The world has changed.
I can feel it in the water.
I can feel it in the air.
I can feel it on my foot. Drat. I must be more careful with that seeing-stone next time.
The story so far.
Much that has changed will be the same. Much that was the same will have changed. Much that is, will be, or would, perhaps subjunctively. Much that occurred at Oxonmoot will be reported elsewhere, when I have sobered up found my notes, or at least remembered where I left my magical memory stick.
But for those more easily pleased, all is but a pale shadow before a performance of Lord of the Goons Part III: Return on Investment by the Cambridge Tolkien Society.
History becomes legend. Legend becomes Myth. Myth becomes the Release of Calcium from Intracellular Stores. Heroic, muscle-bound Kenneth Williams peers over the battlements, standing on brawny, bearded Betty Marsden son of Gloin. The phallically helmeted Gondorian guard, played by elfin Hugh Paddick, lights the beacon provided by pointy-eared Bill Pertwee. Just then a horn blows. Drums, drums in the deep. We cannot get out. We cannot get out. They are coming. The demonic hordes of calcium ions swarm the battlements and break into the keep. The Finger of the Shadow extends impudently over Middle-earth, remorselessly, rick, cot and tree, until all that is left is a small valiant band of the Faithful, holding out against Beelzebun Demon Bunny of DOOM the domination of Middle-earth by He Who Must Not Be Named until the World’s End, whichever comes first. The Free Radicals Peoples of Middle-earth are confined, at bay, in their last redoubt, the Hidden City of Peasemouldia. But heedless of the commands of He Who Must Not Be Named, a cock crows, and, riding for three days straight, hope against hope, a great and valiant voice is heard: “Hello, My name’s Kenneth Huorn”.
KENNETH HUORN: I have come in search of J. Peasemould Gruntfuttock, Prince of Peasemouldia.
GRUNTFUTTOCK THE WHITE: I have not passed through fire and death to be addressed as J. Peasemould Gruntfuttock. Oh no, I am Gruntfuttock the White, returned from the dead to defend Peasemouldia and All Its Realms.
KENNETH HUORN: Remarkable – how did you effect such a startling transformation?
GRUNTFUTTOCK THE WHITE: It was the voices, you know. There I was, plain Gruntfuttock the Grey, being chucked out of the Green Dragon at closing time, and I was just passing the ‘orsemeat shop in the Bywater Road when I ’eard the Voices. The Voices, Yes. They says to me, ’Gird up your loins, Gruntfuttock, my child! ’Gird them up’, they said. The voices, you know. ‘Gird up your loins, and go forth unto Middle-earth. And get us an ounce of lembas while you’re about it’.
KENNETH HUORN: Fascinating. What is the extent of your domains, Noble Lord?
GRUNTFUTTOCK THE WHITE: Alas, the Dark Intracellular Calcium Ions of He Who Must Not Be Named have tried us sorely, until we are confined here in Railway Sidings, Hoxton The Haven of Imladris, and up Buttermould Street as far up as the Prancing Pony.
KENNETH HUORN: Your ears trials are sore indeed. But I am here to release you from bondage.
GRUNTFUTTOCK THE WHITE: The Lay of Leithian?
KENNETH HUORN: Don’t bring her into it. She’s supposed to be in Rivendell. and She’s not as good with a sword as Peter Jackson you might think.
THE LADY BUTTERCUP: That’s not what I’ve ’eard, cheeky face.
GRUNTFUTTOCK THE WHITE: Get down, Lady Buttercup. I’ve told you before about meddling with the Large Hadron Collider in the affairs of wizards. And anyway, Mr Huorn, how do you propose to save us? A couple of dozen suspiciously well-washed elves against ten billion trillion calcium ions? Pour your shampoo over them?
KENNETH HUORN: better than that My Liege. I have brought salvation on wings of minstrelsy. After all, in a book like this you have to interrupt the action now and then with a folksy ballad.
RAMBLING SID RADAGAST: ‘Ello Me Dearios! It is I, Rambling Sid Radagast, come ’ere after roving the length and breadth of Middle-earth, with naught but the sky as my coverlet, the hedgerow as my bed and a hedgehog for my pillow, with naught for company but this bird called Galadriel wot I found a-moolin’ and a-wogglin’ under a Mallorn Tree in Caras Galadhon.
GRUNTFUTTOCK THE WHITE: Not you again. And how do you propose to release Middle-earth from the tyranny of He Who Must Not Be Named?
RAMBLING SID RADAGAST: I shall sing at them. Believe me, it usually clears the place. Those Calcium Ions will be back in their Intracellular Stores before you can say Elen sila lumenn’ omentielvo.
KENNETH HUORN: Oh, all right then, you may as well give it a go. We’ve nothing else to lose. What Lay or Air of Ancientry do you intend to lay on us this week, Rambling Sid?
RAMBLING SID RADAGAST: This be an ancient Numenorean ballad, culled from the Downfallen West in the Deeps of Time amidst the Innumerable Stars. I made it up last week.
KENNETH HUORN: Sing us, then, O Rambling Sid, of the Music of the Ainur, of the Beginnings of Days, of Aule and Yavanna, of the Chaining of Melkor, of the Oaths of the Noldor, of Feanor and his Disobedience, of the Battles under the Stars, or Thingol and Melian, of The Coming of Men into the West, of Luthien and Beren, of Turin the Accursed, of the Fall of Gondolin, and All That Other Stuff I Can’t Remember.
RAMBLING SID RADAGAST:
Grummet up my scrurdies, o! Tom Bombadillo!
Plurdled are his nadgers, o! By the weeds and willow!
Posseted are thy futtocks, o! Tom Bombadillo!
Snurgle dandle doodle o! Tom Bombadillo!
KENNETH HUORN: Is that it?
RAMBLING SID RADAGAST: Well what do you expect in half an hour, and in an economy with no visible means of support?
KENNETH HUORN: It’s worked, though, the Calcium Ions are once again Bound in their Intracellular Stores.
GRUNTFUTTOCK THE WHITE: But what’s that ahead? That evil, red glow? What is this new devilry?
SARUMAN: Oooh, ‘Ello, I’m Saruman, and this is my friend, Sauron.
KENNETH HUORN: Whatever your terms are, foul spawn of Morgoth, we reject them utterly.
SAURON: Charmed, I’m sure.
SARUMAN: And he hasn’t even ‘eard what we’ve got to offer.
SARUMAN: Oooh, yes. We’ve gone into business together, see? The genetic manipulation subcreation game.
KENNETH HUORN: Oh, all right. I can’t pretend I’m not intrigued. What are you up to?
SARUMAN: Well, we’ve called ourselves ‘Bona Balrogs’.
GRUNTFUTTOCK THE WHITE: I am a Servant of the Secret Fire! Wielder of the Flame of Anor! The Dark Fire will Not Avail you, Flame of Udun! Get back to the Shadow!
SAURON: Oooh, ’e’s very bold, inn’e, Saruman?
SARUMAN: Very bold.
GRUNTFUTTOCK THE WHITE: You Cannot Pass!
SAURON: Speak for yourself, ducky.
SARUMAN: Come on, Sauron. I don’t think we’re welcome ‘ere. Let’s go and read the Two Towers.
SAURON: So that’s what you call it in Quenya Polari? Well, I’m game, if you are.
KENNETH HUORN: What we need now is a continuity error. Smith, you know what’s expected of you.
DOUGLAS SMITH: Oh, very well. After having his staff broken in Orthanc, Gruntfuttock the White magically comes up with something exactly the same in the Council of Elrond, only to turn up in Fangorn Forest with something completely different.
KENNETH HUORN: That was close. Escaping from the Balrog when some eagles turned up in the nick of time, I was just about to edit all the jokes out of The History of Middle-earth when my palantir rang. I picked it up.
HAVERSTRAP: Haverstrap here. I’ve got Brown-Horrocks on my extension.
KENNETH HUORN: That calls for Elvish medicine.
HAVERSTRAP: No, Brown-Horrocks, Intelligence.
BROWN-HORROCKS: Ah, Huorn.
KENNETH HUORN: Ah, Brown-Horrocks.
BROWN-HORROCKS: Listen, Huorn, we have a crisis. All the trees in Hyde Park have started walking about.
KENNETH HUORN: Walking about?
BROWN-HORROCKS: Yes, Huorn, walking about. And singing.
KENNETH HUORN: Singing? What about?
BROWN-HORROCKS: About how they’ve lost their wives and don’t know where to find them.
KENNETH HUORN: Some people don’t know when they’re well-off. Don’t they know there’s no sex in Middle-earth?
BROWN-HORROCKS: I know, Huorn. But perhaps it doesn’t apply to walking trees. Anyway, I want you to find out who’s behind this – and stop them.
KENNETH HUORN: Only one being in Middle-earth could be responsible for such treachery. I knew what I had to do. I jumped out of my tower onto a conveniently passing eagle. He took me straight to the Tower of Cirith Ungol, Tel Aviv. I knocked on the door. It was answered by the Lovely Ramona. I looked at her quizzically. She looked at my quizzically. Her mouth was full of extraordinarily large teeth a scarlet wound. My lips found hers, exactly where I expected them to be – underneath her nose.
DOUGLAS SMITH: Three days later…
KENNETH HUORN: Three days?
DOUGLAS SMITH: Just doing my job, sir. I mean, it’s a trilogy – you’ve got to pad it out somehow.
KENNETH HUORN: Oh, if you insist. I ran Ramona through with my trusty Blade of Gondolin …
SARUMAN: Oooh, vada! ’ark at him!
KENNETH HUORN: Don’t you start. And leave the blessed Varda, Queen of the Stars out of it.
SAURON: I was dragged up a lovely Queen of the Stars, once, weren’t I, Saruman?
SARUMAN: Yes, ’e took ’is part lovely, ’e did, Mr Huorn. Fantabulosa!
KENNETH HUORN: Be gone with you. Now, where was I?
DOUGLAS SMITH: Bottom of page 347.
KENNETH HUORN: Thank you, Smith. I ran her through and bounded up the stairs. I reached the topmost chamber. I recited the magic spell – speak ‘artichoke’ and enter. The doors flew open, revealing:
CHOU-EN GOLLUM: Ah, Mr Huorn.
KENNETH HUORN: Ah, Chou.
CHOU-EN GOLLUM: Bless you, my preciouses.
KENNETH HUORN: Look, Chou, what’s your game, making all the trees in Hyde Park walk about, singing?
CHOU-EN GOLLUM: Because it’s my birthday, precioussss, and I wants it. But before we parlay, I shall summon Laurelin, loveliest of all my cucumbers concubines, to entertain us in the Hall of Fire. Laurelin, joy of my heart? Light of my life?
LAURELIN (gruffly): I hendeavour to do yore biddin’, cock.
CHOU-EN GOLLUM: Sing us the one about the elf princess who runs off with the hero and turns into a bat and dances naked in front of Harrods.
LAURELIN:
Oh, the hokey cokey
Oh, the hokey cokey
Oh, the hokey cokey
Knees bend arms stretch rah rah rah.
CHOU-EN GOLLUM: Does not that stir your blood to fire?
KENNETH HUORN: No, I can’t say it does.
CHOU-EN GOLLUM: No. Doesn’t work with me, either. Anyway, Mr Huorn, what was it you wantses? Not my preciouss?
KENNETH HUORN: Is that what you want, what you really really want?
CHOU-EN GOLLUM: No, what I really wantses is a better part, that’s what. They make me troll out this rubbish, week after week, all this nonsense about ‘we wants it’ and ‘my precious’. Do they tell me what it’s about? Do they? No. Just get on with it, they say. And to think, I could have been an actor. I could have been a star. ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends’, you see, ‘and fill up the walls with our English Dead’, you see. A star. I’ve got the calves for it. Look at my calves. Just look at them. That’s the problem with fantasies. No love.
KENNETH HUORN: No love? What can you mean? Just listen to this. (Brings out palantir).
ARAGORN: Oh, Arwen. We must stop meeting like this.
ARWEN: Oh, Aragorn, surely not. I live for our brief meetings. When I think of them, I become thrillingly, heart-throbbingly, tongue-chokingly, chthonically, eldritchly, preternaturally, utterly, utterly, utterly excited. And yet, somehow, calm.
ARAGORN: Yes. I feel it too.
ARWEN: I know.
ARAGORN: I know you know.
ARWEN: I know you know I know.
ARAGORN: I know you know I know you know.
ARWEN: I know you know I know you know I know.
ARAGORN: I know.
ARWEN: That’s what I like about us, Aragorn. We don’t need words.
KENNETH HUORN: I’ve seen through your little game, Gollum! Take that!
CHOU-EN GOLLUM: Aaaah!
KENNETH HUORN: … And That!
CHOU-EN GOLLUM: Aaaaah!
KENNETH HUORN: … And that!
CHOU-EN GOLLUM: No thanks, I’ve already got two of those.
KENNETH HUORN: Chou-En Gollum climbed up to his full height of eight foot three (he was standing on the windowsill) and with a cry of ‘my preciousss!’ he threw himself out of the window. I looked out to see his receding form, and as he fell, I heard his last, foul cry, as if in unutterable terror -
CHOU-EN GOLLUM: You may have beaten me this time, Mr Huorn, but you haven’t heard the last of Dr Chou-En Gollum, M. A. Failed – GOODBYE!!!
APPENDIX P: ANALS OF LADLES AND JELLYSPOONS
News of Unicycling Girrafes has yet to reach the Wise Clerks of Oxenford
Should I be worried that I envisaged nearly all those characters as portrayed by Frankie Howerd?
No.
“Pissed in charge of the internet”.
If it’s not a crime, it bloody well ought to be.
Or in my case, “confused reader of Nature Network”.
Now imagine what it was like hearing all this from the Author in person (if thaat’s the correct description) after breakfast this morning. He did everybody BUT the police in different voices …. I feel traumatised.
Open miruvor bar at Oxonmoot, eh?
Really?
(there’s no hash mark on this keyboard!)
Miruvor? Well, if miruvor is transparent, colourless and bears a label saying : “Russian strong 56 degrees”, then yes.
Miruvor is in the eye of the besotted.
I think I need some strong drink.
Isn’t 56 Gay-Lussac (98% proof) strong enough?
Was there any discussion of lawsuits at your moot?
None that I heard.
Gosh. Never realised that working on calcium ions made one a tool of He Who Must Not Be Named. What about other ions? Are they Minions of Darkness too?
And has anyone told Sir Andrew Huxley?
Calcium ions are the evil hellspawn of Morgoth as any fule know. Whither the other ions? I cannot say.
Well, when you got to the bit about the Prancing Pony, what about Strider, then? He seems to have been, er, missed out. Never mind all that “you know I know” stuff. What about the real onion?
Zapping X-rays into frog muscle fibres in Helm’s
sychrotrondeep, now. Not very popular in the extremes of the Northern Line ofMordorMorden, I can tell you.Yikes. Those going forth to strike the evil Minis Mingal have had to go upstairs to photocopy their fish letters (fish currently languishing next to spaghetti in fridge) to prove to customs that their fish is bone fide fish. Otherwise, aforementioned X-rays may never get a look-in. Bejasus, these elves, dwarves and last bastions of the Dumendin never realised they had it so good.
Maxine – never mind David Doughan’s vodka, have you been at the absinthe again?
Talking of Bastions and the Northern Line, the old NIMR up at Mill Hill is, of course, over the road from a place called “Watchtower House” (yes, the name does indicate it what you might think). Indeed, I recall that once as I slogged up the hill from Mill Hill East Station I was accosted by a wild-eyed seer type, who followed me right up to the doors of the NIMR Bastion whilst prophesying various kinds of apocalyptic doom.
Obviously must have tagged me as a person fated to fall victim to the dark lure of power, I mean calcium ions.
What the chuff are you lot drinking, and may I have some, please?
Tea.
Can’t speak for anyone else.
Pinot Grigio up here in the grim North.
We have to resort to strong drink when the Northern weather comes over all Hithlum-Thangorodrim.
Actually not, not the absinthe but I appreciate not very coherent. Malcolm had a bunch of frozen fish muscle fibres in the fridge which he was rather worried someone might eat – in fact he’d bought them home as he was taking them off to
Helm’s Deepthe Grenoble synchrotron early this morning, in order to zap them with subatomic particles. A bit of cursing and swearing could be heard in the library of Minis Tirith as the relevant customs documentation was being sought.Meanwhile, this just in. Discuss.
True.
Are neutrons on the side of light, then? Unlike calcium ions…
@ Austin: It’s a bit Hithlum here today, though not particularly Thangorodrim, I’m glad to say. Neutrons are happily neutral … but then, so was Shelob.
@ Maxine: did Malcolm manage to gird up his loins for his quest?
@ Stephen: how true. However, Tolkien is probably the exception as all his words have very detailed etymologies and thus a reason for existence. So his words, even though made-up, don’t read as if they are. I did read an amusing critique of the film The Two Towers which said words to the effect that it consisted of a lot of people running about in the landscape, pausing occasionally so one of them could say ‘This is the Valley of Gorgonzola’ and another could reply ‘I sense evil here’.
Henry, I’m afraid I cannot find it in me to share your love of Tolkein and his oeuvre. However, I am with you all the way on the relative dramalessness of science. Oh damn, I just made up a word. Does that mean…?
Henry, I’m afraid I cannot find it in me to share your love of Tolkein and his oeuvre
With you on Tolkein. Absolutely. Tolkien, though, is a different matter.
Hi Henry – I’ve just received this email:
If there is one spelling mistake…
… you won’t get your monkey back.
Or did I mean ‘money’?
I didn’t pay that much! It was only about 0.4 of a pony.
Henry – they’ve been lurking under the Alps for 36 hours or so now, and all I have found out is a lot about technical hitches and a few curses at the fish for not being like frog.
BTW, they have had to stop working on frog muscle because of animal rights people who have made the various frog suppliers from Italy to Ireland close down. Sad. Years of a research programme involved in that.
I pray for the day when animal rights protesters say ’don’t use that frog, use me instead’.