Document of Authentication

For a long time Cortally Bakewell has been concerned about the brass ornament that Stella Sopling bought at the church jumble sale. He knows it is valuable, and suspects that within its crevices is hidden a document of authentication. He mentions this to Indrek Karlosoroff who is visiting his brother Felix, and eventually word gets through to Yamima, who has been having qualms of conscience having found that very parchment under the table whilst sweeping up at Moudi’s. She confesses to Indrek (a buddhist Bodhisattva with whom she is translating the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra) who suggests that she returns it to Stella. Since it indicates that the ornament is worth £45000, Stella is delighted, and offers Yamima a significant reward.

The Oleograph

Behind the row of gardens that backs onto the railway, very visible from passing trains, stretches a long white wall. Its inaccessible location means that it is seldom sullied by extensive offensive graffiti. On Sunday however, whilst all the local residents are nosing around other people's houses (in the name of Art) the Young Kimrock breaks into Number 27, and climbs over the undergrowth to scale the wall. Once over, he decorates it with remarkably exaggerated claims and biological drawings of Guthrie Cotton and Yevgeny Huxtable.  As he returns through the house, he spots a beautiful painting (actually an oleograph) portraying a bluebell wood. The scene is so calming that it dissipates his anger, and he regrets his recent vandalism.

Mrs Papworth's pineapple chunks

Around Seven Dials even the older shops date back only a few decades. In one corner however time has stood still. Here is Mrs Papworth’s sweetshop, still selling pineapple chunks and aniseed balls. When Leporello Swanson first wandered in, he was greeted by the  rasping sound of the owner, dressed in Victorian black, short and old as the hills, asking what he required. She peered at him from behind the counter, and wielding a silver hammer she broke off shards of toffee from a shiny solid block. Leppo had never seen anything like it. Now he goes in daily to discover some new delight. But even the saintly Mrs Papworth is not interested in the diatonality of Hyoaxic spatial music.

Hamentash Yumble's chiaroscuro drip method.

For week two of the Art Course, Lucien Jung invites Hamentash Yumble to talk about his chiaroscuro drip method. Yumble’s latest exhibition at Borgonzo’s Gallery in New Bond Street has attracted great attention from the overseas art buying clientele, and he feels obliged to dress the part. He now buys shirts at Ermenegildo Zegna, and shoes from Etro. There are invitations for his work to be exhibited in Singapore, Dubai and Maynooth. He gives a full résumé of his career to the assembled art students (including Prigentia Colswain who is overwhelmed by his long, thin, bony physique). Sister Veracitude presses him to reveal more about his drip technique, and he offers to run a workshop at his metallic Shoreditch studio.

Lines on Tintern Abbey

Sometime at the start of 1300, "midway along the road" Dante was lost in a dark forest. To survive this ordeal, he had to visit the three realms of the afterlife, accompanied by Virgil who suggested that first they stock up at the local Aldi. Eight centuries and a bit later at Vevgeny Huxtable's Art Studio in a Hove mews, Lucien Jung is supervising the ten week art course. Kugarita Zinfandel is painting a rural landscape in which, inexplicably, a leopard, a she-wolf and a lion are lurking in the woods beyond a ruined Gothic castle. Sister Veracitude is also painting, but her images are more abstract. Her water-colour portrait of a mid-century Archbishop of Canterbury looks like a monkfish.

Freudian Oneiromancy

In 1877 Grapella’s great-grandfather unearthed  a bronze sculpture of a liver dating from 100 BC, near the town of Piacenza in northern Italy. The Etruscans were well known for the practice of divining by the entrails of sheep and this sculpture was thought to be an artefact of Roman haruspicy. Even today amongst Grepella’s extended family there is a fortune-telling Falgir called Sapsule Colswain. She is now talking to Frab Lotus, and trying to convince him that Freud was merely a latter-day Oneiromancer, and that better results can be obtained from Extispicy. To demonstrate her point she has purchased a sheep and is now examining its entrails (Hepatoscopy). Frab nods politely, and wonders how he can get rid of her.

...che mi fu tolta; e 'l modo ancor m'offende

The unexpected arrival of Lazarus Colswain, Prigentia’s father, causes pandemonium in the street. Grapella (his ex) refuses to talk to him, but unfortunately it is she who opens the door.  She takes one look at him, and leaves him (on the threshold) to the mercies of her cleaner, Magritude Feather, who has over the past three years absorbed the wrath that Grapella has poured out in full shpoch. She puts the poor man in his place, so that when he leaves (with his metaphorical tail between his legs) it is with great relief. Despite this Magritude sends a text message to Prigentia, who rushes to meet Lazarus at the Local Coffee House where he is sitting despondently reading Dante’s Inferno.

Justification of Voltaireine de Cleyre

Sister Veracitude finds a letter from Herman Helcher concealed in the binding of an antique book on Anarchist Thought that she bought at Zangwill's Bazaar. The letter had been smuggled out of the asylum where Helcher was detained after attempting to assassinate Voltaireine de Cleyre, the American writer and feminist who opposed the state, marriage and the domination of religion over sexuality and women's lives.  In 1895 De Cleyre condemned ideals of beauty that encourage women to distort their bodies. For twenty years she  worked amongst the poor of Philadelphia, living among poor Jewish immigrants where sympathy for anarchist beliefs was common. There, she learned to speak and write in Yiddish. (Rabbi Oud Ramonides translates the letter for Sister Veracitude.)

Give us a ring (reflections of Valhalla)

Avid readers of this blog will recall that Wolfram Bettel's nephew Leporello Swinson has asked Cortally Bakewell for the address of a possible pen-friend. Bakewell sent him Prigentia's address, and an earnest exchange of letters  has developed between them. When Leporello learns that Prigentia's mother will be visiting Gundelfingen he drops his commitments in Dubrovnik, and returns home to show her and her companions (Emelda and Sevalanz) around the sites of the Roßkopf. The young musician makes a great impression on Grapella Colswain, who decides that (despite the age difference) this beautiful man would be the perfect partner for her daughter. Leporello Swinson however is struck by the beauty of Grapella, and falls for the mother rather than the daughter.

The Unseason

The Seven Dials Emergency Flood Committee meets to discuss the problem of McGonagal's drains which, having been blocked by unseasonal leaf deposits, are draining into Zangwill’s Bazaar of Curiosities. The owners (Ferabdurus Lotus and Cortally Bakewell) are in conference with the local authorities who offer to slap a closure notice on McGonagal's Writers Cafe. Frab is wary, as he is fears that it will generate a wide-spread epidemic of hysterical writer's cramp. A compromise is reached when Rev. Lanzarotte's branch of the Toy Sprouts are called in to pump out the water, and unblock the drains. Unfortunately, Prigentia (for whom Frab is a Transcipient Rain God) now develops an emotional attachment to young Kimrock, the leader of the pack.