A Few Lines from Horace

Horace had had it.

He slumped back in his 'ergonomic' chair (falsely so called, the thing made his teeth ache), and stared at his boss's email with baleful incredulity.

'Horace, old boy,' it started, 'got just the thing for you. Read the guidelines for The Clarion's new poetry contest, and have a go at the submissions. We've promised each entrant a 'professional appraisal' of their writing talent by our crack team of poetry experts.

'That's you, of course. The submissions are in the public mail tool under 'Verse and Worse', that's in-house only, of course. A nice, encouraging answer is called for. Of course.

'Have fun! Oh, and we need them out ASAP, of course. The winners have already been picked by my lady wife. Thx, John.'

Horace pushed away from the creaky desk, grabbed his mug that said 'To be great is to be misunderstood (R.W. Emerson)', and headed for the tea urn, dodging the lucky many who were leaving the newspaper office already, it being five p.m. He poured himself a cup of the ghastly stuff that passed for tea around here, and stumped back to open the emails. Better get on with it. Perhaps there was a gem hidden in there, undiscovered by Deidre Farnham in her cherry-picking for prize material?

The first one was folksy. After scanning the first verse - which didn't - Horace decided that emergency measures were called for. Looking around to make sure that no one was watching (they weren't, being preoccupied with searching for umbrellas and Macs), he slipped a flask out of the side drawer and fortified Mrs Knightley's toxic tannin tonic with a dollop of Glenfiddich, where it lay like a pearl in the mud. He took a desperate swallow.

Thought: Such welcome and unwelcome things at once 'tis hard to reconcile...Pah! If I'm quoting the Scottish Play already, where will this end? To work! Feeling a little better, Horace looked at the 'poem' again.

'All in the merry month of May, when green buds all were a-swellin',
I sang a great rock roundelay to my best friend's ex-girlfriend, Mary Ellen,
Who in the town of Milton Keynes was all and all and all a-dwellin''

Horace grunted and looked at the email queue. 150 of the cursed things. One hundred and fifty, the number of the Psalms. Not dwelling on this - with or without Mary Ellen - was going to be the key to getting out of here by midnight. He hit Reply.

'Dear Entrant,
'Thank you for submitting your poem, 'The Ballad of Mary Ellen Sommersby and the Dudes Who Loved Her', to The Clarion's annual poetry contest, Clarion Call for Verse Writers.

Out of so many exciting entries, the choice of a winner was difficult. In a sense, all who entered are winners. Although your poem did not garner one of the top prizes, you will find attached an ecoupon for 20% off at the bookshop of your choice....'

So much for the boilerplate. Now for Horace's contribution, the 'expert opinion'. Horace took another sip - wrong, slug, of tea, decided it needed more Glenfiddich, applied remedy, put hands to home keys.

'Your poem is a splendid collocation of things old and new. The combination of ideas - the simple folk ballad style, redolent of Merry Olde England, and the cutting-edge daringness of Rock - is, in the experience of this writer, absolutely unique. The choice of picturesque location is particularly apt. A minor criticism: in stanza 15, are you sure that 'rocks off' and 'socks off', while certainly a valid rhyming pair, actually convey the image you want of a pair of star-crossed lovers?  

'Thank you for a great reading experience.  

'Yours,
'Horace Wallingford, Clarion poetry editor.

Horace hit the Send button with a sigh, and tried more tea. Interesting, the stuff was getting more palatable. Or his palate, like himself, was becoming inured to the slings and arrows of outrageous literary capitalism...on to the next hostage to fortune...

'Oh, Calcutta! Oh, Bombay!
Where is the Empire of yesterday?
Where the gymkhanas? The box-wallahs all?
When I yell for a chota peg, who answers my call?'

Horace chuckled. That's telling them, Colonel Sahib, he thought. He tapped out a message of encouragement, in which the words 'Queen and Country' actually passed his figurative lips, so shameless had he grown in his downward-spiralling career in literature. The next few entries passed almost unnoticed, and the tea mug was refilled (from both sources). Horace imagined that he might finish his Sisyphean task in time for the last train homeward and a soak. He was feeling almost no pain when...

'Ouch!' He glared at the latest submission.

'The mind holds a memory, clouded and dim,
A vision of battle, sanguine and grim,
Where generals plotted, and young men died,
And nobody ever knew really which side
Was right...'

The painful part of this effusion was that Horace himself - long ago, as a hopeful child, he had always been a hopeful child - had once written much in this vein. Oh, the glory that was Greece...he drank more tea and addressed himself, fiercely, to the keyboard and his own demons, telling the writer what he wished someone had told him.

'Dear Entrant, blah-blah, This is your critic speaking. Step away from the computer. This is an official warning. Do not perpetrate cliches. Do not paper over real events with shabby, trite platitudes. Do NOT imagine that you know what it is like to fight a war because you have seen Henry V seventeen times. DO NOT. Stop it. Go away and do something useful with your life, like collecting stamps. Stamps do not have feelings. Yours sincerely, Horace W.'

Horace sat back, watching in detached awe as his index finger, seemingly independent of his sense of self-preservation, hit the Send button. There, that's done it. Honesty is the worst possible policy in this business. He was done for.

Immediately Horace began to feel better. Why not? I hate, loathe, and despise this wretched job. John Farnham is the worst editor in the English-speaking world. I have a bit of money saved, I could freelance. And finally, finally, finish that play I've been working at for donkey's years. I don't care what they say, the world IS ready for a play about funny Irishmen in outer space...

He grinned to himself. In for a penny, in for a pound, might as well be hanged for a sheep...yes, and all those other cliches and suchlike...

He grabbed the next poem, and went for the gusto.

'Books are so important to me,
They open the world, they let me see
Things that are important to me,
Things I like to know and see...'

'Dear Entrant, Are you over the age of fifteen? If so, you should be ashamed of yourself, because this poem reads like something my little sister wrote when she was eight.'

Phoebe's was better, he thought, even if Mother helped her with the last line.. He Sent it off, and grabbed the next one. This was fun.

'Dear Entrant, Anent your poem, 'Rhyme on the Impossibility of Understanding the Works of Michel Foucault': while the subject matter strikes a chord of recognition in all of us who find French philosophers tough going, your method of expression is an insult to the noble English language. Please submit your verse to Babelfish - preferably into Estonian and back again - before trying again. I think you will find the sense much improved thereby, as well as satisfying a postmodern imperative.'

Horace chuckled. As the list got shorter, the flask emptier, and the hour later, his feeling of elation rose. ..

Last one:

'On the wee, bonny banks of the Firth of the Forth,
Which is somewhere in Scotland, I haven't got a map but I think it is in the North...'

Horace pounced triumphantly. Yes, that is what his night had needed. The invocation of the Patron Saint, the Bard of All Bards, the Touchstone of All Bad Poetry (a Touchstone with no Audrey, alas...cut that out, unconscious)...

'Dear Entrant, You are treading here upon sacred ground. Back Off. I KNOW William Topaz McGonagall. YOU are no William Topaz McGonagall. That poet even has his works inscribed in cement, which is where they belong. McGonagall was a professional. Do not try this at home. Sincerely yours, Horace the Epigone.'

Aaaaand....Send!

Horace sank back in his awful chair, looking down into the lees of his mug with regret - but only for the fact that he had no more Glenfiddich at hand. Otherwise, he was completely satisfied with the deliberate trashing of his career with The Clarion. I know not what course others may take, he intoned inwardly, but as for me, give me freedom of metaphor or give me death! He toasted the silent pressroom with his almost-empty mug.

His celebratory mood was interrupted by the office LAN admin. 'Hey, Horace, don't you read your email? I've been trying to tell you for hours...your response-mail tool is down. Anything you sent out in the last, say, eight hours is lost...gone where the unpaired electrons go.' He grinned the grin all geeks grin, when they've just told you your life's work has been lost to Computer Error.

Horace surprised himself by grinning back. 'Sorry, I had the broken tool up, didn't see yours,' he explained. He shrugged. 'Oh, well, that's the evening wasted, then. I'll try again tomorrow.' He glanced at his watch. 'I can just make the last train.'

Shouldering his jacket and forgetting his umbrella, Horace headed for the door, remembering to place his mug carefully in the dishwasher on the way out.
Good night, sweet print, and printers' devils sing thee to thy rest.

He just made the train. And it wasn't raining.

Kalima

When peace broke out, everyone took to the sea.

The dividend was ships. Destroyers plough–shared into freighters, carriers morphing into the cities they had always really been, with convenient airports, submarines used for exploration and environmental policing, moving craft, stationary craft...

Statelessness became a viable option, and I needed a job. So I took my shiny new rainbow passport and went trolling the net for offers.

I am no sailor. I found an interesting offer on a tide–less seacoast, good weather, I knew from experience, pay adequate. I talked to the man on the phone, and come the day, there I was, standing on a wooden pier beneath a Mediterranean sky...

...and staring up at the biggest houseboat I had ever seen. Three storeys of wooden gingerbread, a cube as wide as it was tall, and as deep as it was wide, the Kalima boasted a promenade deck like an arcade around each floor, and an open gallery of a dining area on the bottom level. It was improbable, like a house on pontoons rather than a boat.

But it lived up to its name: it was beautiful. I shouldered my recently acquired sea bag and stepped aboard.

There was nobody around, so I went in search of the owner's office, which must be somewhere on an upper deck, I guess I should have called it. But the place was a mini–labyrinth of corridors and hatches – I stepped gingerly over the raised sills, and soon became mildly lost.

The place wasn't open for business yet, but a blowsy blonde seemed to have lost her tour group. She accosted me, lifting her fashion shades over sun–dried tresses and balancing on her wedge–heeled rope sandals.

'Is this tub safe?' she demanded. I decided not to explain that I hadn't had any new–employee orientation yet.

'Yes, ma'am. I believe it is.' I couldn't resist adding, 'Safe as houses, ma'am.'

She snorted. 'That sea out there isn't always so peaceful. What if there's a storm?'

I shrugged, because I didn't know. 'It's safe, ma'am. Tell your group.'

She stamped off, to my surprise, managing the spiral stairs without falling (note to self: is there a nautical word for stairs? Must ask new boss), while I continued my fruitless search for the office. Finally, tired, I sat down on a bench by the railing, second deck, and wiped sweat off my face as I looked out at a sky grown clouded and what was becoming a restless sea.

I clutched my sea bag as a sudden violent wind snatched at it, and stuffed my hat inside my shirt, lest I lose it. Where had the storm come from? Wherever that was, it was an angry place. The normally calm water was rolling against the shoreline, white–capped breakers lifting the small fishing boats and tossing their contents like a salad. I held tight to the railing as the large craft I was on began to rock to the rhythm of the pounding surf.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all? I thought of seamen's prayers, though I doubt mine were very original.

The rain was coming down in sheets now, lashing my face and blurring my vision. A kaiki tore loose from its mooring and flew inland, smashing against a house. The rocking of the houseboat was violent, and I gripped my own mooring harder, planting my feet apart, expecting either my body or the vessel to fly away at any moment.

The pounding went on for perhaps half an hour. Then, gradually, the rain slacked off and the wind subsided. By the time the last drops had fallen I was shaking from the effort it had taken to hold on. I sank down onto the bench gratefully. What a ride.

I looked up and saw the man I had been seeking coming across the deck, his hand outstretched – big, firm footsteps, broad Greek grin, booming voice, strong grip as he shook my hand.

'How you like Kalima, paithi mou? It rain, she rock. But she no founder.' He grinned more broadly, a friendly predator.

'Pontoons. Is water, but foundation. See?'

He wagged his hand in a rocking motion. 'Then pirazi, it don't matter to the Kalima. Storm come, we weather.'

I decided right then and there that peace was a good thing – as long as you could stay upright in the water.

Pride and Pixellation, by A Lady

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley...

Not the one you might be thinking of. Not Hitchcock, Fontaine and Olivier, or even, should you be intellectual enough in this post modern age to have actually read a book, the Du Maurier version. Nor yet the successful publishing house, that chocolate-fuelled dream factory. No, this Manderley is unique. The home of elegant Regency bucks and strategically fainting ladies (Prinny's ball is a favourite, and earns extra points).

Beautiful, timeless Regency...toons.

Toons, for those of you so last-millennium as not to know, are what some people used to call avatars, that term being rather last-millennium itself. Dollies, if you must, that can be manipulated in the heady, fast-paced, all-absorbing world of the MMORPG. Sigh... Really, you must keep up with the times, dear reader! MMORPG stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.

In other words, a cyberworld of almost infinite variety, accessible to all with a computer. For the truly nominal fee of EUR 15.00 per month, one is let loose in the virtual-reality candy store, free to explore new worlds, to seek out new friends and new adventures, to boldly go...

All right, where thousands of other paying customers have gone before. But who cares? The best thing about the MMORPG is that it is live. Online, one has the opportunity to meet other players in the field of dreams. To interact. To form one's toon's choices, her developing persona, as it were, in reaction to one's fellow sojourners on the cyberplane. Unlike a film or novel, this world is interactive; one is not locked away in isolation, dreaming sad little dreams in the corner. No, one is 'Out There', encountering a new reality, meeting the neighbours.

Don't tell me to 'Get a Life'. I have one, thank you very much.

Or at least, I had one. But you shall hear.

I met Maxim in this fashion. One spring afternoon, my 'main', Hermione, level 176, I point out modestly, was entering Almack's, a popular neutral playfield hither one resorts to find partners for teaming, to trade items and gossip, and generally to show off one's new clothes.

Hermione was looking particularly attractive, I recall, in a pale green gown of the empire style, not dampened, of course, (according to the dimension's clock, it was but three in the afternoon, and dampening one's gown at such an hour would have been scandalous!) but nonetheless fetching and revealing (the colour set off my character's auburn locks so magnificently, the artists do such a lovely job).

Using the GUI button (Graphical User Interface, oh, do try and keep up!) marked 'mince', I, Hermione, was doing just that, moving with feminine grace across the floor when...

The chatline indicated a conversation. 'Has mademoiselle perhaps lost something?' Ah, a role-player. Perfect. Approaching Hermione was a tall, dark, handsome gentleman of level 190 with impossibly broad shoulders – the player had chosen well. In his outstretched hand (GUI button 'proffer') he held a lace handkerchief, a quest item which I knew had cost him at least three hours of online work to acquire.

The emote 'simper' was absolutely the only proper response, so I gave it. After a bit more chat, meaninglessly trivial pleasantries which nonetheless are de rigeur at Almack's, we settled into chairs by the window (the passing vista of lords and ladies won the designers a coveted award), had ice cream, and then went for a walk in Hyde Park. There, I was able, by pushing the 'Grecian Airs' button repeatedly, to contribute to our progress in such a way as to make us the cynosure of all eyes. Cynosure? Look it up. A modern outlook should not mean that one neglects the basics of one's education. Really.

Maxim was a wonderful player, both in the smoothness of manipulation of his toon, in his response to my own movements, and in his quick repartee on the chatline. He had obviously read all the right books, or at least the online synopses, and could share titbits of gossip about the Season, news from the Peninsular Wars, and such. Nor did he have resort to the gauche shorthand of txtspk, so abhorred by all true citizens of Manderley. No. He was a gentleman to the core.

And manly with it. When a couple of ignorant level 150s approached us in the park and Offered Insult; using scripts, obviously, which is really a violation of the EULA (End User Licence Agreement, darlings); Maxim coolly invited them to the Duelling Ground near Speaker's Corner, where he soundly thrashed them both in PVP. (Player-versus-player, dear, all the best games have this feature.)
Maxim was a master to his fingertips. Not only was I able to admire his Manly Physique, acquired after much questing and at the expense of many ingame credits, I assure you, but I was also at long last able to press my favourite GUI button, 'swoon', after which Hermione sank gracefully to the ground, only to be revived with the inventory item Smelling Salts, quality level 176.
I was in heaven, dear reader!

After that, Maxim and I became inseparable. We attended Prinny's Ball, of course, where we took the dancing prize, strolled around Vauxhall Gardens, dined tete-a-tete, and levelled our characters by attending all the balls of the Season. The NPCs (Non-Player Characters) were most gracious, I assure you.
To celebrate level 220, as our crowning achievement, we eloped to Gretna Green. It was thrilling, to say the least, and the special fee of EUR 5.95 required for the Bridal Suite was well worth it. I shall say no more. Of some things, it is indelicate to speak.

It was then that unhappiness began to creep upon us, although we were as yet unaware of trouble on the horizon. We began new characters, notifying one another in advance in order to team again. And that ushered in the beginning of sorrows, the insidious advance of RL, Real Life.

The worm in the bud was known as Email. We exchanged addresses.
Oh, that our emails had confined themselves to appointments ingame! But, alas, like many a fool before us, we began to exchange personal information, forbidden in the sacred halls of Manderley. From user names we advanced to those given us at birth, and, as so often happens, we committed the Final Folly a personal meeting.

As it happened, Sheldon and I lived in the same city, separated geographically by only a twenty-minute bus ride. That ride we now took often. True, Sheldon was far from the broad-shouldered creature with raven locks first encountered, being short, balding, and a bit on the stout side, but then, I was hardly Hermione, with my dishwater blonde pageboy and sensible shoes. We were nevertheless ourselves, we were there, and we could go out and eat real food.
And, after all, we always had Manderley.

True, Sheldon's habit of picking his teeth at the dinner table was disconcerting, so far from the elegance of Maxim in such circumstances, but as he said, 'These are different times, my dear.' For his part, Sheldon professed to find my apartment to be decorated in 'early Oxfam', though for the life of me I cannot understand what he objected to, apart from my collection of Princess Diana memorabilia.

We began to see more and more of one another Outside, as it were, and less and less Online, until one evening, as we sat together by the computer, reminiscing over times past and quests accomplished, Sheldon turned to me with the fateful question:

'Shall we do it? Shall we go RL?'

I was thunderstruck at the suggestion, and even more reluctant than I had been to go with Maxim to Gretna Green. Go... cold turkey? At first I refused... but, after several days of discussion and persuasion on Sheldon's part, I agreed.
We deleted our characters, and cancelled our accounts. Then we went out to celebrate. Fish and chips around the corner.

Oh, alas and woe the day! So many good intentions lead but down the same dreary road, as Clarissa, level 125, might have said. Loosed from its mooring in our shared passion for the Regency period, my relationship with Sheldon deteriorated rapidly, and ended in mutual recrimination during a steady downpour in front of the public library one late November evening. I slogged home, wrung out my soggy socks, and threw myself on the bed, sobbing for what had been lost.

The heart is resilient. Mine, at any rate; it stubbornly refused to break. I went back to my job at the estate agent's, and read to while away the evenings.
Until spring came around, that is. When the warming breezes came wafting in my window, bringing the scent of flowers, I bethought myself of what had been. And I longed to return. Booting up the computer, I reactivated my account, and sent in a request for the ‘undeletion’ of my lost characters, Hermione, Clarissa, Phyllis, and the others. I impatiently awaited the confirmation email.

And then I knew for the first time what true heartbreak could be. For the email from the company informed me that in the interval between deletion and reactivation my poor characters had been purged, permanently removed from the system and could no longer be retrieved.

Oh, poor Clarissa, never to know whether Mr Darcy will Pop The Question! Poor Hermione, poor, poor Hermione, doomed forever to face an undecorated rose-covered cottage! What had I done? How could I forgive myself, I, who had allowed a mere flirtation to interfere with my first love, the creation of truly lasting affairs of the heart?

But from even this dire blow have I recovered, dear reader. After a suitable period of mourning, during which I wore nothing but black (until advised by my employer that my attire was inhibiting sales), I pulled myself together mentally, asked myself what Mrs Bennett would have done under the circumstances, and...

Re-rolled.

Oh, figure that one out for yourself. Now, with a new stable of characters: Miranda, Elizabeth, Polly the Servant Girl, and that elusive Frenchwoman, Marguerite St Germaine, I once again proudly mince, glide, and stroll (but never stride) through the streets of Regency London and, in season, Bath. But I keep my heart pure. No matter how ardent my heroines, no matter how passionate the suitors, I never give out my email address.

As a fellow player so beautifully expressed it in OOC (Out-of-Character) chat, 'You should treasure what lasts. I still have everything I've ever put into a computer, because I have backup files. But I've been married three times'.

'Wives and girlfriends come and go. But a good MMORPG is made to last.'