Thursday, June the 24th, 2004
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Last Friday, in our “Ask Uncle Dan” feature, an innocent question about anchovies from reader Glyn Webster was met with a somewhat tetchy reply from the Renaissance Man we employ as the fount of all wisdom. Pansy Cradledew has written in to complain:
Dear Uncle Dan : Your reply to Mr. Webster's query (An Offence Unto God, Friday 18 June) left me in stunned silence. Only now do I feel able to put pen to paper and express my dismay. Your response to Mr. Webster's piscine turmoil seemed at best insensitive and at worst downright rude. How is Mr. Webster to provide you with all the background information you require? How long is he to go without pizza? Can you only answer a question with a question? Yours flummoxed, Pansy Cradledew
We tried to reach Uncle Dan to ask him to reply to these cogent points, only to be told that he has decamped to a flamingo park on the outskirts of some nameless and deserted village by the sea. He has ejected the Head Keeper from her cottage, by casting an eldritch spell, and is now mooching about in her comfrey-and-hollyhock-splattered garden biting his fingernails and musing on his shadowy criminal past. Well of course he is! It is the month of June, after all, and those privy to the clankings and whirrings of Uncle Dan's formidable brain know that at this time every year he likes to take up temporary residence near a colony of particularly stupid birds. Come July or August he will, I am quite sure, be back to answer readers' enquiries. When he returns, Uncle Dan will find that Mr Webster has addressed himself to the matter with far greater equanimity than Ms Cradledew would have us expect, and, during a telephone call, eked from his friend all the required information. See below:
Name : Bruce Noel Gilbert.
Full postal address : [encrypted]
Telephone number : [encrypted]
Email address : bng57@hotmaiil.com
Bird count : Nil.
Name of regular dentist : “[Name of previous dentist] No, no, no, no, no, no, no! I've got his card in my pocket. Stuck in my pocket. What's going in my pocket?! There it is: Doctor Henk Eksteen, Dental Surgeon.”
List of hats : One regulation brown woolly hat provided by the Head Injury Society.
List of chalk : No chalk.
And list of tatty things : A dozen cardboard boxes contain all Bruce's possessions. They have lain unopened for many years.
Date of graduation from the Collegeiate Institute of Brusque Snarling Ecclesiastical Phantoms : Does the Salvation Army count?
How many fob pockets has he filled with sand, and where did the sand come from? : Three fob pockets stuffed with black magnetite sand from the Waikato Heads. I once succeeded in picking Bruce's breast pocket. Like all dedicated Christians, he carries a small book stuffed with scraps of notepaper and folded pamphlets—I like to think the Apostles roamed the Empire clutching such tatty books. Bruce also jams an outmoded personal organiser into that pocket. Whenever an important date is mentioned he will flip up its lid and laboriously prod the thousand tiny rubber buttons inside in an agony of concentration that can awe gatherings of any size into complete silence.
Was he in Chappaquiddick on that fateful night? : I tried discreetly introducing the subject into the conversation: he took so much pleasure in repeating the name “Chappaquiddick” over and over that I have to conclude he wasn't involved.
Why is there a big stain on the map of Java pinned up next to the sideboard, and of what wood is the sideboard made? : The stain is spirulina. “Spirulina makes a good stain.” His sideboard is formica: plain cream with numerous stains. I have tried to examine the wood beneath but the formica is hard enough to resist my penknife.
How many cows lumber about in his barnyard? : None. Bruce lives in a cubical apartment building in the centre of a “greenspace”. The man in the apartment above Bruce is slow and lumbering and wears three boots.
Is there something monstrous and crude about the average burlap sack? : Quite possibly. But Bruce's burlap sack, of which he is proud, is delicate and refined and once held basmati rice.