Archibald and the Killer Daffodils
Chapter Twenty-two
Before today's master plan could swing into action, saving Archibald from a fate worse than death, there was the Hooper matter to attend to. The lad, despite his many, many, many faults, had been of stalwart service yesterday, suffering a most unpleasant vomitation in the course of carrying out his duties. I may seem to some to be a hard master, a cantankerous old Blimp, but that is merely the result of my uncompromising understanding of how things should be between Master and Slave, between Lord and Vassal. 'Friendliness without familiarity' was what they had said at Sandhurst, and I had always followed that, normally dispensing with the 'friendliness' element as well, just to be on the safe side. And who could fault me? Or rather, who could fault me, without immediately being sacked? Anyway, we digress; I wanted to reward Hooper for his fine conduct. I would ideally have liked to 'Mention him in Despatches' in a signal to the War Office, but that line seemed rather irrelevant just now; so I had to settle for a less interesting form of reward.
I summoned him to my illustrious presence - reward enough in itself, I can hear you thinking - and rewarded him verbally.
"Hooper, I'd like to thank you for your valiant conduct in the face of adversity."
"Thanks very much sir, but I think it was called the Moriarty Arms, not the Face of Adversity."
Ha! Very droll, that boy, on occasions. Well, very droll or very stupid, and I was in benevolent mood today, so we shall extend the benefit of the doubt.
"In fact, Hooper, I'm so impressed that I'd like to reward you in a more physical way."
"Thank you very much, sir, and I really am most honoured, but I don't have much of an appetite for that sort of thing. Especially in the morning."
Whatever was he waffling on about now, the stupid ass?
"I mean lucre, Hooper, the sordid means of trade and exchange, and so forth." I never like to use the word m***y with one's servants - rather vulgar, in my opinion. In fact the whole concept is so frightfully vulgar, best left to those engaged in Trade. I really cannot imagine how the Queen ever agreed to let her fine and beautiful person be plastered on all that vulgar stuff. Still, I suppose she knows best.
"Ah! Very kind of you, sir."
And so I tossed him a shiny new ten shilling coin, the heptagonal variety.
No, really, I jest. Well, actually I did, just to see the look on his face, but I did then follow it up with a nice little busterella bulging with sparkling new £10 notes, totalling £500 I believe.
So, however crusty one's verbals might at times seem, never let it be said that the master-brain behind 'Archibald and the Curse of the Egyptian Waffle-iron', the genius behind 'Archibald and the One-eyed Man with No Head', is not, at heart, a generous and caring master.
But, enough of this mawkish codswallop. We had heftier matters to discuss, and once discussed, to do.
"Hooper, what are the results of that Spot analysis you were doing? What should we be doing to win the Holy War?"
"Well, actually sir, I was meaning to discuss the Swot analysis which we were considering starting."
I liked the man's outrageous phrasing, turning the tables even before they had been laid. "We were considering starting"! As I remember, he had been mustard keen on the bally idea, a quite remarkably high blood-zeal level, and now he was trying to imply that 'we' were still thinking about whether or not to start it. Which, of course, to my trained eye meant that he hadn't started it. As I remember, his Mother of all Swops should have been finished today. But it looked as if we had not even the S bit, let alone the WOP, or whatever the damn analysis was called.
"So, Hooper, would 'considering starting it' be the opposite of 'deciding it's finished', perchance?"
"Well, the thing is sir, I started thinking more and more about it. Actually, you know, the swot analysis is starting to lose ground to the Porter analysis. Shall I explain how that one works?"
"I'm sure I can guess the rudiments. Something along the lines of, 'You can lead a management consultant to Porter but you can't make him think', perhaps?"
"Ah, very funny, sir. And then of course the Porter analysis itself is brought into question by the new inter-focal marketing paradigm."
"Is it, by Jove?"
"You see, the fundamental these days is what we marketing men call the supply-demand focus matrix."
"Hooper?"
"Yes?"
"Nothing. Carry on."
"Well, the theory is, you see, all you really need to do is research the overall audience megaset via focus groups and statistical techniques to ascertain what they want, which then leads to the microset of people who might buy the product. So then you design the product to appeal to this microset. It's a hot topic, you know."
"Hooper?"
"Yes sir?"
"Have you perchance changed girlfriend recently?"
"Well, it's funny you should say that sir, but in fact I have. She's lovely. I'm sure you'd like her."
"Hooper?"
"Sir?"
"What does your new innamorata do?"
"Well, actually that's a big coincidence seeing what we've just been discussing. She works in marketing, in fact."
"Gosh, that is a coincidence, isn't it."
So, young Hoopy had done it again. Out with the old, in with the new, and the whole library of meaningless words and thoughts - such as they were - would be recycled. Would this mean that, instead of having to endure long streams of meaningless management consultancy babble, I should now have to endure long streams of blatantly obvious marketing twaddle? Would Hoopy start to wear lime-green suits and pink check shirts? Would he dare to outshine me in the bow-tie department? Well, such is the cycle of life, and who am I to interfere with God's mysterious ways. Always best to humour the chap when he's on the crest of a craze.
"Now, Hooper, how would you go about doing all this, should we 'consider starting' such a process?"
His eyes lit up, becoming even more incandescent.
"Actually, sir, I've already done it!"
"Already done it? During breakfast, I suppose, while dreaming up some ripe new marketing slogans?"
"No, actually sir, my new young lady-friend Julia was doing this job for another client, but she let me take a copy. Look." And he produced from thin air a great sheaf of papers, a great mountain of costly marketing nonsense as Dickens might have said, with at least 200 pie-charts, 300 tables and 800 bullet points.
"Well, what does it say? To the humble layman, that is," I added in a tone of great humility.
"Well sir, if you look at this section 12, and then bear in mind the extrapolated trendline future projections on page 40, you'll see that the people who are going to be interested in RPL are going to have the following socio-economic interest patterns."
"What the blast is RPL?"
"Ah, that's current jargon, sir."
"Well, of course it's bally jargon, what does it mean?"
"I think that'll be 'Reading portable literature', sir."
"Does that mean reading books?"
"Well, that would be a simplistic way of putting it," he responded magnanimously.
I could see that this new little craze of his was, possibly, going to be an even bigger pain in the gonads than the management consultancy craze, and that was saying something.
"Well, what do book readers want then?"
"If you look here, sir, at the subsection of RPLs who tend to take YPs - that's youth products," he added graciously for the benefit of imbeciles such as myself. I interrupted the flow:
"Would YPs in a RPL environment mean children's books, perchance?"
"I think that is the old-fashioned term for it, yes sir." I considered my wrist sufficiently slapped.
"Anyway sir, if we take this graph, and look at the main subsets - the 'Twelvie Tipsters' and the 'One-Three Compsters' - and extrapolate out over the next five years, then adjust for the CP of the parents, who tend to be B2-Peawhites, we get the following:"
By now Hoopy was lost in a language of his own, wading into brave new swamps of linguistic meaningless of which many a philosopher, sociologist or government spindoctor would have been most envious. Would it be worth asking Youngman to gag him, or cut his tongue out, so that he would be constrained to communicate this poppycock by appropriate gestures? It would make for a very pleasant evening playing Advanced Charades.
One term in particular had caught my ear without passing back out through the other ear - 'C.P.'. Was this the Communist Party that Josef Stalin had kept waffling on about during his loquacious visit, never letting anyone else have their say? Or the County Parish? Or a Command Post?
"Hooper, what's 'CP' in this exciting new language of yours?"
"Ah, that'll be, . . . um . . . " and he paused for thought, affecting to scratch his earlobes, which is no doubt a key behavioural characteristic of Marketing Man, before exclaiming, "Of course! 'Commercial pressure.' How stupid of me."
"Anyway, sir, here are the results, when we put all the elements together as I was explaining."
He pointed at a short table towards the end of the report. There was, of course, more title than text, but I shall not dream of affronting your linguistic sensibility by relating the words therein; one should not want to pollute these fine pages with too many gross marketing neologisms. It was sufficient to look at the contents of the table to realise what a great load of diced spleen it all was. The contents were as follows (surprisingly succinct, I must say):
|
0.62 |
Spy stories |
|
0.35 |
1920's period light drawing room comedy |
|
0.02 |
Computer games |
"What are the numbers?"
"Ah, those are the RW's, I think. The relative weightings, that is, sir."
I remember my younger sister had once waited an entire week in a rum place called 'Omsk' for the Trans-Siberian Railway to carry her to somewhere else with even more consonants. Was that, I wondered, an example of an RW? Still, one shouldn't be too cynical about these new languages. After all, where would human society and the spirit of international peace and co-operation be now without the web of Esperanto to bind us together?
"So you're saying that the sort of people who might buy the new Archibald books want plenty of spy stuff in the story, and a light little dusting of Noel Coward?"
"That is the inescapable conclusion, sir."
Personally I think one could escape those conclusions fairly easily, perhaps by shoving the whole damn thing up poor Hooper's 'RT' - rectal tract, as we marketing men call it. If there's one thing your average thirteen year old doesn't want to spend his easily-unearned pocket money on it's a big chunk of Blithe Spirit with a few double-crosses and moles thrown in for good measure. I do occasionally wonder if I am falling behind the times, but this really did seem to prendre la biscuit.
"So, Hooper, we should write the next Archibald novel, the twenty-fourth epic of the series, the world's most eagerly awaited book ever penned concerning killer daffodils, in a sort of Ipcress-File-cum-Hayfever style?"
"Precisely, sir. But don't worry, I've already done it for you."
This was getting a bit thick. Spouting drivel all day was what one expected from the ass, but what was he doing trying to write Archibald stories? Then I remembered the program - but surely none of those styles fitted Hoopy's idiotic criteria?
"You see, with Russell's help, I ran the program with the perimeter value set to 19.4, and it gave this, which I think you'll agree really fits the bill, sir:"
And another bundle of paper appeared from nowhere. Was he extracting all this stuff from his arse? That would explain many things. I must ask Youngman to administer a good prune vindaloo with extra bran, that would stop all this nonsense piling up inside him and festering away like this. I took a look at what he was showing me - from a distance, of course, in case my hypothesis regarding its provenance was correct - and actually found it so incredibly bad, it was almost charming.
As Archibald scrambled across the cliff onto the small ledge, he remembered the words of Control in his last briefing at the Circus. Whatever he did, he mustn't for a moment let slip his cover. He was Elyot and Amanda, a happy honeymooning couple in the French Riviera, who had simply lost their way and ended up in the Amazon jungle. It was lucky that he - they - had been able to get away from those dreary giant mutant tarantulas at lunch; they had droned on for hours about nothing at all, and then tried to eat him - or them. He - they - had hummed some tunes from 'Tonight at Eight Thirty', and the tarantulas had simply exploded; extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
Looking down from the ledge, sipping his second gin and tonic of the day, they - he -saw the evil Dr Chow Yun Li Wong dressed elegantly in an emerald green kimono and smoking a Balkan Sobranie through a two-foot ivory cigarette holder very much like his own. He was directing the gang of workers, who had probably been smuggled into the country via the famous Istanbul route which was Moscow Centre's favourite. He used that trick he had learnt at Sarrat many years ago, throwing his voice, singing 'Roll along prairie moon' as if the Doctor, and so causing the workers to retire to the ball-room.
"I say, what are you doing here" said the Doctor, noticing him for the first time.
"We're on honeymoon, if you must know."
"Oh really? Me too."
"Lovely time of day, isn't it?"
"I prefer the night, you know. The killer daffodil sheds look so lovely in the moonlight."
"Do you think so? I've always thought they looked rather like a Turkish Delight box."
"Have you been here long?"
"Just arrived. We've come down from the giant mutant tarantula farm."
"Very venomous, giant mutant tarantulas."
"And we're just staying on this precarious cliff ledge for a couple of minutes."
"Very steep, cliffs."
Archibald scrambled down, remembering his climbing lessons from old Toby on the Sarrat climbing frame many summers ago. He brought out his silver-tipped juggling batons, the same ones he had used so successfully against the Mole.
"Solomon Isaacs!" said Dr Chow Yun Li Wong quickly, on seeing his juggling batons.
"On the contrary, my dear Doctor. Certain oriental villains should be struck regularly, like gongs."
I stopped reading and looked up.
"Hooper."
"Impressive, isn't it sir? Although I must admit, I don't understand where that Solomon Isaacs character comes in."
"This is all complete balls."
"Which bit, sir?"
I must say I was hard-pressed to say which part had a greater Balls Coefficient, or 'BC' as no doubt Hoopy would call it.
"All of it. This story. And that bally report. But keep trying. And take this down to the kitchen on your way out."
And I terminated the conversation by proffering a jar of marmalade for him to remove from the vicinity, a jar liberally smeared with its contents and a good dose of superglue to boot. Hooper's anathema to things sticky really has to be seen to be believed. It really is one of the finest anathema I have ever seen, and would not be out of place as a prime exhibit in the anathema section at Kew Gardens.
"Thank you, sir."
"No, not the plate, I need it for my enema."
"You don't mean . . . "
"Yes."
"Urrgghhh."
And off he went, cradling one of the stickiest things he had ever held between his hands. That should keep him busy at the washbasins for the next few weeks, thereby preventing his coming up with too many unreadable Archibald stories. I wondered how long the glue would take to come off.
Ah, Hoopy. In many ways, life would be the worse for your absence. Of course, in many more ways, life would be so much the better, but that just shows what a wide, balanced view I have of the world.
With Hooper and his babbling tongue removed, I could start to organize things for the next little anti-Pimple operation.
Unfortunately, before I could get down to business, I was interrupted by an impertinent telephone call. It's a funny thing, how certain telephone calls seem to ring with a particular stridency all of their own, a forewarning of doom. Makes one think of Oscar's line, applicable originally to doorbells but no doubt permitting some extension to other media, "Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner."
This particular ringing had a most Wagnerian resonance, redolent of Siegfried in one of his more aggressive moods. But, alas, it was neither relative nor creditor. It was something much worse; my agent. "Shoot the messenger bearing bad news" is a guideline with which I have much sympathy, and never more than then.
Of course, her news was not quite as apocalyptic, if not apopleptic, as the recent occasion when we had been 'entertained' at her palatial offices - built on the earnings of the beleaguered Archibald, I might add - and told the news about our publisher's treasonable attitudes. Still, bad news is bad news, and the fact that it was not as suicidal as the last announcement made little difference.
A word-by-word transcript of the conversation would enlighten you little, dear reader, containing as it would certain profanities and other assorted jeux de mots with which one would sooner not be associated, especially as they had all fallen from my gentle poetic lips. So let us give instead a summary. Here it is, as summary as one of Archibald's pith helmets in 'Archibald and the Case of the Vegetarian Tiger that Sang Like Maurice Chevalier':
The next Sherbert Pimple manuscript was going to be sent to the publishers in just six days time.
Not as catastrophic a piece of news as many others that spring to mind, perhaps, such as when the Ancient Mariner learned that he was to become an official Performing Artist, destined to spend his life recounting distinctly unamusing shaggy albatross stories. Or when Archibald, in that excellent story 'Archibald and the Curse of the Giant Tap-dancing Goldfish' learned that his young friend Albert had been swallowed whole by an escaped g. t-d. goldfish.
But, bad news it was, undeniably. Here we were, poised on the brink of a frightful abyss, ready to be pushed over the edge in six days' time, and not a single silver-tipped juggling baton around to save us.
Well, I did have a plan of sorts; but would there be time?
There was only one thing for it: we must get hold of the elusive Mr. R.C.G. Thornhill, and apply indiscriminate physical force, indiscriminately, forcibly, and perhaps also physically. Oh yes.
Copyright © 2000 Matthew Edwards