Dec 2, 2015

Extract from Chapter 39 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':    

‘You’re going to make a documentary based on your thing. Baby’s up for it.’

‘No! Really? Are you serious? Are you saying you sold the quest to know everything?’ asked O’Singh, wondrously.

Persil spun round to offer O’Singh her full attention. ‘You are lucky you have got me!’ she laughed, piteously. ‘If it were you back there with Baby, that’s what you would have been proposing – a doco discovering just that, “everything”!’

‘Well, yes I suppose I would,’ said O’Singh, thoughtfully.

‘Learn something, prof. Everything isn’t enough. Not any more.’

‘Is it not? I did not… I mean, it used to be,’ replied O’Singh, in consternation. Of course, he had heard of footballers in the modern era routinely giving 110% effort. Was there now similarly more to everything?

‘You go in there offering everything, Baby’s going to say what else have you got?’

‘Really?’ said O’Singh, very much out of his depth.

‘This will be a documentary, not about everything, but everything about everything. That’s what we’re going to call the series: “Everything about Everything”.’

‘Oh, so a lot more than everything?’

‘This will be the documentary to end all documentaries,’ Persil condescended to explain, taking a couple of steps backwards to reach the studio complex’s ornate brick gates. ‘Where else can you go with docos once you’ve discovered absolutely everything?’

‘No, but, really? My ideas, my theory put to the sword on the medium of television? No! This is amazing. How? No! But I confess to feeling flabbergasted!’

‘Think of the kudos. They want you to make the first episode on Alphabetti Spaghetti,’ said Persil, distractedly, peering down the street.

‘Alphabetti Spaghetti?’ said O’Singh, joining her at the gates. ‘You mean the canned pasta shaped as letters of the alphabet?’

‘Square Eye’s got a sponsor interested in its making.’

‘A sponsor who puts up the money to get the documentary made?’

‘Penny dropped, Einstein.’