Extract from Chapter 40 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':

‘I enlisted the help of a most capable gentleman from your production team,’ said O’Singh excitedly, lifting the weighty tome.

‘We know cavemen said “Ug!”’ he continued, pointing with the book towards the cavepeople that moment receiving reassurances from the uncomfortable-looking studio runner.

‘And that knowledge has enabled me to compile this.’

O’Singh showed Persil the title of the book: ‘O’Singh’s Caveman-English, English-Caveman Dictionary’.

‘What’s it about?’ asked Persil.

‘Dip inside. It is a translation dictionary.’

Persil prised the book open to a random page. A little bemused, she looked to O’Singh.

’Look here,’ he said, running a finger down entries in what was the English section of the dictionary. ‘For every single English word, we see the definition given as “Ug!”.’

O’Singh turned, feverishly, to other spreads.

‘Here look, for instance, we see “Wine decanter” – “Ug!”; And here a wholly unrelated word: “Parisian”.’

‘“Ug!” again,’ said Persil, reading the translation.

‘The caveman language sounds unsophisticated, but it is actually very efficient.’

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.’ 

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

‘Come, come this way,’ urged Persil. ‘It’s all good. I’m like family.’

Persil led O’Singh across cobblestones to a conservatory extension of a Victorian-era warehouse. What looked like a Post-it Pad sticker stuck to the glass door was the doorknob, labelled ‘Square Eye Studios’. Persil heaved the door open and led the way.

‘Persil! Persil Bland!’ called a woman, who was busying herself reorganising her desk in the conservatory reception area. Not so much a greeting it seemed, but a warning to others of Persil’s approach.

People gathered from behind a stage curtain draped across the entrance to the warehouse proper, all dressed in various designer T-shirts and fashionably distressed jeans. A faint chinking sound could be heard behind them.

‘Hi gang!’ Never seen an ex-hostage before? Expecting me back in instalments?’ japed Persil, slipping a hand into a padded envelope lying on the reception desk to mime the posting of her parcelled hand.

A thirty-something man with sculpted beard and immaculately coiffured hair framing a lived-in face, was the last to emerge from behind the curtains.

‘Persil Bland?’ he enquired.

‘Baby?’ asked Persil.

‘Mike Baby – Producer-Director,’ he said holding out a hand for shaking.

‘Mike Baby! Love it! A big grown-up baby. Maa!’ bawled Persil, in a baritone, emulating the probable cry of an adult baby. ‘Baby, meet Professor Breville O’Singh.’

‘Ain’t Breville them devices for making toasted sandwiches?’ asked Mike Baby, in his very middle-class accent.

‘My father was very fond of a toasted sandwich,’ replied O’Singh, warmly, unaware of the possibility that Baby could be poking fun.

Extract from Chapter 38 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual': 

Professor O’Singh pulled open a cupboard door. The gas meter inside had given up the ghost. He had been cut off. He closed the door and carried on down the corridor into the kitchen. There, he fumbled under the skirt of a duvet wrapped around the tarantularium sat on the kitchen island, located his landline phone and dialled.

‘Hello, Georgina!’ said O’Singh, shortly, his face brightening. ‘Good to speak. Been a long time. Thought I might catch you before you wended your way. How is the publishing business?’

Not good, came the reply. Georgina though was happy to hear from O’Singh.

‘Georgina, I have something of interest. I have rustled up some fresh messages for next year’s office calendar,’ announced O’Singh, rifling through his notepad with the handset tucked under his chin. ‘Here is one you may want to consider. You know the old saying regarding bears and stating the obvious? Well, alternatively, could we not turn it on its head and ponder: “Do bears ever get bunged up in the woods?”’

The line remained silent at the other end. O’Singh began to repeat himself when Georgina interrupted. They would not be producing a calendar for the coming year. Nor the one after. Perhaps never again. O’Singh bit his lip. Politely, he enquired why.

‘Competition. No-one wants daily philosophies any more. They don’t want the sage insights thing.’

‘Oh, what do they want? Perhaps I may adapt my thoughts?’

‘What do you know about celebrity?’

‘I know… well I am not really… perhaps…’ confessed O’Singh.

‘Our biggest competitor is printing the quotes of celebrities,’ intervened Georgina.

O’Singh heard a sound like that of paper shuffling.

‘An insider contact of mine managed to send some samples through to me. Like to hear?’ said Georgina sounding like she was not so keen to hear them again herself.

O’Singh didn’t know if he would. Georgina started to read them, regardless:

‘Oh my God!’

‘Is everything alright?’ asked O’Singh, concerned, heading back into the corridor.

‘“Oh my God!” is a quote from a celebrity who won a show where she had to live in a house with other girls and look after a pet or something.’

‘I see,’ said O’Singh, unconvincingly. He heard more paper shuffling.

‘Oh, from the same show, different series: “It’s like all this stuff like just like was all so totally phwerr! Do you know what I mean?”’

‘Do I know what you mean?’ asked O’Singh, needing clarification whether it was part of the celebrity quote or Georgina testing his comprehension. He was slightly distracted as he fumbled again with the handle on the gas meter cupboard.

‘The point is, you’re supposed to read the quote and then guess who said it. That’s it. That’s what this is about.’

O’Singh was plunged into deep gloom. The lights had failed. Georgina was still on the line. A loud rap sounded hollowly on the apartment door. ‘Uh, Georgina,’ said O’Singh. ‘May I call you back?’

O’Singh fumbled his way down the corridor, feeling his way along a wall. The rapping increased in frequency. Reaching the latch, O’Singh ripped open the door and shrunk from the sudden glare of light.

“I dunno ya know, I wanna leeve in da England but this Boudicea. I never ‘it a lady.”

‘Persil?’ asked O’Singh, through his squint.

‘Julius Caesar,’ said Persil, joyfully correcting the professor. ‘He came, he saw, he conquered. Professor Breville O’Singh, join me on my conquest!’

Unprecedented gratitude to Rab Ward for pre-ordering a copy of 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual'. Rab divulged that he received an email warning of the carcinogenic properties of a particular processed meat. He believes it might be spam.

Extract from Chapter 36 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':

‘A lovely morning, Poindexter,’ proclaimed Cohen.

‘Unambiguously so, sir,’ concurred Poindexter, negotiating tables while balancing coffee and Danish pastries on a tray.

The morning traffic plying Piccadilly was muted here on the patio of the café in the lee of St James’s church.

‘Shall we arrange ourselves somewhere more sun-dappled, sir?’ suggested Poindexter, edging past an unoccupied table for another located under a protective plane tree.

‘An ambiguous message I saw the other day as it happens, sir,’ said Poindexter, breezily, depositing the tray upon the favoured table. ‘I saw a For Sale notice posted on the inside of a car window – “£4800, single owner”. Do you think the owner wanted to sell the vehicle and advertise his availability for a date?’

Cohen pursed his lips as if to contemplate Poindexter’s remark, then dragged out an aluminium chair to sit himself down.

Poindexter envisaged a spruced-up young man showing off a hatchback to a glamorous girl, suggesting she might want to take it for a test drive, take it for a spin. ‘We could drive up to Lover’s Leap. It’s lovely this time of year. Maybe take a bottle of wine,’ Poindexter imagined the young man saying, then adding as though mindful of his double purpose: ‘Just a glass, though of course. Not known as “one careful driver” for nothing, you know. Ha!’

Atlantic-bridging gratitude to Rob Ferber and Amanda McCutcheon who have pre-ordered not one but 3 copies of 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual'. We met a few years back in Thailand. Rob runs tours in wildest New Jersey (www.pinelandsadventures.org), planning to carry on the theme (probably) into the lunch breaks at Bada Bing! Amanda is an amazing artist - check out her stuff at www.amandamccutcheon.com

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