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‘O fickle fortune. I’m now celebrated as the champion of what I scorned. Old ladies cudgel me with their brollies, crying, “Wretched man! Your vile Gedankenexperiment has traumatised my Tiddles.” Everywhere I see grinning cats winking into and out of existence. We were wrong, Albert, God does indeed …Hahahahaha.’
***
‘Did you give Schrödinger his medication, nurse?’
‘I both did and didn’t, doctor — I wasn’t observed.’
‘Well, observe — he’s gone. Off to play God, no doubt.’
‘I know where he is,’ said visiting physicist, Werner Heisenberg. ‘In principle. Although I can’t be certain.’
‘Then collapse the wave function of our tenterhooks, and tell.’
‘Sir, when I heard of him last he was running about town shooting cats.’
Liz Childs
‘Do you suppose,’ the doctor asked, glancing furtively round the restaurant, ‘that Fabrikov is really being pursued by the Kremlin?’
‘He’s convinced they have devised some devilish means to dispose of him,’ I said.
‘My God,’ he shouted, then looked over his shoulder. ‘Will they poison him?’
‘Fabrikov told me that he has learnt they will get to him through Pollyanna.’
‘Pollyanna?’ The doctor was almost hysterical now.
‘His Persian cat which, by the way, has run off somewhere. The cat,’ I explained, ‘will release some sort of venom — so Fabrikov thinks — only on the selected target. Make of that what you will.’
The doctor stared at me, then put his head in his hands.
‘He’s gone insane, then,’ he muttered.
I patted the doctor’s hand to console him and said:
‘Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.’
Frank McDonald
The waiter at the Café Méliès was even older than me, and more than age and loneliness bonded us. We shared a nostalgic enthusiasm for Nouvelle Vague cinema, and after the place closed we sat there toasting ‘absent friends’ — Melville, Truffaut — and reminiscing about the New Wave’s great moments: Cathérine’s plunge into the Seine in Jules et Jim, the tense subway pursuit in Le Samourai, Bande à Part’s spontaneous bar dance.
My own knowledge of the field had grown rusty, and I felt a Parisian serviteur might be just the person to update me. After he’d filled me in on Chabrol and Rivette I asked him what Godard — whose work I’d deserted when he went bizarrely ‘political’ — was currently doing.
He shrugged eloquently, saying, ‘Eh, Godard — qu’est-ce qu’on peut dire? Un fou. Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.’
Basil Ransome-Davies
‘Did you complete the Marathon, Hodge?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Excellent. And Boswell? He doesn’t seem to have been in my Literature lessons lately.’
‘He ran it dressed as the end of King Lear, sir.’
‘Really? How does one rig oneself out as a dénouement?’
‘In a tragic fashion, sir. Although that was not the word you recommended, sir.’
‘Tragic?’
‘Dénouement, sir. You objected to the French, sir.’
‘Did I, indeed? Something must have disagreed with me.’
‘Boswell did, sir. He felt that Albany’s line “That’s but a trifle here” might be modernised to “That’s but a rifle”, sir. You were not amused, sir. You wrote some definitions of “ending” upon the blackboard, sir.’
‘Coda?’
‘Catastrophe, sir. Although you did not pronounce it, sir.’
‘Hodge, I am tiring of this.’
‘Very bootless, sir.’
‘Where the blazes is Boswell?’
‘Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.’
Bill Greenwell
‘Yes, sir, it’s a sad story. It must have come as a bit of a bombshell — the interfaith dream blowing up in his face, no luck with his memoirs or after-dinner speeches and then the embarrassing business of getting his fingers burned over global warming.’
‘Did he visit the jobcentre often?’
‘Yes, but we couldn’t help him. Richard and Judy’s sofa was filled, the W.I. didn’t want a new patron, pop groups weren’t interested in ageing guitarists, the Queen had no vacancies for personal mentors and Ken Livingstone politely rejected his offer to replace the Millennium Dome with an Olympic Cube.’
‘They say he fancies photography now.’
‘Yes, sir — he probably sees himself as the next David Attenborough. He photographs stray pets.’
‘What was he doing when last you heard?’
Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.’
Alan Millard
Competition No. 2499 Pet sounds
With Hodge in mind, you are invited to submit a poem eulogising a pet (16 lines). Entries to ‘Competition 2499’ by 14 June or email to lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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