Keats and Chapman had a profitable small business on the go manufacturing, of all things, porcelain likenesses of favourite characters from children’s television programmes of the 1970s. Many a happy morning they whiled away hand-crafting an Ivor the Engine or attaching whiskers to Top Cat, before boxing them up and dispatching them to eager customers all over the world. There was only one problem. Their next-door neighbour was the renowned children’s animator Oliver Postgate, but in old age he’d become more than a little touchy about his work in children’s television. However he pored over his stamp collection it couldn’t live up to the excitement of stop-go animation, and whenever the subject of his former glories came up he would become alternately wistful, morose and even truculent. Needless to say then, Keats and Chapman went to considerable lengths to conceal their new business from him. One lunchtime, however, Keats found himself in the middle of a delicate painting job when the doorbell rang. Not wanting to break concentration, he decided to carry the large pink bibelot he was working on to the door with him. ‘I was just wondering if you still have my hedge-trimmer – ’ began Oliver Postgate (for it was he), when he noticed what Keats was carrying and shrieked with distress, before turning and running off down the road, shrieking and whooping as he went. In his shock Keats dropped the bibelot, which shattered into myriad fragments at his feet.
‘What is it now?’, hollered Chapman from the workshop. ‘Has your lack of social savoir faire got us into trouble again?’
‘You could say that’, answered Keats. ‘It seems I’ve dropped a major clanger.’
4 comments:
O what can ail thee, Lord Mountcharles,
Alone and fretting in the wings
When the Edge is strumming by the lake
And Bono sings?
Not knowing who created The Clangers, I thought you were going to mention looking into Chapman's Homer (Simpson).
PS
Excellent Sean.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/8867613/East-Yorkshire-pub-named-best-in-UK.html
No need to publish this Dave, I just read about a pub in England that won best pub award, and it being in a small village just North fo Hull and knowing you are a connoisseur of the northern ordinariness in which one was formed as a ranter of mad-dog-shite, thought I would drop the link, just in case you are not aware of a potentially new hole to check out.
I see you translated a poem from Aifric Mac Aodha. I remember meeting her through Fintan O'Higgins outside Grogans, and boring her shitless with my bardic drivel, not having a clue she was an up and coming Irish langauge poet.
Ah the comedy of Dublin clowning.
Cheers
Des
Encourage your mates (if you have any!) to enter the 2013 International Open Keats and Chapman Competition. Eneter via http://essaydensushing.blogspot.co.uk/
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