The History of Maryport

… And still they gaz'd, and still the wonder grew,

That one small head could carry all he knew …

Oliver Goldsmith

“He invented differential calculus, you know,” said Buffalo Fred.   The crack in the Bounty, oiled and eased by many libations of Jennings Bitter, had meandered past the subjects of sex, football, and pop music, and somehow or other had arrived at the personage of Isaac Newton.  Peter the Og elbowed his way into the group at the bar.

“That’s right,” he said, “absolutely right.”

If Davey the Hope’s lip did not exactly curl in contempt, it certainly trembled on the brink of it.

“And just what the hell do you know about calculus?” he said.  The Og’s response was modest enough.

“Everything,” he said. “I know everything.”

There came over Davey the Hope’s face the kind of look that comes over a man’s face when he doubts the veracity of a statement made to him -- you know the look, the eyebrows are lifted to maximum elevation, the eyes bulge, and the expression “Oh, yeah!” is not far from the lips.  Davey the Hope’s eyebrows shot up like rockets.

“Oh, yeah!” he said.  “You wouldn’t know calculus if it jumped up and spat in your face.”

Peter waved an admonitory finger in the Hope’s face.

“There is no need to use such a rude, ejaculatory image,” he said.  “It is uncouth and uncalled for.  I know all about calculus.”

“All right then, Bollix Brain, tell us what it is.”

The Og did not even pause to gather his thoughts.

“Calculus,” he said, “is that branch of mathematics that deals with the limits, differentiation, and integration of functions of one or more variables.  It is also a method of analysis or calculation using a special symbolic notation.  It can be the combined mathematics of differential calculus and integral calculus.  Its etymology springs from the Latin word for a small stone that was used in reckoning.”

Davey the Hope looked like a man who had just sneeringly dismissed the theory of spontaneous combustion, and then discovered that his Y Fronts were on fire.

“Jesus!” he said.  Whistling Sid doubled the blasphemy.

“Jesus Christ!” he said.

“Just what, exactly, is differential calculus?” said Buffalo Fred.  “I’ve often wondered.”

“Differential calculus,” replied the sage, “is the mathematics of the variation of a function with respect to changes in independent variables.  It is also the study of slopes, curves, accelerations, maxima and minima, by means of derivatives and differentials.  By the way, did you know that a newton is the unit of force required to accelerate a mass of one kilogram one metre per second and is equal to 100,000 dynes?”

“Shit,” said Whistling Sid.

“Holy shit!” said Davey the Hope.

“He’s been reading the Encylopaedia Brittanica,” said Buffalo Fred.

“Naw” said Davey, “he only reads about Man United in the Daily Sport.  The rest of the time he just looks at the pictures.”

“You haven’t asked me about integral calculus,” said Peter the Og.  “I know that one as well.”

“Spare us,” said Davey the Hope.  “Our heads are still spinning from the other two.”

Whistling Sid parked a well-masticated dollop of chewing gum behind his right ear, and peered quizzically at Peter’s face.

“It looks like Peter the Og,” he said.

Davey the Hope put his nose close to Peter, and sniffed.

“God!  It certainly smells like him.”

“It can’t be,” said Buffalo Fred.  “He’s an impostor.  Someone has slipped a ringer in on us.”

“Do you think he’s an exrta-terrestrial?” said Davey.

“A possibility,” said Buffalo Fred.  “He is certainly not the Peter the Og that we all know and love.  Yes, I think you must be right.  He’s an alien clone.  They must have the real Og up in their flying saucer.  They’re probably dissecting him right now.”

“There aren’t any extra-terrestrials in this sector of the universe,” said Peter the Og.  ‘The nearest ones are at least ten thousand light years beyond the Crab Nebula.”

“I don’t know who or what it is,” said Davey the Hope, “but it seems to know everything.  Ask it a question, Fred.”

Buffalo Fred crinkled his brow and tried to remember one or two of the more esoteric questions from the last pub quiz.

“What is the meaning of the word steatopygous?”

“That’s a rude one,” said Peter the Og.  “It means fat-arsed like a Hottentot.”

Fred crinkled his brow again.

“Quotation,” he said.  “In which work would you find the following quotation: ‘Had I as many souls as there be stars, I’d give them all to Mephistophilis’?”

“Too easy,” said Peter.  “That would be from Christopher Marlowe’s ‘The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus’.  Faust sold his soul to the devil for knowledge and power, and went to hell.  In Goethe’s version, however, his soul is redeemed at the penultimate minute, and he goes to heaven.”

“I’m beginning to get frightened,” said Davey the Hope.  “This stinks of witchcraft.”

“I’ve just noticed something else,” said Buffalo Fred.  “He has been in this pub for at least ten minutes.”

“So?” said Whistling Sid.

“No swear words.  Apart from fat-arsed, he hasn’t sworn once.  Not one little eff word.”

“I don’t need them,” said Peter the Og.  “I am quite capable of constructing sentences that sing in their completeness.  I no longer have a need for expletives, meaningless paddings, or intensives.”

“Now I’m definitely frightened,” said Davey the Hope.  “I feel as though the bogey man is about to jump on me.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” said Peter the Og.  “A face like yours would frighten away Satan himself, never mind the bogey man.”  Mr. Hope took umbrage.

“There have been plenty of women who quite liked my face,” he said.

“Only a female gorilla would fancy your mug,” said Peter, “and even then, only a lady gorilla of limited intellect, myopic vision, and suspect sobriety.”

Buffalo Fred tried to calm things.

“Let’s ask Raymond the Glum,” he said.  “He might know something.”

Summoned from his seat by the door, Raymond the Glum joined the group. 

“What do you think?” said Davey the Hope.

“I’m not sure,” said Raymond the Glum.  “He seems to have become some kind of idiot savant.”

“What’s an eedeeoh savong?” said Whistling Sid.

“And idiot savant,” said Peter the Og, “is a person of negligible mental capability who nonetheless possesses or exhibits genius in some highly-specialised area, such as mathematical calculation or musical composition.”

“Oh,” said Davey the Hope, “a clever idiot.”

“That’s an oxymoron,” said Peter the Og.

“All right, then,” said Davey the Hope, “a clever moron.”

“But he doesn’t have ability in only one specialised area,” said Buffalo Fred.  “He seems to know everything.”

“That’s right,” said Peter the Og.  “I know everything.”

“And just how did you get to know everything?” said Davey the Hope.

Peter the Og pondered for a moment, remembering the events of the night before.  He remembered drinking lots of rum.  He remembered the funny, little man with the beard who had bought him the rum.  And then he remembered the dog, the talking dog.  Hell!  He couldn’t tell them about the dog.

“It’s too abstruse,” he said.  “You wouldn’t understand.”

*

The evening before had started just like any other like any other in the Bounty, but at about half-past ten a stranger had entered the bar.  Ordinarily, a stranger could not have entered the Bounty without attracting some kind of attention.  The district of Netherton is like a little village; strangers stand out.  This stranger, however, might almost have been invisible.  No one seemed to notice him.  This was odd, because his appearance was certainly noteworthy.  He was a little, slim man of about five foot three.  He wore a snazzy porkpie hat with a feather, a bright, lavender shirt, a green bow tie with black polka dots, a suit of glaring crimson, and suede boots of a type that used to be known as brothel creepers.  His jaw sported a Vandyke beard, and he had a long thin cheroot stuck between his large, yellow teeth.  It was his eyes, however, that were most noteworthy and disturbing; they were small, and green, and hypermetropic, a hunter’s eyes.  The hunter’s eyes scanned the people in the room, and eventually settled on one individual.  A look of sinister satisfaction appeared in them. 

“Ah, yes!” the eyes seemed to say.  “You will do nicely.  You will satisfy my purpose exactly!”

In retrospect, Peter the Og was never quite sure just when or how the little man with the beard had struck up a conversation with him, but when the man began to talk knowledgeably and appreciatively about Manchester United, he soon realised that here was a kindred soul, a prince among men.  He offered to buy him a drink.

“No,” said the stranger, “My treat.  Have a short of some kind.  A rum perhaps?  How about a double?”  Peter the Og was forbidden rum in the Bounty.  Peter the Og was not allowed to drink rum in the Bounty.  Peter the Og was not allowed to buy rum in the Bounty.  Peter the Og was not allowed to have rum bought for him in the Bounty.  Peter the Og was not allowed rum under any circumstance; Landlady Lil was adamant on that score.  His behaviour, boisterous and erratic at the best of times, could become spectacularly so when fuelled by this demon beverage.

“A double rum?” repeated the stranger.  Peter the Og glanced furtively at the bar.  Landlady Lil was not in evidence, and he remembered that she was not working that night.  His tongue licked his lips.  Many double rums later, Peter bade a slurred good night to his new friend and left the pub.  Outside, he paused and glanced at the night sky.  The infinitesimal portion of God’s universe that lay open to his view was mockingly inscrutable, and paid no heed to him.  Peter returned its indifference, and made his way homeward.  His gait rolled slightly, but only slightly;  Bounty barflies can hold their liquor.  As he walked, he reached in his pocket, and fished out his front-door key. This made him think of Buffalo Fred, and he smiled.  Fred sometimes had trouble with his front-door key.  On one inebriated occasion he had spent ten minutes accomplishing the business of inserting the key in the lock, and even when this simple task had been brought about, he had fallen over his doorstep, and had pushed the front door so hard in the process that the inside doorknob had bashed a deep indentation into the hall wall.  He had then fallen asleep on the doormat, to be awakened at first light by the milkman.

 *

The ways of fate are strange (or, if you prefer inverted, poetic syntax, strange are the ways of fate).  Sometimes a man’s life can be changed by the most trivial of things, tripping over a kerb for instance.  As he stepped onto the kerb at the corner of Ada Street, Peter tripped, fell, and banged his forehead on the pavement.  A short period of unconsciousness followed.  When he came to, a dog, a nondescript cur of Heinz manufacture, was licking his face.  The dog looked at him with apparent concern.

“Are you all right, Peter?” it said.  “You had a nasty fall there.”  Peter was startled.  Drunk or not, when a man encounters a dog with linguistic ability, he has good reason to suppose that the natural order of things has been cocked up somehow.

“What?” he said.  The dog repeated its concern.  Peter stood up, brushed himself down, and checked out his bodily parts.  Apart from a slight bump on his forehead, everything seemed to be in normal working order.

“I’m fine,” he said hesitantly.

“Good,” said the dog.  “I was worried about you.” 

“I’ve never met a talking dog before,” said Peter.

“You should get around more,” said the dog.  Peter was slightly miffed.

“There is no need to be like that,” he said.  “Talking dogs are not exactly thick on the effing ground.”

“True,” said the dog.  “I cannot gainsay that.”

“What’s your name?” said Peter the Og.

“Meff,” said the dog.

“That’s a strange effing name.”

“It’s short for Mephisto,” said the dog.

“I see,” said Peter, but he looked like a man who didn’t.

“I have other names,” said the dog.  Christopher Marlowe called me Mephistophilis, although I am better known as Mephistopheles.  At one time I was known as the King of Rats and Mice.”

“Who is Christopher Marlowe?” said Peter.

“A scribbler from Tudor times,” said the dog.  “He came to a sticky end.”

“That sounds like the sort of thing that Fred the Needle would know,” said Peter.

“Who is Fred the Needle?” said the dog.

“Fred Rumney,” said Peter.  “He plays for a pub-quiz team.  He’s a bum.”

“Well,” said the dog, “if he plays for a quiz team he must be a knowledgeable bum.”

“He thinks he is,” said Peter, “but if brains were dynamite, he wouldn’t be able to blow his hat off.”

“Does he wear a hat?”

“Not as a rule,” said Peter, “but if he did, he wouldn’t be able to blow it off.”

“How would you like to know more than him?” said the dog.  “How would you like to know everything?  How would you like to have a general knowledge that surpasses the knowledge of any other human being?”

“That’s a effing lot of how-would-you-like-tos,” said Peter.

“I’m serious,” said the dog.  “I can do this for you.  As you can see, I’m not an ordinary dog, and I have special powers.”  A look of peasant suspicion and cunning crossed Peter’s face.

“What’s the catch?” he said.  “What’s the price?”

“Ah,” said the dog, “you mean that there is no such thing as a free lunch?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, that’s right, I suppose.  There is a small price, but I can assure you that it is a mere bagatelle.  You will have to give me something of such little importance that you will hardly miss it.”  Peter considered for a while, his brow knotted in concentration.

“What about seven days on approval?” he said.

“What!” said the dog.  “That’s outrageous!  I have never heard anything so disgusting!”

“Well,” said Peter, “it is that, or it is no deal.  I am not going to buy an effing pig in a poke.”  The dog appeared to be highly agitated.  It hyperventilated, and a vile fluid slavered from its jaws.

“Be reasonable,” it said.  “Just think of what you will be getting.  No man will know more than you.  Knowledge is power.  You will be a god among men.”

“No effing dice said Peter.  “Seven days appro or effing nothing at all.”

*

A few minutes later a stranger strolled jauntily up Ellenborough Old Road.  He wore a snazzy porkpie hat with a feather, a bright, lavender shirt, a green bow tie with black polka dots, a suit of glaring crimson, and suede boots of a type that used to be known as brothel creepers.  A little dog, a nondescript cur of Heinz manufacture, limped along beside him.

“Did you get him?” said the stranger.

“I think so,” said the little dog.

“Think?” said the man.  “You think so!”

“Yes,” said the little dog quickly.  “I got him.”

“Good,” said the stranger.  Exuding an aura of contentment, he continued to stroll up the road, and hummed softly to himself as he did so.

*

Next morning, the sun, having morosely absented himself from the locality for quite some time, deigned to visit Maryport.  It was early summer and Nature was in full production.  The sun spread his warm, bright rays over the happy little community of Netherton, and into the bedroom of Peter the Og.  Peter awoke and moved his head.  This proved to be a tactical error, and a look of pure agony contorted his features.  It is said that when a diplomat was ushered into the presence of the tyrant Vlad the Impaler, he forgot to doff his hat.  Vlad the Impaler, a touch displeased by this breach of etiquette, had the unfortunate man’s hat nailed to his head.  For a moment, Peter the Og was fully convinced that a frolicsome Vlad the Impaler had visited him during the night, and, just for laughs, had brought his hammer and nails with him.  Wary tactile inspection of his skull, however, revealed no cap of nails, but only his own tousled hair, and thus showed the falsity of this theory.  But he felt as though someone had hammered nails into his noggin, and at last realised that this was RUM HANGOVER.  He wasn’t entirely sure just how high rum hangover figures on the scale of alcoholic consequence, but he was pretty damn sure that it must be somewhere way up in the upper stratosphere at the very least.

It was the custom of Peter the Og to take a morning constitutional, a matutinal meander along the fine, broad boulevards of Maryport, with perhaps a crack or two with people he met along the way.  After a breakfast fry-up, he decided that a morning stroll was even more desirable than usual: he needed to clear his head of rum fumes.  He stepped out of his front door and sniffed the air.  The air was good, and rewarded him by placing a fine, summery bouquet into his nostrils.  His spirits rose, and rum hangover receded.  Suddenly, with effortless certitude, he was aware that air is a mixture of approximately twenty one percent oxygen, seventy eight percent nitrogen, lesser quantities of argon, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, neon, helium, and tiddling amounts of other gases.  This left him somewhat nonplussed.  Where had this knowledge come from?  Then, he remembered the dog and the events of the night before; it hadn’t been a drunken dream after all.  He continued his stroll with a concerned look on his face.  Several hours later, he leaned on the rail around Elizabeth Dock, lit a cigarette, and gazed moodily at the murky water.  He had the look of a man who was considering things.  During the last few hours he had learned much.  First of all, he had learned that he really did know everything.  No area of knowledge was closed to him.  Next, he had learned how to select.  He had learned how to stop knowledge in all its myriad forms from willy-nillying into his mind and blowing a cerebral fuse.  Finally, he had learned to be very careful with people, and not to probe them too deeply.  On a dark note, he had found that it is difficult to have a casual crack with a marra if you know with certainty that the marra’s moments are soon to be terminated, and that his dicky ticker is going to kick him into eternity a week come next Thursday.  On a slightly lesser note, he had found that it is difficult to hold a normal conversation with a man who is extolling the merits of his newly-born son, the apple of his eye, when one knows that the child is not his son at all, but rather the result of a casual, carnal encounter that his wife had enjoyed with the milkman.  There are some things it is better to not know if everyday social intercourse is to function smoothly, and the storms and stresses of life alleviated.  He realised that omniscience has its drawbacks, and can be a tricky beast to handle.  He sighed.  “To live one’s life is not just to cross a field,” he thought, for, amongst other things, his new-found powers had made him strong on Russian proverbs.  That night he went to the Bounty, and paused at the door of that happy booze dispensary. He felt a compulsion to look up at the night sky.  The infinitesimal portion of God’s universe that lay open to his view paid no heed to him, and remained as mockingly inscrutable as ever.  Somehow, this frightened him, for he had the feeling that if he were to push a little harder, were to be a little bit more persistent in digging into the powers of knowledge that had been given to him, that the universe would then reply to him, would display its private parts, and would whisper all its secrets into his ear.  A feeling of absolute dread overcame him, and he forced his thoughts onto more mundane territory.  In doing so, he realised that the regulars inside the pub would be unaware of his transmogrification; they would be expecting him in his usual persona, Peter Ogni, amiable buffoon.  He sighed, and entered.  At the bar, Buffalo Fred was talking about Isaac Newton and differential calculus.

*

Once word of Peter’s omniscience had gotten around, life became hectic and somewhat nightmarish for him.  Everybody wanted a piece of him.  Raymond the Glum and Buffalo Fred, hitherto two men on the most friendly of terms, almost came to blows arguing as to which pub quiz team would become invincible by having Peter as one of its members.  Raymond the Glum said that as Peter was a Bounty drinker, he should be a Bounty Mutineer.  Buffalo Fred said “bollocks” to that.  Buffalo Fred said that the Bounty Mutineers were third-league nonentities, and that Peter should play only for the better team, which, of course, was the Navy Club.  Tempers became very heated.  Colin the Counter exhorted Peter to appear on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”.  Colin the Counter said that if Peter would then give him the million pounds, that he would invest it for him, and that they both would then end up as trillionaires.  Peter said “bollocks” to that.  Peter said that as he knew everything anyway, he did not need a financial adviser, and was quite capable of doing the investing himself.  Colin was quite upset.   And then there were women.  Barren women sought his advice on how to become fertile.  Overly-fecund women consulted him on contraception.  Suspicious wives and girlfriends wanted to know if their menfolk were straying, and, if so, with whom, so that they could scratch the bitches’ eyes out.  Worst of all, he couldn’t even enjoy a pint without the most arcane facts of zymology and zymolysis debouching into his mind and spoiling the taste of the beer.  His manner became increasingly fretful and disconsolate.

*

Late at night one week later, Peter heard a scratching noise at his front door.  When he opened it, the little dog was sitting on the pavement.  It squatted on its hind quarters and looked up at him like Nipper, the dog on the HMV label.

“Well?” it said.  Mr. Ogni feigned a lack of perception.

“Well, what?” he said.

“Our bargain, our contract,” said the dog.  “Are you ready to finalise it?”

“Oh, you mean the contract with seven days’ approval?” said Peter.  The dog sounded hesitant.

“Well, er yes,” it said.  Mr Ogni looked at his watch.

“I think I still have several minutes to go on that one,” he said.  I’ll have to think it over.”

“There really isn’t much time left,” said the dog.  “If you don’t agree in the next few minutes you’ll go back to being the way you were before.”

“You mean that I’ll be ignorant again,” said Peter the Og.

“Since you’ve said it, yes,” said the dog.  “All men, except you, are ignorant.  It is just the areas in which they are ignorant that vary.”

“There are things to be said for being ignorant,” said Peter.  “It’s not all bad.  Swings and roundabouts you know.  The Chinese have a goddess, the Gentle Goddess, or Goddess of Irony.  If she gives a gift with one hand, she takes with the other.  Or, in contrary manner, if she takes with one hand, she gives something back with the other.  So, if the Goddess takes away my knowledge with one hand, the odds are that she will give me something in return with the other.  I suppose how you look at it depends on whether you are a pessimist or an optimist.”

“And what gift do you think the Goddess of Irony will give you in return?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter.  “Peace of mind, perhaps.”

“Peace of mind isn’t everything.  Surely it is better to be knowledgeable than to be ignorant?”

“I think I’d rather have peace of mind,” said Peter the Og. “Last week I didn’t have all the knowledge in the universe squashing down upon me.  The human psyche was not built to take such a load.  Men are not gods.”

“What did you think of that movie?” said the little dog.

“Which movie?” said Peter.

“Men Are Not Gods,” said the dog.

“Ah yes,” said Peter, “a Korda film, a London Film Production made in 1936.  Directed by Walter Reisch.  Starred Gertrude Lawrence, Sebastian Shaw, Miriam Hopkins, Rex Harrison, and A.E. Mathews.  The title is epigraphic, and comes from Othello Act 3, Scene 4.”

“You see,” said the dog, “last week you wouldn’t have been smart enough to know that.”

“It’s just a trivial piece of knowledge that will make nobody’s life richer,” said Peter.  “It’s the kind of nonsense that those idiots in the West Cumbria Quiz League squabble over for points.  You have filled me to overflowing with dryasdust facts, but you haven’t given me any real expansion of mind or profundity of understanding.”

“You can’t have everything,” said the dog.  “I didn’t promise to give you wisdom.  Nonetheless, you seem to be doing quite well in the wisdom department.  You’re coming along quite nicely.”

“You’re right,” said Peter.  “I’ve decided.  The answer is no.”

“But you can’t!” said the dog.

“Can’t what?” said Peter.

“Say no,” said the dog.  No one has ever said no before.”

“I have,” said Peter.

“But … “said the dog.

“Oh, go practise reflexive coition!” said Peter the Og, and slammed the door in its face.

*

Shortly afterward, a dapper little man and a dog walked up Ellenborough Old Road.  The little dog trembled, as if with fright.  The man trembled, as if with extreme anger.  He ground his large yellow teeth, and muttered under his breath.

“That bloody German scribbler,” he snarled, “it’s all his fault.  He created the precedent; before he came along I had no difficulty in catching them.”  In his wrath, he lashed out with his right foot.  A suede boot of the type that used to known as a brothel creeper connected with the ribs of the little dog, and sent that unfortunate canine sailing and yelping into the middle of the road.

“You incompetent, mangy little cur,” said the man.  “I give you a simple case of soul acquisition and what do you do?  You let him have seven day’s approval.  We DON’T give punters options like that.  We DON’T give punters options at all.  I wouldn’t trust you to run a toffee-apple stall.”

*

The next night Peter went to the pub again where he was button-holed by a stranger, a man of lofty brow, giant brain, and intense intellectual curiosity.  This quester-after-truth had heard of Peter’s reputation, and, in order to seek enlightenment from Peter on the finer points of modern philosophy, had journeyed from the wilds of Wigton to the Bounty Inn, Maryport.  Peter eyed this bozo nervously.  He had a suspicion that the guy was trouble.  And when the man began to speak, the suspicion was confirmed.  He talked loudly and earnestly at Peter, and scattered his discourse with arcane references to Daoism, Neo-Platonism, Logical Positivism, and Existentialism.  He made references to mysterious beings called Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, and Jose Ortega y Gasset.  Peter stared at him transfixed, like a wedding guest clutched by an ancient mariner’s skinny hand.  Eventually the man spat a question at Peter freighted and convoluted with fancy ten-dollar words such as phenomenological, transcendental, and epistemological.  These verbal beauties slithered from his mouth like oily, voluptuous snakes.  The Og’s jaw dropped with a audible click and the look of non-comprehension and anxiety on his face, which had been deepening by the second, reached maximum magnitude.

“You what?” he said. 

Thus, sanity returned to the overall scheme of things, and the little world of Netherton was back to normal.

**************************************

… A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain …

                                     Sir Thomas Wyatt 

… Seize on him, Furies; take him into torment …

Shakespeare  Richard the Third

When, adorned with a big, beautiful bruise on his chin and a multitude of them underneath his shirt, Buffalo Fred shuffled into the Bounty Inn and ordered a pint of Jennings, the boys in the domino school were hard at it.  Ralphie the Croak pondered over the three dominoes in his hand and, unlike George W. Bush when he determined to throw the hardware at Iraq, displayed every sign of indecision.  Across the board, with a pint of cider to hand, The Countenance of Sydney the Dour watched him attentively.  As a rule, the Countenance of Sydney the Dour is difficult to read.  In the dictionary definition of ‘dour’, the salient words are stern and forbidding.  The Countenance of Sydney the Dour is stern and forbidding.  Sometimes, when Syd is amused, something will slide over The Countenance like a fugitive glint of sunlight across a dark, winter landscape, and a deep, reverberating rumble will issue from somewhere in the depths of Syd’s intestinal region.  The keen-sighted and quick-witted will recognise these fleeting phenomena for what they are, a smile and a chuckle.  Most of the time, however, the winter gloom is unremitting and The Countenance is stern and smileless.  It seems to regard Humanity with grim suspicion.  It seems to look at Humanity as though it suspects that Humanity is about to pull a fast one.  It seems to survey Humanity as if it expects that Humanity is about to try to sell it a dodgy motor car or an Omega watch lovingly assembled in the back streets of Hong Kong.  In stern and forbidding mode, The Countenance continued to watch Ralphie the Croak.  Eventually, Ralphie decided to have done with shilly-shallying and to move his tanks into Iraq.  He placed a tile onto the board.  Quick as a wink, Colin the Counter dumped his last domino and took the game.  He dry-washed his hands with nervous satisfaction.  For once, the Countenance of Sydney the Dour became transparent; it displayed open-mouthed incredulity.  The man behind The Countenance had banked on winning this one, but Ralphie’s injudicious choice of domino had shot the game plan to hell.  The Countenance of Sydney the Dour shone forth fury with blowtorch intensity.  It was also quite evident that The Hands of Sydney the Dour were struggling against a homicidal urge to grab Ralphie by the throat and to squeeze the windpipe until Ralphie’s eyeballs popped.  Nor was The Tongue of Sydney the Dour silent; indeed, it was violently voluble with diction culled exclusively from the Anglo Saxon side of the language.  In rage, Sydney the Dour threw his last domino with great force at the board.  It bounced off the board and hit the Peter the Og just above the left eyebrow.  Peter blinked, and went into his usual, tattletale, schoolboy routine.

“Lil,” he cried, “Sydney’s swearing again!”

At the bar, Landlady Lil gave a slight Gallic shrug, and went on pulling a pint for Buffalo Fred.  She had heard all this bullshit before.  Buffalo Fred, ignoring all the brouhaha, paid for his ale and raised the glass to his lips.  With a full pint in his hand and several illicit rums under his belt, Peter the Og, perhaps a little concussed from the domino projectile, turned abruptly and careened his bulk into Buffalo Fred.  There ensued a crying-out of surprise, a tangling of arms, an interlocking of feet, and the crashing of two bodies to the floor.  The beer in the glasses went to the floor also, but did not stay in the glasses.  A little of it went over Peter the Og, but most of it chose the clothing of Buffalo Fred as the better blotting paper.  Drenched and gasping, Buffalo Fred lay on the floor like a stranded porpoise, his little legs twitching, his whole being emanating the silent, despairing cry: “I am a martyr to misfortune!”   A deep, booming, intestinal chuckle resounded from the domino table.  The Countenance of Sydney the Dour, which had witnessed the unseemly collision and its consequences, underwent a sea change and something rich and strange ensconced itself on its features.  There was no doubt about it; this was a smile and a smile of great potency at that, a genuine, broad-beaming, full-magnitude, one hundred-gigabyte grin.  It is possible that the Earth wobbled a little in its orbit.

**

The misfortune of Buffalo Fred had not begun in the Bounty.  Early that morning Fred had awoken from a night of troubled sleep and violent dreams, unaware that The Fates had it in for him.  There are days when the Gods seem to view us with haughty contempt and to exhibit a strong determination to defecate upon us.  These are the days when we live under a cloud of their dark disdain.  The first intimation of dark disdain came when, on dragging his carcase from under the blankets, Fred caught his big toe in the bed clothes and sprawled headlong across the floor.  Fortunately, he is not the weak-bladdered kind of gent who keeps a chamber pot by his bedside, for, had he been such, he would undoubtedly have upset it and thereby given himself an unintended early-morning ablution.  As it was, his chin took the brunt of the fall, and, as it scraped painfully along the carpet, caused his mouth to relinquish its possession of his upper denture.  The denture shot the length of the bedroom like an ice-hockey puck hit with force and flair by a star skater of strong arm and determination.  It bounced off the skirting board and came to rest in a pile of dust, fluff, and carpet mites.  Uttering the kind of language of which his mother would not have approved, Fred picked up his bruised little body, retrieved his errant gnashers, and, in order to rinse them under the tap, shambled downstairs to the bathroom.  His bathroom, as is often the case with bathrooms, contained a mirror over the sink.  “Oh, mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”  Fred stood stock-still in front of the washbasin, and, like the poet Thomas Hardy, looked into his glass and viewed his wasting skin.  He did not like what he saw, not one little bit, not one little part.  Scanning his near-naked image, he decided that even his navel disgusted him.  This bellybutton, which in former times had been of concave construction, was now of definite convex inclination and bulged forth like a resplendent button on the uniform of a guardsman who has been exhorted by the R.S.M. to inflate his chest and to display bags of swank.  A feeling of loss and desolation overcame him and he mourned his younger self.  Where was the young Fred of the bright eye and the dark hair, the young Fred whose blood, like pressurised water through a fireman’s hose, had throbbed along his veins laden with an abundance of oxygen, hope, and energy?  Where were the summers of yesteryear?  He sighed and lamented “… the fulness of the past, the years that are no more … .”   Sad of heart, he applied soap and water to his face and reached for his razor.  Fifteen minutes later, his face, spotted with a plethora of toilet-paper scraps, emerged from the bathroom in bloodied splendour.  His plastic safety razor, which usually caressed his cheek as coyly as a maiden’s kiss, had this morning seemed possessed of an aggressive will of its own and had inflicted maximum sub-cutaneous damage.  Muttering sotto-voce curses to himself, Fred stumbled into the kitchen.  Buffalo Fred was a man of irregular eating habits.  The usual round of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper was generally ignored, and, after a day of jaunting around the hostelries of Maryport, hunger would pounce upon him at about two o’clock in the morning.  It was then that he would make busy with the frying pan.  It was then, for his gustatory delight, that eggs, bacon, and other esculent goodies would splutter and splash in the cooking oil.  As a consequence, he was rarely hungry of a morning and usually breakfasted by swigging about half a pint from the milk bottle.  It was Fred’s wont to purchase his milk the old-fashioned way, one glass bottle of semi-skimmed deposited on his doorstep four times a week, but this was not a milk-delivery morning and his fridge was barren of glass bottles of semi-skimmed.  Milk-wise, all it could it could offer him was one waxed, cardboard carton, six months past its best-before date.  Fred looked at it in puzzlement: he could not remember buying it. He shrugged and removed it from its cold habitation.  Milk cartons can be tricky things to handle and drinking from a newly-opened one can be a hazardous procedure.  At best, the slightest carelessness will result in some spillage; at worst, disaster can occur with only the inadvertent twitch of a finger or thumb.  Fred scissored the top from the full carton and raised it carefully to his lips with both hands.  At this point, a sudden, electric spasm overcame him and his hands jerked together violently.  A litre of milk tsumanied into his face and up both his nostrils.  Men cannot breathe milk.  Coughing and spluttering, Fred stood in the middle of the kitchen, his autonomic nervous system in meltdown as it tried to eject cow juice from his lung passages.  White liquid dripped upon his head from a bespattered ceiling,   

“GODDAMNITTOHELL!” said Fred. 

After cleaning up the milky mess, he drew the curtains and glowered out at the day.  The day glowered back at him, dull, miserable, and leaden-skied.  The leaden skies were leaking copiously; rainwater spilled from the flooded guttering and splattered onto the ground like a line of drunkards’ pee.  A strong wind whistled among the chimney pots and thrashed the streets.  In other parts of the county the weather was bright and salubrious, but the area around Fred’s house seemed to have a climate of its own; it was wet, windy, and downright nasty. 

**

Sometime later, Fred’s body gave warning that it was necessary for him to make a call of nature.  Entering the bathroom again, he dropped his pants to the floor and his backside to the toilet seat.  It took him a minute or so to realise that bowel evacuation was not going to be the usual automatic procedure.  That his lower bowel contained a surplus of waste matter was beyond doubt, but his sphincteral muscle seemed unable or unwilling to expel it.  Fred sweated and strained.  The result?  Zilch.  He persevered and strained harder.  His face, rubicund at the best of times, by now boasted a cherry-bright glow intense enough to have functioned as a traffic light.  Indeed, had you placed Fred for long enough at the Curzon-Street junction, his kisser would have backed the traffic up as far as Aspatria or Cockermouth.  He continued to strain.  At last, came a measure of success and three or four inches of waste protruded.  The protrusion, however, had been painfully acquired, for it had been obtained in a dry, unlubricated manner with razor-sharp twinges that had brought tears to his eyes.  Furthermore, progress was stalled, for his recalcitrant sphincter refused to continue the task for which it was designed. 

“Sweetbloodyhell!” said Fred, and continued with his labour.  At length, feeling like a woman who had just delivered her first child to the world after a twenty-four-hour confinement, Fred was successful in his efforts and was rewarded by a resonant splash from the lavatory pan.  He stood up painfully.  Unfortunately, an hour’s squat on the toilet seat had blocked the circulation in his legs and removed most of the feeling in them.  His upright position became uncertain, and, swaying wildly, he grabbed for the toilet-roll holder.  It came away from the wall and dumped Fred onto his coccyx.  The toilet roll flew through the air and landed in the toilet bowl.  After having expelled a great deal of bad language, Fred fished the sodden roll from the pan, and then gave vent to even more bad language when he realised that he did not possess a replacement for it.  Fortunately, there was a roll of kitchen towel on the window ledge and he utilised it as coarser means of bum cleansing.  Cleansing completed, Fred stood and surveyed the result of his travail.  It lay menacingly in the toilet bowl.  He viewed it in awe.  It was a serpentine stool of gigantic proportion.  It was a python.  Nay, it was a khaki anaconda.    He was half afraid that it was about to rear up and curl itself around him in a constricting, suffocating embrace.  Hurriedly, he flushed the cistern.  This proved to be an error of judgment, a precipitant act.  Giant, serpentine stools do not flush.  Giant, serpentine stools block plumbing and cause flooding.  Dirty, disgusting, brown water cascaded over the pedestal, lapped his feet and pooled on the bathroom floor. 

“Sonofabitch!” thought Fred.  “More cleaning.” 

**

Following his exertions in the bathroom, Fred, uncharacteristically for the time of day, began to feel peckish.  For some reason, he had a fancy for sardines.  A rummage around his kitchen succeeded, eventually, in bringing forth a can of this piscine delicacy.  Fred regarded it uneasily.  It was not one of the old-fashioned variety with a key that slots into a metal tag - the metal tag that invariably snaps off when the key is turned - but one of the ring-pull variety.  Normally, the ring-pull provides a reliable and efficient mechanism for sardine extraction, but, viewed in the light of previous mishaps, Fred had forebodings.  He inserted a cautious finger into the ring and pulled gently and smoothly.  The ring snapped off immediately.  Steam rose from Fred’s brow, naughty words tumbled from his tongue, and his face took on its traffic-light aspect again.  He assaulted his kitchen drawer in quest of a tin-opener.  Several minutes later, with several cuts on his hands, but none on the can, his lust for small fish of family Clupeidae had somewhat diminished and he dumped the can into the bin.

“Eggs,” he said to himself.  “Eggs are safe.  I’ll make an omelette.”  Alas, ‘twas not to be; an exploration of his refrigerator showed him that eggs had an extremely-high scarcity value, indeed, were not to be had at all.  With his face resembling a traffic light even yet again, he pulled on his coat and set out into the storm in forage for eggs.

**

At three o’clock in the afternoon, Buffalo Fred trudged his way through stair rods of rain towards Netherton Post Office.  He was carrying a plastic bag filled with a dozen duck eggs, and also, unknown to him, a dollop of doggie doo-doo on the sole and instep of his right shoe.  Having purchased his eggs, Fred had remembered that he needed stamps.  Shedding rivulets of pluviosity, he entered the post office.  Inside, there was one customer ahead of him at the counter, a sour-faced old lady who was collecting her state pension.  The lady suffered from severe arthritis and leaned on a heavy stick.  Here, regrettably, we must enter an area of delicacy, or, more likely, indelicacy.  We must discuss underclothing, an old lady’s underclothing.  The old lady - let us call her Agnes - was very much in need of new knickers.  But new knickers cost money, and a pensioner must count her pennies.  The day before, Agnes, whilst rummaging through her dresser drawers, had come across two pairs of her dear, departed mother’s best bloomers, voluminous, baggy garments in a shocking shade of pink.  Agnes was a lady of small stature and the garments were much too large for her, but they seemed to have elastic strong enough to keep them aloft, and, as the saying has it, “Needs must when the Devil drives”.  Consequently, as she stood waiting for her widow’s mite to be doled out to her, Agnes was adorned underneath her dowdy skirt with a pair of capacious pink knickers, the kind that rejoices in the description directoire.  Our unlucky hero was unaware of this, for, being the healthy, clean-thinking boy that he is, the last thing on Fred’s mind was old ladies’ knickers.  He moved forward toward the counter and stepped into a puddle of rainwater on the floor.  It happened suddenly.  The combination of hard, wet floor and doggie doo-doo on his shoe proved to be a slippery trap for the unwary Fred; his right foot slid from under him and he pitched forwards.  Let us examine the sequence of events as if it were a movie shown in slow motion.  Here is a close-up of Fred’s face; observe the astonishment and fear in his eyes. Here is a tracking shot of the plastic bag as it slips from his hand and soars through the air; watch it splash-land.  And here is a mid-shot of Fred as he falls forward and instinctively reaches out for something to grab hold of; see his hands clutch the hips of the old lady.  And here is -------------  but enough, by now you must have guessed the outcome of this.  Yes, when Fred fell on the old lady’s hips, the aged elastic in her bloomers proved to be of insufficient resilience to withstand the shock.  The pink knickers yielded to the lure of gravity.  Looking as though she had just been poked with an electric cattle prod, Agnes stood bolt upright at the counter.  A terrible suspicion had entered her mind.  She looked down at her ankles.  Horror of horrors, the suspicion was confirmed.  Around her feet, in commodious clutter, lay a pair of pink, directoire knickers.  An old lady has a lot to put up with in her life.  She must learn to live with thinning, grey hair, wrinkles, parchment skin, failing eyesight, arthritis, varicose veins, hardening of the arteries, heart murmur, brittle bones, lack of energy, and the many other infirmities that life showers upon the aged, but, if she lives purely, she can retain her dignity.  It is not possible for her to retain her dignity if she stands in a public place with her unmentionables on display.  Quickly, Agnes searched her mind for courses of action.  She could think of only two; she could hoist up her skirt and pull the errant garment back to waist level, or she could step out of said garment altogether.  She chose the latter, and then turned around to confront the causer of her dishonour.  This proved to be a small man with shoulder-length, grey hair and a rubicund face.  Agnes didn’t much care for men.  She had once been married to one of them.  For forty eight years she had endured holy deadlock with a specimen of that odious breed, until one night, while sitting on the end of the bed and picking between his toes, he had tumbled forward and suffered the terminal heart attack that had given her freedom from that unhappy state.  It was the only thing that he had ever done which had her seal of approval.  Crimson-faced, and trembling with white-hot indignation, Agnes faced Fred and gave voice.  Words of steel rebuke slammed into him like machine-gun bullets.  The verbal fusillade seemed to go on forever.  Finally, obviously considering lexical onslaught to be insufficient punishment for the heinousness of the offence, Agnes sought for a more physical means of retribution.  Her eye fell upon the plastic bag on the floor.  It oozed egg white and egg yolk.  She stooped quickly, picked it up and emptied the contents of it over Fred’s head.  With duck-egg detritus in his hair, Fred cut a ludicrous figure, but this in no way mollified her.  Further action was called for.  She raised her heavy stick.  Agnes was a slight old lady, but adrenaline rage gave strength to her arm.  A book of synonyms will provide many words which carry the concept of ‘beat’.  Agnes ran the gamut of most of them.  She basted him.  She battered him.  She belaboured him.  She buffeted him.  She hammered him.  She lambasted him.  She pounded him.  She pummeled him.  She thrashed him until her stout stick was in danger of disintegrating.  Shamed, terrified, and severely bruised, Fred fled from the storm inside the post office and, with egg white in his hair, egg yolk behind his ears, and egg shells on his collar, escaped into the lesser storm that prevailed in the street.  With his spirits at an all-time low, he scuttled for home.  The rain fell on him and the wind howled round his ears. 

**

At eleven o’clock that night Fred sat shivering in the foetal position.  He had been that way ever since arriving home from the post office.  For hours he had been anticipating a knock on his front door, a knock signalling the arrival of the police to  arrest him for an act of indecent assault in Netherton Post Office.  Time, however, had crawled by and the knock had not been knocked, the constabulary had not called.  By now, he was fairly sure that the lady had not set the rozzers on him.  But he still shivered. 

“What I need is a drink,” he thought. 

He put on his coat and set out for the Bounty.  Inside the Bounty, of course, he suffered the humiliation already recounted.  Yet again, he fled the scene and wended his way homeward through wind and rain.  Ordinarily, at about this time he would have settled down to watch television or to listen to CDs until four or five in the morning, but now, after all the emotional turmoil of the day, he decided that it would be safer to go straight to bed. 

“Nothing much can happen to me there,” he thought.  Little later than the thought came the deed and he was soon ensconced and supine in the womblike hug of the bed clothes.  He turned out the light and prepared himself for sleep.  At one minute to midnight, with a crack and a bang, something in the framework of the bed collapsed and the mattress plummeted through the frame and deposited Fred with rude shock to floor level.  Fred lay there in stunned surprise.  For a man of his age, he had a good head of hair, but if there was ever a moment in his life when despairing rage might have caused him to tear it all out in handfuls, that moment was upon him.  Fortunately, the moment passed and Fred remained hirsute, but it had been a close-run thing.  Trembling, he raised his eyes upwards and uttered the cry that Man and his primeval ancestors have uttered throughout the ineffable length of time that they have suffered existence on this planet: “Why me?  Why me?”  The hands on the bedside clock reached twelve midnight. 

“The hell with it!” said Fred and turned onto his side.  At one minute past midnight he fell into a deep, peaceful sleep and slumbered restfully for the next eight hours. 

**

In the morning, all seemed well.  Fred awoke fully rested and managed to extract himself from the wreckage of his bed without incident or accident.  Washing, shaving, dressing, grooming, and bowel evacuation also passed uneventfully.  The breakfast milk, replenished from the doorstep, was consumed without violent spillage, and when he pulled back the curtains and peered out, a beautiful, sunny day smiled back at him.  He spirits lifted and he decided to go for a stroll.  Somehow, his stroll deposited him at the bookie’s, where, impelled by an inexplicable, irresistible urge, he placed his last thirty pounds on the nose of a rank outsider called Dark Disdain.  It romped home at thirty three to one.  Suffering, it seems, is sometimes profitable.