Clare's entry:
Figuring it out
My mobile rang. The lid popped off the teapot and the Dormouse`s head appeared.
“Is it teatime?” he yawned. “I seem to have been asleep for an awfully long time.”
“How do you do?” I began politely.
“How do I do WHAT?” demanded the March Hare, from across the table.
“I meant … oh hello Alice,” I said with relief, as she appeared carrying a milk-jug.
“They said I`d find you here, but the table still looks as disorganized as it was when I left,” said Alice. “March Hare upset the milk last time, so it`s a good job I brought some more with me.”
“Nobody`s been here since then, that`s why,” said the Mad Hatter.
My mobile lit up and rang again.
“Twinkle, twinkle,” muttered the Dormouse sleepily.
I glanced at the screen. My boss!
“Hi Bob, yes I`m here, and working on it. I`ll get back to you.”
“What`s that?” asked Alice, staring at my phone.
“It`s a way of talking to people far away,” I explained.
“So why did you come here to see me?” she asked.
“I work for a pharmaceutical company,” I began.
“A what?”
“A kind of apothecary. I need to know about your magic mushrooms and bottled tinctures. I`m Head of Research for Slimming Products.
“You fit in here,” said the Mad Hatter, “you`re totally mad!”
Suddenly the Cheshire cat materialised on a branch of the tree overhanging the table.
“Quite, quite mad,” he grinned, nodding in agreement. “You don`t need research and products to slim. You just eat less!”
“He`s right,” laughed Alice, clapping her hands. “Just label food “DON`T EAT ME,” then people will lose weight.
I stood looking at my new acquaintances around the table, and began to wonder just who was sane and who was mad.
* * * * * * * * *
Lewis Carroll, Alice‘s Adventures In Wonderland
Geoff's entry:
Hamlet: To be, or not to be: that is the question.
Intruder: Oh, come on, mate, bit of a cliché, innit?
Hamlet: um… Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer…
Intruder: …the slings and arrows… yeah, yeah, get real, mate.
Hamlet: Sblood! To die: to sleep…
Intruder: Perchance to dream!
Hamlet: Aye, there’s the rub...
Intruder: Gotcha!
Hamlet: Hey, what manner of thing art thou?!
Intruder: Sorry to bark what you’re gonna say next, Bruv, but I learnt it off by heart for ‘O’ level English.
Hamlet: Alas! Intruding fool….!
Intruder: I failed of course… well, Mum was shacked up with some dangly docker. Left to me own devices, y’know. But that Amlet, blimey… Dog’s Bollox… puckered me inner core, he did. You’re doing ok with it, mate, but it’s a tad gloomy. See, you might be scrapin the idea of toppin yerself, but spunk it up a bit… like how Laurence Olivier done it.
Hamlet: Wilt thou cease my mind to manipulate?
Intruder: Oh, cool, mate…speakin in character… with a whiff of alliteration to boot… nice one.
Hamlet: No more!
Intruder: Gawd! …it dunnarf smell in ere!
Hamlet: O rogue and peasant slave! To grunt and sweat under a weary life…
Intruder: Exactly, Bruv. Something’s rotten in the State of Denmark. You need deodorant, tho you Vikings revel in a good ol stinkfest, don’t yer? By the way, you dropped some lines just now… not to quibble or nuffin… oh yeah, and can you point me towards the big deal Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, mate?
Hamlet: Your drift eludeth me…
Intruder: Continental Drift, right! Ere, just hold me protest banner a mo while I get me map.
Hamlet: (reading banner) “Conscience does make cowards of us all”.
Intruder: Nottarf mate… and great delivery if I may say so. You wanna come along? I know you’re busy angstin over yer Dad n stuff but you could swing it for us. Tell yer what, that smutty bird in the see-through skirt’s gonna pitch up in a sec.
Hamlet: Soft you now! The fair Ophelia.
Intruder: Told yer! We used to call her “I’ll feel yer”… geddit? Eh?
Hamlet: Be gone, noxious foreign mule… what a piece of work is man!
Intruder: Wrong scene, mate. Comest thou along or what?
Hamlet: Shuffle off this mortal coil!
Intruder: I’ll take that as a ‘yes’. The rest is silence. Taxi!
* * * * * * * * *
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Christine's entry:
Catching the Train For Sandbourne
“Angel Clare, wait for me!”
He turned with a look of surprised irritation while I caught up with him on the dusty road.
“I’m not in a sociable mood,” he said.
“I don’t like you either,” I said. “You’re the worst egotistical wimp in literature. Your belated reconciliation effort will cause nothing but grief, and it won’t save your soul.”
“I’ll thank you for not meddling in my personal affairs,” he said.
I ignored him.
“Do you remember looking – or rather leering – at Tess in the Talbothays dairy? She was such a ‘fresh and virginal daughter of Nature’, wasn’t she?”
“I mistook.”
“What an intolerable, self-righteous Victorian hypocrite you are.”
“It isn’t a question of respectability, but one of principle!”
“As indeed you told Tess on your miserable wedding night. She worshipped you as a superior, loving being, capable of forgiveness, to whom she must confess the errors of her past. Honesty and trust were her guiding principles. But they mean nothing to you. Yours is a far more primitive principle of macho pride, I’d say. You couldn’t bear not to have been the first. All your high-faluting ethics boil down to that: sexual possessiveness. Another cur had lifted his leg and marked her as his property before you came along. ‘How can we live together while that man lives? – he being your husband in Nature, and not I,’ you blathered. That’s what really hurts, isn’t it, Angel?”
“You don’t understand.”
“That grovelling letter Tess sent you: ‘I would be content, ay, glad to live with you as your servant, if I may not as your wife…’ That’s gross, isn’t it? But it got you salivating and now the dutiful husband rushes off to reclaim his discarded wife.”
“What else can I do?”
“Nothing, my angelic Angel. You’re the survivor, and you’ll have to live with the consequences. At least your callous behaviour will abolish the scenario where you, the benign and generous husband, would continue to accept the abject, submissive penance of that sexy, little sinner. It’ll change the plot from a pathetic Victorian melodrama into a grandiose tragedy of Greek proportions.”
“Hold your peace.”
“At Stonehenge all the ancient gods will applaud, while yours will brush you off like an annoying piece of fluff.”
* * * * * * * * *
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
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