SAILOR'S HORNPIPE
First time appeared in "Boxed"
"The hallway.
From outside, an ordinary house. A great house, true - four hundred
and eighty three rooms, each one with its own marble
wash basin and douche, bidet as it may. But inside,
and the positions are reversed. A human failing,
some say a disease, but a disease that Sir Francis
Dashwood knew, and knew it well.
Upstairs, inside and a revelation. It's a discotheque.
No, no, uh.. there are paintings, real, and look here -
a rare seventeenth century masterpiece, and if I can
scrape a little of it off, beneath I can find hidden a
fourteenth century underpiece.
Made entirely of eggshells, this lurid work has
caused controversy in the world of embroidery and
anthropologicky. No, I'll say it again, anthropolology.
Umm.. no quite possibly make an anthropol, no, uh, I
mean an apolog..ph.. It has enthralled distinguished
professors, and in layman's language is "blinking well
baffling".
But to be more obtusely, "buggered if I know." Yes,
"buggered if I know." And that's all we've gleaned so
far from experts in fourteenth century painting,
renaissance, greengrocers, and recently revived members
of the public.
"Buggered if I know."
Vivian Stanshall, about three o'clock in the morning,
Oxfordshire, 1973, Goodnight."