Paul Angliss sent an update for The Investigations of the Para-Usual

 Extract from Chapter 11 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':  

‘I have noticed with you, Dr Pratt, an interesting form of body language that accompanies your speech,’ said O’Singh, hesitantly.

‘Well it might interest you that in recent times I have been attending to a little project of my own?’

‘Oh? Do share.’

‘I have been formulating accompanying gestures to speech, rather akin to signing for the hard of hearing… you know, to help certain disadvantaged people.’

‘Oh, and to aid whom in particular?’

‘The hard of understanding.’

O’Singh raised his eyebrows and propped his upper lip with the lower, in a gesture of approval.

‘Here we are – the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice,’ announced Dr Pratt.

The academics shuffled their way along the wall, absorbing the plaque tributes to heroes from Victorian times. Ordinary people who had become extraordinary in their death, perishing in the act of saving the lives of others; jumping into rivers, breaking into burning buildings.

‘I love this place,’ said Dr Pratt, improvising a swimming fish.

‘Place… oh, plaice, yes, I see. You imitate that species of fish for the hard of understanding,’ realised O’Singh. ‘Although… how do you distinguish that signing from “I love this haddock?”’

‘The plaice is a flatfish,’ replied Dr Pratt, assuredly.

O’Singh glanced over the person of Dr Pratt to gauge whether he was breathing in or somehow making himself appear flatter.

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    Paul Angliss sent an update for The Investigations of the Para-Usual
    Extract from Chapter 8 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':

    ‘They want a bigger ransom!’ bawled Cohen at his secretary. ‘A king’s bloody ransom!’

    ‘Bigger? There must be a reason. I’m certain, sir, that it must be because your daughter is worth more than the kidnappers had supposed,’ Poindexter answered, ingratiatingly.

    ‘But why? I don’t even like her!’ exclaimed Cohen, unable to contain himself.

    ‘Let me make myself quite clear. I mean I like Persil,’ qualified Cohen, registering the shock on the faces of the academics. ‘Of course. Naturally. She is one half of her mother, whose genes I like.’

    ‘Is she not one half of her father as well?’ asked O’Singh in a bid for clarification.

    ‘She’s my stepdaughter,’ said Cohen, answering O’Singh. He did a double-take and acknowledged then properly the presence of the two visitors in the room.

    ‘You know we human beings have 50 percent of our genes in common with yeast?’ claimed O’Singh.

    ‘Well there you go,’ retorted Cohen. ‘I would say I like my stepdaughter as much as I like yeast.’

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      Paul Angliss sent an update for The Investigations of the Para-Usual

      Very flattered that Jeremy Thomas, CEO of Inkshares, has pre-ordered a copy of the book. Thanks very much, Jeremy. Jared Diamond's 'Guns, Germs and Steel' one of my favourite texts too. I entreat any readers hoping for a yarn about an unhygienic paintballing centre in Sheffield, to persist.

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        Paul Angliss sent an update for The Investigations of the Para-Usual

         Extract from Chapter 8 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':

        O’Singh stood up, stunned. The prospect of a position at the IPU had been too good to be true. Why he had been gifted somebody else’s letter of introduction was neither here nor there. The outcome was what it was – stark. Mankind stood never to know the answers to the truly big questions. Like how we might discover the means to appear invisible. Or, why – when a TV licence costs more for a colour set than a monochrome – a dog licence isn’t cheaper? Dogs see only in black and white.

        -yhnsvqu{p6'{�

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          Paul Angliss sent an update for The Investigations of the Para-Usual
          Extract from Chapter 8 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':

          Gingerly, O’Singh stepped up to the doorway and ventured a foot inside. A small, wiry man stood at the window in shirt-sleeves, hands planted in his pockets; on his face a look of intense disappointment even before he turned to settle his cold gaze on O’Singh. A face like that of a greyhound with an obsession over what it must be to taste rabbit after it gets to catch one in its very last race.

          ‘I cannot tell you how exhilarated I am,’ gushed O’Singh. ‘I am here, really here, in the hallowed offices of the Investigations of the Para-Usual.’

          Dr Pratt condescended to look O’Singh over with narrow, burning, scrutinising eyes. His heavy salt-and-pepper, tight-curled beard all but concealed lips that were working slowly, lending the effect of a beard bulging and squirming like a ferret seen through the opening of a bag or a trouser leg. Generally, it might be said, Dr Pratt’s was a face of misfortune. He had once injured himself badly in a night class. Night classes are usually non-perilous affairs. But Dr Pratt had chosen his in mountaineering.

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            Paul Angliss sent an update for The Investigations of the Para-Usual

            Goodlye thanks to Cathy Curtis for pre-ordering my book, the mystery-comedy titled, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual'. Cathy is one half of the partnership with Hector Nobike, star of the short film, 'Lawnmower Version 1.4, Tutorial' (see http://bit.ly/1Mm15qW). 

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              Paul Angliss sent an update for The Investigations of the Para-Usual
              Excerpt from Chapter 7 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual':

              ‘Aha! Here is something. How about a trade magazine for opticians?’ said O’Singh. He plucked a biro from his haversack and a mangled notepad, which he laid on top of his newspaper and scrawled away, head bowed, until he had finished: ‘The opticians’ trade magazine could format the lay-out of its articles similar to the way the letters are arranged on the eye test charts, starting with the biggest, most easily discernible letters on the first line; subsequent letters decreasing in size and legibility as they progress further down the page.’

              O’Singh capped his pen and turned to the passenger on his left. ‘I knew of a man who visited an optician’s once,’ he said, as freely and easily as if he had known this travel companion all his life, ‘who had such poor eyesight that he started reading the eye chart before he had even stepped into the surgery.’

              O’Singh stared intently at his fellow passenger, who was slowly recoiling into his seat.

              ‘“But how?” you might ask,’ continued O’Singh, anticipating the passenger’s incredulity.

              ‘“I” this man had said confidently, reading what he thought was the first letter on the chart. How could he have had such bad vision if he was able to read the sign from so far away, from outside the room?

              ‘“Mr Hoskins,” said the receptionist, to the man entering the surgery, “we’re going to have to see about fitting you with some stronger lenses – that’s not an ‘I’ you just read. That was the shape of the doorway.”’ 
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