While you might be forgiven in thinking there's precious little association between such diverse subjects as bankers, ornithologically-prompted horology and the tercentenary of Samuel Johnson, I shall, with all due respect Dear Reader, henceforth be disabusing you otherwise. Never one to allow mutual indivisibility to get in the way of a good yarn, I freely acknowledge this month's feuilleton will be remarkable, if for nothing else, in its attempt at possibly the most unlikely coupling since Donald Trump became attached to whatever that is on top on his head.
Largely by dint of an experiment in getting by on credit crunched funds, (such is my belief that the economic recovery's light at the end of the tunnel might in fact be a train wreck hurtling in the opposite direction) this summer's family holiday also served to put a dent in our carbon footprint. A footprint, moreover, which having eschewed air travel in favour of the train, bore the imprint of shoes, rather than those sweaty sock-prints left in your wake as you shuffle through airport security, simultaneously holding on to what's left of one's beltless trousers and shredded dignity.
This year, you see, the family holiday was a so-called staycation. Which, unlikely as it may seem, is where, etymologically speaking, we encounter the aforesaid Dr. Johnson. On his 300th anniversary this September, what might the compiler of the first Dictionary of the English Language have made of such a word as staycation? Casting aside the likelihood that old Sam would not have bothered much about the anniversary side of things - the devout Anglican lexicographer famously regarding such frivolities merely as occasions for repentance and pious resolution, (though on his 72nd birthday, he wrote that "some little festivity was not improper" and "had a Dinner") - I reckon in acknowledging the evolving nature of language, he would approve of ‘staycation' finding itself newly installed in this year's Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
So, having staycationed on the unquestionably beautiful north Yorkshire coast, where it turned out not to be a holiday at all for every one else there - other than the train operator, who having decided to cancel the scheduled service without warning, necessitated us in the un-budgeted purchase of secondary, and even more expensive, tickets with a rival operator, thereby nullifying the cost-benefiting element of the exercise - I returned home feeling oddly dislocated. But it was nothing as compared to the yet odder depths to which I was to find dislocation could plummet.
Ask not for whom the cuckoo clucks!
I'm willing to bet even Donald Trump cannot trump me in the ‘smallest event ever to go awry with a house in its owner's absence' stakes, of which I became aware in nary a short time of my homecoming. Two hours, to be precise; which is precisely what I can be; thanks to the cuckoo clock in my kitchen, where I just happened to be at the time - the time being gin hour. Just as James Boswell recounts Johnson as saying how "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money", it surely follows that if a chap spends his life writing for ready cash, some of it may not always come up to impeccable snuff! Thus, in order to energise sufficient inspiration to conjure a resonating flourish with which to leave your heads reeling, I quit the unyielding nib and headed to the kitchen, ears cocked for the cuckoo, whence to enjoin with messrs Gordons and Tonic!
No doubt you're impressed by my strict observance in this yard-arm custom being occasioned by a little Swiss-made bird popping his head out of its door and chirruping six. Except what leapt out this time was merely the spring; the creature's head, and indeed what passes - or at least it once did - for the rest of him, was not on the end!
As cuckoo clocks go, I dare say Swiss banks - even in these cash-strapped days - probably boast more expensive ones than mine. But surely, things hadn't got so bad in Stockholm that they were resorting to inferior workmanship? Was this but a forewarning of further travesties ahead... cheese with the holes filled in? Next you'll be telling me that Obama, Brown and the rest of the G20 comedians have outlawed Swiss bank accounts; I mean, they can't even agree on how many countries should be in the G20!
So, taking the cluckless cuckoo clock from the wall, I removed the back, appropriately enough, with my still trusty Swiss Army Knife. I'm sure it is exactly what the Swiss Army would have done. Sadly, the cuckoo's head remains nowhere to be seen. Perhaps a clockwork cat had got in?
As I speculated thus, it dawned upon me that Wordsworth must have suffered a similar horological hiatus; nothing else surely could explain such a line as dire as ‘O Cuckoo! Shall I call thee bird, or but a wandering voice?'
What a blast it must have been for all those Romantically-inclinator Lakeland poets, staycationing together up there amid the glowering mountains of England's draughty north west corner. No wonder I can never remember whether Keats ode'd his Autumn of mists and mellow fruitfulness courtesy of a Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun... or was it perhaps a close-maturing friend of the maturing bosom?
Phew, do I need proper holiday!
