The Defenestration of Bob T. Hash III Read online

  My aim, throughout all aspects of this task, was to be as unobtrusive an editor as possible. My guiding principle was to reinvest Bob’s out tray apocrypha with as much as possible of what I imagined to be the core spirit of the original “decoy” version (which a subsequent search of both living room and office desks failed, alas, to unearth). In my parrot phase, I had already absorbed—by osmosis, no doubt—the very ethos of anodyne melaminity so central to the course book, in its original form. This meant that in my role as editor I was able to remain true to the spirit of the bland, stalwart captain of industry before he misplaced his marbles and began tampering around with the wires of his own creation. Far from trying to supplant or outshine my predecessor’s original efforts, I hope to have left them as much as possible intact, for which Bob should even now still take the bulk of the credit.

  16

  Repairs and Rectifications

  Bob T. Hash III sat on a wall

  Bob T. Hash III had a great fall

  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

  Couldn’t put Bob T. Hash III together again.

  A sling, a set of crutches, and a packet of nurses’ Elastoplast bandages may be provided by teacher.

  17

  How close Bob came to getting away with his fiendish plan! How nearly civilization as we know it almost drew to a standstill. But for my timely actions, his dastardly, demented Forward with English! might have passed through the printers without so much as a spell-check, to be churned out like hotcakes and distributed to the four corners of the globe. Millions and millions of unwitting would-be Bob T. Hash IIIs would at this very moment be organizing meetings, managing projects, conducting workshops, all babbling away in Bob’s new whacked-out lite-speak—and not an eyebrow would be raised.

  Meanwhile, in the turquoise shade of a pool of some high-rise hotel in Acapulco, Bob was chortling into his rum and Coke, saluting a bamboo umbrella….

  18

  Imperatives

  The uniquely formulated and breakthrough Acme Philosophy™ is based on learning through practical example, and is scientifically proven to optimize the student’s success.

  Some typical examples:

  (i) Keep off the Astroturf!

  (ii) Mind you don’t fall out of that window!

  (iii) Jump through the hoop, please!

  (iv) Stop the gondola here, gondolier. My wife wants an ice.

  (v) Let the Egg and Pie World Championship commence!

  (vi) Knees bent, left arm straight, eye on the ball, pat down the divot.

  (vii) Sitzen Sie bitte.

  (viii) Pedal faster the bright peals of laughter.

  (ix) Don’t let me ever see you near this pet shop again, d’you hear!

  Student might like to think about who these might be said by, under what circumstances, and to whom in each case they might be addressed. Now match up the letters with their Latinate numerical equivalents. The answers have been done already in order to help you.

  a) golfer’s resolute injunction to pre-swing zen-mastering self (vi)

  b) cantankerous picnicking Astroturf salesman to blind man wandering astray from leisure park pea stone (i)

  c) at the Düsseldorfian equivalent of the London Crufts dog show, addressed to a shepherd (vii)

  d) to chortling mono-cyclist (viii)

  e) to circus acolyte trainee walrus-cum-student (iii)

  f) arriving exuberantly at Ye Olde Egg and Pie Shop (v)

  g) to a light-bathed maid of Vermeer (or de Hooch) (ii)

  h) to Italianate punter passing quayside “gelateria,” bride in need of her magnum (iv)

  i) to incompetent air-conditioning maintenance man on threshold of pet shop (ix)

  LANGUAGE TIP! Student should bear in mind that imperatives (or even pseudo-imperatives) don’t necessarily have to be issued by Bob T. Hash III in person. Naturally, when an imperative is uttered by Bob T. Hash III (or by one of his proxies), it takes on an added air of authority perhaps lacking in other speakers. But while Bob does bob up rather frequently in the picture book, he is not technically speaking omnipresent and cannot be on hand whenever, and wherever, an order needs to be given. As a general rule, therefore, imperatives not lucky enough to be uttered by Bob should command our attention notwithstanding: if something needs to be done with any urgency, there is little point in waiting around for Bob to come along and dish out instructions. By the time he gets round, it might well be too late.

  19

  Not long after I began my sober bowdlerized revisions of the material for the new and improved eighth edition of Forward with English! (with the odd advertisement thrown in for good measure), I thought it might not be a bad idea to supply some kind of section-by-section commentary on Bob’s hoax versions (here presented)—if only to demonstrate the many great improvements I have made and, where appropriate, to give credit yet to Bob.

  By the way, if now and again some supporting non-Bob characters from picture book Belmont give us a sense of déjà vu, this is because we probably have seen them before. The Acme budget can feed and clothe and house only the most prominent citizens of Belmont—the ones who get speech bubbles and get lines in the exercises. To make up numbers for things like conference applause settings, fire drill debouchments, mall complex scenes, etc. (life-size cycloramas of Where’s Waldo? or, more accurately, Where’s Bob T. Hash III?), hack extras get bused in from out of town. This kind of work is by nature precarious and seasonal, forcing not only picture book extras but sometimes regulars too to supplement their income by putting in hack appearances in glossy catalogues—in any case never more than a stone’s throw from our own pastel incunabula. Steve Winshaw, for example, seemingly rooted to the petty accounts desk in the picture book office, was the stubble-chinned cowboy from last summer’s Interiors catalogue, seen lounging on a clip-together chaise longue teaching his daughter the rudiments of chess. Before she took on the more permanent role as my replacement PA, Miss Happ appeared in last spring’s bumper edition of Good Housekeeping, in a cheesecloth frock, skipping through a ripe purple field of lavender in the south of France. Sally from public relations is perhaps more famous for shaving a well-toned calf on the pink slender rim of a luxury bathtub in an advertisement for faucets, parrot stand in the corner of her bathroom.

  Talking of parrot stands, I had better describe what happened to mine. As you already know, on my first fateful afternoon as torch-bearing Bob I had assisted Matilda in its postcalamity reconstruction. Once more assembled, it was returned to its habitual position by the living room window, pristine and patient. For a number of days, with tenderness and care, both seed tray and water were replenished to keep them looking fresh; the rungs of the ladder were dusted to keep them spick-and-span; the mirror polished to keep its reflections free from smudges. It all looked very inviting, I must say! But as the days rolled on, reality began to sink in.

  As hope that Comenius would return began to wane, attention to seed tray and water was replaced by unforeseen passions. With moves choreographed to the positional logic of grief, the cage began its slow but inevitable retreat. It was initially transferred (supposedly on a temporary basis) to the rear of the couch where it suddenly seemed more convenient—but alas, not quite convenient enough. Next thing, like a receding phantom, the stand was pushed farther back still, looming for a few days in the living room corner. From whence it was then shunted into the hall, where it was subsequently deemed an impediment to the free flow of pedestrian traffic.

  Finally, one rainy weekend, the entire apparatus was quietly dismantled. The seed tray was emptied, the sawdust was cleaned out from the base of the cage, the accoutrements were wrapped up in sheets of the Belmont Gazette. The disparate sections were then withdrawn from service to a windowless cupboard that was located under the stairs.

  20

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  —That’s rather expensive, is it not?

  —Don’t look at it as a cost, Jack. Just think of it as an investment in your future!

  21

  By “parrot” as in the phrase “demanding challenges of the contemporary parrot’s busy international lifestyle,” Bob is presumably referring to the Psittacus erithacus—more commonly known, and with understandably widespread popular affection, as the African gray parrot. And, despite his nefarious meddlings in the matter of the manila I cannot help but feel a little flattered—as I proceed with my sectional commentaries—that such a renowned and authoritative compiler of course manuals should, in his otherwise astringent pageantry of lozenged examples, find the time and space to allude to that humble bird of which I am indeed an exemplar. How easy it would have been, when describing today’s busy international lifestyle, for Bob to have alluded instead to any number of lesser feathered aviators: to the mariner’s albatross, for example; to the immaculate dove returning from a distant shore with its sprig of quaint foreign expression; to the magpie with a shining literary tidbit in its beak; or to the miner’s yellow canary (snuffing it, as with noxious gas, in the presence of impish interpolation); or again to the noble ostrich, with its head in the sand—not to mention the cuckoo, the jay, the nightingale, the godwit, the mockingbird, the stonechat, the warbler, the secretary bird, the puffin, the hummingbird…or to any one of a no doubt infinite variety of tits.

  On the other hand, given that history is chockablock with examples of illustrious parrots, parrot is maybe not as surprising a choice as you might at first think. Kept as domestic companions and confidants by the great and the good, in their castles and boudoirs, in the very citadels of modern democracy, that’s parrots for you. African grays in particular have been prized for their gift as affable mimics, and in that capacity have so often been privy to the inner thoughts of the “makers and shakers” of their day. What key event that has shaped the destinies of civilizations has not been attended upon by the African gray? What pretty stenographer does not daily think of how Columbus brought back for Isabella of Spain a magnificent pair of Cuban Amazons? What photocopying apprentice worth her salt does not dream at night of how Henry VIII, who kept a parrot at Hampton Court, was one day saved by it with a well-timed imperative from drowning in the river? What motel chambermaid doesn’t think of wise King Solomon’s sage bird, or of Casanova’s popinjay when she’s making one’s bed up? What Russian princess doesn’t slaver Slavically at the thought of Anastasia and her nice pair of Jacos? What lusty intern doesn’t remember how President Roosevelt kept an African gray in the White House? What saloonstress of letters can forget how Dorothy Parker’s Onan spilled its stain on her chintzes? Alexander the Great, Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill, all inevitably had their parrots—and who knows what wise counsel they received from them during moments of national crisis!

  And little wonder that such a luminous bird should find itself in the picture manual’s protagonist’s front living room, or leading a busy international lifestyle.

  Over and above this justified homage to the species, please note the nod of personal gratitude (probably inadvertent) in anticipation of the efforts I myself would one day expend in rescuing this snippet, in slim-lining it down, for the purposes of fruitful instruction.

  Nevertheless, both here and in the eventuality of any sort of situation of mortal combat that might arise in the future, Professor Bob would do well to remember that flattery will get him nowhere, will get him nowhere at all.

  22

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  But perhaps you wish to eliminate that nasty regional accent? Time to get rid of those annoying glottal stops? Time to BOTOX those vowels, bowdlerize your vocabulary? Why not come to an English south-coast Balbec for estuary schoolmarm and scones at the Acme-Ashley Institute? Summer courses to suit all needs, with prim sea views and garden path gnomes. Traditional hospitality provided at Mrs. Widow-Smith’s guesthouse (curfew at 10:00 p.m.). Faded esplanade tearooms and crayons for rainy afternoons with views of the pavilion.

  23

  As my editorial work on the course sections began to gather pace, I became aware of a desire to share the story of Comenius’s metamorphosis—unlikely as it was that anyone would ever believe me, to say nothing of putting my revision work on Forward with English! at risk—but it was simply too big, too incredible a story to keep under my trilby. I amused myself by formulating different, almost novelistic, ways I might tell it, thinking of the different angles, inventing a town and a few minor characters to act as a backdrop. The time sequence bit was not going to be easy. I would have to choose an accent—as per the advertisement above. I could stick in an Ovid, I could stick in a Commissioner Rex.

  This desire to relate my little tale was particularly strong, of course, in regard to Matilda; I wanted very much to watch the play of incredulity, of laughter, on her face—darling, you must be pulling my leg!—while I spun my homespun wordsmithly phrases. Yet despite her intelligent laughter and healthy serendipitously un–Forward with English! cynicism, I wasn’t quite sure even Matilda was ready to appreciate learning the ornithologically related fact that she was conjugally conjoined to a parrot. On my own account, I’d have had no qualms—look, here’s my crimson-tipped tail! But on account of the sanity of Forward with English! the risk was still just too great. It was best I bide my time till Forward with English! was in the clear….

  I take it as understood, by the way, that as I work my way through the manila material, I am still doing all those regular, ordinary, air-conditioned day-to-day things that Bob did. I get up every morning at a quarter to seven, I wash, I have breakfast, I drive to the office, I open the mail, I answer the phone, I chair this, I signature that. I read Laurie Lee and listen to Charlie Parker. I mow the lawn on the weekends and play Frisbee with the children. (I’ve even been away on a business trip of my own!) I also take it as understood that Matilda has her own parallel set of day-to-day things: when she isn’t with me it’s not like—well, it’s not simply that she’
s absent, floating about in some big tub of aspic in a bikini. She’s doing things all of the time, as real as I’m writing this sentence. You can see what she’s up to now, just look at page 34 of the picture book: Matilda setting the table for breakfast. Matilda at the mall. Matilda in her motor car on the way to the mall. Matilda at the ladies’ hairdressers, her hair wrapped up in tinfoil under the hood of a bubblegum-pink dryer…

  That’s where I found her, head under the bubblegum hood, when, succumbing one day to a mad lunchtime impulse, I ducked out of the office canteen, gripped by the idea of going directly to Matilda to tell her the true fate of Comenius. It was an impetuous, crazy idea. Part of me of course realized that it would probably have been better to wait till Matilda and I were alone in the evening, say curled up on the couch with a test card in the living room after the children had gone off to bed. But I was flushed from a successful morning’s editing and felt that my sheer enthusiasm would override any absurdities of making a full-blown public announcement at the ladies’ hairdressers’ in broad Belmont daylight.

  When I put my head through the hairdressers’ door and doffed my fedora, several pairs of ladies’ eyes looked up at me, surprised to see an unscheduled man there—an unscheduled Bob T. Hash III, at that. Nice big (bell-less) mirrors above a row of gleaming porcelain sinks, I noticed. On shelves, lotions: unction and herbal—often with squirting devices attached. The place smelled of hair stuff and perfume. Miss Ting at the cash register, her coin drawer ajar. Miss Snip, frozen midsnip with her scissors paused slicing the air. Janet, from accounts, getting a nice seventies wavy perm done for an upcoming drinks do at the office. Matilda was watching me in the mirror, strands of waxy tinfoil poking out from the sides of the noisy hood. On her lap, in a magazine, Doris Day and James Garner were embracing each other in a scene from an old movie I’d watched from a rainy afternoon’s perch. In it, Doris Day’s first husband, played by a pre–Rockford Files James Garner, had been in a plane crash. Presuming him dead—please pass the popcorn—Doris remarries a millionaire schmuck in order to continue her life of diamonds and glamour to which she was accustomed (see Habits). The twist in the film, a very early twist in the film at any rate, is that pre-Rockford Garner hasn’t perished at all—his plane has only ditched into the ocean. He’s been washed up on a Pacific island, replete with pineapples and coconut skirts. After a few years of pineapples and coconut skirts, Rockford escapes from the island, as from the Island of Circe, and next thing, like a spruced-up Robinson Crusoe, he just happens to bump into Doris in a swanky hotel lobby while husband number two is off sorting out the luggage with the bellhop (“Right away, Sir. Fifth floor it is!”). The stage is set for some light afternoon farce. More fumbling suitcase and wardrobe regurgitation than nasty shoot-outs or duels but, nevertheless, just seeing the photo there on Matilda’s lap, I couldn’t help feeling there were perhaps certain parallels with my own situation: inversions, mirrorings, coincidences; certain possible slapstick developments that, in my impetuous resolution, I’d perhaps not quite thought through yet. Was Bob for example, as gone for good as I’d imagined? Had I not been maybe unwittingly cast in a role similar to that millionaire schmuck, shunted off to the side of the stage—the wings—with the suitcases?