Inventing the Paperback

At Yifitsin Print Bookshop, Samuel Quinine is preparing an exhibition celebrating the life of Aldus Manutius (1449-1515) printer, publisher and inventor of the semicolon and the prototype of the paperback. He promoted italic type (and was also into Garamond and Zapf's Palatino). In his desire to preserve ancient Greek literature, Manutius introduced personal or pocket editions of the classics in Greek and Latin that anyone could own. He founded the Aldine Press in Venice, which continued to produce finely illustrated books until 1597. Today, antique books printed by the Aldine Press are referred to as Aldines, and Samuel Quinine owns a seventeeth share in a rare edition of the previously mentioned Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. To Quinine, Manutius is a personal god.

The origins of militancy

Milton Ridley is not happy. He feels let down by Sevalanz Grimble who he had thought of as a friend. However, far from enthusing at his winning the part of Dr Faustus (in the new Global Brickworks Production) she is actively campaigning against the show. 

‘Well, I too can be militant!’ exclaims the old war-horse, and he starts a major campaign against Irrational Superstitions directed at both the Militant Moralists, and the Seven Dials Ladies’ Kabbala Tsimtsum Circle (no association, merely a commonality of membership).

Magritude Feather, who is now babysitting the infant genius Kolya, finds one of Ridley’s pamphlets, headlined, ‘What is to be done?’  Obscurely it turns out to be a diatribe against ‘West Side Story’. 

A tangled web

Life is a confused mix between order and disorder (or as Mandible Winkworth refers to it whenever he talks to Samuel Quinine, between maat and isfet. Only Magritude Feather would understand his conceptual referents, but she is ignorant of Egyptian mythology). Quinine believes that the arbitration of the Ibis-headed Thoth forms the synthesis, to the thesis of Seth and the antithesis of Horus. As he struggles to make this wooden trichotomy explicit, he loses track of time, and loses track of Kolya, who has in recent days become obsessed with the movement of articulated lorries. Mrs. Feather shakes her head when she finds the infant genius toddling along behind a Waitrose lorry which is inching forward through a traffic jam.

Thoth has big problems

No-one is expecting it. Without warning, a quarrel erupts between Felix and Indrek over a critical comment the visitor has made about Felix's husband, Frab Lotus. The loud altercation echoes through the streets, and eventually becomes a violent brawl in the comfortable Snug of the Never a True Word pub. Someone calls the discreet Community Policewoman, Alicia Drublick, while Malvolio Claxendell tries to bring peace between the two brothers. When he sees the flashing blue light, Malvolio suddenly remembers the bedtime tale his old nurse used to read him (she was keen on Ancient Egyptian pornography) about the Contendings of Horus (him of the Eye) and Seth (of the painful testicles). Today's conflict between the Karlozoroff brothers is no less sinister.

The skilled scribe whose hands are pure

Out of the blue, Sonia Quinine (née Labrador) appears on the threshold of Yifitsin Print Bookshop. There are serious problems in her fashion business (trendy ‘supportwear’ for the fashion-conscious over eighties is not doing too well). However she merely tells her father-in-law that she has a window in her schedule, and has decided to take her little ‘Wobbly’ (her name for Kolya) out to town for an ice-cream. Unlike most of his generation, the infant genius is not delighted by the prospect and bawls his eyes out for twenty minutes. However Grandpa Samuel calms him down with a beautifully illustrated volume of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (he loves the picture of the ibis headed Thoth in Spell 183).

The Idiot’s Guide to Macrame Theory

Rabbi Oud Ramonides is worried. His son, Yachin, has suddenly developed an interest in left-wing trendy things, and is trying to reconcile Higgs boson with String Theory. Kugarita Zinfandel (daughter and sister respectively) assumes it is a talmudic thing - and indeed there was much advanced mathematical thinking amongst the brethren (even before Maimonides) that still remains to be rediscovered. Unfortunately, when the revered scholar Oud appears before his son and daughter, he forgets he is still wearing his shorts (an unheard of precedent). Luckily, far to the north, the Thane of Baile na Drochaid has (with the help of Demon Baal) written the definitive Idiot’s Guide to Macrame Theory, which he sends Kugarita, who passes it on to her brother.

Poor Sister Bebarabilia

The poster announcing today’s pubic prayer meeting has been corrected, and the nuns’ chorus from the Cruxicogentian Retreat at Little Porrit arrive on their quad bikes (Sister Bebarabilia, from Huddersfield, is in mourning for Hull’s defeat in the Cup Final, but the others as Arsenal supporters are all hung over). Frab, a devout atheist counter-tenor, has agreed to accompany them. The traffic at the new roundabout grinds to a halt as the nuns start singing. The Seven Dials Ladies’ Kabbala Tsimtsum Circle are perplexed. They had not predicted such a happening (the reader will recall that the roundabout has very special properties). However all is resolved when everyone (including Oud Ramonides who is unbelievably wearing shorts) joins in the singing.