A plan to slay the Jabberwock (involving fondant fancies)

When isis-k got to Dartagnion's attic pad, she was surprised to notice that he was clearly 'the worse for wear'. Chasing the Jabberwock had left him with a raging thirst and he'd bumped into old Colonel Gin-soaked of the eponymous Gordon's Highland Regiment, who had got lost on his way back from Gin Lane (penny a pint) and...well, one thing led to another with predictable results. They'd even persuaded the three-legged accordionist to temporarily abandon his stool outside Paris's best brothel and do a quick Fandango. Gin-soaked was slumped on the sofa dribbling and isis-k was unimpressed.

She did what any self-respecting 3,000-year-old witch would do, and made a brew, thus

reviving both the old soldiers and asked them how they thought they were going to fight a mythical beast in that sort of state. They both looked up shame-faced:
'I was going to round up the Gargoyles' Dartagnion stammered, 'but....'

isis-k raised one eyebrow (which took her by surprise, as despite being a pretty damn good witch, she'd never - up to this point - mastered the art of raising an eyebrow in that quizzical, yet insouciant fashion so eloquently employed by her favourite actor Roger Moore, so she took a quick 'selfie' and posted it on Witchtagram)

'First you need to sort out the question of their having been on strike for two hundred years don't you?' isis-k pointed out.

'Well yes, I suppose so' Dartagnion muttered.

'As it happens, I have a plan,' isis-k beamed. 'My friend Janka the One-eyed Wonder (queen and most beautiful of all the Bulgarian witches) once helped out a young gargoyle called Ernestina who is positioned half way up the steeple of a very famous church in the north-east of England. I have absolutely no doubt that Ernestina would act as intermediary for us, as long as we get her some Fondant Fancies. Are you with us Colonel?' she asked, looking over at Gin-Soaked.

'Rather' he replied 'my gin's run out and my sword is rusty. What more motivation do I need?'

So the three of them set off for England (via Tesco's)....

isis-k gets back to her roots and finds new routes for adventures

isis-k woke up and found herself in Paris. She had answered a distress signal sent out by a drug-addicted three-legged accordionist, and while she suspected he was a lost soul, she could not help but answer the call.


It was months since her last adventure, which had found her battling the Evil Empress just off the Bermuda Triangle where Barry Manilow's nose was continuing to prove hazardous to ships that passed in the night (unless any of the crew were named Mandy, in which case it sent them away).
Strange sounds heard in the Bermuda Triangle
Her worse fears about the Evil Empress's global ambitions had been confirmed when the BBC's former headquarters at Television Centre had been swallowed up by a movable portal and reappeared on a small island off Miami. However, she could only fight so many battles and had opted to leave Janka the One-eyed Wonder (Queen of the Bulgarian witches) in command of a legion of Romans borrowed from Claudius, a few flying monkeys (defectors from a Disney sequel) and the Weird Sisters, who were on their Easter holidays and were on the verge of trading in their broomsticks for provisional driving licences. We will come back to them later.

For old time's sake, isis-k wandered into the nearest Absinthe bar to look up her old friend Toulouse Lautrec, who was still trying to catch the Green Fairy (a very old friend of the Weird Sister's from Elementary Elf-school back in the 60s.....(1660s), for they were still relatively young and hence somewhat unpredictable)). She asked Henri about the

accordionist and he sighed:
'Best leave him be, isis, he will snap out of it in another few hundred years. If you are looking for a good cause, go see my friend Dartagnion who is putting together an expedition to catch the Jabberwocky, who is running rampage in the 11th arrondissement, ravishing virgins and roasting unsuspecting urchins. Dartagnion needs some help rounding up the gargoyles, who have been on strike since the Eighteenth Century because they are fed up with having their differentials eroded'.

isis-k didn't need to be asked twice. She picked up her bag, mounted her broomstick and headed straight for Dartagnion's house...

just a fantasy

The three-legged accordionist fell off his stool outside the Paris brothel where he had been entertaining passersby for three hundred years. He was drunk. Lush from life and under the influence, lid-heavy humming ditties to the pimps of Pigalle and the ladies of love-for-a-sous.

He had promised her he'd wait for ever, and  never lost hope as she came and she went with the same refrain: just one more, and then we can leave this place and sever our street servitude. But there was always another lover to please for pennies, as lost in her despair she was dragged by  dejection found in fires too old. Too solid the chains, too weak her desire, too deep the furrows too furious the fire. They'd fallen before - too long ago and were bystanders in their own story, set in cement of shared sorrow.

Move along, Freak snarled the gendarme with kicking malevolence, taunting as he'd done for hundreds of years, envying his boundless devotion to a love so lost it seemed laughable: 
'three-legged and legless' he sung and the crowd joined in chorus mocking and proud. Proud of what? Proud of thin straight white lines they eschewed? Proud of the queue for La Porte Etroite which stays shut in their faces as they strut the obedience with expressionless faces. There but for the grace of the graces. How could they share what he felt? The devotion of Penelope, weaving by day and unpicking by night, the thread that tied him to one pair of eyes and one sorry soul.

Alons-y Allonso the crowd chanted with glee like the Doctor, D. Tennant the Tennent's super-monster from the park-bench of bed-ridden Britain, the Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I drink to you all.
Move on
Allons-y
Nothing to see - c'est fini
It's just a childlike fantasy

In which our brave Librarian sends in the Naval reserves....and the Absinthe

So one battle draws to a close and peace very nearly breaks out...except that here in the Barracks, a truce is never final. It seems that the new CO of the mobile catering corps has torn up the rule-book and inserted his own, in a desperate attempt to make his mark on the battlefield. Thus, when I arrived to check up on my book battalion, I found that Colonel Chez Gerald had dug a trench outside my luxury office suite (aka the broom cupboard, soon to be converted into a disabled loo) and filled it with soggy meringues. Not to be beaten (unlike the egg-whites obviously), I immediately armed myself with several packets of blancmange and built a bridge over the trench to allow both ingress and egress, grabbed a newish edition of Jane's Fighting Ships (second hand on ebay at a very reasonable price) and rounded up the Naval Reserves who were straining at the leash and ready for action.

Seeing himself outsmarted, Chez Gerald decided to pull a fast one and sneakily flogged off some of my very special new editions at a knock-down price the minute my back was turned. This of course kept the punters happy, but left my Brave Boys feeling somewhat depleted. Several in fact are laid up in the Military Hospital complete with bandages and I am reduced to rattling tins in Piccadilly Circus to collect enough money for medical supplies.

Meanwhile in the Indies, Old Colonel Gin-soaked of the Eponymous Gordon's (Highland) Regiment, is stirring up a one-man Indian Mutiny on account of his not having been able to get access to the latest edition of Wisden's Cricket Almanac...well that and the fact that Ocado have failed to deliver his weekly supply of Slimline Tonic. The poor old sod is bereft I tell you: wailing and gnashing teeth - I had to call in the paramedics and get an intravenous infusion of Absinthe set up before he calmed down.

So all business as usual really: don't shoot until you see the eggwhites......

Gawd bless Madame Cyn - a tale of War & Peace, in which our Brave Librarian is caught in the crossfire

Well chaps - it seems like a life time since I've been on the old bush telegraph communing with you all. Long enough to fight a few small wars and re-enact the battle of Trafalgar  several times over, and for Old Colonel Gin-Soaked (of the eponymous Gordon's Highland Regiment) to take an extended holiday. What's afoot you may ask?

(Answer: it's the thing on the end of your leg and  - we have several battalions of foot-soldiers currently awaiting breakfast, which is being provided this week by our new sponsor - Arny's Bunion Corporation - suppliers of footwear to the gentry..... and several small mercenary outfits, thank you for asking)

Anyway. The Catering Corps has lost its Commander owing to an unfortunate incident involving several stale sandwiches and a side of beef (you thought beef didn't take sides didn't you, but let me assure you, that where there are more than two sides, someone is bound to have a beef).

Which brings me to my latest skirmish. A sad tale of a Volunteer corps pitted against an ever ebullient CO against whom they recklessly declared intentions towards hostilities. It was a bloody battle and there are fears relating to collateral damage, but - like many conflicts - it had been simmering away on the margins of the theatre of battle for several years. Several bookshelves, thirteen publishers and three authors were held hostage for 

eighteen months in a series of complex manoeuvres, salvos were fired (both literary and literal), before relations broke down and all-out war was - somewhat inevitably - declared. The Volunteer Corps were clearly outgunned, and comprehensively overrun and five of its leaders fell on their swords, and retreated to camp to lick their wounds and contemplate their next move. I suspect this will involve setting up a charity bookshop dedicated to selling - exclusively - the works of the great literary heroine - Madame Cynthia Payne. Why the woman was never rewarded for Services to the Gentry or made a Regimental Mascot, I will never know, but that's War......and Peace for you eh?

One of our submariners is missing

Well it's been a long time since I put pen to paper (in the virtual sense). apparently since I last did so, I've been awarded a new title...Chairman or something. Well I don't know - I tried (like Caesar in Shakespeare's play) to 'put it by thrice', but the buggers insisted, so now you will all have to address me as Madam Chairman (apparently this is better than being called a Chair - in case someone attempts to sit on you)

Meanwhile after an unusually long truce, the old sods in the Catering Corps have launched a new assault planned for 13 hundred hours today. I am told I will be invaded by several dozen Submariners bearing Champagne rather than Arms. I have put my legions of books on standby and warned them that if attacked by champagne corks they are immediately to retaliate. Fortunately I  have positioned Sun Tzu's Art of War (de luxe French edition) in a key strategic position and if he fails me, not only do I have several volumes featuring heroes of the Battle of Midway, but Nelson is guarding the Left Flank. The buggers are not going to catch me napping.


Oh - and by the way - I've given birth again...to a new online catalogue. Watch this space.......

In which our brave Librarian takes on the Pirates...and a few casual diners

Avast there ye landlubbers for 'tis international Talk like a Pirate Day evidently. Now I personally, am not sure if my brave lads fought two World Wars and several other skirmishes involving an array of enemies ranging from imagined aliens to the far deadlier mosquito, just to dress up as cheap corsairs, but that's the modern way apparently, so let us take a moment to make sure we can identify one of these scoundrels should we come across 'em

Course 'tis unlikely that a real pirate will be presenting a sitting (standing) target like this one, who appears to be performing some sort of sea shanty in front of a captive audience of his victims who he is either torturing to death by singing the wrong lyrics, or entertaining, to distract them from the fact that there is a large plank at the rear of the auditorium which they will be forced to walk, into a crocodile pit once the concert is over.

As for my brave boys, they are still befuddled from attending a lecture on Naval & Military portraits at the National Gallery. Most behaved beautifully, but I had to restrain a couple of the younger recruits from painting moustaches on some of the exhibits apparently on the grounds that someone's grandparents had been victim of a particularly cruel flogging when acting as a Fag at some minor public school or other.

Other than that, it's been rather quiet in the Library...apart from migrating a rather old and creaky catalogue to a nice shiny online version and devising a digitization strategy that is, but, all in a day's work as they say.

And today, as the Library yet again disguises itself as a Dining Room, I am resorting to a few rounds of my favourite sport: firing old rubber stamps and (formerly sticky) labels at passersby in order to distract them from their food and entice them into reading some of my most memorable Military Histories. If that doesn't work I could try Plan B: wandering around with an air of Amazement at the sight of all these wonderful volumes, or Plan C: pretending I have fleas and scratching at the next table. 

If all else fails, it's back to the Pirates.