Hpe, Lve, Valur and ?

"Black stared into his tankard, while the tavern clock ticked sixty times. ' I hate things with an O in their names, ' cried Black.  'That goes for clocks and parrots.'  He threw his tankard at the clock and broke it open, but there was nothing inside but works, no rubies, no emeralds, and no sapphires and no map.

Littlejack, the man with the map. (by Ronald Searle)

'The parrot's name is Magraw,' said Littlejack. ' There aint no O in that.'
…
Black stood up and smote the table with his fist. ' I'll get rid of O, in upper case and lower,' cried the man in black.  'I'll issue an edict.  All words in books or signs with an O in them shall have the O erased or painted out. We'll print new books and paint new signs without an O in them.'

And so the locksmith became a lcksmith, and the bootmaker a btmaker, and people whispered like conspirators when they said the names. Loves Labours Lost  and Mother Goose flattened out like a pricked balloon.  Books were bks and Robin Hood was Rbinhd.  Little Goody Two shoes lost her O's and so did Goldilocks, and the former became a whisper, and the latter sounded like a key jiggled in a clock.  It was impossible to read 'cockadoodledoo' aloud and parents gave up reading to their children, and some gave up reading altogether, and their search for the precious jewels went on."

Hope, Love, Valour and Freedom!  and a Happy New Year

The Wonderful O  James Thurber
© the estate of James Thurber,
Ronald Searle illustration for Penguin Books

Authors -- pains and pleasures

"Fry was one of the many friends to whom Kaye would send thoughtful presents. He was enraptured by the 'Rexel Home Office' stationery set.  'The black and red of it.  The self-sharpening of it.  The refillability of it.  And not just a namby-pamby stapler --  but a BAMBI stapler.'  J.C. Trewin was equally grateful for a book, 'a work of perverted genius' which 'shall go into my most precious Stuffed Owl collection' .  Rebecca West wrote from Ibstone House, thanking Kaye for the bottle of brandy, 'which was, by God it was, badly needed'.  She had just endured an experience that 'might afford material for your husband's genius', if that did not make Kaye wince.   She and her husband had  returned from America to find that their secretary, ' a lady of fifty',  had rearranged the contents of their house.  'We can't find anything, including the typescripts and copies of a complete novel, of which mercifully I still have the original.'  They found a bowler hat perched on a lamp-stand, and in the gardeners' cellar, an eighteenth-century cradle, a family heirloom, had been 'hit with something hard and left among the stored potatoes', draped with a 'quite valuable Bosnian carpet'.  The soon-to-be Dame Rebecca was prostrate with indignation: 'I went to Switzerland in a state of collapse to recuperate'. "

So Much to Tell  Valerie Grove