Tuesday, December the 19th, 2006

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In the Bleak Midwinter

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, but that was outside, in the vast harrowing wilderness of wind and ice and storm and horror, whereas we were snug inside in the lecture tent, cupping in our hands piping hot mugs of a strange Norwegian soup, peering through the steam towards the platform upon which stood a lectern, awaiting a lecturer.

There was, as you can imagine, typical lecture-tent hubbub. But then, suddenly, he was there, at the lectern, smashing his fist on it, startling us all, so the hubbub was hushed in an instant, and he began to speak.

“Valves! Flaps! Funnels! Ducts! Dials! Plungers! And hundreds upon hundreds of nozzles! My name is Serge.”

He then gathered up a sheaf of papers from the lectern and left the platform, disappearing behind a curtain of mauve and cerise brocade, and we were forced to conclude that the evening's lecture was at an end. Now this was something of a quandary. It was early evening, out in the trackless icy wastes, and we were at a loose end. It may have been worth pursuing Serge, of course, if only to pump him for the precise meaning of what had seemed to be very well-chosen words. Which valves did he mean, what flaps, and so on and so forth. Elhugavamp, my companion, was pessimistic, however. She said she knew his type, and he would be forever unforthcoming. I pondered what “type” Serge was, and how Elhugavamp knew enough of them to make so sweeping a judgement. Before I could quiz her to this effect, there was an unutterably hideous inhuman eerie blood-curdling eldritch awful howling from outside. Elhugavamp stopped up her ears with cotton wool and continued to smoke her acrid Serbian cigarillo, looking quite plussed and nonchalant, unlike me, for I was nonplussed and chalant, and innocent of cotton wool ear-stoppers.

A waiting page person stepped to my side to take my drained soup mug, and I asked him what was the cause of the howling. He said nothing in reply, merely exchanging sidelong glances with Elhugavamp, who I am sure nodded in response to his imperceptibly raised eyebrow. The next thing I knew, he had taken me forcibly by the arm, steered me out of the tent, plopped me none to gently on to a sledge, boarded it himself, and mushed a team of huskies who sped us across the ice at bewildering speed. The howling had not been husky howling, of that I was convinced, for I have made a thorough study of the howlings of all known hounds, and of certain other howling creatures which are not hounds, such as monkeys. But the fact that my question remained unanswered was of little concern to me now, as I hung on to the wooden safety rails of the sledge, fearful that if I lost my grip I would topple off onto the ice, or snow, or whatever impossibly white substance it was we were streaking across, glistening under the moonlight. David Bowie would, once, have dubbed it “serious moonlight”, and not without reason. I do not think I have ever been in a more serious frame of mind than I was then. A thousand questions jumbled in my brain.The only one I can recall, all theseyears later, was “Did they put something in the soup?”

It was a good question, actually. Later, when I was sitting opposite Serge in a sort of giant bamboo-and-straw pod that might have been constructed from half a dozen balloon baskets, I asked him about the soup. His reply was fascinating. Lengthy, but absolutely fascinating. Among the points I managed to jot down with my jotting stub in my jotter were the following:

1. As I had surmised, the soup was strange and Norwegian.

2. The recipe had been discovered in a manuscript entitled SomeStrange Norwegian Soup Recipes Copied By Hand From Ancient Incunabula

3. Elhugavamp had sprinkled something in to the soup as it simmered on the stoves at the back of the tent.

4. He, Serge, was but a spectral being who had been sent to impart an important message to the world, and I was to be the recipient of that message.

5. Well, having said that, either me or somebody else whose identity he could not divulge.

Once he had ceased his babbling, I shifted uneasily on my chaise longue and fixed him with what I hoped was a steely glare. This was completely wasted, for I later learned that Serge was as blind as a Blunkett. He eschewed the use of a guide dog because, being spectral, he had no need for earthbound assistance. Having not knowingly met an ethereal being before, I felt rather shy, and flapped my hands around awkwardly. One of my shoelaces had come undone on the high-speed skim across the wasteland to Serge's pod. I became conscious that there were bits of steamed greens from the soup in my beard. Serge was saying nothing more for the time being.

We sat in silence for some time. I could not help pondering on Elhugavamp's perfidy, if perfidy it was. I had not known her for long, but would not have thought her capable of stooping so low as to poison a strange Norwegian soup. And not just my mug, but the cauldron full! I wondered about the others in the lecture-tent audience, some of whom I counted as friends. Little Tim the meteorology student, Sacha the ruffian, Constance Crewfudd the transcriber of witterings by Yoko Ono… were they, and others, now beyond help, their digestive systems shutting down as Elhugavamp's mysterious soup-sprinkling ravaged their innards? I was seized with a desperate need to return to the tent, however perilous the journey may be, and stood up suddenly, gesticulating like a maniac at Serge, who, blind though he was, regarded me with amusement.

It was at this point that a pair of ostriches came thudding and scampering into the pod. At least, I think they were ostriches. You can never be sure, particularly if, like me, you have not accorded bird life the same painstaking attention as you have hounds, and I grant that I have not done so, no, never, never, never, and I regret that now.Serge greeted the ostriches—if that is what they were—with a curiously unnerving whoop. Unnerving because it sounded exactly, and I mean exactly, like Elhugavamp's laughter, a sound I knew well and would never hear again without shuddering.

How convenient if I could say that I swooned and recalled nothing more. But I remember those next two minutes with a grim clarity. There is a line in one of Dennis Beerpint's poems that goes “Then the ostriches revealed themselves as emissaries from [something something] / And all was magnesium white and [something]”. That pretty much sums up how it was. I often wonder how Beerpint, that puny versifier, somehow managed to foretell what happened to me that night, in an otherwise irrelevant piece of concrete drivel.

One of the ostriches gave me the once over and told Serge he had picked the wrong person—see point 5 above. Their pod would have to be released from its restraining wires and be transported, I knew not how, to the perimeter of a holiday camp near Basingstoke, where the true—and, it was hinted, more worthy—recipient of Serge's otherworldly message was awaiting them. I had time to tie my shoelace before I was bundled out of the pod and abandoned.

I hailed a passing motorised snow plough which took me back to the lecture-tent. Everyone was still there, looking none the worse for wear, animatedly discussing valves and flaps and funnels and dials and ducts and plungers and hundreds upon hundreds of nozzles. The consensus was that Serge had been the most charismatic lecturer of the winter. Through a fug of pipe smoke I sought out Elhugavamp, and found her lounging in a nook, her eyes flashing brilliantly, and laughing her head off, and I shuddered.