Two tomcats

A.B.d.P. Johnson, wearing a dressing gown and nothing else due to the heat wave which in recent days had ravaged the United Kingdom, lay relatively lushly in his chaise longue in an attempt to get along with his sciatic nerve, that had been teasing him for some weeks. The doctor had said stress, something about knowing your limitations, and prescribed some pills. Therefore, A.B.d.P. Johnson knew there was absolutely nothing wrong with him and that he could just as well continue to get pissed off by little things (the kids) and small pebbles in the shoe (girlfriend). It was still early in the morning, everything breathed peace. There was complete silence in the residence except for a lone buzzing fly patrolling the airspace above his head and the star war unfolding inside it. It was widely known that A.B.d.P. Johnson was extremely quick-witted and that many a V-2 rocket had left his forehead towards a distant galaxy. He himself, was proud of his cognitive speed and unpredictability and considered himself a cheetah in a bamboo forest populated by dull pandas. He was now composing his inaugural speech, which was to be held later that day. Of course, he wanted to re-use some exquisite formulations from previous occasions, but was at the same time on the lookout for another apt sentence that would send a clear message to his opponents and to the entire population - "what I said, said I" or something to that effect. His encyclopedic and agile mind ran hither and thither between ancient poetry and modern philosophy with detours to religion and science. Ideas arose and collapsed successively and rapidly as civilizations so that he could barely keep track. In the midst of his enhanced brooding, the hot weather and the vexing sciatic nerve, he could suddenly hear another screeching sound, like a radio dial moved between two radio stations, and gradually this sound ceased and turned into a more regular rhythm; de Pfeffel, de Pfeffel, and TOO-TOO, TOO-TOO, which he no longer was able to perceive, but which the fly around his head registered as the sound of a scottish locomotive at close quarters. He was now dreaming of Larry, the Downing Street 10-cat, lashing out its paw at him while trying to stroke it. There was no love lost between the two tomcats.

The Cannonball House

High up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, you'll reach Castlehill, an ancient part the fair city with a varied and truly horrific history (previously a site of many a witch burning). One of the still existing attractions of the hill is The Cannonball House. This 17. century building has been dismantled and re-erected at least once through the ages. It is called The Cannonball House due to the fact that an old cannonball is protruding from its gable facing the castle. There are a number of theories regarding the question as to how the cannonball got itself into the wall. Some say, it was a loose cannon from the castle that fired a stray shot during the Jacobite siege of 1745. This theory has alas a very narrow evidential base and has been rejected by people who know their ballistics. Others maintain, the ball was never shot into the wall in the first place, but instead inserted into it by engineers, to mark the height of the water reservoir on the other side of the street. This could well have been the case. However, against this seemingly better substantiated theory stands the fact that another, smaller cannonball used to be tucked into the wall as well, as if to illustrate to passersby how the moon encircles the earth. No one seems to have felt the need to explain what could be likened to a stellar constellation on that particular spot. Perhaps due to the fact that the smaller cannonball is no longer in lieu. It was probably forgotten under a restoration or nicked away by a boy who kept it as the crown jewel of his marble collection. It is no small temptation to furnish further conjectures pertaining to the cannonball in the wall of The Cannonball House. To name just a few, it could arguably have been the case, that the cannonball is the self same ball that Baron Münchhausen sat on, before getting off at his destination of choice. Indeed, why not? The law of inertia would see to it, surely. Another bold conjecture entertained by certain gossip mags, suggests, the cannonball is in fact, no cannonball, but an aul' curling stone, the movement of which The Primus of the Scottish Episcopal  Church, elected from the diocese of Edinburgh, failed to curtail, when he contested the Edinburgh Makar on a frozen and uneven lake. A still hotly contested proposition that. At this stage, it is perhaps becoming apparent, that the cannonball in the wall is no longer merely a physical object. It has long since passed into the realm of metaphysics, where anything, as in anything, goes. The children of Edinburgh are actually encouraged by their elders to engender novel speculations about the cannonball as an exercise in creativity, and a yearly champion is chosen by a committee headed by J.K. Rowling. So much better than burning witches and more environmental to boot.   

Ben Hecht and I

Ben Hecht and I go way back, like forty odd years or so. I recall waking up one morning and discovering I'd turned overnight into a young man with a foreign sounding name in my head. I had no idea who the man was, but the sound of his name was nice and soft, like foam or fog in a tired head after a night of restless dreams. For months and even years, I'd brood out of the blue and in public places over the source of that commendably succinct name, wondering how the heck it found its way into my poor head. It became a sort of dormant obsession that would occasionally come to life by contact with certain stimuli or irritants. A first such contact was made on the way to Kefar Shemaryahu, on the outskirts of belle Hertzliya, Israel. I was then embarking on a new albeit short lived career as a gardening assistant. The gardener was a friend, who may actually be proof reading over my shoulder as we speak, so I will refrain from disclosing incriminating details. Suffice it to say, he never payed me for my three days of labour as a gardening assistant and that I have no axe to grind with him at this point in time. We were sitting in his car listening to the radio, when we passed a big street sign saying Butcher Hecht, Home Deliveries. I believe butcher Hecht was back then mostly renowned for selling so called "White Meat", i.e.,  pork meat, a rare commodity at the time. Pork or no pork, now I felt that I'd uncovered an important piece of the puzzle and that Ben Hecht could plausibly have Butcher Hecht as a source or at least as a partial source. Many years elapsed, I had other things to think about, and also things I tried not to think too elaborately about. Ben Hecht was not one of those things. I was sitting in the TV-room in one of the dormitories in Aarhus, Denmark, watching a Hitchcock flick. When the credits came rolling down, I saw Ben Hecht's name, and understood at long last, that I'd unknowingly picked his name from the screen many years previously. Mystery solved, obsession gone! Or so I thought. My latest and most memorable encounter with Uncle Ben, happened no more than a few days ago. I was watching a documentary about the american-polish sculpturer Szukalski. It happens to be the case that Ben Hecht was a close friend of Szukalski and wrote glowing articles in praise of his work. At some point, the two parted  ways radically. Szukalski became a right wing nationalist and anti-semite in Poland, while Hecht became a right wing zionist promoting in words and deeds the creation of the state of Israel. In honor of his efforts, a ship was named after him, the S.S. Hecht, transporting jewish holocaust survivors to Palestine in the forties. The ship was boarded by the english, the crew (a mixed group including among others a black american and two men from Norway) was jailed in Acre while the refugees were sent to a camp in Cyprus. Later on, the S.S. Hecht changed hands and names several times and was put to other purposes. I can neither confirm nor deny, that I was a passenger on that ship when wee, and that the captain showed me how to steer the wheel and use the gyroscope.