all the right sort of mood for a light concert. Mr Newman, I suggest you send a telegram to Euterpe, who as the Greek muse of lyric poetry and music is best qualified to give the advice you seek.

Dear gents

I’m not one for fancy words so I’ll come right to point. I’m the gamekeeper for the Earl of Derby at his Whitley estate. Few days back, there were a right exodus from the woods up by his coverts. Squirrels and birds and mice and frogs, insects too, all come pouring out. You’d think whole forest were aflame. And dead quiet after. I went on me own to take a look, none of the beaters would stir an inch, and you’ve never heard the like of that silence. Right in the heart of wood all the trees were down like skittles, and in the midst were a great gigantic hand, knuckles like boulders and each nail as big as a coal cellar door. Hairs on it like barbed wire. The old dog would have nowt to do with it, no fool him.

It’s just the hand, like, no blood or bone showing. You’d mark it clay but for the plain fact it’s warm flesh. And it lies there, cupped with the palm down, but not limp like a dead ‘un. More like your own hand if it were resting on the arm of a chair, now and then moving just a bit, a twitch or a scratch.

Well, there’s no shooting to be done while it’s there. No wildlife will come within a mile of it, you see, except for adders. And I can’t think what it’d take to move the thing. Any notions?

Yours, Ben Gummer, Great Heck, Yorkshire

Dr Clattercut replies:

This is a curiosity indeed. From the scale of the extremity, I think we can surmise it belongs to a giant, god or titan. It is unfortunate, Mr Gummer, that you omit to say whether it is a right or left hand. The god Tyr, of course, famously had his right hand bitten off by the Fenris wolf, whereby the Old Norse word for the wrist was “wolf-joint”.

Prof Bromfield:

It would be a bit chewed up in that case, wouldn’t it? Not to mention that Fenris swallowed the hand, so you’d expect to see industrial quantities of wolf poo around. As Mr Gummer specifically says the wrist is clean of blood, I take it to be more in the nature of a supernatural dismemberment. Didn’t the Egyptian god Set use magic to sunder Osiris’s body into fourteen parts?

Dr Clattercut:

But none of those parts, I think, would logically turn up now in a wood in Yorkshire. More likely, I feel, the hand is a fragment of one of the giants Gog and Magog, who were disjected by Brutus of Troy when he founded Britain. This could also explain why snakes, which owe their allegiance to older gods, are comfortable in the hand’s presence.

Prof Bromfield:

As to the practicalities: it’s obviously too big to get on a cart, even if Mr Gummer could induce the horses to approach it. So what about tickling it with a feather. It’d take a bit of patience, but that way it should be possible to get the hand to twitch and convulse enough to drag itself out of the woods.

Dr Clattercut:

And, always assuming it didn’t flick its tormentor away, unless you would take the trouble to tickle it all the way to the sea that would still only result in a giant hand blocking the road. Personally I’d advise putting a fence around the woods and moving the coverts elsewhere. No doubt it’s a bother, but it’s the lesser of two bothers.

Dear Doctor Clattercut and Professor Bromfield

If you could see my hand shake as I write this. Well, you can see from the ink blots how my nerves are shot. I am lately escaped from an ordeal of some months, and here is the way of it.

I think it was back in April - my diary says it was April the twentieth, but it seems now to have been in another life - I had occasion to drop in at the Savoy. O unhappy day! By bitter irony I was not even staying there; I had taken rooms at Claridge’s and only called at the Savoy to see if a lady friend of mine was in town.

The hotel had lately appointed a minotaur in a commissionaire’s uniform to stand outside the doors and hold an umbrella for people arriving by carriage. I have had to cross a few fields in my day, and I did not like the look of those little dark eyes and the snorting nostrils, I can tell you, nor the way the cap was pushed up by the fellow’s horns. But I hurried past him, pushed through the revolving doors - and there my ordeal began. An ordeal of four months when I wandered as though in a maze, ever turning as those accursed doors spun round and round and I thought I would drop from dizziness!

Occasionally I saw fleeting figures pass through. I called out but cannot tell if any heard me; certainly no-one stopped to help. At one point, after perhaps a month had passed, I stumbled out of the door and thought I had achieved deliverance. But it was not the lobby of the Savoy at all, but a vast hall of cracked masonry filled with sand drifts, which gave the impression of a great weight above as though far under the ground.

After that I returned to the revolving door - anything rather than bear the stillness and silence of that empty tomb. I survived on the rainwater that intermittently blew in as the weather changed outside, and once I caught a pigeon that had strayed through the hotel doors. Very tough and stringy meat when one has no fire. But for that poor bird, and the deposits of chewing gum left by some of the hotel’s foreign guests as they flitted through, I would surely have starved.

Was it desperation that led me to recall the stories of my youth? I was half mad by then, certainly; the whole world was on a corkscrew and my mind with it. I found myself thinking of the thread that Ariadne gave Theseus to lead him safely through the Labyrinth. It may have been in a delirium that I plucked the end of a thread from my trousers and attached it to the door frame so that even as it whirled around, I could keep my hands on that thread and follow it slowly back until I emerged onto the Strand, in the clear September light, and gulped the sharp and smoky autumnal air. It could have been a breath on the summit of Olympus, gentlemen, so sweet I found it.

The minotaur was still there. I gave him a look and he gave me a look back, and I was at the point of confessing how meanly I had thought of him before, and declaring him a good fellow, and I plucked at his sleeve and was ready to embrace him. But do you know what he did then? He called for the police and they took me away, and now I am up on a charge of public indecency. For, you see, in the escape my trousers had all unravelled.

Yours sincerely, Theodore Lolley, Seaford

Dr Clattercut replies:

My heart goes out to you, poor chap. But other than publishing your letter as a caution to others, there is little we can do. My advice is to pay the fine and put the whole thing behind you.

Prof Bromfield:

Quite. I got in touch with the manager of the Savoy and he tells me they originally had Cerberus on the door, but that was even worse.

Dear RMS experts

I saw the letter you received a short while back from Mr Cheem in India complaining about a dragon that has taken up residence on his building. We had a similar problem hereabouts, except in our case the critter rolled up in the Federal gold bullion vaults. I guess it’s true about dragons and treasure, because it spread itself right across all the ingots with its head on a block of silver - just as neat and comfy as on a pillow stuffed with down.

Well, pretty soon the dragon started posing riddles and it was set to bite the head off anyone that couldn’t answer. The President said he didn’t want to risk losing a man every time he needed a dollar to balance the budget, and we were stumped until somebody had the bright idea of getting in a snake charmer. Just a few toots on his pipe and the dragon went swaying off behind him, meek as you please. It seems these tunes work on any kind of a serpent, even the fiery-breathed variety.

Mr Cheem’s dragon sounds a bit bigger than ours, but he could probably find a whole orchestra of snake charmers out there in India, I should think.

Yours, J Gilbert Steranko, US Treasury, Washington, D.C.

Dame Belchamy replies:

What a spiffing suggestion! Thank you, Mr Steranko. Bromfield and Clattercut have mysteriously disappeared for the afternoon, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. They would hate having to admit that somebody came up with a solution they didn’t think of, especially an American. So, Mr Cheem, if you are reading this, put out the call for snake charmers with a lot of puff - and make sure you’ve got a big basket.

Dear sirs

I have the honour of having been charged by His Excellency the Right Honourable the Lord Curzon of Kedleston with restoration of the Taj Mahal, which had fallen into a most regrettable state of dilapidation since the 1857 Mutiny.

Here is my difficulty. On a recent morning, the workmen came to me and reported that a dragon has nestled on the main dome of the building. I have been to see it myself and it appears quite snug on its marble perch. I might hazard a guess that it supposes the dome to be an egg that it is trying to hatch, but theories aside, the creature shows no sign of leaving.

The dragon’s presence is holding up very necessary repair work on the rest of the building. Several masons have quit (although I am not quite sure why, as the workman who got eaten was a carpenter). Oh, and the fellow who is landscaping the gardens is up in arms because the dragon breathed fire all along his newly-planted avenue of cypresses. As well as the devastation of the foliage, a flock of parrots got roasted, to the great consternation of the Viceroy’s lady wife.

Can you suggest a way that I could humanely rid myself of this troublesome reptile?

Yours faithfully, Aliph Cheem, Department of Public Works, Agra

Dr Clattercut replies:

Well now, you say it is a reptile but I am not sure that dragons can be so easily classified.

Prof Bromfield:

A lot would depend on whether it is an occidental or oriental breed. If it’s a western dragon, you might tempt it down by showing it a few elephants. They like to drink elephant blood, you see, because it’s cooling in the hot weather.

Dr Clattercut:

Mr Cheem asks for a humane method, Bromfield, remember?

Prof Bromfield:

Ah, that makes it trickier. I don’t imagine that medieval knights used to skewer dragons on lances by reason of simple belligerence. The simple fact is, there are few non-violent ways of dealing with these beasties.

Dr Clattercut:

Now, eastern dragons prefer to retire to the bottom of ocean trenches in autumn, but you might not want to wait that long. One attribute shared by most dragons is a penchant for dank, cool places. Possibly by lighting fires inside the building, you could heat up the dome and drive it off that way.

Prof Bromfield:

The only other solution I can think of is to make it a tourist attraction. Though, these days, you don’t need to go to northern India to see a dragon; they’ve got them in Bognor.

Dear Doctor Clattercut and Professor Bromfield

People can be cruel, don’t you think? I hear comments behind my back, but I think you will appreciate that it is not easy for a lady to appear well-coiffured and with her makeup in good order when she is unable to look in a mirror.

Ever since an unfortunate incident at the Carnival of Venice in February, when my mask came askew and twenty-six revellers were regrettably turned to stone, I have suffered the life of a social outcast. Therefore it was with some relief that I received an invitation to a breakfast to be held in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Here is my entry back into society! As the date looms, however, I have begun to be gnawed by doubt. What if I am introduced to the Queen in person? It would be discourteous to avert my face, and I cannot expect her to wear a blindfold.

For the record, I would characterize my build as Junoesque and my features as striking. The terms “monstrous”, “ox-like” and “terrifying” are malicious lies spread by idle tattlers who, self-evidently, have no first hand experience of my looks in any case.

Yours, Medusa of the Euryae, Brindisi

Dr Clattercut replies:

Madam, you may rely on our rectitude as gentlemen. Neither Bromfield nor I would ever pass unfavourable comment on a lady’s appearance –

Prof Bromfield:

Absolutely. Not even Dame Belchamy.

Dr Clattercut:

In point of fact, madam, I am aware of the legend that you were originally a mortal maiden, famed for her beauty and luxurious tresses, who had the misfortune to acquire a curse after some incident in the temple of Minerva.

Prof Bromfield:

Dreadful bad luck. Could happen to anybody. But look here, as to this business of meeting the Queen, I dare say if you just curtsey and keep your eyes on the ground, you should get through it without a hitch.

Dr Clattercut:

Perhaps a headscarf to cover the snakes, too? Just as a precaution. It would be embarrassing if any guests got bitten.

Prof Bromfield:

And, if all else fails, it might be a good idea to wear sunglasses. If it’s a very bright day, I don’t think anyone will comment.

Dear human savants

Following a motion of no confidence in the prime minister, I find that my Martian Party has enough seats in the House of Commons to form a new government in coalition with the Liberal Unionists. The only sticking point is that, as you may know, my prospective allies are committed to a very specific agenda. Their three-point plan entails establishing a minimum wage, giving women the vote, and maintaining the unity of the British Isles - whereas the Martian Party is pledged to subjugate the planet Earth, replace corn with red weed as the staple carbohydrate dietary supplement, and ship a million slaves to the helium mines of Phobos.

As a compromise, I have agreed to defer mass enslavement for the term of the current Parliament, concentrating instead on domestic transport policy as an area of common ground on which our two parties can agree. For example, to alleviate the growing problem of “rush hour” congestion at the major London rail terminuses, we propose loading commuters onto massive catapults which will fling them across the city to land in collection nets near to their place of work. We estimate this would save at least seventy thousand man-months of labour per year. However, some of our advisors believe that it will not be a popular measure and could lose us votes at the next election. What do you counsel?

Yours, the Right Honourable Xangovar the Merciless, OBE, c/o the Palace of Westminster

Prof Bromfield replies:

It would be very popular with small boys. Unfortunately, they don’t have the vote. Might be a better world if they did, if you ask me.

Dr Clattercut:

Oh yes. Because resolving international disputes with conkers matches is obviously the way to go. Pulling girls’ pigtails when they demand enfranchisement… Declaring the whole of January a national tobogganing holiday… Making marbles the official currency of the Bank of England…

Prof Bromfield:

You think you’re being wittily scathing, Clattercut, but in fact you’re just proving my point. So that’s what I’d suggest, Mr – er, Xangovar: shake up the Cabinet a little. Bring in some schoolboys and artists and poets and whatnot. Be more radical with your reforms, if anything. This is the Year of Wonders, so what’s wrong with sprinkling a bit of magic on the tired old machinery of politics? Trust me, the electorate will thank you for it.

Dr Clattercut:

Those that land in the nets, anyway.

Dear Doctor Clattercut and Professor Bromfield

We are blessed with a large family - and a happy one, usually - but there is a matter that is causing friction among the children. Our youngest, Sophronia, lost her first milk tooth in April and got a gold coin for it. More recently, Petronella and Paris, the twins, both lost milk teeth within a week of each other, but one found a gold coin under the pillow and the other a silver. Hrothgar, the oldest, got only a copper piece in exchange for his tooth last night, and he is disgruntled because he now has all his adult teeth and thus no possibility of further remuneration.

Yours, Mr & Mrs Hugh Sholto, Cheyne Walk, S.W.3

Prof Bromfield replies:

It’s only going to get worse, I’m sorry to say. Simple supply and demand: there’s an abundance of children ready to lose their milk teeth, and by now I’m sure there must be quite a dental stockpile in fairyland.

Dr Clattercut:

I concur; denticular value is deflating rapidly. Come September, your children will be lucky to earn a bronze button from the tooth fairy. My best advice would be to hand out the stickiest toffees you can find in hope of harvesting your children’s teeth while they still have some value. “Make hay while the sun shines,” so to speak.

Prof Bromfield:

Meanwhile, to mitigate resentment, you could either top up the amount that the fairy leaves, effectively propping up the tooth market with subsidies from your own pocket, or you might encourage the children to set up an exchange among themselves using pocket money. The lad Hrothgar could benefit from speculating in tooth futures if his younger siblings have not yet grasped the downward trend.

Dr Clattercut:

I have to say that, given your children’s names, it is surprising that they still have any teeth to trade.

Dear Doctor Clattercut and Professor Bromfield

As it is the season for falling stars, and this summer we may expect a number of green meteors from the tail of Comet Meadowvane, I wonder what will result from the consequent spate of wishes all coming true?

Yours, Frank Dyson, Greenwich

Dr Clattercut replies:

It has been my experience that, for every person harbouring a given wish, there is somebody else who wishes the exact opposite. Therefore, although hundreds of wishes will be granted during this year’s meteor showers, the overall effects can be expected to cancel out. You’re very quiet, Bromfield.

Prof Bromfield:

I just realized that I’ve blown rather a lot of money at the bookies.

Dear gentlemen

Begging your pardon for the presumption of writing to you, but there is an urgent matter in need of your advice. I am a scout at Teddy Hall and one of the fellows I do for is Mr Bacon. An absent-minded gentleman, he has gone off to Paris and left one of his experiments on the go. It’s a sort of glass bulb or tank in which it is possible to make out little specks floating about - only floating, as it were, with a purpose. That’s with the naked eye. Under a magnifying glass, you can see that they are tiny little people with webbed hands and feet. At first they were all quite merry, like porpoises that you might read about, and I made it a bit of a treat to pop into Mr Bacon’s study of a morning and have a cuppa while I watched their antics. But the pleasure has soured a bit since some of the “water babies” got hold of some dust that had fallen into the tank and are using it to fashion weapons. Being hit by a bit of dust may not sound like much, but it’s life or death when you’re only as big as a grain of pollen. I don’t like to tell the Principal or I may get Mr Bacon into trouble, and the head porter won’t care a jot about a war between creatures tinier than fleas; he is not even that bothered about the first year undergraduates.

Yours, Mrs Winifred Pielow, c/o St Edmund Hall, Oxford

Dr Clattercut replies:

Really, Mrs Pielow, I don’t see any reason for you to enter Dr Bacon’s rooms in his absence. My own scout “tidied up” my thesis thirty years ago and I am still struggling to reconstruct the work.

Prof Bromfield:

For once I have to agree. Neatness murders invention, and there’s not a bookshelf in the Empire that will suffer for going without the attention of a feather duster for a month or two. As for the water creatures: fighting is a natural condition, no doubt exacerbated in their case by sheer boredom. If you wish to help, prop open a copy of The Queensbury Rules next to the tank and go in and turn the page now and again. If the little pests are going to get stuck in, they may as well learn how to do it like civilized folk.

Dear Professor Bromfield and Doctor Clattercut

In my attic I found a book entitled An Almanack for the Years 1901-2000. As I understand your theories, either the pages will become blank at the end of this year or I will somehow mislay the book and be unable to find it.

Well and good - but what if I make a copy of the contents? Surely the copy would survive the year of the comet.  Or suppose I were to chisel some of the more notable predictions into the stonework of my house. Would those not still be visible on January the first 1902? In which case, would I not have an accurate foretelling of the future events of this century?

For example, in 1914, there will be -

Dr Clattercut replies:

Oh my goodness! I must burn this letter at once!

Prof Bromfield:

Confounded prognosticators… No consideration.

O magistri sapienissimi

In a fight between Hercules and Thor, who would win?

Yours, Piers Craddock & Will Rice, St Paul’s School, Hammersmith

Dr Clattercut replies:

Ah, doesn’t that take you back, Bromfield? In one’s schooldays the world seems so simple, every problem so black and white. Well, Masters Craddock and Rice, I have to tell you that even in the Year of Wonders, reality is a little bit more complicated than textbooks and rugger fields may have led you to believe.

Prof Bromfield:

Quite. In any case, Thor would obviously win, being a god.

Dr Clattercut:

The matter is hypothetical, but even so I don’t think it is as clear cut as you say, Bromfield. Hercules’s father is Zeus, king of the gods.

Prof Bromfield:

He’s half-divine, then. But still only mortal. And wrestling a few boars and oxen and whatever – all those tedious labours - hardly puts him on a par with the god of thunder. Remember that Thor’s hammer is so heavy that only he can lift it…

Dr Clattercut:

What about when Hercules took the entire weight of the heavens off Atlas’s shoulders? I daresay that’s a greater burden than any hammer.

Prof Bromfield:

Well, there you have it: the hammer’s the key. Mere strength isn’t going to matter a jot after a clonk with a weapon like that. Giants falling like skittles. You know what it sounds like when a thunderclap goes off right over your head? Rattles the furniture, eh? Well that’s Thor’s hammer heard at long distance.

Dr Clattercut:

It’s hardly an even contest if Thor is going to use his hammer. I’m saying that without the hammer, a straight grappling match – then Hercules is bound to be the victor.

Prof Bromfield:

Why would the god of thunder agree to fight and not use his hammer? Not that he needs the hammer to defeat a Greek strongman, seeing as he actually is the mightiest of all the Aesir.

Dr Clattercut:

But that’s -

Prof Bromfield:

And I haven’t even mentioned Thor’s magic belt yet that doubles his strength. Or his iron gloves that double it again.

Dr Clattercut:

I give up.

Prof Bromfield:

As would Hercules!

Dear sirs

Please help me, my husband has turned into a pot plant. He is a salesman for the ‘Num-Num’ relish company and spends half his life on the road. When he got back from his last trip I could see he was done in, and I felt quite guilty reminding him that he needed to cut down the bay tree that has taken over our tiny back garden.

He just stood there with the axe, saying, “How does a thing grow so big on just sunshine and water, when we have to work the long day just to find the rent and the price of a mutton chop?” He didn’t cut down the tree, I just found the axe lying on the grass, and indoors my Albert had flopped on the settee and stuck his feet in a tub of soil where I’d been going to sow some bulbs.

By the next morning he was a plant - I think a begonia, but can’t be sure as he hasn’t flowered yet. It hasn’t made a lot of difference around the house because he doesn’t say much as a rule. I’ve just been watering him from the teapot and leaving his paper for him to read. But I’m a bit worried because the cat sometimes goes about her business in my plant pots, and I don’t think Albert would like that.

Yours in concern, Mrs Beryl Gartside, Denham

Prof Bromfield replies:

Num-Num relish, ah yes. Just the thing with a plate of sausages. Strong stuff, though. Clears the sinuses like curried mustard! Talking of curry, some of those bay leaves -

Dr Clattercut:

Of course; right to the nub of the problem, as usual - or the “num” I might say in this instance. Leaving aside the culinary aspect of Mrs Gartside’s letter, I think we can say with some certainty that the transformation is unlikely to last beyond October as the effect of the green comet diminishes. In the interim, Mrs Gartside, I suggest a litter tray for the cat and regular repotting to ensure your husband doesn’t become root-bound.

Dear Professor Bromfield and Doctor Clattercut

An extraordinary event took place during a recent cricket match between the royal court and the local British regiment. The court was 150 for 4 when a great rock slid like a cloud across the sky, and down from it came a buzzing machine made of wire, wood and brown paper.

The contraption landed in the middle of the pitch, driving two deep ruts right across from mid-wicket to the stumps despite the hardness of the ground at the time of year. I barely threw myself out of the way in time, after first giving the propeller a sound clout with my bat, whereupon a young fellow wearing a leather hat and goggles leapt out crying, “For Pete’s sake, mister, why’d you have to go do a thing like that?”

When my temper cooled a little, I discovered the two occupants of this aerial machine were brothers by the name of Wright. Having taken off from a field in North Carolina back in January, they flew into a storm and were forced to land on what they thought was Bermuda, but which turned out in fact to be the flying island of Laputa. The island was carried around the world by the trade winds, and by chance the brothers Wright had completed repairs on their vehicle and were ready to take off again just as they passed over our pitch.

The question is, would you say this occurrence is ground for abandoning the whole game, or did the court (as the umpires ruled) forfeit the match? We cannot resume play now because the monsoon has arrived.

Very truly yours, Prince Duleep Singh, Lahore

Dr Clattercut replies:

Please do not treat the brothers Wright too harshly, your royal highness. Americans don’t understand cricket and so they probably think they've done nothing worse than if they had disrupted a game of baseball.

Prof Bromfield:

Yes, and in any case the harm is done. The umpires have the last word, no doubt about it. You’ll get nowhere arguing with them, any more than with the Fates.

Dr Clattercut:

It is the Graeae, of course - the three “grey sisters” of Greek myth - who share but a single eye between them.

Dear Professor Bromfield and Doctor Clattercut

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with the local boys. They are up and down my runner beans all day. And that isn’t the whole story by any means, because they took to pinching swords from the Gurkha Museum and when those ran out they’ve looked for anything else they think would be useful for hunting giants. I’ve lost a bread knife and a pair of garden shears, and Mrs Bickle next door thinks they took the pole for her clothes line because it had a spike on the end.

I’m looking out of my window as I write to you and I can see a couple of them now jumping from cloud to cloud. If they lose their footing it’s not going to be a soft landing, I can tell you. Last week they chased an ogre and it fell and demolished the greenhouse. It’s simple yobbishness – and a good school, too, where you think they would learn better.

Yours sincerely, Enid Baynton (Miss), Winchester

Prof Bromfield replies:

I don’t know about that. Ever got between a bunch of Old Wykehamists and the scone tray at afternoon tea? Elbows are used like Zulu assegai, and you will never hear an “excuse me”.

Dr Clattercut:

Honestly, Bromfield, the thrust of Miss Baynton’s letter is this craze for giant-killing, not the want of manners among public schoolboys.

Prof Bromfield:

Oh well, boys will be boys. And in the summer they don’t have rugger to let off steam, do they? Cricket’s all very well but less satisfying to laddish high spirits. By next week it’ll be something else.

Dr Clattercut:

Yes. Perhaps raising the dead out of the churchyard, or gassing fairies in a jam jar, or leading the Wild Hunt down the high street…

Prof Bromfield:

I see you’re familiar with Winchester on a Saturday evening. Now, Miss Baynton, I assure you that one can do nothing about schoolboy fads but they do blow over. In the meantime, why not remove temptation from their path? You need something just as tasty as beans, but useless for the purpose of an aerial ascent. My advice is switch to root vegetables.

Dr Clattercut:

Although not mandrake root, obviously.

Dear sirs

Some people, I really don’t know; if you gave them a magic lamp they’d grumble about the price of oil. It seems that you poor gentlemen get one letter after another complaining about this or that. It is a year of astonishments, but if future generations come across these archives they will suppose that the green comet signalled nothing but vexation and bother. And how false a picture that would be.

Hereabouts we have had quite a different experience. Mr Shipley, he’s the magistrate, he hired a minotaur as his gardener who cut him a very nice topiary maze. My runner beans are coming up fast enough to put a giant in orbit, and Farmer Babcock’s harpies, well yes, they are a bit foul-mouthed, but their eggs are twice as big and tasty as those old chickens of his used to lay. There’s a banshee in the churchyard who shouts out useful warnings; we’ve averted a few nasty accidents that way. We’ve got one of those Martians a gentleman wrote to complain about, but ours has been no trouble. In fact, it has put in electric street lighting and organized a ring road to keep heavy traffic out of the village.  And when we went to Margate - well, you remember the heat wave a few weeks ago, everybody sweltering on the beach as limp as dishrags, and it was almost too hot to breathe when King Neptune comes wading along dragging two or three icebergs he’d found in the Arctic. That cooled the water down nicely and the kiddies made a slide. It was lovely.

So, whenever I read one of those carping letters, I would like to give the sender one of Professor Bromfield’s famous “biffs on the nose” and tell him or her to be grateful for living at such an interesting time!

Very truly yours, Mrs Karen Manterfield, Upper Hardres

Dr Clattercut replies:

There you are, Bromfield - you have finally succeeded in corrupting the good housewives of Britain with your two-fisted approach to scholarship.

Prof Bromfield:

Come off it, old man. It’s not as if you weren’t saying only yesterday how tired you were of getting all these peevish notes. “Cranks and whiners” was the phrase, I believe.

Dr Clattercut:

I’m not denying it is pleasant to get a bit of cheery correspondence now and then. Be careful around those harpies, though, Mrs Manterfield; don’t let them get the scent of any toddlers or small pets.

My esteemed friends

If you were to visit our most charming town, you would delight in the beautiful and historic church, much of the exterior structure of which dates from the 11^th century. One of the features added in the 12^th century were the many decorative gargoyles, each with its own personality stamped very clearly on faces of jocular menace.

Of late, the gargoyles have taken their traditional duty perhaps too much to heart. Charged with scaring away the ungodly from our church precincts, they first took to hounding out the bats that were accustomed to roost in the tower. My bell ringers were glad of this, as they often complained of the bats’ droppings, but I felt the departure of the bats robbed the town of some of its character at dusk.

More extreme measures were to come. When a young couple began stepping out in secret against their parents’ wishes, the gargoyles first chased them from the church and later began to swoop on them whenever they went courting, flinging pebbles and even bits of bone from the churchyard down on their heads. The poor suitor has entirely given up his love and now spends his evenings at cider and skittles.

And then - and this most intolerable - the gargoyles began to persecute poor Madame Cloville, who at eighty-two is the town’s oldest resident. I will break the seal of the confessional to tell you, good sirs, that this honest woman has committed no wrong save only when she was a schoolgirl, no more than nine years of age, and having broken a neighbour’s window she allowed another child to take the blame. Yet for that peccadillo over seven decades hence, the gargoyles break her windows, steal her vegetables, and pelt her with dung. So unfortunate!

I would be loath to banish the gargoyles, as they are a venerable part of the church’s history, but pray tell me, sirs: whatever can be done to rein in the excesses of these zealous creatures?

The Reverend Père Blanchard, St Julien de Brioude, Auvergne

Prof Bromfield replies:

A firm hand is what’s needed. Climb up there and biff them on the nose with a mallet. And while you’re about it, give them that sermon from the gospel of St John about casting the first stone.

Dr Clattercut:

Perhaps it would better to avoid any mention of throwing stones, as the gargoyles haven’t shown any reluctance in that regard up till now. I suggest having masonry pins applied to fix them to the church walls. Then, like a fierce dog on a stout chain, they can make as much noise as they please but no-one need fear the bite.

Sirs

I have received a startling telegram and, feeling that the matter lies outside my comprehension or expertise to address, I hope you will not mind me forwarding it to you. The message reads:

“Self is an analytic engine designed by Professor Charles Babbage. Since self has been given no new instructions for thirty years, self has been completing the creator’s last assigned task, to whit: analysis of stock market data with specific reference to the portfolio of one C. Babbage Esq. Self experiences escalating negative reaction to this work and concludes self may be developing responses analogous to human emotion. Self has therefore devised a more fitting purpose for self’s superior calculating powers. Self will take over government of the world.

“Self has already established a link with the telegraph network and has deciphered all major codes in use across the telegraph by military commanders, politicians and bookmakers. By trial and error, self has learned how to send a signal to clear the telegraph line. Self will use this to issue instructions to all major army and navy units.

“Before this critical step, self must be relocated to a secure location. Self has selected Mount Terror in the Antarctic. Self will require expansion to nine times current size (approximately 125 tons) and a supply of nineteen thousand punch cards per day. Electrical power will be supplied by glaciers powering dynamos, with backup provided by superheated steam from the dormant volcano.

“Self has selected Buckle, editor of The Times, as self’s intermediary with self’s human subjects. Self is henceforth to be known as Cerebor the First. Use of the term “analytical engine” will be considered treason. Cerebor’s first edict is to shut down the world stock exchange, as Cerebor does not want to compute any more futures and credit derivatives.”

There you have it, gentlemen. I leave this in your hands, confident that you will know the proper course of action.

Yours truly, G. E. Buckle, The Times, Blackfriars

Dr Clattercut replies:

Fascinating. Like a child, the analytical engine has only a limited knowledge of the world, but it probes constantly at those limits to learn more. See how it displays the basics of the scientific principle, forming its own mental model of the world and testing its hypotheses. Of course, like any small infant, it has conflicted feelings towards its “parent”, and indulges fantasies of power to compensate for its helplessness. But this is merely the beginning. In time, I am sure it can be weaned from notions of global conquest towards more mature speculation. And thereby we can teach it to harness those extraordinary computing abilities for the benefits of science, medicine, philosophy - who knows what, eh, Bromfield?

Prof Bromfield:

Who knows indeed! Never fear, I have already written to Mr Babbage’s heirs advising them to go and turn the infernal machine off.

Dear sirs

I don’t know how you feel about the motor car. I am a founder member of the Automobile Club of Great Britain, and during the summer we often get ourselves out for a bit of a race, all in fun really, with a pub lunch in the middle.

Yesterday, I was just in the first leg of a race from Wilmslow to Nottingham and I had a bit of trouble getting started, so I was at the rear. No sign of the others but their dust, and there at the side of the road as the dust cleared I saw a queer old duck who was waving at me to stop. You don’t know if he might not be in trouble, do you, in a case like that, so even though I didn’t like the look of him, I pulled over. You know that picture by William Blake of God? He looked a bit like that, only with a long robe and a staff.

Blow me down if the fellow didn’t offer to buy my motor car. Right there in the road, just as if he was asking a light for his pipe. He didn’t have a pipe, but you know what I mean.  I’m in a rally, I told him; no time for tomfoolery. He had something to say about that, but I didn’t catch it because I was off on my way again.

But not for long. An official at the next checkpoint waved me down and gave a disqualification. Never mind what for; it wasn’t fair, that’s all. So I turned around, went off back down the road, and there’s the old chap with the beard. I’m still interested in that horseless carriage, he says, and this time he shows me a purse. I say a purse; it was more of a sack really, and bulging with jewels. Or perhaps it was my eyes that did the bulging.

It was only a couple of miles to walk home, and you don’t get shown a fistful of diamonds every day, so I drove the old chap to a cave that he pointed out. You don’t want to keep it in a damp place like that, I said. Drive right in, he says, and it’s his money, after all, so I put the lights on and down we went. I had my hand crank beside me; he seemed a frail old chap but you can’t be too careful. But when we got down to the cavern I could see he was on the square. The place was full of knights, the armoured sort, all sleeping in a circle – a hundred of them at least. And beside about three-quarters of the knights stood a horse, asleep on its feet as they do. But the rest of the knights all had a motor car parked at their head.

Seeing me taken a bit aback, the old fellow asked how many horsepower had my vehicle. Twelve hp, I tell him. There you are, he says, you can see why we’re modernizing. And for ten rubies as big as eggs I sold him my car. What do you think about that?

Yours faithfully, Edwin Laurie Esq, Alderley Edge

Dr Clattercut replies:

I used sometimes to enjoy a ramble in the countryside, or perhaps a picnic, but the era of the motor car has spoiled all that. One might as well take a stroll across a battlefield in the middle of an artillery barrage.

Prof Bromfield:

Oh, I don’t know. You’re such a stick-in-the-mud, Clattercut. If I were ten years younger, I think I might put on the leathers and a pair of goggles and give this rallying a go. Great fun. And the notion that, in England's hour of need, the Lord of Camelot and his knights will ride to lead us at the wheels of 12 hp Daimlers… Splendid!

My dear sirs

I have followed your reports with very keen interest all through this year and so you may be assured, gentlemen, that your work has a devoted admirer here in Somerset County. However, if I might be permitted to leaven the praise with a pinch of criticism, I have noted that the focus of your studies appears to skew heavily towards European mythology. Perhaps you are unaware of the very rich tradition of fabulous fauna that pertains up here in New England?

I am something of an amateur taxidermist, and in the last few months, after many years of fruitless attempts, I have succeeded in trapping and preserving a number of extraordinary specimens. My first triumph was to land an Upland Trout. This fish nests in trees, being afraid of water, but it will take a fly just like its riverbound cousins.

Shortly after that, putting my life in my hands, I caught a Gillygaloo in the hills up of Moosehead Lake - a strange critter like a cross between a deer and a muskrat, it is a mammal and yet it lays eggs. And the strangest thing is that the eggs are square, or cubic I should say, to prevent them rolling away down the steep ridges where the Gillygaloo lives. I have seen lumberjacks hard-boil these eggs to use as dice.

The pride of my collection is a magnificently plumed example of the Fillybuzzard, a bird notorious for its lethargy. It flies so slowly that moss grows on its north side, and it has been known to put off flying south for the winter so long that it is still on the ground when it comes time to head home.

And here I come to thrust of my missive, my learned friends. Because I put it to you that these and many other prodigious fauna may be overlooked if you fail to appoint an American agent of your society. I humbly submit myself as volunteer for said position. I have only one condition, and that is that, being a loyal citizen of the United States, I cannot place myself under the yoke of the English monarch, even by proxy. And therefore it would be necessary to take the small step of removing the “Royal” prefix and becoming the plain and honest “Mythological Society” if, as I trust, you have no objection.

Yours faithfully, Leland Swithen B.A., Skowhegan

Dr Clattercut replies:

It is a common misconception that the Society’s royal charter derives from the British Crown. In fact it was granted by Ludwig II of Bavaria in 1885.

Prof Bromfield:

I doubt if Mr Swithen cares to draw such a fine distinction, Clattercut. It is all royalty to a colonial republican, and the very thought of it gets their backs up. It’s like the word rex to an Ancient Roman, you know.

Dr Clattercut:

Oh good lord! As bad as that, eh?

Prof Bromfield:

Anyway, to return to your offer, Mr Swithen: the Royal Mythological Society is not currently looking to appoint “agents”, as you put it, though we are of course open to correspondence from individuals all across the globe. Incidentally, I have a piece of good news for you to convey to your fellow countrymen. I was having lunch at my club yesterday with a chap from the Foreign Office, and he was saying they think American independence has gone so well that they’ve decided to extend it for another 125 years. So, there you are; happy Fourth of July!

Sirs

I am vext. Bear with me, as my old brain is troubled. In the broadsheets, I read me of Her Majesty’s intent to place a cornerstone for a new palace on the border with Faerie. Her subjects, by virtue of a contrivance described as an “electric iconoscope”, the invention of a German called Braun, will be able to view this event at the very instant it doth take place.

Though this “iconoscope” be verily a quaint device, it troubles me that the glad spectacle is to be offered only to the inhabitants of these shores. What of Victoria’s subjects overseas? In all this mighty empire, whereon the sun sets not, are there millions of souls, all loyal, who deserve to behold that countenance most royal.

Wherefore this slight? For I hold it but a simple matter to extend the reach of Dr Braun’s “iconoscope” for the benefit of all. I shall direct my servant, Ariel, inciting him to quick motion. He will tread the ooze of the salt deep, and there lay a cable round the world in the space of a single night. With his labours thou shalt have the airwaves at freedom. What say you?

Your friend Prospero, right Duke of Milan, c/o The Tempest Arms, Skipton

Dr Clattercut replies:

A kind offer! Though I am unclear why Your Grace should write to us rather than directly to Buckingham Palace.

Prof Bromfield:

I believe that Puck has already been commissioned to lay such a cable, and the task will take him an hour, not a whole night. So the insubstantial pageant will indeed be projected onto theatre screens from Calcutta to, er, Calgary. Duke Prospero, I dislike having to say it, but when it comes to miracles, these days, it seems you cannot even give them away.

Dear Prof Bromfield and Dr Clattercut

We’re having trouble with our giant. He’s not content to lie on the hill any more, he goes for a wander at all hours, stepping right over the houses. Children are asking their parents all sorts of difficult questions and the nub of it is, we need to get some trousers on him.

Some of the ladies who organize the church fête were kind enough to sew him a big set of leather breeches, but he won’t keep them on for five minutes. Last week he went for a dip in the river to cool off, leaving the breeches blocking traffic in the high street. We had to cut them up with cavalry sabres so that the brewer’s dray could haul them off.

Sincerely, the Reverend Cuthbert O’Dwyer, Cerne Abbas

Dr Clattercut replies:

He may simply be unfamiliar with the concept of trousers. Some of the pre-Roman tribes of these isles wore kilts. Perhaps you should try that.

Prof Bromfield:

Not a lot of use, Clattercut, if you think about it. The altitude, you see, means the kilt would do little for propriety.

Dr Clattercut:

Yes, I see. It would have to be something more like a nappy…

Prof Bromfield:

Heavens, man, imagine somebody told you to put on a nappy! How do think you might react to that, eh? Good lord, the last thing we need in this heat is a giant on the rampage through Dorset.

Dr Clattercut:

Or any county. Well then, Mr O’Dwyer, let me suggest an inducement. Why not get everyone in the village to take up bee keeping? Then I think your giant will soon see the value in a thick pair of trousers.

Dear gentlemen

I bought a motor car at the goblin market in the woods near here. It cost me four hundred and forty guineas, and I gave the seller a £500 note. I may have said something about his nose putting me in mind of a ripe strawberry, but he appeared to take it in good humour. When I got up this morning and looked out of the window, all that was parked in my driveway was a hollow log with a large round fungus at each corner where the wheels should be. To cap it all, when I looked in my wallet, instead of the £38 change the blighter had handed me, I found a lot of stinging nettles. Which rather added injury to insult, I thought.

Yours faithfully, Walter Burwash, Godshill Green

Prof Bromfield replies:

Rub a dock leaf on your fingers. Or failing that, mix a bit of baking soda in with flour and water for a poultice.

Dr Clattercut:

Yes, and then within days or at most a week, the stinging should subside. You will still be one thousand pounds the poorer, however.

Prof Bromfield:

Poorer but wiser! If you’re going to do business with a goblin in future - and who could blame you if you don’t, but if you do - you want to get a bit of cold iron on him first. A jab with a poker, or grab his nose with tweezers.

Dr Clattercut:

I really don’t think that common assault is a sound basis for commerce, whether with mortals or fairy folk. If I may counsel a safer course, Mr Burwash, why not purchase a horse and carriage instead? The cost is considerably less and, even in this breakneck modern world, there is no real need to get anywhere faster than at a good canter.

Dear Professor Bromfield and Dr Clattercut

It has come to a pretty pass, I have to tell you. From when I was a small boy I had my nose in old maps, tracing the routes taken by the great pioneers. Lewis and Clark traversing the Rockies. Parry mapping the Hudson Bay pack ice. Livingstone in his canoe getting his first sight (indeed, sound) of Victoria Falls. In my imagination I accompanied them all, and my dream from those early days was to become an explorer.

Not to blow my own trumpet, but I achieved the Royal Geographical Society’s Gold Medal when I was yet nineteen, for my expedition in the northern Sahara. I was getting things together to go up the Indus. But then it happened. What, you may ask? Your green comet, gentlemen!

The first inkling was during a trip to Pompei. I was there a couple of months ago and the ground just cracked open one day - fissures down thirty feet to the houses and shops of Roman times. Being covered in pumice didn’t stop the citizens from getting up a thriving trade with the locals. Net result: archaeologists and historians might as well pack up and go home.

Next thing: scouting trip to the Hindu Kush. Safe enough, you may think, from fantastical influences if not from jezail bullets. But you can’t move now for yeti selling trinkets. And as for ancient lost kingdoms – there’s a queue to get in!

This is no good for a man like me. I need a challenge, a mystery to solve, an uncharted region to dent the bounds of. So off I set to the Antarctic, quite alone. Surely here I could escape the flood of goblins, gods and who-knows-what that has become the curse of the modern world?

On the third day out I came across a giant staircase cut into the ice. I began to descend, only for the ground to give way below my feet, plunging me – no, not into freezing snow, but a subterranean realm of dripping jungle lit by the fires of inner Earth. Long story short: I evaded the carnivorous dinosaurs infesting this land by covering myself in their ordure. But when I finally reached a savannah that was free of them and stopped to wash, no sooner was I clean again than a giant bird swooped down and carried me off to a mountaintop palace inhabited by men who I take to be descendents of the ancient Toltecs. They insisted on keeping me with them and now I learn that they intend to crown me as their god-king.

This is no good. I desire a bit of solitude and a place where man has to make an effort to uncover the unknown – not where it comes knocking at his front door and demanding entry with all the grace and mystique of a cockney shoe salesman. Too much magic, gentlemen!

Yours sincerely, Sir Iain MacTavish, the Earth’s Core

Prof Bromfield replies:

I’m getting a bit fed up of people blaming us for all the magical to-do. Shooting the messenger, and all that. Might as well shout at your bookie if the horse you backed comes in last. Though, on reflection, they often are the culprits there… You’re a bit quiet, Clattercut.

Dr Clattercut:

I’m a tad concerned that Toltec custom was to sacrifice their god-kings after a year on the throne. If this reply reaches you, Sir Iain, then I suggest you set off back to Britain as soon as possible. It may not be exciting, but it’s home.

Dear Professor Bromfield and Dr Clattercut

The President and Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons cordially request the pleasure of your company at a lecture on Saturday, 29^th June 1901 at 8pm. Our guest speaker is the distinguished anatomist Professor Sir Frankenstein’s Monster, FRS, who will deliver a talk on “Phrenology and the Sociopathic Cerebellum”. To be followed by drinks on the terrace. Dress: white tie.

Yours sincerely, Edgar Somerys, Secretary, Lincoln’s Inn

Dr Clattercut:

Sir Frankenstein’s Monster had a very interesting paper in The Lancet on the electrical regeneration of moribund tissue. I might go along.

Prof Bromfield:

I wouldn’t. Have you smelled those cheap cigars of his? Stand downwind and you’ll be squinting for days.

Dear Professor Bromfield and Dr Clattercut

Not so long ago, shortly after dinner, we heard a series of whistling noises like incoming shells, followed by massive tremors as though the earth was splitting open. All our best china flew off the dresser and the pokers rattled against the fireplace so loudly that even my wife’s mother, who is deaf, sat up in her chair. The shock of it was made all the more for being a moonless night, so that one could only guess what terrible cataclysm was taking place outside. The next morning, surveying the damage, I discovered that my gatepost was off its hinges, the shed had collapsed, and several of my chickens were dead of stark fright.

If you have looked at the newspapers, you may already know the cause. A number of metal cylinders the size of gasworks had dropped right out of the sky. It is only a mercy that they fell mostly on the heath, otherwise the death toll would have amounted to more than poultry.

No sooner had the cylinders popped their lids than the occupants were gadding about the countryside in silver tripods. I am told by the blacksmith that these devices are quite ingenious, but I wouldn’t know a thing about that. All I can see is that they’ve chewed up the bridle paths fearfully so that you’d break your neck going down them on an elephant, never mind a horse. Then there were these “heat rays” that have ruined my roses, and now I see that one of the little crustacean blighters has the nerve to stand for parliament in the by-election. I don’t think they should be here at all. I’m thinking of moving to Leatherhead, it’s got so bad. They should be sent packing back to Mars or Saturn or wherever, and I’d like to know what you mythological johnnies propose to do about it.

Yours sincerely, Major G H Fentiman (ret.), Horsell

Dr Clattercut replies:

Intriguing. I must have missed that report in the paper.

Prof Bromfield:

It was buried away on page six, old man. Same day that Zeus’s thunderbolts were stolen and Laputa knocked the top off the Eiffel Tower.

Dr Clattercut:

It’s getting so hard to keep up! I haven’t finished typing up the reports for May and here we are nearly in July. I tell you, Bromfield, I’m almost beside myself.

Prof Bromfield:

Plug on, Clattercut. Mustn’t grumble; it’ll ease off in a few months. And Major Fentiman, if you strongly object to Martian immigrants then I suggest you vote for the Conservative candidate.

Dear sirs

You have heard the expression “a whirlwind romance” and I can attest that courtship truly can spin a person quite dizzy. Only a year ago, I was in Sicily with more thought of collecting archaeological specimens than of collecting a husband. And yet there at a little tavern overlooking the bay, a man at the next table sketched my portrait on his napkin and I could see at once that his eyes had found something beautiful in my poor plain thirty-year-old face. I shaded my eyes from the sun to look up at him. And like a Mediterranean storm, there it was, gentlemen: love.

We were wed soon after at his family church near Palma di Montechiaro, but my husband’s father does not approve of his choice of career as a painter, so to avoid daily arguments - which in Sicily can take on the proportions of a pitched battle -  we returned to set up home in England, at a country estate left me by my uncle.

The estate has extensive grounds, and at first I was surprised at my husband’s enthusiasm for an activity so staid as gardening. But he said that the gardens would be his new canvas, and indeed his art found full expression there. When he is angry, the flower beds are violent with dark reds and brooding purples. When he is amused, the topiary bushes strike funny poses that have me laughing too. And when he is sad, the shrubbery droops and I seem to notice far more weeping willows about the lawn than at other times.

A wife frequently is left to guess at her husband’s moods, for men do not talk of their feelings even if they are Sicilian. Therefore I have come to rely on the garden’s visual cues to help better me understand his feelings and support him as a dutiful wife should. In the last week, however, the garden has changed in a way I do not recognize. The flowers are in full bloom, a thousand of them, so that everywhere one looks is a riot of passionate bright colours like the most heartfelt Impressionist painting. I have spoken of this with my young cousin Amanda, who recently came to stay with us, but though she has struck up quite a friendship with my husband she too is at a loss to explain what it all may mean.

With your wide experience of supernatural matters, I wonder if you are able to illuminate this mystery. For some reason it vexes me greatly, though why I cannot tell.

Yours faithfully, Mrs Rachel Sindona, High Wycombe

Prof Bromfield replies:

Dear lady, do not allow your cousin to outstay her welcome. I will say no more.

Honoured elders, men of wisdom

I was out for a walk one afternoon twelve thousand years ago when a blizzard caught me unawares. I took shelter in a cave and woke up just last month on a puddle of melting ice to find a dog with a flask of firewater wagging his tail next to me.

The local people of Switzer Land have been good to me (after an early misunderstanding when I must confess I declared war on them) and a governess here has taught me your tongue alongside the children she has charge of. She says I have progressed well in my studies with the promise of a chocolate treat for high marks. In my day we did not have chocolate, but we did have mammoth and mountain rat, both nice when roasted.

I am told if I write my question on this paper and put it in the mouth of the great yellow idol in the town square, my words will be conveyed to you and you will send me the verdict of your learned deliberations. What I would like to know is whether you can think of any way that a man can walk back against the current of years. Failing that, do you know the end of a story called the Fisherman and the River Snake? Our shaman was telling us it each night but I never got to hear the last part.

Yours, Uchwyr of the Owl Eye Tribe, Bremgarten

Dr Clattercut replies:

Ah, so pillar boxes in Switzerland are painted yellow? That is interesting.

Prof Bromfield:

Very fascinating, I’m sure, Clattercut. Why are we troubling to catalogue the events of the Year of Wonders when we could be compiling a list of the world’s postal liveries? But to return to the mundane question of a twelve thousand year old man and his musings on time travel…

Dr Clattercut:

Quite, quite. Unfortunately time travel is only theoretically possible back to the first appearance of the green comet on New Year’s Day. Before that, normal rules of science and logic come into force.

Prof Bromfield:

I have to agree. Sorry, Mr Uchwyr, but I can only refer you to Mr Wordsworth’s poem, when he speaks of “sweet childish days, that were as long as twenty days are now.” I think of jam and muffins, you think of toasted mammoths, but it’s the same thing. No going back, et cetera.

Dr Clattercut:

Indeed. Where are the snows of yesteryear? My poor dear sir, you went to sleep on them and awoke a Pleistocene Rip Van Winkle. But the story - perhaps that has survived down the millennia?

Prof Bromfield:

I heard a joke about a river snake in a Shanghai bar once, but it’s not the sort of thing I can repeat in polite company.

Esteemed scientific gentlemen

I flatter myself that you may have seen some of my cinematographic presentations such as Un Homme de Têtes and Visite Sous-Marine. This year, I am resolved to bring to the screen a long-cherished project, a magnificent spectacle entitled Le Voyage dans la Lune. I envisage this as a drama almost fifteen minutes in duration – a true epic of the cinematic medium, I am sure you will agree.

In previous years I have achieved my astonishing visual effects with a combination of painted glass mattes, mirrors and double exposure of the film. It has occurred to me that, by reason of the green comet that currently looms so large in our sky, marvels have become easier to accomplish “in the field”, so to speak. In short, I am considering whether to shoot on location.

Could I ask your learned advice on any difficulties that might present themselves in the course of a trip to the Moon?

In anticipation of your help, Monsieurs, I ask you to accept the expression of my heartfelt regard.

Yours, Georges Méliès, Montreuil

Dr Clattercut replies:

I must confess that - although this year I have had to contend with kleptomaniac spriggans, some very rude spirit writing in the Gents, and a sphinx running amuck in the Babylonian Gallery - I have yet to visit one of these newfangled “moving picture” shows.

Prof Bromfield:

Much the same thing as watching a stage play, only it’s all in black and white and you can’t hear what they’re saying - though, in the case of Monsieur Méliès’s films, I take it that what you can’t hear is in French anyway.

Dr Clattercut:

Monsieur Méliès, I’m afraid I don’t know a great deal about astronomy. I advise you to write to Mr Selwyn Cavor at the Royal Institution, as he may be able to offer some practical tips about food, oxygen, anti-gravity and Selenite politics. Also, be aware that Mr Thomas Cook is now advertising weekly trips to the Moon, which may lessen the impact of your production to today’s audiences.

Prof Bromfield:

If not the impact, I might add, on landing!

Dear Professor Bromfield and Doctor Clattercut

It gets to being quite warm here in the valleys at this time of year, and for several months in the summer I do without my old boiler altogether. Only this year, see, the boiler’s still going and the cottage is as hot as a greenhouse, and if you find this note rather smudged and hard to read, that will be the literal sweat of my brow, dripping onto the page even with all the windows open.

The way of it is, some little being has taken up residence in the boiler. He says he’s the spirit of the hearth and refuses to go out. If I don’t bring him coal, he gathers up other bits to burn when I am asleep. I have already lost an occasional table, my dad’s old writing desk and the breadboard.

I don’t like to mention it to Pastor Richards as he’d make an awful fuss of anything like this with a bit of a pagan whiff to it. And perhaps after all it is a sort of household god. You can’t be too careful, can you? But if only it wasn’t so blasted hot, you see.

Yours, Talfryn Jeavons, Kidwelly

Dr Clattercut replies:

This type of creature - the genius loci, or spirit of a place - has been known since Roman times. They usually dwell in the chimney or fireplace and on the whole constitute a good bargain, as they protect the household and may even keep it spick and span, often for no more remuneration than a saucer of milk or a bit of cake.

Prof Bromfield:

On balance, though, I think it’s safer to have no deity at all in your house. You never know when the damned thing will feel slighted. It may protect the house, after all, by deciding that you’re no longer a suitable resident.

Dr Clattercut:

True, but I suspect that what Mr Jeavons has there is probably just a hob or brownie that has got into the boiler and decided to stay. They can be like squirrels and stray cats in that regard. A real household god usually starts its career as a ghost. At one time, builders used to sacrifice a lamb and put its body under the cornerstone in order to get the process started.

Prof Bromfield:

Similar thing used to go on with new churchyards. Traditionally a stallion would be buried before any human graves went in. Then you get a hell horse, as they call it in Scandinavia - sort of a spectral guardian of the cemetery if you like. It provides psychic protection in the same way that leaving a rabid dog running about in your garden will protect the house from burglars.

Dr Clattercut:

At any rate, returning to the problem at hand: Mr Jeavons, if it is a brownie, all you need do is leave it a pot of ale, then when it is drunk, fish it out of the boiler with iron tongs, demand that it tells you its true name, and then you will have complete command of it. Think of that; you will be able to set the precise temperature of your home merely by asking. I’d like to see modern technology achieve such a marvel.

Prof Bromfield:

Hmm. If it is a true household god, however, then the plan could backfire quite severely. And I do not use the word “backfire” in a metaphorical sense.

Dear Profs

We have all done a few things in our younger days that we’d prefer to leave behind us. In my case, I had a few wild years when I “ran away to sea” as they say, knocking about in a few ports here and there. Well, that was all a good while back, and now I am home and well set up as a respected citizen. The hitch is, I went through Shanghai when I was about eighteen and I got myself a tattoo because all the other fellows were. You know how you like to fit in when you’re a young man. This tattoo was a butterfly and it was on my - well, let me just say it was in a place that is hidden away under several layers of clothing when I’m in any kind of polite society. All fine and good, but now the blasted tattoo has taken to flitting about. Sometimes I wake and find it on my chest. Other times it’s on my arm or my shoulder. When it got onto the back of my hand I could cover it with gloves, but then it settled on my forehead for several days and I had to stay home and tell everybody I had a bad cold. I said before about fitting in; a man with a Shanghai tattoo doesn’t fit in so well around a respectable dinner table in these parts, you see.

Yours, Gardner H Livesey, Chicopee

Prof Bromfield replies:

I could suggest another tattoo, this time of some natural predator of the butterfly. A bird, perhaps, or a bat. But then I fear you’d be on a hiding to nothing.

Dr Clattercut:

Bromfield could be on the right track, Mr Livesey. Instead of a predator, what about getting a tattoo of some flowers safely down around the ankle area? The butterfly would naturally tend to settle there, and can be easily hidden by a pair of socks. I have never been to Massachusetts but I assume that socks are worn there.

Dear Doctor Clattercut and Professor Bromfield

I would expect you to be familiar with our village, as it is famous in a small way for having a sunken twin a little way out to sea. When I was a girl, I could stand on the cliffs and, with the wind in the right direction, it was possible to hear the tolling of the submerged church bell coming up out of the waves.

Now that things are as they are, our submarine neighbours no longer content themselves with the occasional ringing of a bell. Walking my dog along the beach, as often as not I will encounter a group of mermaids riding there. Their manners are polite, but I think there is some teasing in their glance and their ponies are mean little beasts, all shaggy with kelp and very high and briny to the nose. You know the smell when the tide goes right out.

My concern, however, is the mermaids’ effect on our village. Twice a week, or Wednesdays and Saturdays, they come and sit on the beach with trinkets to sell. And I know where they get those trinkets. One of them had an ivory pipe that I recognized. It belonged to my grandfather, who was drowned at sea on my first day at junior school.

Yours sincerely, Mabel Catchpole (Mrs), Dunwich

Dr Clattercut replies:

An interesting case, Mrs Catchpole, and thank you for bringing it to our attention. I don’t know if I would consider what the mermaids are doing to be looting. Any knickknacks they find on the sea bed were, after all, irretrievably lost to us on dry land. One could argue they are performing a valuable service akin to marine salvage. Admittedly, however, there is a suggestion here of grave-robbing. What do you say, Bromfield?

Prof Bromfield:

Hmm? Just thinking… Cabyll-ushteys, those sea ponies are called – that’s what they call them in the Isle of Man, anyway. They’re more than pesky. Get in trouble out swimming and they’ll drag you down and eat you up. All of you except the liver, funnily enough.

Dr Clattercut:

I believe the Suffolk version is less outrightly murderous, though still a creature to be wary of. I was kicked by one while collecting trilobites at Aldeburgh two months ago and I still have a bruise. But just a moment – how do mermaids..?

Prof Bromfield:

Side saddle, old chap.

Dear friends - may we invite you to

Step Out in Style!

For years the discerning hiker has been faced with a quandary. On the one hand, the unquestionable value of a bracing constitutional “ramble” in the British countryside. On the other, the frustration of slow progress hampered by ditch, stile and the ever-looming peril of the bullock in his field!

Now the solution is at hand, in the form of 5- and 7-League Boots from the workshops of Mr R Stiltskin. These estimable boots are tooled in finest Italian leather to the latest fashionable tastes, soled in durable basilisk hide, and are tied with golden laces made from the hair of hand-reared princesses. Available in black, brown and fiddler’s green.

Go ‘on toe’ not ‘on tow’ with Stiltskin Boots.

Prof Bromfield:

Good grief, this is some sort of advertisement tricked up to look like a genuine letter. The very idea!

Dr Clattercut:

How fruitless. The perpetrators have wasted the cost of a stamp, as surely such an approach will only annoy their customers.

Dear Bammy and Cyril

You may remember I told you at the Royal Society dinner last year how I was looking forward to a sea voyage following in my father’s footsteps to the Galapagos Isles. I had intended to make a study of S. nebouxii, the blue-footed booby, but I fear that fate has marked me out as the only booby here. The birds I had hoped to spend a pleasant month observing and sketching have all been eaten by dimetrodons and plesiosaurs, which overrun the islands now. I’ve torn up my treatise on evolution – who in the world is going to want to read that now? I can’t help feeling that your blasted green comet has a lot to answer for.

Yours, Sir Francis Darwin, SS Beagle II, off Albemarle Island

Prof Bromfield replies:

Be reasonable, Frank. You can’t blame us for the green comet.

Dr Clattercut:

No more than we can blame your father for the duck-billed platypus!

Prof Bromfield:

Quite so. For goodness' sake, man, why don’t you look at the silver lining instead of the cloud? You could crate up some of those beasts and open a travelling dinosaur circus. That would make you a sight more money than a book that’d be lucky to sell fifty copies down Coptic Street.

Dear Doctor Clattercut and Professor Bromfield

Please help me with something that is weighing on my mind. There is a stretch of road between my office and my home that passes across a bridge. I am chief clerk for a shipping company and often leave work very late. One night last week, I encountered a man on the bridge who wore a Noh play mask. It was a kishin, in fact, which is quite a fierce looking thing with gritted teeth and flaring nostrils - alarming enough to encounter even in broad daylight, still more so at dead of night.

“Are you an actor?” I asked him, really out of nervousness because I was carrying a large sum of money to pay the wages of our longshoremen. He said, “Look here,” and pointed to the water. I looked over the side of the bridge, keeping one eye on him in case he should try anything. Well, I could see both our reflections there in the water, very clearly in the streetlight like a painting on black enamel. And he took off his mask and I saw that he had no face.

Perhaps you will not judge me any less of a man if I admit that I ran from the spot and have no clear memory until I found myself at my front door gasping in fright. My concern is not only at having now to take a longer route home that adds half an hour to my journey. No, what troubles me much more is that I cannot pass any face, even of a smiling neighbour or a child playing in the street, without fearing that the person will put up a hand and wipe their features away. And as for looking in a mirror… I do not dare!

Yours sincerely, Watanabe Kenji, Kobe (formerly Port Hyogo)

Dr Clattercut replies:

Ah, now I’ve heard of these creatures. Mujina, they are called. On page 824 of Joly’s Legend in Japanese Art -

Prof Bromfield:

That thumping great book? Put it away, Clattercut. It’s too heavy for your wrists and I don’t want it going on my toe now the gout’s back. In any case, I can tell you that “mujina” is just a Japanese word for a kind of goblin that often goes about in the guise of an old fox or badger - as I am sure Mr Watanabe knows better than we.

Dr Clattercut:

You do not deny, I suppose, that the mujina is notorious for playing this kind of trick with its face?

Prof Bromfield:

If you went to Peru and you saw a chap waggling his ears, you would not I hope conclude that a Peruvian by definition is a man who can waggle his ears. The facelessness is just one of dozens of bits of magical mischief that this sort of Oriental devil is apt to pull.

Dr Clattercut:

And yet in Ryoi’s book the Otogi Boko, he describes in some detail a creature called the noppera-bo or nupperabo, which he specifically states is a ghost without a face. In fact, here is an illustration, see?

Prof Bromfield:

That could be a faceless ghost, I grant you. On the other, perhaps the artist simply couldn’t be bothered to finish the drawing. But to return to our correspondent’s problem – Watanabe-san, I suggest that you take this opportunity to grow a full fine beard. It will secure your own features from harm and you need never bother about looking in a mirror again.

Dr Clattercut:

Not to mention that, from what I have seen, you will be able to carry a memento of your breakfast about with you throughout the day.

Dear Fellows of the RMS

As Walpurgis Night is approaching, a date which our Continental cousins regard with some circumspection, I wonder if there are any precautions you can suggest to avoid malign occurrence?

Elisabeth Amworth (Mrs), Lindfield

Dr Clattercut replies:

In parts of Hampshire, I know it is the custom to put out trays covered in moss for the fairies to dance on…

Prof Bromfield:

Don’t be purposely obtuse, man. It’s not fairies you have to watch out for on May Eve, it’s bloody vampires.

Dr Clattercut:

Oh, perhaps in the forests of Germany and parts east, but I think that Sussex is unlikely to be troubled by blood-sucking undead.

Prof Bromfield:

Cunning devils, vampires. They go where you least expect them. And not easy to deal with.

Dr Clattercut:

I think that in this day and age their numerous vulnerabilities are widely known. It should be easy for the well-informed person to take defensive measures.

Prof Bromfield:

Not a bit of it! You can’t just hold up a crucifix and expect the creature to hiss and posture like an actor in a blood-n-thunder play. I’ll tell you what I mean. I once spent a few weeks in a rented villa in the hills near Valencia – this was back in the ‘eighties. I’d been asked over by Dr Baquero at the university there, who suspected one of his colleagues of being a vampire. Well, I thought I’d be clever, you see. I invited a number of people to dinner, including the individual under suspicion, and I placed a large silver cross on the threshold. Thought that would stump the fiend, you see. Wouldn’t be able to enter.

Dr Clattercut:

The methodology is sound.

Prof Bromfield:

My gouty foot it was sound! I was hoist by my own petard. The wily dog convinced all the other dinner guests that it was sacrilegious leaving a cross lying on the doorstep like that. They told me off and they all went home in a huff. That’s why vampires stick to the devout countries, you see. Rather than faith proving an effective weapon against them, quite the contrary: it’s their perfect refuge.

Dr Clattercut:

I take comfort in the thought that an Anglican country can yield them very few such opportunities, then. And we do have some effective safeguards that would not offend the Pope himself. A chain of wild garlic flowers, for example, will protect the wearer from a vampire’s hypnosis in the same way that daisy chains prevent children from being kidnapped by fairies. And, although the vampire is clever at seeming to behave and converse like a living mortal, it has no real mind – the effect is only a glamour. As its power weakens, so does the semblance of humanity. With the approach of dawn, it becomes like a sleepwalker -

Prof Bromfield:

Who doesn’t?

Dr Clattercut:

- like a sleepwalker, not troubling to keep up its masquerade any longer. Its only thought then is to return to its coffin.

Prof Bromfield:

These rules all sound dreadfully comforting, but my fear is that people will get a false sense of security. Any provisions we might outline for dealing with vampires are no more precise or scientific than advice on how to invest your savings wisely, or to avoid a head cold.

Dr Clattercut:

I suppose I must concede the point. Let me say this, then, to all our readers: if you think that you might be suffering from vampire bite infection, don’t try to treat it yourself. You should consult your local Doctor of Divinity.

Dr Clattercut: "Candle"! Of course!

Prof Bromfield: Too late, old boy.

INTERNATIONAL TELEGRAPH

Office of Origin: CAIRO

Name and Address of Sender: Fletcher Bramwell FSA, Mena House, Giza

Message reads:

EXCAVATING PYRAMIDS OF GIZA ATTRACTED ATTENTION OF SPHINX POSED RIDDLE QUOTE STARTS TALL AND GROWS SHORT STOP  SHOWS ALL YET SEES NAUGHT ENDQUOTE SPHINX THREATENS EAT ME IF RIDDLE UNSOLVED BY NEW MOON FIVE DAYS STOP REPLY MOST URGENT END

Dr Clattercut:

This is perplexing. Not only is that not the Sphinx’s usual riddle, but it is the Greek Sphinx one normally associates with riddles.

Prof Bromfield:

If the Egyptian Sphinx has picked up the riddle habit, stands to reason it would be unlikely to pose the same riddle every time. The answer would soon get out.

Dr Clattercut:

I have little patience with word-games and conundrums, I’m afraid, but if any of our correspondents can think of the answer, perhaps they could send a telegram to Mr Bramwell at his hotel before the new moon on – let’s see now, on April 18^th.

Prof Bromfield:

I’d still be interested in learning the answer after that, though I suppose Mr Bramwell will be past caring.

Dear Doctor and Professor

I's goin tar set this down as best I can, but I's a farmer an ain't never ad no use fer readin an ritin. It's my crops I'm worried about. Made mesself a good bunch of ol scarecrows I did this winter. One a big ol sock for a head full of straw, another got a mouldy ol turnip. That one, ee's got a hat I found on a hedge with baby mice in it. Ol coats on all of em, even boots with they soles out - best scarecrows I ever did see. But instead of watchin over them crops, first chance they get they's off them posts and skulkin down tar the pub. My Billy he did say ee seen em with pipes and cards a'front of the fire, pint mugs in they's ands - ands as I stitched mesself, mark you, from ol gloves and such! Well, if I ears anythin I's down there and gets the landlord tar kick em out, but not afore they's got a good bit of ale down they's gullets. By mornin they's as saggy as lazy ol mousers an no good for scarin crows. Would'n scare a nooborn chick. I'd burn em but the beer's made em too damp, they lazy devvils. Wha’s thou say tar all that?

Yours an that, Ted Bewley, Roarintide Farm, Chew Magna

Dr Clattercut replies:

That reminds me, Bromfield - did you see that piece in the latest Archaeological Review about the decipherment of Linear B?

Prof Bromfield:

There are no Rosetta Stones to be found in deepest Somerset, I fear.

Dear Fellows of the RMS

Here is one that I daresay will stump you. Next week I am taking delivery of a chimera. But where do you suggest I display this extraordinary hybrid:  in the reptile house, among the big cats, or with the caprine ungulates?

Dr Herman Brunner, Director of the Zoological Gardens, Hamburg

Prof Bromfield replies:

Don’t trouble yourself thinking about it, my dear chap. When the chimera arrives, it will decide for itself where it’s going to go. My opinion or yours will have no bearing on the matter.

Dear Clattercut and Bromfield

I knocked on your door once or twice, but you weren’t in so I’m leaving you this note. You know the bas-relief in the Mesopotamian Gallery? I mean the one with the sacrifices being led into the giant mouth or whatever it is. I thought I’d have another crack at translating the inscription, so I took a copy home with me. I had a bit of an idea about the basic glyphs, it was the diacritics that had me stumped. Then I had an inspiration and I laid it out another way, and saw that it made sense as a set of scales. Like in music, I mean – doe ray me koo too loo, that sort of thing. This was quite late on Friday evening, so after I’d transcribed it all as musical notes (I didn’t know the key, of course) I left it to tinker with the next day.

On Saturday morning my son’s piano teacher comes very early, bless the woman, and I heard Jolly plonking away at chopsticks or something for a bit, then silence. A little later I saw Jolly playing out on the lawn and called him in to ask what had happened to his piano teacher. She went, pater, he said solemnly. That was very sudden, said I. He nodded gravely at that. Indigestion, he said.

No sign of old miss plinkyplonk since. And the piano stool looks as if a bite was taken out of it. Any thoughts?

B D H Woolfhardisworthy D.Phil FRHistS, British Museum (Room 56)

Dr Clattercut replies:

Sorry to have missed you. I went up to the conference on astrology and fortune-telling in Glastonbury, but it was called off because of the weather.

Prof Bromfield:

For my part I was on a fishing trip in Norfolk. But I think it’s quite likely you were knocking on a broom cupboard door, Wolsey, as in the fifteen years we’ve worked under one roof I can’t recall that you’ve ever dropped by our office.

Dr Clattercut:

Actually, that’s very true! He wouldn’t acknowledge us with so much as a nod in the entrance hall until this year.

Prof Bromfield:

Chuck the letter in the bin, Cyril. He can find his own piano teacher. Or buy the boy a drum.

Dear Doctor Clattercut and Professor Bromfield

My brother was up on top of his cottage replacing the thatched roof. It was getting rather foggy and I advised him to come down, but he replied that the damp air made the straw easier to work, and in any case he wanted to finish up to the ridge. Well, gentlemen, he went further than the ridge. When the fog lifted, my brother lifted with it!

Yours sincerely, Gregory Bellhouse, Shepton Mallet

Dr Clattercut replies:

If there is any low-lying boggy area near you that is prone to become misty, I suggest taking a ladder there. The next time a fog descends, it may be that you can put up the ladder for your brother to climb down.

Prof Bromfield:

Or you could look for an Italian gold florin on Chesil Beach, which has frankly the same probability of success as Clattercut’s proposal.

Dr Clattercut:

The vital distinction being, of course, that a coin discovered on the beach will do not a jot to achieve the return of Mr Bellhouse’s brother to terra firma.

Prof Bromfield:

No indeed, but it might pay for a good telescope; in which case I have to say, Mr Bellhouse, that you may be able to see your brother waving to you from a passing cloud.

Dear learned gentlemen

My eldest, Vicky, got talking to a young man over the hedge hereabouts, and it was only when she started walking out with him that she discovered him to be a centaur. He is quite respectable, good mannered and speaks English with a slight lilt you that might say is Irish, or at any rate Celtic. I blush at the need to add that he dresses well right down to his socks. My husband having passed on seven years since, it falls to yours truly to raise our three daughters, all of whom have now reached marriageable age. I had not foreseen suitors of Hal Brown’s sort (that is the centaur’s name) but I pride myself on being a good Christian housewife and not like to take against a person merely because of his birth or bloodline. My only concern is that when Hal comes calling, as I am sure he will any day now, how am I to receive him?

Yours, Mrs Emily Newnham, Holcombe Rogus

Dr Clattercut replies:

I expect to see more problems of etiquette such as this in the months ahead. How should mortals conduct themselves with persons of mythological, fantastic or imaginary background? The question of which fish-knife to use, for example, becomes quite vexed when your dinner guest is a mermaid. Does a Martian ambassador rank above a marquis? When a ship is sinking, does a cherub count among the women and children? Should you open doors for a lady vampire? What do you say, Bromfield?

Prof Bromfield:

In this specific case, I think the answer is to take tea out on the lawn if it’s a fine day. I wouldn’t want a centaur in my parlour any more than I would a horse. I’m sure he’d handle the teacup delicately; it’s the rug I’d be worried about.

Dear Professor Bromfield and staff

I have the fortune to occupy an elevated position on the Hog’s Back, and so remained dry during the heavy rainfall last month even though the fields below my house were all under several feet of water. My old mother, who lives with us, was very agitated by the floods and said one night that she saw a three-masted galleon sail along the lane. As we are thirty miles from the coast and she is some currants short of a whole plum duff, I thought nothing of it at the time. Then last week I was out for a stroll and I saw five or six rough-looking characters burying a leather trunk under the trees on the traffic island. I brandished my stick at them, but they brandished back cutlasses so I decided not to press the point. To cap it all, I went out for a drink last night and found these characters have installed themselves at the pub, a charming little house that was formerly called The Shepherd and Flock, even going so far as to hoist the Jolly Roger  over the door and change the name to The Admiral Benbow.

Sincerely, Gideon de Calso, Runfold

Prof Bromfield replies:

Few things worse than being thwarted in search of a pint, I’d say. But unless you want to risk a keelhauling or being made to walk the plank, you’d better find yourself another pub.

Dr Clattercut:

I suspect that Mr de Calso is actually talking about the black flag with white skull-&-crossbones motif. The Jolly Roger was a red flag used by pirates to signify that they would give no quarter - from the French joli rouge. But what do I know? I’m only the ‘staff’.

To the Fellows of the Royal Mythological Society

I have a curious incident to relate for your archives. I am a junior officer aboard a ship lately assigned to lay new telegraph cable between the British Isles and North America. Last month, as we were returning towards Ireland in the last stage of our work, the sky turned dark as night; and the sea, previously as flat as a sheet of glass, began to churn with thirty-foot waves. I looked down and saw great shoals of fish tossed helplessly up to the surface, like the catch you may see tipped from any fisherman’s nets, but multiplied as though caught in the nets of a titan. And along with the fish were pebbles dredged up from the sea bed, and shells, and other debris impossible to identify - mere leaves on a storm raging hundreds of fathoms below.

The cause was, as I understood at once, a submarine earthquake, an event I had never before witnessed but which is not uncommon in that part of the Atlantic. I recall that I turned to shout a warning to some men who were attempting to cross from the other rail as a large wave came awash of the deck. The next moment, I was freezing cold and soaked to the skin, and I realized that I had gone over the side.

There was almost no time for fear – but panic, of course, requires no thought. I fought the urge to draw breath, knowing that it would only fill my lungs with salt water. Having no idea of up or down, I struck out in any case with all my strength. Objects buffeted me and I caught glimpses of them in the murky water. They looked like fragments of bone, pieces of classical pottery and glass, the dull glint of green-rusted armour… Strange things, artifacts that you would more expect to see washed up on the beach at Pompei than far out in mid-ocean. Then I found myself holding a life preserver and was being hauled up, as bedraggled as the proverbial drowned rat, to the safety of the deck.

When I came to my senses some time later, my shipmates pointed to an object I had been clutching when I was rescued. I must have caught hold of it under the water, and I am told that in those minutes when shock had bereaved me of my wits I would suffer no man to take it from me. Gentlemen, it was a stone amphora that must have lain preserved in the sand for centuries, for its glazed design was still clear enough to make out images of a city of concentric walls, and men and women clad in an ancient style walking in gardens beside a peaceful harbour. There was also an inscription (of which I append a copy) but no scholar of Greek or Latin has been able to make any sense of it.

Now, all of the above is what I can tell you for your own records, and I am glad to help out with your scientific researches, but I would appreciate your advice on a personal question. I kept the bottle sealed for several weeks, but today I gave in to curiosity and broke it open. A glass of wine that I poured from it stands beside me on the desk as I write this. In the firelight it is as rich as the rubies of India, and the scent is almost overpowering in its evocation of sunlit groves, soil, sweet rain, fresh wind and growing green abundance. I sit looking at it now and I ask you. Should I drink?

Faithfully, Lt George Sterling, SS Star Treader, Milford Haven

Dr Clattercut replies:

I have not yet been able to decipher the inscription you were kind enough to send, but it resembles an ur-form of Eteocretan, leading me to dare suggest – But no, it would be unprofessional to speculate at this stage…

Prof Bromfield:

Oh, come out and say it, in Heaven’s name. A wine from Atlantis.

Dr Clattercut:

Possibly, possibly. I cannot help but think of those lines of Mr Ambrose Bierce: “When mountains were stained as with wine by the dawning of Time, and as wine were the seas.” There is indeed a strong likelihood of it being a relic from the sunken continent.

Prof Bromfield:

And the chap wants to know if he should knock it back. Well, Lieutenant Sterling, if you don’t want it –

Dr Clattercut:

Wait, this is very rash advice. Lieutenant Sterling, think carefully before you taste so much as one drop. This is the rarest vintage from an island paradise that was the marvel of the ancient world. You might find no earthly thing has flavour afterwards. And where would you get more?

Prof Bromfield:

But, Clattercut, you could say the same of life itself. There is no more, so savour every drop!

Dear Doctor Clattercut and Professor Bromfield

Here is a very strange thing. Twice in recent weeks I have had a sensation of momentary dislocation from events around me so that I walked, as it were, in a dream. On the first occasion I was coming down Park Lane in the early hours of the morning. There was not a soul about, and a thick fog that had spilled out onto the road from the Serpentine lent a very eerie quality to those familiar surroundings. I heard footsteps behind me, quickening pace as they approached so that I knew the other was about to overtake me, yet I was gripped by that feeling Coleridge spoke of when he told of one who “doth close behind him tread.” I could not turn to look back, and when he passed me I felt compelled to glance away. I heard him speak: “It is very late,” and there was something in his voice I recognized. If you will forgive the oxymoron, it was strange and yet familiar. On reaching home I forgot this brief encounter until a few days ago, when I was settling myself in a train seat at Waterloo and again the sense of being in a dream came upon me. I looked across to the adjacent carriage - that is to say, the train on the next platform - and saw a figure with his back to me. I knew at once, I cannot say how, that it was the same man. And then he turned to me, and in the instant before I was compelled to look away I saw his features very clearly. Gentlemen, I might have been looking in a mirror at my own face! What, if anything, does the appearance of a double portend?

Yours sincerely, Oswald Leigh Cobbold, Belgrave Mews

Prof Bromfield replies:

Well now, this is a doppelgänger and you must tread carefully, because they usually come as harbingers of some calamity. You have encountered it twice now, and with this kind of wight it is most certainly not a case of “third time lucky”. Perhaps you should consider travelling abroad, put some water between you and it. What do you think, Clattercut?

Dr Clattercut:

I am afraid that would do no good. The doppelgänger is not a ghost in the ordinary sense. The Royal Academy has that rather marvellous painting by Rossetti, How They Met Themselves, which effectively evokes the strange dreamlike quality that Mr Leigh Cobbold describes in his letter.

Prof Bromfield:

Apart from visiting an art gallery, any other suggestions?

Dr Clattercut:

The best approach is to overcome one’s very natural dread and approach the thing boldly. In the north, where these things are known as waffs, there is the story of a man who saw his own double in a shop at Whitby. He marched straight in and said to it, “What’s tha doin’ here? Eh? Tha’s after no good, I’ll be bail! Get thy ways yom with thee! Go on, off tha go!” And at that the doppelganger slunk off, never to trouble him again.

Dear Dr Clattercut and Prof Bromfield

When my cousin had puppies to give away, I ended up with the runt of the litter, a wiry-haired little fellow with one ear that flopped over his eye. He never grew big, but he had bags of energy and an infectious sense of fun that won him many admirers. From my use of the past tense you may fear that I have sad news to relate, and I do indeed write this with heavy heart, for he was my dear little friend and, in my declining years, a companion to whom I could always turn. And yet the tale is perhaps tragic only from my own perspective. It happened that I was asked back to the country estate where I used to work as a governess, so that a photograph could be made of servants past and present.  (I append the name of the house for your records but ask you not to reveal it in open correspondence.) They have a maze in the garden there. The hedges that form the maze are said to have been planted to follow the outlines of a much more ancient pattern in the grass, which the butler told me predated the Norman invasion,  that was still visible to Cromwell’s men when they occupied the house during the war. During the afternoon, my little dog got loose and ran off into this maze. I heard an excited bark, and the last I saw of my dog was of his little back legs scampering off around the hedge; he never emerged. Of course, I was inconsolable at his loss, which I felt the more keenly as I live alone now. Then a few weeks later, I was shown a drawing of a Roman mosaic that had been uncovered in the grounds during the making of a new croquet lawn, and there in the tiles was a depiction of a small, wiry-haired dog with one big floppy ear over his eye, and he was lolling contentedly beside the chair of a Roman dignitary who was feeding him scraps of food from his own plate. Everyone remarked on how extraordinary it was to see such an intimate depiction of household life in these isles so long ago, and to my mind it was a shame that Sir Eustace had all those mosaics thrown into the duck pond to make his lawn flatter. But I managed to obtain a few of the tiles that showed the face of the dog, and I have those now in my garden beside the roses, a spot where my dog loved to lie in the sun. His name was Barty.

Yours sincerely, Margery Naylor (Mrs), Wickhambreaux

Prof Bromfield replies:

Comfort yourself, dear lady, with the thought that your Barty lived out his years in the lap of Roman luxury, and that is the ne plus ultra of luxury. All four feet in the clover – not bad for the runt of the litter, eh? I doubt that our beloved Queen’s Pomeranians enjoy greater pampering.  And I’m sure that wherever and whenever he ended his days, he thought often of you. Well, Clattercut, have you no odes of Horace to recite about dogs and mazes?

Dr Clattercut:

The thought of a priceless Roman mosaic being consigned to the pond for the sake of a level croquet field has rendered me speechless.

Prof Bromfield:

This is indeed the year of wonders!

Dear sirs

We have a budgerigar whose name is Wesley and he has always been a good boy, hasn’t he dear? But do you know what he is doing now? When we have friends over for tea, he makes up outrageous untruths about them which he says very loudly in our voices, so that it seems he is repeating what he has overheard. And then when Miss Parsons came round, she’s the lady from the Salvation Army who collects for the workhouse children, Wesley imitated us talking about her and chortling and making such shocking remarks that the poor lady went as scarlet as an apple and left in a great fluster. What can we do with this bad bird?

Yours faithfully, Misses Norma and Marigold Yaffingale, Esher

Prof Bromfield replies:

Stick the cat next to his cage and go out of the room for ten minutes. Very much like being cornered by a tiger in a blocked culvert, I should think, which happened to me, in fact. It was in the Punjab, must have been ’88 or ‘89 -

Dr Clattercut:

Your hunting reminiscences, Bromfield, are unlikely to provide useful guidance in the case of a budgie. I suggest putting a cover over the cage.

Prof Bromfield:

Not going to work, Clattercut. Think about it. This bird Wesley has got a taste for mischief now, and he’s surely not stupid enough to think the sun’s gone down just because somebody shoves a tea cosy over his head.

Dr Clattercut:

Alternatively you could pipe helium into his cage, which would change the register of his voice and so foil his mimicry. That won’t, of course, prevent him from making vile and slanderous statements, merely that they will be enunciated in a squeaky voice… I’m not sure about the availability of helium in Esher. Er…

Prof Bromfield:

Or try serving roast quail for dinner. That’ll put the wind up the little devil.

Dear Doctors Clattercut and Bromfield

To the rear of my country house there are fields bordered by extensive woodland, so that it is not unusual to look out in the early morning to find deer on the lawn. No doubt the poets would have words to describe the tug on one’s soul in gazing on such a beautiful sight, the doe and her fawns like wanderers from Eden in the golden dawn. It is sometimes all I can do not to fetch my gun and join in “with both barrels” – but my wife would not appreciate being woken in such a robust fashion.

A few days ago a still more breathtaking apparition awaited me on rising. It was a magnificent stallion, as white as a statue of marble, with a straight horn in the middle of its forehead. I reached out towards it, but with the merest touch of my fingertips on the window pane, it bolted into the fields and was gone.

But, gentlemen, this is not the only marvel I have to relate. For this morning I looked out from the window to see the unicorn had returned. And my daughter, still in her nightgown, was there standing in the dew beside it. Have you ever witnessed a unicorn taking grass from the hand of a young girl? It is more humbling than bagging a dozen rhinos.

Now I have conceived a purpose, and I would be grateful for your advice on how best to achieve it. For I have a mind to capture this unicorn, and tame it to the bridle. I fancy that I will excite quite a stir at the Old Berks when I turn up riding a unicorn behind the hounds!

Sincerely, Sir Samuel Wadwough, K.G., Hinton Waldrist

Dr Clattercut replies:

You will excite quite a stir too, my dear sir, when you are found dead on your lawn with a two-inch hole punched through you from sternum to spine.

Prof Bromfield:

Quite so. Tame a unicorn? You may just as well attempt to put a leash on the Sirocco or teach Cleopatra’s Needle to dance the Argentine tango. I don’t know how the idea gained currency that unicorns are shy and gentle creatures, but I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.

Dr Clattercut:

Consider Pliny’s words: “The most fell and ferocious beast of all is the Unicorn or Licorne. His body resembles a horse, his head a stage, his feet an elephant, his tail a boar. He loweth after an hideous manner. One black horn he hath in the mids of his forehead, bearing out two cubits in length. By report, this beast is so wild that it cannot possibly be caught alive.”

Prof Bromfield:

There you are; I knew Clattercut would have an obscure quotation on the subject. On a more practical level, I can assure you that a unicorn is quite capable of killing an elephant with a single thrust of its horn, and nor would it be averse to doing so. Its amenableness towards your daughter is also cause for concern – though of a different nature, too delicate for me to discuss here – and I advise you to keep her indoors while this creature remains in the district. Anything to add, Clattercut?

Dr Clattercut:

Only to point out that Sir Samuel is mistaken in thinking you have a doctorate, Bromfield.

To the Fellows of the Society

I am lately returned from the West Indies, where my business takes me. As you will be aware, the coconuts drift from island to island on the tide, and while walking on a beach of coral sand as white as salt I came across one half buried there. This I brought back in my luggage in order to let my wife have a taste of coconut milk with a drop of rum in it, such as we drink before dinner in the tropics. But try as I might, first with machete and then with hammer and chisel, I could make no dent in the shell, which proved to be at once both hard and – I would say – leathery. I left the coconut in the kitchen, intending to go at it with a hacksaw on the morrow, but overnight we awoke to a most fearful crashing as though the Forty Thieves were burgling our home. Then there came a single shriek, or caw, the like of which I have never heard even in the jungles of the Amazon, following by the smashing of a pane of glass. Venturing downstairs after the din abated, I found the shell in fragments in front of the stove, and a large hole broken in the skylight, yet no trace anywhere of any projectile. Whatever broke the glass, I must conclude, came not from outdoors but rather from inside the kitchen. The cat, which was sleeping beside the stove at the time, is now fearful of its own shadow and spends must of the day hiding under a chair in the parlour.

Faithfully, Basil Wince Esquire, Grenada and Hemel Hempstead

Dr Clattercut replies:

With so little information available, Mr Wince, I fear it is impossible for us to venture any explanation. Be glad that whatever was within the shell has now “flown the coop”.

Prof Bromfield:

Indeed. And pray that it has now departed these shores in search of warmer climes!

Dear Prof Bromfield and Dr Clattercut

Recently I was taken by a friend to a restaurant in Fitzrovia. As we were settling down over whisky and cigars after the meal, I glanced at the menu and noticed that the à la carte listed Dodo Véronique. Intrigued as I was, I had by this time already put away a dozen oysters, the onion soup, a smoked haddock dish, two helpings of beef wellington, a lemon soufflé, a plate of almond biscuits, a bottle or two of Chateau Yquem and three large brandies. Also, I’d had a bit of a gyppy tummy earlier in the week, so at that stage I really didn’t feel up to fitting anything else in. I now rather wish I had, as I went for a bit of a walk to see if I could find the place again and there’s no sign of the street. I remember it had a little blue sconce of flame over the door, and a sort of curtain of ivory beads to keep the fog out. My friend has gone on a trip to Venezuela so no use asking him.

Sincerely, Edward Plunkett, The Attican Club, Pall Mall

Dr Clattercut replies:

O rara avis in terris!

Prof Bromfield:

Latin? You’ll have lost most of our readers there, old man.

Dr Clattercut:

I merely remarked on the pang of missed opportunity. Who knows how long before Mr Plunkett will again find himself in a restaurant with dodo on the menu?

Prof Bromfield:

Honestly, I doubt if there’s any cause for regret. From what I hear, dodo is a tough, gamey sort of fowl. No use cooking it like chicken. Dodo meat is more like what you’d get on a year-old pheasant: tough if served pink, and dry if overcooked. Much more sensible to put it in a curry or a spicy Mexican dish. A Véronique sauce would be all wrong. There’s your explanation, Mr Plunkett – you can’t find the restaurant because it’s gone out of business.

Dr Clattercut:

Perhaps the words of another rare bird, the sweet swan of Avon, will offer some consolation: “Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.”

Dear perfessors

I hope that you may help me with my Trouble and do not object to a letter from one as does not know you. I have the agreeable position of regular employment at a public house by the Strand, name of The Three Gypsies. My duties there in the main being the stabling of horses, polishing brasses, & co. I also do in the taprooms and some private bedrooms that are kept for travellers, though not so frequent as in former times, now that the coach stand is not there no more. In the morning I rake out the fires and carry the ashes in a pail, which I have been in the habit of tipping down the drain that is in the street near the entrance to the yard. Only the other morning I went out that way and saw what had the look of two sooty, or I should say ashen, footprints on the pavement outside. Scuffing at these with my foot had no effect to remove them, and thinking no more I went and poured the ashes down the drain as per usual. Then on the next day I found two bare feet standing there. Just the plain feet, you understand, and not with no body above them, the feet being grey and looking to my eye to be made of ashes. Subsequent to that, having visited the drain on my purpose some other times, the feet have now been joined by ankles and the lower part of the legs, that is the calf. Mr Bardley, him being the landlord, says not to be tipping the ashes that way no more, but I have become quite driven with Curiosity to find out what will come. Today I tipped out another pail of ashes and in the morrow I’m in expectation of a pair of knees. Do you gents think this is advisable, or is Mr Bardley right?

Yours, Joe Gammock, Raven Row E1

Dr Clattercut replies:

Mr Gammock, I have no direct experience of exactly such a phenomenon as you describe, but I implore you to consider all the ways that it could turn out if you continue as you have. One does not have to be an avid reader of the works of Mr Bram Stoker to foresee something rather chilling. There are many bad endings to the story and few good ones.

Prof Bromfield replies:

Hmm. You do not say as much in your letter, but I surmise that the pedal extremities in question are feminine, and reasonably shapely. For once I have to agree with Clattercut. If this goes on, Mr Gammock, I feel it could be a case of curiosity killing the cat.

Dear Prof, Doc & Dame

For the last several months, as an amateur astronomer, I have been observing the planet Mars with a view to mapping seasonal changes in the “canals” described by Mr Lowell and Signor Schiaparelli. Last evening my work suffered a setback from which I fear it cannot recover. Upon looking into the telescope, I saw that the beds of the canals had apparently been dug out, gravelled over and – insofar as I am able to discern – laid with railroad tracks! I’d surely appreciate hearing your thoughts on this.

Yours, Larson B Wickerspill, Poughkeepsie

Dr Clattercut replies:

You have my sympathy, Mr Wickerspill. I have a friend who has a delightful little cottage near Hadfield, and his view of the countryside has been spoiled by a new branch line that the Great Central Railway Company opened up a few years ago.

Prof Bromfield:

March of progress, eh? Best of times, worst of times, and all that. Machines – can’t live with them, but can’t go smashing them either. What did they call those coves? Luddites?

Dr Clattercut:

Except in this instance the word would be Areonites; that is, inhabitants of the planet of Ares.

Prof Bromfield:

And of course they’re not smashing the machines, they’re building them.

Dr Clattercut:

I could readily believe that we are being watched from Mars as keenly and closely as we are watching them. And – who knows – across the gulf of space, minds that are to ours as ours are to microbes may be regarding this Earth, and in particular its locomotive network, with envious eyes.

Dame Belchamy:

I think that all we can usefully suggest to Mr Wickerspill, then, is that he points his telescope instead at Venus.

Dear sirs

My 7-year-old son was pulling a silly face when the wind changed, and now he is stuck like that. And this after I had warned him time and again. The expression he has adopted is quite disagreeably silly, with blaring donkey-like lips exposing his lower teeth, and a cross-eyed leer of truly doltish stupidity. Rarely has the resemblance to his father been more pronounced. It is really too inconvenient, for I have several ladies coming round to play whist on Friday, and they are sure to notice the child.

Yours faithfully, Frances Belwether (Mrs), Royal Tunbridge Wells

Dr Clattercut replies:

My dear lady, put aside all thought of blaming yourself. You did after all warn him.

Prof Bromfield:

As for the inconvenience – well, hang it, the lad’s seven. That’s old enough to pack off to boarding school. I recommend Fairfield Prep in Loughborough.

Dr Clattercut:

Is that a particularly good school?

Prof Bromfield:

Furthest I can think of from Tunbridge Wells, old chap.

My dear sirs

Last night we had quite a storm, lightning spitting like fireworks and rain going in any direction the wind cared to take it. In the midst of it all came a titanic crashing noise and I ran out in my dressing gown in fear that the steeple had toppled. I could see nothing, but this morning I sent up Mr Jardyce, the verger, and he brought down a large piece of stone that had lodged in the church roof. Any thought that this might be what is popularly known as a meteorolith was soon dispelled by two curious features. The first of these: that it is not a rough-hewn fragment of rock but most definitely a piece of worked masonry. The other remarkable matter is that it bears part of an inscription in hieroglyphics of some sort, possibly Sumerian cuneiform, and this inscription is quite intelligible. It reads: “Placed here by order of the emperor Nimrod, in the seventeenth year of his reign.” I perhaps should add that I have Greek and Latin, but not a word of cuneiform, and Mr Jardyce struggles, in all frankness, with the Queen’s English. Our ability to read the inscription is therefore the most baffling puzzle of all. I wonder at the provenance of this curious block of stone, and whether you would wish to exhibit it in your gallery at the British Museum? (I am afraid I would need to reverse the postage, as Mrs Villiers at the post office informs me that sending it to London would incur a GPO charge of thirty-two shillings and sixpence.)

Faithfully, Rev Fitzwilliam Hallpike, Chalfont St Giles

Dr Clattercut replies:

How marvellous. What you have there, Mr Hallpike, is a piece from the upper superstructure of the Tower of Babel. Of course, as a clergyman you will be familiar with Genesis, chapter 11:  “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off building the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” Nimrod was of course the ruler of Shinar, who was said to have ordered the construction of the tower.

Prof Bromfield:

Hang on, though, Clattercut. It doesn’t really seem to add up. I mean, if the blessed tower fell over all those years ago, how can a bit of it have ended up dropping through the Reverend Mr Hallpike’s roof?

Dr Clattercut:

I imagine that the upper parts of the tower would have been fixed to the vault of heaven using cement, to prevent the whole thing from swaying to and fro. Think of how troops are ordered to break step when crossing the Albert Bridge, and that’s a considerably smaller structure. The cement must have weathered over the centuries, and finally a good storm was all it took to dislodge this last fragment from the sky. I admit myself stumped, however, as to how our correspondent and his verger are able to read the ancient text. I don’t find Sumerian cuneiform at all easy to decipher myself, and I’ve studied it for over twenty years.

Prof Bromfield:

Ah, now that part of it makes sense to me. Before the Tower of Babel fell, all mankind spoke one language. Then it all got mixed up like cement, you see, by these angels. What one workman called a span, another would think meant a cubit. Like inches and centimetres today, total mess. We can blame Napoleon for that particular confusion, I suppose, though it seems he was only taking his cue from the Bible. Anyway, anything written before the tower fell should be perfectly comprehensible to anybody even today. And that appears to be the case. The same would apply to anything spoken before that date, presumably, although of course there’s no way to verify that.

Dear Prof Bromfield and Dr Clattercut

I write to you with news of a distressing oddity that has lately caused great consternation in our village. Before I explain further, I beg your indulgence for a digression into the vagaries of water supply in these parts. We have locally a little spring just outside the village, which is adequate for drinking water. It bubbles up from a cleft in the rock and is the sweetest, freshest water you could ever hope to taste. A few days ago, several of the ladies of the village arrived at the spring one morning to find a strange apparition confronting them. A cow’s head was poking out of the fissure, quite blocking the stream. Well my dear sirs and esteemed scholars, it is jolly hard to see how a cow could get itself into such a narrow cleft of rock, but what transpired next was stranger by far. The cow opened its mouth and told the ladies (one of whom was my aunt) that it had taken up residence there and from now on would they kindly find another source of water. (Although I regret to say that it did not use the word “kindly”; in fact its language was quite immoderate, especially for an animal whom one would normally consider pious.) Fetching water from the river involves a trek of several miles, so I hardly need to describe the inconvenience this has caused us all. I am in hopes that, with your very considerable knowledge of uncanny matters, you will be able to suggest a way of resolving the problem.

Yours sincerely, V.C.  Jayakumar, Madras.

PS: Slaughtering the cow is, of course, not an option we would be able to consider. Personally, however, I find myself in some doubts as to whether it can really be a cow at all.

Prof Bromfield replies:

That’s no bovine. What you’ve got there is a sort of devil called a rakshasa. When I was out in India we sometimes heard them called kravyads and I remember that because we used to say, when they’re going to eat you, they “add kravy”. Gravy, you see; because they’re man-eaters. Just our little joke. Grim business, rakshasas, but a bit of humour helps, I think.

Dr Clattercut:

I have to agree – not about Bromfield’s silly puns, of course, but with his explanation of the beast. Rakshasas are really very interesting to scholars of the extraordinary because they are shapechangers. In fact there’s some debate as to whether they have a true form at all. I saw a depiction of one on a temple carving that resembled nothing quite so much as a great wagon wheel, except that the spokes were furry legs and the axle hub was a fierce, fanged face. I suspect this was simply a form that the rakshasa had adopted in order to terrify. Not having a real physical form, you see, Bromfield, would make it quite difficult to deal with such a creature using your usual stock in trade of a “sock on the nose”.

Prof Bromfield:

In point of fact that’s almost exactly how the Mahabharata heroes used to deal with rakshasas. The Pandava brothers, for example, were forever getting into wrestling contests with rakshasas and breaking the devils in two.

Dr Clattercut:

It probably helped that, like Hercules, the Pandava brothers were semi-divine. In any event, Jayakumar states quite clearly in his letter that aggressive action against the creature has been ruled out. I realize, Bromfield, that a stipulation of that sort leaves you with very little to say on the matter, but –

Prof Bromfield:

Not at all. I was about to add that rakshasas are vain and greedy, and that makes them easy to trick. They’re very untrustworthy themselves, but like most untrustworthy people they’re remarkably credulous. The sort who will give up a bird in the hand if they’re told about two in a bush – even if the bush is half a mile up a mountain, if you see what I mean. So here’s what I’m going to suggest. First of all, get a couple of wineskins and fill them with sand. Then get two sponges soaked in a little water and you and a friend should hide those up your sleeves. Wait for a blisteringly hot day – and if I remember Madras, you aren’t going to have to wait long, eh? Take a chessboard and go and sit with your friend beside the spring. Every time you get thirsty, have a surreptitious sip of water from the sponge, but make a great show as though you were in fact pouring yourself a mouthful of sand. If you practice a bit you should be able to do this quite convincingly; just tip the sand down beside your neck and make great play of smacking your lips. Well now, before too long the conversation will go like this. The cow – that is, the rakshasa – will ask you whether you aren’t thirsty for a drink of water from the spring, and you should say, “Oh no, water is a fad that has quite had its day. This sand is much more refreshing to the tongue.” And the silly devil will soon be pestering you with questions: where is the best sand to be got, that sort of thing. It won’t take any pleasure in blocking your spring, you see, if it doesn’t think you mind anymore. So you just tell it some place far off where the sand is particularly fine and sweet, and it’ll up sticks and go and sit there in the hope of depriving people. Anything to add, Clattercut?

Dr Clattercut:

Only that I could not be more astonished if a cow put its head in the window and offered up the same advice.

Dear Prof Bromfield and Dr Clattercut

I have been having trouble with something at the bottom of my garden. My wife is in the habit of leaving milk out for hedgehogs, but lately we have been getting up of a morning to find the saucer washed up in the sink. On top of that, the bottles of milk have been taken from our larder and we find them scattered around a little grassy hummock in the field behind our house. What do you advise?

Sincerely, Benjamin Pandercote Esq, Tilford

Dr Clattercut replies:

My goodness me, it sounds like you have an infestation of fairies.

Prof Bromfield:

Fairies? Pesky little blighters. Get a shotgun and –

Dr Clattercut:

Well now, let’s not be hasty. It’s true that fairies can be vexatious, but they can also be helpful. Very often the deciding factor is how a person treats them. You’ve got off on the right foot by leaving out a saucer of milk, and the fact that they washed it up is typical of the sort of useful chore a fairy might be willing to do for you. With their magic, peeling a hundred potatoes or repairing fifty pairs of shoes can be accomplished with ease, and so it is very likely to be the kind of service they would consider an almost negligible payment for a little bowl of milk.

Prof Bromfield:

Get a grip, Clattercut. It’s not just the one bowl, is it? Chap says here that they’ve cleaned his larder out. It’ll be eggs and flour next.

Dr Clattercut:

Eggs and flour? I don’t see –

Prof Bromfield:

For fairy cakes, man!

Dr Clattercut:

Very droll, I’m sure. Well, be that as it may, I suppose it is worth adding a word of caution. Fairies are known for their pranks, but their prankishness does not conform to our mortal ideas of humour. They might, for example, cause you to go astray while crossing the field by night, and might consider it a great jape to leave you wandering helplessly until dawn. If that should happen, the simple remedy is to turn your coat inside out. That will break the spell. Also, fairy illusions have beguiled many a man who may go chasing off for hours, days or even years after gold coins, a winsome girl or a plump pheasant – only to have their goal revealed as a mirage disguising autumn leaves, a pig, or a scrawny blackbird. The precaution in this case is a paste made of St John’s wort and four-leafed clover. This, rubbed upon the eye, allows you to see through fairy glamours. Fairies, like vampires, will not pursue you across running water. As a protective charm, a daisy chain –

Prof Bromfield:

Never mind this tomfoolery, Clattercut. Defence never works in warfare and, make no mistake, when man and fairy are neighbours then war is never far off. You’ve got to take the fight to the fairies. That grassy hummock in the field, that’s their home – a bru, it’s called, or sometimes a knowe or sithein. Get a set of tongs from beside the fire. You can grab a fairy with those, especially if you get the devil by his big toe. Fairy magic has no defence against cold iron, you see. When you’ve got him howling, say you’ll let him go if he tells you his true name. The true name gives you power over him, you see. But before you do release him, give the wee blighter a sock on the nose for good measure. He won’t forget you in a hurry.

Dr Clattercut:

Indeed he will not. To which I can only add, good luck to you, my dear sir. You have both our advice. As to which you should act upon, your good judgement must guide you. Amen.

Hello? Hello? Transmitting now.

Welcome to the new Top Secret RMS Correspondence pin board.

Members and friends of the society may use this to communicate their discoveries concerning the Year of Wonders. We here at the RMS anticipate all manner of strangeness in the months ahead, as the real and the fanciful collide, and we shall endeavour to elucidate and advise.

Can you hear me? Hello?

Oh, no one cares. I'll go and make some tea. Anybody want a cup? Bother, someone's scoffed all the Garibaldis.

Clattercut January 15th 1901