Friday 7 March 2008

Collect and other animals

So, finally some thoughts on the rank evil that is Collect.
website here

I admitted that I didn’t get there this year, and I’ve a feeling I didn’t last year, or if I did it was spectacularly unmemorable. The most memorable year for me was when I stumbled in on the coat tails of the White Rabbit, who kept pulling a gold watch out of his waistcoat pocket and muttering, ‘my ears and whiskers, so much FLIM FLAM,’ before scampering off into the undergrowth to edit his parish council pottery review. I clearly remember finding myself in a room full of weird shaped china, with a large table, in the middle of which was a miniature celadon tea pot, over which was slumped a giant sized dormouse, with whom, apparently, I was to have ‘supervision’. Since the dormouse continued his slumbers, oblivious to the world, I slipped past and into another vast strange room, in which I found ‘Ratty’, sitting in a big chair on a stage, and on either side of him – actually he’d had his gender reassigned and was now she – on either side of HER, were a Badger, called Julian, an extraordinarily cantankerous fellow in a velvet smoking jacket, and a Toad, called Grayson, in a ludicrous flounced frock with bells and ribbons. They were discussing death, coffins, and sarcophagi. The more cantankerous Badger got, the more Ratty tried to intervene, and the more Toad just said ‘toot toot’, greatly to the amusement of the audience; apparently he had a very fine collection of very fast flash motorbikes, and just wanted to show them off. Badger and Toad both made clay pots in their spare time it seemed. Ratty talked and wrote about them, the pots, not B and T. Eventually Toad flounced off, climbed into primrose yellow car and, with one last ‘Toot Toot’, sped away. Ratty scuttled off and investigated the rest of the Collect sewer, and Badger growled at everyone and brushed up his velvet jacket. I went to look for the dormouse and his ‘supervision’ again, but was told he’d retreated to his tank with a group of other rodents to do some thinking. Apparently he had to rethink the entire 20th Century. No wonder the poor chap was comatose. I gloomily wandered out into the February sunshine and found my sister on the Temple bank, who nudged me awake, gave me good strong cup of tea, and said ‘Well whatsortofmug goes to Collect anyway?’
for a different take on collecting, consumption, and how to drink a mug of tea click here

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