K26

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K26, an APAzine for PIECES OF EIGHT, July '92, from A. VINCENT CLARKE, 16 Wendover Way, Welling, Kent, DA16 2BN. What I write in a Hurry I always feel to be not worth reading, and what I take Pains with, I am sure never to finish – SHERIDAN

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UPDATE

Missed my usual foray out of the bilge last month. Almost as soon as summer weather came along so did a cough/cold which was utterly depressing, and the depression has persisted to date. Ugh. I've let letters and fanzines pile up unanswered, and have only enough life to try and read various books which I bought long ago and which I didn't have time to look at then.

And I'm ruthlessly culling – 40-odd so far and counting.

I haven't bought any books for some weeks (that shows you how poorly I am) and my only library book has been Gwyneth Jones' WHITE QUEEN, an astonishingly complex and packed piece of writing – review may follow next month.

COMMENTS ON MAY MAILING

THE 1% FREE – Darroll Pardoe

Like the coloured title. Re. Hell's Angels, when I was managing a DIY shop locally, one of the staff, a rather feckless lad, was wanting to become a Glamourous (to him) Hells Angel. He had the leader of the Kent Hell's Angels call in at lunchtime at the shop. A scruffy individual, but when you got to know him quite a pathetic character. He was growing old for a tear-away – about 30-ish, I'd say – and was uneasily aware that in our present culture there's no room for such a person. Youthful excesses can be excused, but the sheer dead weight of responsibility crushes rebellion.

COTTAGE PIE 4 – Ian Bambro

The four-letter variations are presumably some legal search for a suitable name for a new commercial product. Astonishing how many words aren't used, isn't it? A hasty scan shows 'Egret' and 'Beret', but one wonders about some of them. 'Skret' – the sound made by a stylus when jogged? 'Luret' – a new synthetic dress material? 'Igret' – small South American mammal nearing extinction? Reminds me of THE MEANING OF LIFF by Adams & Lloyd where British place-names were given the treatment, ie. – "'Aberystwyth' (n) – A nostalgic yearning which is in itself more pleasant than the thing being yearned for".

Ah – I know the feeling.

The Rest of the Mailing – Much appreciated but feel it's a bit too late to comment.

COMMENTS ON JUNE '92 MAILING

WHISPER FROM THE BILGE – Unsigned!

But we know. Briskly competent. Don't think it would be a good idea to take turns (some of us are paralytically lazy) but interesting to see if anyone brings it up (no pun intended) at the November meeting.

MS. SELENEOUS – Sue Thomason

Welcome aboard, Sue. RYCT John about keeping a patch of nettles in the garden as a sort of McDonald's for local Red Admirals – almost all of my back garden is nettles, where it isn't overgrown by bindweed, but I don't think I've seen a single Red Admiral this year. Nothing in the media on it...I wonder if the bird population, having increased during mild Springs, is responsible? Ecology in your own back yard, egad.

RYCT me – your sentiments mirror mine, exactly, except that I feel very mediocre. I think it may be because the media published, during the Election, so many hundreds and thousands of words and pictures of people who obviously think they've a right to dictate our lives for one political cause or another. About 50,000,000 folk in this country are rubbing along as best they can, but a few thousand are thrustful enough to get all the attention – and the power.

We-e-ell, it's a supposition.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR – Brian Stovold

Yes, I was taught at school (or somewhere) that Englishmen/English sailors were known as 'Limeys' because of lime juice and lemon juice our gallant lads took as anti-scurvy ("No, you don't rub it on, Boy Milligan"), but why just us? I wonder what other nationalities used? Or did they just stand there and scratch?

Crosswords. I stopped doing crosswords when I realised there just wasn't enough time in life. May have signalled the onset of senility.

Watership Down. Have you read THE GIRL IN A SWING by Richard Adams? One of the few supernatural books on my shelves – creepy, tho' the German phrases used get in the may of straight-forward story-telling. The general hinting at something uncanny is reminscient of the old master M.R. James.

Re-reading LORD OF THE RINGS? Had mine for about fifteen years now, but haven't got further than Chapter One.

TRAVELS IN HYPER*REALITY – Maureen Speller

As someone who had very little formal education I have a sort of instinctive respect for it. But if you're sure that any academic qualifications you might have gained will not be of importance, then of course just carrying on because you think a few folk might think better of you is plain silly.

Interesting about optimum sleeping patterns – I wonder how much one can trust the idea of two periods of sleep (totalling 7 hours) every 24 hours? I suppose I'd be the ideal subject to try something like that – no ties, etc. May try it some time.

RYCT me – sorry, THE BROOCH OF AZURE MIDNIGHT was a library book.

That's a bit twee, Barrett remarking that "I don't believe that rabbits might not have a mythology", isn't it? And yes, I read TARKA THE OTTER many years ago when, believe it or not, in those apparently more literate days, it was serialised in what we'd nowadays call a tabloid newspaper.

Now there's a subject which is up for grabs, as it were – the serialisation of stories. The Daily Mirror had a 'Saint' yarn, I remember, while I revelled (I was young at the time) in Wheatley's THE DEVIL RIDES OUT in the Daily Mail, including maps of the Home Counties where you could trace the route by which the major villain sped away with the heroine day by day. The NEWS OF THE WORLD ran cowboy and historical serials. Goshwow, he whispered, falling into a senile sleep.

RYCT Ken, local libraries have been running small 'addict' type exhibitions for some time, tho' they do shade into the 'This Marquetry for Sale' side. I suppose I could call myself a fanzine addict, but I'd hate to answer 12 questions on them....there is probably an upper limit on the sheer scope of enquiries that can be tackled on anything like this. Which must, in fact, make Mastermind extremely difficult to set questions for – is someone who answers queries on The Roman Empire in the same category as the earnest expert on Elizabeth Barrett Browning?

RYCT Ian, that was quite fascinating, your reaction to the topless dancers. The male reaction to a nude or near nude female body is, presumably, based on our cultural upbringing, but one rarely hears the female side. But as for your 'men worry ((like women)) about the normality of their appearance' I tend to disagree. The great majority shrug and give the mirror a cursory glance.

Language. You know that I have fallen heavily for the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, and this is not only because it's a good book but because it classifies and defines so many scores of disciplines within the structure of language itself. It clarifies, sure, but shows one how many are the possibilities of further study. The 'acknowledgements' are not easy to check, being in minute type , but I reckon there's about 400+ information sources cited.

As usual, a good read, Maureen.

THE STRUTHIAN PERSPECTIVE 23 – Theo Ross

When we first moved to 16WWW there were bats in the local park a few hundred yards away, and, by extension, over the garden in the dusk. And I could hear them! Alas, came the war, and the bats vanished...there was a battery of AA guns in the park. I sometimes wonder if they just stopped breeding and died out, or packed their bags and migrated elsewhere. I wonder if they ever came back? Will have to go out at dusk some night and check. Like your Elspeth, I haven't been conscious of them.

OK, I'll setup a clamour all by myself to hear more about Lilliput, tho' I have a feeling that it should be Brobdingnag? RYCT me, I presume your 'sgian-dubh' is a variant of 'sgian-dhu'? I'd ask if you'd ever used it, but have a slight feeling of my lgeg being stretched.

RYCT Darroll – do supermarkets up North really shift goods around?

The Struthian is full of charming felicities as usual.

THE ARACHNO FILE Vol.19 – John D. Rickett

The mention of leak-proof fountain pens exploding at 250ft. reminds me of the story of the invention of the ball-point pen, a chapter in THE BIG PUFF by Thomas Whiteside (Constable '55). It was invented in 1888 but was never exploited, and was re-invented by Laszlo Jozsef Biro a Hungarian, in 1939. He (wisely) moved from Paris to Buenos Aires soon thereafter, where the pens were bought by US airmen troubled, as JDR suggests, by wet pockets.

By the end of the war big business was getting interested, but it was an entrepreneur named Reynolds who bought some pens (retail), flew to Chicago and together with an engineer planned on breaking the patent. They did, in fact, come up with an improved model. The first day's output was 70 pens, 23 days before they went on sale. They were an outstanding success..."Mail sacks full of orders were piled up....One day a letter containing an order for $125,000 worth of pens tumbled out of one of the sacks – it had been postmarked three weeks earlier". By early '46 production was 30,000 pens per day, and in March Reynolds had three million dollars in the bank.

This is a lovely book, which includes not only the full version of the above but such items as a run-down of the tremendously popular Hummert US radio serials..."One character was kept in a revolving door for 17 days..."

Used to sell the screws you describe once – known as 'prison door screws', tho' whether they were ever used for that purpose is a bit of a moot point. Once upon the time (sez he with faint pride) I was the technical guy in the fastenings dept. of the biggest wholesaler in London. Didn't get me anywhere, tho' (sez he, gloomily).

Yes, I've had mysterious losses, in particular a bread-knife. After three weeks I bought another; missing one never did appear.

RYCTme. I had a rush of brains to the head and looked up Geneva/Gin in a dictionary of Historical slang. From what I can understand of a condensed explanation, "Geneva" actually became "Gin", so you're right (there was a complicated pun involving "read Geneva print" ie. to drink it, a tortured reference to the kind of type used in Geneva bibles), but it still leaves me (mildly) curious as the the events leading up to the closing down of gin shops.

The passing mention in the Southwark saga of "policemen...went about in pairs" in the Elephant & Castle district brings back memories of the days when this was the ultimate cachet of a really villainous area...policemen walk in pairs. Sturdily armed with a truncheon apiece.

Nowadays the E & C is a shopping centre built around a roundabout, with glass-walled offices of the Ministry of Health looming over all, a cinema named for local boy Charlie Chaplin, and the splendidly, majestically named Spurgeon's Tabernacle...a disappointment, a large Victorian brick chapel.

WHERE ARE YOU, JOHN BELLINGHAM? – Kev McVeigh

I'm sorry, but whatever method of reproduction you've used (is it really ordinary ribbon as Maureen infers?) I find it almost impossible to read this, even with a large magnifying glass. Next time send a decent top copy and I'll copier 20 copies for you or put it on electro-stencil and duplicate the thing – free of charge. But don't, puleese, put me through this again.

As far as I can see you keep up a philosophic front on the Election (but another five years), and the trouble is that if the 42% get what they deserve, the country's going to be really crippled.

You mention James Tiptree (Alice Sheldon). A very good writer in my opinion, and people can hardly be blamed for taking the masculine name at face value...the protagonist was nearly always male, and although, as you say, there was a good deal of enlightened feminism, you had the feeling that this was as much of a man as one of Niven's heroes. And often very funny too – I was re-reading 'I'll Be Waiting For You When the Swimming Pool is Empty' (where on earth did the title come from?) only this last weekend (too hot to do anything else), and thinking what a satisfying yarn for the trifle it was.

A lot of the rest seems to be about music, "BT are the greatest band in the history of rock and roll"? Who are BT?" and I find I can hardly listen to anything written after '66, so I'll say I'd probably politely disagree with you if I could read it. (Ah – it's not exactly ignorance – I have a daughter who was 10 in the late '60s, so had my share of pop music into the late '70s.)

DAY FOR NIGHT – Paul Kincaid

Who? Welcome, Paul. Interesting thoughts about the swimming bath changing room; I suddenly realise that it's a long long time since I was in the RAF and took changing rooms as a matter of course, but as I remarked to Maureen earlier, it's a matter of culture. If you were charging about naked in the South American rain forests the shape of your body wouldn't matter a damn.

I've only read 2 of your desert island books, Dhalgren and Catch 22. As you say, Dhalgren has Delany at his best and worst, and I think this effort predominantly exhibits the worst. Believe I gave my copy away.

Interesting fashion bits, and quite unusual for a male. Never been able to understand it myself.

MARAUDER – Ken Cheslin

As far as I can understand the theory and practice of simple story telling, it mostly consists of quite simply putting your protagonist in a jam, and then when he or she tries to get out, to partly succeed and then promptly fall into a bigger jam, ad infinitum. With sub-plots etc. and with other characters this can be spun out to almost any length. I'm not at all sure that your story meets these classic requirements.

Whales of stuff to comment on – it would seem – but I find it difficult. In agreement with so much, and the letter at the end almost too personal. In re. the RAF, the lower ranks are slightly different from my day, when you started Aircraftmen 2, then after 9 months went to Aicraftmen 1, then if you kept your nose clean you went to LAC in another 9 months or so, and then to the lowest non-commissioned rank, Corporal.

Like the pictures and the reproductions of same.

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The card on the left came through the door recently. Hot in the City was apparently a one-night dance, two floors, selecting the best upfront dance and hard funkie grooves- on one floor and playing an euphoric vibrant mix for the mellow minded on the other. 400 advance tickets at £10 each.

There was also a bar and something described as a 'chill-out room'.

What interests me is the picture, of course. Nearly all my life the atomic bomb has been a symbol of dread. Is this the start of a trend, where it's regarded as something of the past, and, whether you think it's bad taste or not, the start of a Fashion? Shall we see atomic bombs signifying an explosion of taste, or what a drink will do to you?

I guess the dance wasn't expecting any Japanese guests

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You wondered what caused it? Sock label courtesy Archie Mercer. AVC