delicious. The natives wore the plucked turkey feathers in their hair and we too adopted this odd fashion, finding it pleasing and colourful to the eye.
While we waited for decisions from our leaders Giseppi married Greta, the priest presiding, and I was asked by both to be their fathers-in-absence which I gladly agreed to be. Sadly, Giseppi fell from a high crag five days after the wedding while collecting birds’ eggs, and Greta was thus widowed almost as soon as becoming a bride. ‘Perhaps you will consider me for your second husband,’ I offered my friend, ‘when we return to our own countries? I would ask you now to be my wife, except that it seems this land might be unlucky for newly-weds.’
She wept and failed to give answer to this, perhaps because she was so pleased at my offer, or perhaps because it was too soon after the death of her first husband and she was still grieving.
Amerigo spent many days closeted with his lesser generals and eventually emerged to inform us that they had come to the decision that this was not the East Indies, but a new continent altogether. He informed us that he had suspected for a long time that Posidonius was right and Strabo was actually wrong in their measurements of the girdle of the Earth. If Posidonius was indeed correct, and it seemed he was, then the world was 24,000 miles in girth. This was a new world we had landed in and who knew what riches it held? Gold, very possibly. Rubies? Emeralds? All just waiting to be plucked, for the natives seemed uninterested in metals and shiny stones. What horribly wealthy creatures we would become, this little band of water-walkers from the other side of the world!
We cheered our great leader until we were hoarse, then called for this new land to be named after our great general, since he was its discoverer.
I cried out, ‘Yes, let us call this land America , after our most beloved and famous leader, Amerigo!’ But at this the gaunt, red-stoled priest lifted his claw-like hand, the ringed one in which he always carried his black bible, and intoned, ‘Amerigo is not the family name of our glorious general, but Vespucci. Who ever heard of naming a new world using a man’s first name? Vespuccia is what it should be called, and my children, this Vespuccia will be great – make no mistake – I foresee this landscape, which seems to stretch to infinity, being a source of immense wealth and great wonders. Vespuccia then, my flock.’
‘Vespuccia!’ we cried in unison. ‘God Bless Vespuccia!’
Sacrificial Anode
‘Is this about the clowns?’ I said. ‘Because I’m already getting help for that.’
On the other side of a large desk sat his Grace the Bishop of Walsingham, very imposing figure of a man. I’m told you need to be fairly ruthless to reach bishopdom. There was a lot of purple covering his chest, and a red sash too which my mother would have told him clashed with his vest, and a few bits of gold jewellery, and a wooden cross on a piece of string around his neck. We’d already talked about the cross: apparently it was bamboo and came from the South Pacific islands. A gift, he’d told me, from his parishioners – presumably when he was a lowly priest.
‘No James, this is not about the clowns.’
‘It’s a psychological problem, I’ve been told. I was probably frightened by clowns when I was little – too little to remember, actually, because I don’t remember it. I’ve never really liked clowns – you know, never found them funny and all that. They’ve always scared me. Then I got to wondering why, and got myself into this state of mind.’
‘Nothing to do with all that – quite another matter entirely.’
The bishop was overweight and shiny faced. His hair was grey and cut short so that the bristles stood on end. I could see myself in his yellow-tinted and highly-polished spectacles: two of me, one in each lens. He was one of those remote people I try to avoid because there’s nothing much you
While we waited for decisions from our leaders Giseppi married Greta, the priest presiding, and I was asked by both to be their fathers-in-absence which I gladly agreed to be. Sadly, Giseppi fell from a high crag five days after the wedding while collecting birds’ eggs, and Greta was thus widowed almost as soon as becoming a bride. ‘Perhaps you will consider me for your second husband,’ I offered my friend, ‘when we return to our own countries? I would ask you now to be my wife, except that it seems this land might be unlucky for newly-weds.’
She wept and failed to give answer to this, perhaps because she was so pleased at my offer, or perhaps because it was too soon after the death of her first husband and she was still grieving.
Amerigo spent many days closeted with his lesser generals and eventually emerged to inform us that they had come to the decision that this was not the East Indies, but a new continent altogether. He informed us that he had suspected for a long time that Posidonius was right and Strabo was actually wrong in their measurements of the girdle of the Earth. If Posidonius was indeed correct, and it seemed he was, then the world was 24,000 miles in girth. This was a new world we had landed in and who knew what riches it held? Gold, very possibly. Rubies? Emeralds? All just waiting to be plucked, for the natives seemed uninterested in metals and shiny stones. What horribly wealthy creatures we would become, this little band of water-walkers from the other side of the world!
We cheered our great leader until we were hoarse, then called for this new land to be named after our great general, since he was its discoverer.
I cried out, ‘Yes, let us call this land America , after our most beloved and famous leader, Amerigo!’ But at this the gaunt, red-stoled priest lifted his claw-like hand, the ringed one in which he always carried his black bible, and intoned, ‘Amerigo is not the family name of our glorious general, but Vespucci. Who ever heard of naming a new world using a man’s first name? Vespuccia is what it should be called, and my children, this Vespuccia will be great – make no mistake – I foresee this landscape, which seems to stretch to infinity, being a source of immense wealth and great wonders. Vespuccia then, my flock.’
‘Vespuccia!’ we cried in unison. ‘God Bless Vespuccia!’
Sacrificial Anode
‘Is this about the clowns?’ I said. ‘Because I’m already getting help for that.’
On the other side of a large desk sat his Grace the Bishop of Walsingham, very imposing figure of a man. I’m told you need to be fairly ruthless to reach bishopdom. There was a lot of purple covering his chest, and a red sash too which my mother would have told him clashed with his vest, and a few bits of gold jewellery, and a wooden cross on a piece of string around his neck. We’d already talked about the cross: apparently it was bamboo and came from the South Pacific islands. A gift, he’d told me, from his parishioners – presumably when he was a lowly priest.
‘No James, this is not about the clowns.’
‘It’s a psychological problem, I’ve been told. I was probably frightened by clowns when I was little – too little to remember, actually, because I don’t remember it. I’ve never really liked clowns – you know, never found them funny and all that. They’ve always scared me. Then I got to wondering why, and got myself into this state of mind.’
‘Nothing to do with all that – quite another matter entirely.’
The bishop was overweight and shiny faced. His hair was grey and cut short so that the bristles stood on end. I could see myself in his yellow-tinted and highly-polished spectacles: two of me, one in each lens. He was one of those remote people I try to avoid because there’s nothing much you
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