One goes through life imagining that the phrase is a tired, hackneyed truism; and then the extraordinary occurs: an object lesson …
Hi Judy,
I won’t make Jane’s reading tonight, but if I could catch you up on the Thursday that would be just great. Is 4 pm okay? I know you’ll be classing on the 25th, but I think I’ll wait for the next one before that to launch back or ease into harness again as it were … I presume from what I’ve seen, a fortnight after that?
While I’m here, a stranger-than-fiction story for today. Some time back a cousin of mine was getting into my ear that I should try my hand at the terrible blogging. As it happens, I have a fairly basic web site already for our business. The host organisation for that, Adobe, has just announced it is shutting down its service – a royal pain, but not illogical as Adobe mainly provides software for photo graphics, film editing and general publication design – the web hosting was really just an added extra; and these days, the market is pretty saturated with such offerings.
Anyway, I have to redo my sites and find a new host. As part of the fun, I thought I might as well try my hand at the blogging as well.
So, this afternoon I was idly trying to come up with a Blog title and somehow arrived at the phrase “Parnassus on Wheels”. The idea seemed to shoot up from a memory of an old illustration in a “Pick of Punch” that I inherited from my Dad — it was a circa 19th century cartoon of a huge pantechnicon or tumbril cart about to charge down from the top of a hill. The cart was loaded with a vast, heaving, fighting mass of figures — politicians, farmers, tinkers, tailors, artists, writers, ladies of ill-repute, soldiers and so forth …
I set the basics up and then went googling for some useful photos or general information on Parnassus. Imagine my surprise, wonder and laughter, when I came across this Wiki link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parnassus_on_Wheels
Something else to hunt up on ABE Books and read … especially as the main character’s name is … well, me …
Hope 26th will suit you Judy. Very much looking forward to seeing you …
Love
A.
P.S. I have just found the text in Gutenberg online …
“I wonder if there isn’t a lot of bunkum in higher education? I never found that people who were learned in logarithms and other kinds of poetry were any quicker in washing dishes or darning socks. I’ve done a good deal of reading when I could, and I don’t want to “admit impediments” to the love of books, but I’ve also seen lots of good, practical folk spoiled by too much fine print. Reading sonnets always gives me hiccups, too.
I never expected to be an author! But I do think there are some amusing things about the story of Andrew and myself and how books broke up our placid life. When John Gutenberg, whose real name (so the Professor says) was John Gooseflesh, borrowed that money to set up his printing press he launched a lot of troubles on the world.
Andrew and I were wonderfully happy on the farm until he became an author. If I could have foreseen all the bother his writings were to cause us, I would certainly have burnt the first manuscript in the kitchen stove.”
Excerpt From: Christopher Morley’s Parnassus on Wheels
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