the gang's all here (with a few new members)

Back in west London, a light went on in Stan Lightbulb's head. He was sitting staring at his bacon and eggs, nursing a cup of hot sugary tea with the love and affection gentlemen usually reserve for pints of beer or football scores, when he realised he had a chance for a comeback.

Stan - as many are probably aware - had been King of Harlesden High Street, Harrow-on-the-Hill and certain fields in Reading, where his tithes were as legendary as the fluorescent sheep (who had appeared some years after Chernobyl, but no-one had thought to question why owing to some fairly heavy infiltration of the local council by the infamous Tchaikovsky gang - who themselves had formed as a reaction to the Mozart Gang from North Kensington).

Anyway - to cut a long story short: Stan had been deposed following a coup staged by one of his henchmen who wanted to establish his own grazing rights and saw an opportunity while Stan was out of the country on business (buying up all the unsold copies of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in order to build a new castle). So now Stan wanted to get back to the dizzy heights he had once attained, when word got to him that the ghost of Colonel Ginsoaked (recently deceased, of the eponymous Gordon's Highlanders) was assembling an army to take on the Evil Empress in her hideout in Herne Hill.

picture by shugmonkey

Stan wasn't sure that he really wanted to ally himself with a bunch of soldiers who would not look out of place on the set of Carry on Up the Khyber, but thought that this could be a perfect way of getting back on top: taking on the Evil Empress herself: what could be a better challenge than that?

He wasted no time and while finishing his bacon, eggs and tea, Skyped his old friend Barry White, Texted a few random members of the Bow Street Runners (who were in town for the trial of an Alastair Simm lookalike who had tried to burn down a school he mistakenly thought to be the real St Trinians) and got on the train to Herne Hill...............

Prussians, Polyurethane and Planetary Parleys - continuing adventures in Libraryland

Meanwhile back in the Library, the King of Prussia popped in to inform our brave Librarian that he had been invited to a celebratory dinner to commemorate the old Battle of Waterloo. Dammit if I didn’t find that all our books appear to have been written by the Duke of Wellington, who – bless him –seems to have forgotten that he didn’t win the blessed battle single-handed.

And talking of history books: the dashing young writer (who is so busy being dashing that he has chosen to do several duels using first-rate top-brass as his Seconds, rather than sort out the copyright on his looted artworks) has nearly completed his tome on the history of our venerable institution….yes – you at the back – I said venerable, not any other similar-sounding, yet frankly unsavoury words (the very idea).

So today, I was so put out by the frankly inconvenient congregation of senior members of the Chemicals industry, who have taken up semi-permanent residence in my Library with their fancy bread sticks and fine

wines, that I decided to head off to chair a meeting of Astronauts at Galileo’s old gaff. Unfortunately, too many turned up, so there was no room in the space-ship and we had to settle for Tea in Piccadilly with a semi-functioning Teasmade which hadn’t been used since 1936 and therefore was a tad hard to handle.

Meeting went well though and I learned several new cleaning techniques involving miniature vacuuming apparatus, pipe cleaners and beeswax. All in a day’s work eh!