Sunday, July the 24th, 2005
back to: title, date or indexes
A letter arrives from reader E Duggleby:
Dear Frank : Until I read the piece entitled A Snapshot From The History Of Athletics (21st July, below) I had no idea that the fictional sprinter Bobnit Tivol was your father. You will probably be interested to know that some years ago, when my collection of memorabilia related to this great invented athlete threatened to swamp my modest living quarters, I opened the world's first Bobnit Tivol Museum. My collection includes the following items:
His bus pass, his iron vest, a lithograph of one of his ears, the tentacles of a squid he admired, cranky old Halob's cotton wool bag, several urgent telegraphic messages relating to the 1952 Helsinki “disturbances”, a plasticine model of an apple-core with Bobnit Tivol's teeth-marks clearly delineated, a jug, a pot, a basin, lavish petunia-strewn flooring from a podium uprooted from the soil of an incredible sporting arena described in the novel Bobnit Tivol And The Rotating Things From Planet Glub, silhouettes of Bobnit Tivol, Halob, and Christopher Plummer, old rags, a bottle of gripe water, splendid tungsten pincers, the hat of a gondolier and a red fez from Luxor, a pin cushion, turpentine, Norwegian wool, a map with blots, and ten recordings of the Shipping Forecast acoustically treated by one of the leading Dutch music pioneers of the twentieth century.
If you or your readers would like to visit the Bobnit Tivol Museum, please be aware that it is virtually inaccessible to normal folk, being located in an ice-girt wasteland beset by howling gales. Ticket prices available upon request.