Doh – Bother! (vulg, Blast!)
Duh – I say, you must be two pinches short of a snuffbox
Feh – What an absolute shower
Fnord – I think you’d better ask the Ministry about that
Hurr – Tick tock! Ding dong! I say!
LOL – I say, that is a hoot (compare ROTFL – Really, Simkins, you are the limit!)
Meh – If you say so, old chap
OMG – Good Lord!
Squee – I say!
Woot – Rather!
Your best bet for a first name is JOHN, JAMES or MARY; and your second name should be STEEL, KING or IRVING (though other first names might work, such as ROBERT or DOUGLAS).
As for a title, as well as connecting words, you’re really going to need MAN, HOUSE, TIME or WOMAN in there somewhere. My optimal suggestions would be THE HOUSE OF MAN, perhaps, or A WOMAN OF MY TIME.
I look forward to receiving a small royalty share when you’ve put this into action.
Polopolis
The invisible city of Polopolis is half way, by most compasses, between here and Cathay. It has always been a place for meeting – cultures delicately touch one another there as the moon kisses the water on its river, known by the same name as the city’s marketplace, ‘Il Milione’. Leaders meet there, too, to discuss their affairs of state, knowing that this is a place of the moment and the record books will not judge them here – and that Il Milione will carry their words away if they regret them. So long are these moments that much of the city is populated by these leaders’ descendants.
There are no record books in Polopolis, then: all is talk, and all history is oral. History is made most intensely at Il Milione, the marketplace, where thousands gather every day to trade, negotiate, accuse, reconcile or befriend. There, over there, are lost twins reunited after years at the opposite edges of the city (there are no gates, of course), smiling to discover their wives and children have completely different names; to their right, a carpet maker shows off his craftsmanship, so finely woven in so many colours one cannot tell where each thread begins or ends.
Polopolis has three quarters, known as Niccolo, Maffeo and Marco, though no two estate agents can agree on where exactly their boundaries lie: that fine apartment building you see, with roof tiles the colour of the sky, is championed by one as being in ‘Maffeo borders’, and another ‘where Niccolo and Marco meet’.
Il Milione itself is not one broad channel, but an endless series of bifurcations and rejoinings, sometimes ducking under the houses and at others flaunting itself in ornamental lakes; everywhere there are bridges, and each has its resident mathematician, frowning the long weary hours away as she contemplates the shortest route from one place to another. “We both step and do not step in the same rivers” is the old philosopher’s inscription on the perfect masonry of the arch above the city hall.
I have been to Polopolis myself, and sometimes it feels as if I never left.
The first follows John Clare’s ‘journey out of Essex’ – ie his fugue from an asylum at High Beach in 1841, walking penniless, driven by lost (and unregainable) love, the 80 miles to his village north of Peterborough. I can’t remember feeling so inspired and gripped by a book in recent times, such that I’ve fixed anyone who’ll listen (or won’t) with an ancient mariner’s stare and proceeded to prate about it. Sinclair’s form, for me at least, gets ever better with each new non-fiction book he writes – while his fiction (though I probably will tackle Dining on Stones when I have the stomach) gets more unwieldy and unfathomable.
The Clare book is self-indulgent at times, especially with a fruitless quest revolving around his wife’s genealogy, but I loved it throughout nonetheless – the usual blend of coruscating sideswipes at modern blandness, fused with elegiac tones and swathed in his psychogeographic obsession with making connections: Sinclair is the real Dirk Gently.
I’m still in media res with the Rodinsky book – more on that some time soon.
A week or so ago M and I went to the Rollrights, too – another inevitably uplifting megalithic site, largely unspoilt, surrounded by cow parsley and views.
These began in the 11th century, when a Norman lady claimed to have a vision of the Virgin Mary – ever after known as Our Lady of Walsingham – and endowed a priory as a result. The truth is that at the time, there were no viable sites for humble Brits to go on pilgrimage (and weren’t until a troublesome priest in Canterbury was despatched). It was simply a marketing exercise by the church – which clearly worked brilliantly until Henry VIII sent Cromwell’s Dissolving Formula across the country.
Next stop is 1896, when a Catholic woman, Charlotte Boyd, bought the ruined 14th century Slipper Chapel and restored it, and suggested a pilgrimage to visit Our Lady (OLW) in her new home.
Jump now to the 1920s and 30s, when Anglican vicar Alfred Hope Patten secured land to build an *Anglican* shrine. It’s an extraordinary place – typical 1930s architecture, and beautifully done, though also startlingly mawkish.
While building it, they found a mediaeval well, which has since been used (along with rumours of healing properties) to bolster the sacred credibility of the site.
I suppose I’d be hard pressed to say what I would regard as an *unconstructed* site for pilgrimage, but Walsingham doesn’t even have some bones. Now legions of rotund sexagenarians travel from far and wide, all in fealty to an 11th century illusion.