Island Mine

One hundred damn dollars US and I have lost it. How annoying that is! (Actually slightly less annoying than it would have been if the rebel scrip hadn't suffered such drastic devaluation of recent years but ... still.)

My father was a printer and although he was mostly involved in the 'business printing' side of things he nevertheless still came into possession of a considerable number of books. I am still in reminiscence mode and found myself wondering whatever had become of some of those books. Including some I am pretty sure are now hard to find. These were no classics, these books. Some of them were unreadable poop, others no doubt, were far too adult to be allowed into my possession. But there were always the odd ones that slipped through the net and those were always the most memorable for no other reason than because they had that je ne sais pas associated with forbidden fruit. Hey I was only 11 or 12. At that age I was supposed to be reading Moby Dick I did not finish it; I think I didn't feel much like calling anyone Ishmael and I thought that Moby Dick seemed like a silly name to give a whale. Kids!

I was more taken with dramatised biographies of people like Churchill; hell, we're talking about pulp fiction masquerading as fact. Nothing too demanding. I think I am a coward, I choose to avoid challenges because I might succeed.

Anyway I suddenly got into my head the idea that I should Google for the most outlandish of the titles that rattle around on the musty flagstones of memory's cellar floor. And so I came up with And To My Nephew Albert I Leave The Island What I Won Off Fatty Hagan In A Poker Game. Such a delicious title for a novel. Almost a novel in itself. It was, I remember, richly farcical in a highly singular British idiom as Albert's newly acquired island gains a pivotal international significance in the cold war while he haplessly clings a sliver of no-man's land in the middle trying his damnedest to lose his virginity. It was crude and vulgar and funny and although some of the jokes undoubtedly went over my head, there were many more that did not.

I don't have it any longer. I haven't seen it for decades. Even if I did still possess it I am quite sure that I would have hidden it away somewhere being too ashamed to admit ever having read it. I am over that now. I have no shame. Not even in posting the link above that shows that copies of the damned thing change hands for over $100. I let mine go to a secondhand book dealer for pennies.

And I still seek reassurance that I am in fact slighty nuts. Man I am loopy like a bouclé sweater!