Friday, January the 27th, 2006

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Another Vlasto

Last Tuesday, in The Gnawed And The Chewed (see below), we met Vlasto Pismire, the Lembit Opik lookalike whose incessant prattling transfixed Dobson for months and months. Vlasto Pismire is not to be confused with another Vlasto, to whom we now turn.

Vlasto Cuddy was a tall, stooping sort of person who spent most of his time standing on top of a crate, by numberless kerbs and roadsides, elegantly attired, flailing his spookily long arms, pontificating at passers-by.

He sounds familiar… but I can't quite place him.

Possibly you do not recognise the name. Very, very few people knew him as Vlasto Cuddy, for he became familiar to thousands, perhaps even millions, under his sobriquet, the Pontificating Fruitarian.

Ah yes! That rings a bell.

Many bells, I expect. Vlasto Cuddy the Pontificating Fruitarian spent more than fifty years declaiming his blinkered dietary opinions to the passing throng. Sometimes the throng passed more quickly than was seemly. Sometimes it could hardly be called a throng at all. Sometimes there were torrential downpours, and at other times the light of the big bright sun battered mercilessly upon the face of the earth, and in these and all other weather conditions there would be a roadside somewhere in the world where at dawn of day a tall, stooping sort of person would deposit his crate and clamber atop it and begin his fruit-related pontificating, and scarcely cease until night fell down.

Remind me of the nature of his pontificating.

By all means. Vlasto Cuddy would shout, for example, that pride and lust, a corrupt pride of heart, and a furious filthy lust of body, are the non-fruitarian's springs of action, a desire to act the beast without control, and live like a devil without a check of conscience, his only reasons for opposing the existence of fruit. He would thunder that a world of creatures are up in arms against the non-fruit eater, to kill him as they would a venomous mad dog. He called those who eschew plums and tangerines absurd fools, beasts, dirty monsters, brutes, gloomy dark animals, enemies of humankind, wolves to civil society, butchers and murderers of the human race. Moreover, he who eats anything other than lemons and other citrus fruits is cursed in the following hearty terms—“Let the glorious mass of fire burn him, let the moon light him to the gallows, let the stars in their courses fight against the wretch who eats other than fruit, let the force of the comets dash him to pieces, let the roar of thunders strike him deaf, let red lightnings blast his guilty soul, let the sea lift up her mighty waves to bury him, let the lion tear him to pieces, let dogs devour him, let the air poison him, let the next crumb of bread choke him, nay, let the dull ass spurn him to death.”

I remember now. I was always puzzled by that last bit, for I do not think it possible to die simply from being spurned by an ass. Had the Pontificating Fruitarian done his research?

He had indeed. Vlasto Cuddy's sister, the Divine Miss Patience Cuddy, rose to prominence in the world of donkey rearing, and she often conducted experiments in which volunteers from a nearby orphanage subjected themselves to spurning by asses and donkeys. Some died as a result.

Surely that cannot be so!

I grant there was talk in the taverns that the Divine Miss Patience may have falsified some of her data, but nothing was ever proven.

Tell me, was the Divine Miss Patience a fruitarian like her tall, stooping brother?

No she was not. His pontifications were lost on her, for he was forever roaming the world with his crate, while she rarely ventured far from her donkey compound on the banks of the river that runs through Ack.

Did Vlasto Cuddy the Pontificating Fruitarian never commit any of his pontifications to paper? Did he not take a leaf out of Dobson's book, that is to say, and publish his pontifications as pamphlets?

He did not, for the surprising fact is that Vlasto Cuddy was functionally illiterate. It is said that he never had time to learn to read or write because he was far too busy concentrating all the powers of his formidable mind upon the subject of fruit.

Will you be introducing readers to further Vlastos in addition to Vlasto Pismire and Vlasto Cuddy?

Not if I can help it.