I have always viewed the figure of Sherlock Holmes with avid distaste. His calamitous reliance on opiates is a sure index of moral vacuity, and he seems to deem any adventure incomplete without the celebratory assassination of a goose, the wretched cadaver of which Watson is sure to slaver over like an ejaculating Mussolini. Still, an emulous, tremulous glee moved within me at the prospect of donning the great detective’s mantle. With Lulu as my dedicated sidekick, I ached to unveil the secrets of Horwin Manor in what I had already dubbed The Case of the Etiolated Avatar.
Alas, I was blown off course by a picture in the Daily Telegraph. This half-literate megaphone of royalist clotpollery, which had somehow been allowed to ooze into my living room, there thrust upon my violated eye the image of a rictal Pippa Middleton. An unfortunate display at any time, this vile instance found her lounging like a lobotomised odalisque atop a cairn of slaughtered birds. By the time I had honed my open letter down to a compact eighteen pages of jewelled revulsion, it was too late to probe the neighbours. Tomorrow I shall don what I refuse to refer to, even in metaphor, as the deerstalker.
I realised as I wrote, partly from a red line under “realised”, that my spell-checker has been stuck on US English, a phrase that itself demands prompt and violent correction. I have no idea how long this has been going on. I only hope it has not affected the memoir.
Flowers of Boredom 