It was apparent to my discerning mind as I browsed the morning’s broadsheet that the world was in a right old state. To express my dismay and displeasure and more than a smidgeon of personal affront — for surely I have not struggled through decades of boredom only to be confronted with such turmoil in my twilight years — I tore up and screwed up some innocent sheets of paper that happened, from their perspective, to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, uttering sounds of vague despair as I did so, and cast them willy-nilly round and about, leaving the carnage where it landed for someone else, the maid or char or whoever, to tidy up. Indeed, I was quite extremely out of sorts, and I stamped on the floor (“where else, indeed, could he have stamped?” — M.R. James, The Diary of Mr. Poynter) and then I played the piano very loudly (Chopin’s Etude Op. 10 No. 12, to be precise) with a stern expression etched on my chiselled and indisputably handsome (and much admired by the ladies, though I say so myself) features.
Once I’d got all the ire out of my system I settled down, inhaled a few tubes of premium tobacco, and very soon had completed what I consider to be my finest work to date. Without pausing for a reasonable amount of time to be credible, I delivered the manuscript by hand and in person to my publisher. They, as is their wont — I use those particular pronouns at their insistence — kissed my hand, knowing better than to complain about a split infinitive or two, licked my boots, cracked open the champagne, and transferred a not inconsiderable sum of money into one of my Cayman Islands accounts. In the blink of a metaphorical eye the book was in the bookshops and, as expected, the town is so fond of it that the orange wenches and fruit women in the Park are offering the books at the side of cars, coaches, carriages and omnibuses, and the Prologue and Epilogue are cried about the streets by the common hawkers. My hope, as a humble author, is that my characteristic blend of romantic whimsy, social comment, mystery and suspense, and my dry, almost indiscernible humour lifts the people’s spirits and helps them get by in what I have been told are, for a lot of people, quite difficult times.
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Conrad Titmuss
Picture Rupert Loydell
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