Wednesday, January the 26th, 2005

back to: title, date or indexes

hear this 

Mrs Gubbins' New Publishing Venture

That indefatigable crone Mrs Gubbins has announced the launch of a brand new, subscription-only magazine. Here she is, to tell us all about it:

Hello readers. It was a dark and stormy night, just like in that novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and I was lying awake in bed, tossing and turning under my counterpane, watching little fairies twinkling over by my washstand, when I had one of my bright ideas. Actually the fairies may have been moths. Anyway, all of a sudden I realised that there would be a huge market for a glossy magazine, with a spine, probably, devoted to velcro, dubbin and crayons. I jumped out of bed, a bit creakily, and went over to my escritoire, rummaged for my lorgnette, found a pad and pencil, and scribbled down my ideas in the dark, because my little lamp is broken and I was too excited to go all the way across the room to turn on the main light.

I decided to call my magazine A Daily Digest About Velcro, Dubbin And Crayons By Bathsheba Gubbins (Mrs). That has a nice ring to it, don't you think? In the first issue I thought I would tell my thousands of subscribers the story of how George de Mestral invented velcro in 1948 after taking his dog for a walk. “I will design a unique, two-sided fastener,” he decided, “one side with stiff hooks like burrs and the other side with soft loops like the fabric of my pants. I will call my invention velcro—a combination of the words velour and crochet. It will rival the zipper in its ability to fasten.” That would take up a few pages.

Then I would have a picture spread about dubbin, a combination of oils, beeswax and other waxes, hence the pleasant smell when opening the can. I would have to make a few telephone calls come morning to see if I could include a little scratch-and-sniff panel on page 14.

The remainder of issue one would be an exciting article all about crayons, including the fact that Alice Binney came up with the brand name Crayola by combining two words that mean “oily chalk”. Craie, in French, means chalk, and oleaginous means oily.

By the time I had planned out the first issue the storminess had ceased and the night was still, but before going back to bed to have a good long snooze, I made a quick note about what should go on the cover. I decided that each issue should have a full-colour cover-picture of a celebrity, if possible shown holding or using or maybe just ruminating upon velcro, dubbin, or crayons. Who could it be for the launch issue? It would have to be a toss-up between new US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Glenn Cornick, one-time bass guitarist of Jethro Tull.

I scrambled back to bed happy in the knowledge that subscriptions would come pouring in.