I know I had a bit of a go at fairies in a previous piece. Well, the response from the Fairy Community was lively, and I have been dealing with correspondence ever since.Some of it written on oak apples and hurled through the window,malign notes in spiky handwriting floated down the chimney....barren cattle and sour milk has been threatened, and there was even an attempt to kidnap the Giant Boy and leave me a changeling, but it took a hundred of them to lift one of his trainers, so they retired, chattering with rage and shaking miniscule fists.I finally got the Flit out. If you go into B&Q and ask for a spray with which to get rid of fairies,you get a blank look and Security follow you round the Household Pests section. But I am here to tell anyone bothered in this fashion that mothballs don't work. Fairies are robust, and are quite liable to pelt you with them and giggle. Mothballs don't work on moths,either.They have developed utter immunity to any interventions less robust than a blowtorch.Which does de-bobble your cashmere but also singes your curtains.
Fairies don't do e-mail, Goblins deal with that. Goblins run all IT support, and obviously,banking. If you cross THEM, you are likely to find that they will introduce gremlins into your software, and warp your hard drive.You will also start to get letters from your bank saying "Dear Bastard ; we thought you would like to know that you owe us £0.78 . Since you have no overdraft facility on this account we have charged you an unpleasant number of pounds for providing you with this letter". This particular spell is very hard to combat, but Vince Cable informs me that the only way to stop it is to send them a drawing of a spider.
There you are, and you thought I didn't ever tell you anything useful, didn't you?
To return to yesterday's topic, lovely wee students; I wonder if they still do Tolkein obsessives? When I was at Leeds in 1973, the place was riddled with them. Everyone's room had a map of Middle Earth stuck to the wall with pre-Blu-tack lumps of flour, next to that nasty one of Frank Zappa on the toilet. Some of my peer group were learning Elvish,and would write things in it on their folders. I was having enough trouble with Middle English, thank you very much, and had no time for any language in which one could not say "The fag machine in the bar is broken.Kindly do something".
There was a Tolkien Soc. There was a Soc. for everything, including (and this is true) Narcolepsy. A couple of Tolkienites were in one of my groups.The girls would drip about with curtains of dun-coloured, dusty hair over their faces, addressing each other as "Galadriel" and the like.The chaps were a bit worse because they generally had beards and enacted battles with Orcs on a Saturday morning at the back of Morrisons in Headingley. They called them "Re-enactments" ,with which I took issue on the grounds that you couldn't really "re" something that had never happened in the first place.
Harmless enough. A pal of mine in Liverpool was "heavily into" the Lord Of The Rings,when we were both seventeen. For a while she would trot about wearing a cape and a wizard's hat,waving a stout staff,and uttering gnomic statements taken from the "Silmarillion". I would be at her side, lavishly made-up with double false eyelashes and scarlet lipstick, chatting away brightly about Dorothy Parker and Gertrude (or in fact T.E,but NEVER D.H) Lawrence. We must have looked very odd together,we looked pretty damn odd separately. I think at that stage, one instinctively knows whether one is to be an Organic or an Artificial. I have some Organics as friends, and they are lovely,some can even do Artificial for a while.But ultimately one's type will surface, and an Organic will slip quietly down from that bar stool and go off on a camping weekend at a woman's retreat in Gloucestershire. Likewise, an Artificial, often swayed by love or the lack of others of their species to play out with, may for a while eschew intoxicants and camp banter, and dabble in the Environment,or go to Glastonbury. But when the novelty wears off, you will find them drifting off to a subfusc cocktail lounge and leafing through Vogue with Chanel-tinted fingers. There have been attempts to do cross-over, like the Glamping and Lost Vagueness movements, but they rarely work for long. Glitter, satin and tat-based activities demand indoor comforts and flattering lighting. Years ago, young gents used to tell me that I "looked much prettier and more natural without my make-up". In addition to it being an arrant lie, this statement always puzzled me, and I would briskly cross them off my dance card. I am an Artificial, you see,and was after a look which combined David Bowie, a Doll from an Amsterdam sex boutique,and the entire orchestra in the film of "Cabaret".And that was just to nip into the Co-op.
"I bought it because it had sequins on it" is a sentence which springs unbidden to the lips of every Artificial of any sex. As is " Don't people look better when they are clothed and you are drunk?". This was said to me in tones of wonder by a budding A. who popped round to my flat in order to carry off armfuls of shiny things.
Ah,youth! I am so pleased it's over. And now I must go and see what is making that noise in the bin. It might be a trapped Elf, or a Laughing Gnome. I am taking the spray, and may be some time.
Fairies don't do e-mail, Goblins deal with that. Goblins run all IT support, and obviously,banking. If you cross THEM, you are likely to find that they will introduce gremlins into your software, and warp your hard drive.You will also start to get letters from your bank saying "Dear Bastard ; we thought you would like to know that you owe us £0.78 . Since you have no overdraft facility on this account we have charged you an unpleasant number of pounds for providing you with this letter". This particular spell is very hard to combat, but Vince Cable informs me that the only way to stop it is to send them a drawing of a spider.
There you are, and you thought I didn't ever tell you anything useful, didn't you?
To return to yesterday's topic, lovely wee students; I wonder if they still do Tolkein obsessives? When I was at Leeds in 1973, the place was riddled with them. Everyone's room had a map of Middle Earth stuck to the wall with pre-Blu-tack lumps of flour, next to that nasty one of Frank Zappa on the toilet. Some of my peer group were learning Elvish,and would write things in it on their folders. I was having enough trouble with Middle English, thank you very much, and had no time for any language in which one could not say "The fag machine in the bar is broken.Kindly do something".
There was a Tolkien Soc. There was a Soc. for everything, including (and this is true) Narcolepsy. A couple of Tolkienites were in one of my groups.The girls would drip about with curtains of dun-coloured, dusty hair over their faces, addressing each other as "Galadriel" and the like.The chaps were a bit worse because they generally had beards and enacted battles with Orcs on a Saturday morning at the back of Morrisons in Headingley. They called them "Re-enactments" ,with which I took issue on the grounds that you couldn't really "re" something that had never happened in the first place.
Harmless enough. A pal of mine in Liverpool was "heavily into" the Lord Of The Rings,when we were both seventeen. For a while she would trot about wearing a cape and a wizard's hat,waving a stout staff,and uttering gnomic statements taken from the "Silmarillion". I would be at her side, lavishly made-up with double false eyelashes and scarlet lipstick, chatting away brightly about Dorothy Parker and Gertrude (or in fact T.E,but NEVER D.H) Lawrence. We must have looked very odd together,we looked pretty damn odd separately. I think at that stage, one instinctively knows whether one is to be an Organic or an Artificial. I have some Organics as friends, and they are lovely,some can even do Artificial for a while.But ultimately one's type will surface, and an Organic will slip quietly down from that bar stool and go off on a camping weekend at a woman's retreat in Gloucestershire. Likewise, an Artificial, often swayed by love or the lack of others of their species to play out with, may for a while eschew intoxicants and camp banter, and dabble in the Environment,or go to Glastonbury. But when the novelty wears off, you will find them drifting off to a subfusc cocktail lounge and leafing through Vogue with Chanel-tinted fingers. There have been attempts to do cross-over, like the Glamping and Lost Vagueness movements, but they rarely work for long. Glitter, satin and tat-based activities demand indoor comforts and flattering lighting. Years ago, young gents used to tell me that I "looked much prettier and more natural without my make-up". In addition to it being an arrant lie, this statement always puzzled me, and I would briskly cross them off my dance card. I am an Artificial, you see,and was after a look which combined David Bowie, a Doll from an Amsterdam sex boutique,and the entire orchestra in the film of "Cabaret".And that was just to nip into the Co-op.
"I bought it because it had sequins on it" is a sentence which springs unbidden to the lips of every Artificial of any sex. As is " Don't people look better when they are clothed and you are drunk?". This was said to me in tones of wonder by a budding A. who popped round to my flat in order to carry off armfuls of shiny things.
Ah,youth! I am so pleased it's over. And now I must go and see what is making that noise in the bin. It might be a trapped Elf, or a Laughing Gnome. I am taking the spray, and may be some time.
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