| The hallway. |
| From outside, an ordinary house. A great house, true — four hundred and eighty |
| three rooms, each one with its own marble wash basin and douche, |
| bidet as it may. But inside, and the positions are reversed. A human failing, |
| some say a disease, but a disease that Sir Francis Dashwood knew, |
| and knew it well. |
| Upstairs, inside and a revelation. It’s a discotheque. No, no, uh. there |
| Are paintings, real, and look here — a rare seventeenth century masterpiece, |
| and if I can scrape a little of it off, beneath I can find hidden a fourteenth |
| century underpiece. |
| Made entirely of tiny pieces of eggshells, this lurid work has caused |
| controversy in the world of embroidery and anthropologicky. No, I’ll say it again, anthropolology. Umm. no quite possibly make an anthropol, no, uh, |
| I mean an apolog.ph. It has enthralled distinguished professors, |
| and in layman’s language is «blinking well baffling». |
| But to be more obtusely, «buggered if I know."Yes, «buggered if I know. |
| «And that’s all we’ve gleaned so far from experts in fourteenth century |
| painting, renaissance, greengrocers, and recently revived members of the public. |
| Buggered if I know. |
| Vivian Stanshall, about three o’clock in the morning, |
| Oxfordshire, 1973, Goodnight |