Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Dear Maud,

When will I stop playing the fool?

Enderby, the poet, is one of my favourite buffoons; he whose ‘dyspepsia would cut disconcertingly in… blasting like a tuba through the solo string traceries of his little creations’.

In Latin, Maud, a tuba is, in fact, a trumpet. No wonder their empire fell!

Again, when will I stop playing the fool?

Alas, no time soon, for my blunders continue to balloon: Yeoman’s Hut am I too afraid to touch, while Dougal the Duck outpaces his makeshift hutch. And now, on impulse, I have answered the call – editor seeks chump to write film reviews.

So began my latest false quest: to see the cinema for what it really is.

The conclusion of my fulsome study? That our spirits, once exercised mostly in sacred places, now masquerade in movie theatres, testing our senses more than our sympathies. Thus do we moderns deny them substance.

Eh?

Bring on the Shakesbard. His Thersites, Maud, is at least an honest fool. Like jesters true, he broadcasts the truth; or, perhaps, ‘coins slanders like a mint’. Of the glorious Greeks, he dares even to declare: ‘Lechery, lechery; still wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion.’

All’s well that ends well, I’m told.

Yours etc.

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