If blood is thicker than water, it must also be thicker than a calendar or a small clock”

Esther Rantzen, at the opening of The Toppled Bollard, Lancaster*

   

There has been a new outbreak of Variant Menard’s Disease.   This is a strange disease in which the sufferers hold the delusion that they have built a new centre of entertainment and intellectual development when in fact all they have done is copied the façade of a building that currently exists elsewhere.   

The origins of Menard’s disease are recorded in Thackery T. Lambshead’s “Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases” (Macmillan).  It is a volume I find is essential reading and one I recommend to all employers of staff in the UK today.   According to Lambshead the original disease relates to Pierre Menard who “announced to an astonished world that he had written the most amazing work of all time” when he re-wrote the 9^th to 38^th chapters of part 1 of Don Quixote.  

In this case of Variant Menard’s Disease one Phillipio Campbell-Griffin has rebuilt in entirety  the Toppled Bollard in far-off Lancaster (just off the one way system) .   Although there seems to be no difference between the Lancaster structure and the original in Corby, Campbell-Griffin has suggested that the re-engineering of the building has involved much greater creative originality than that involved in the original version.    He suggests that his work has involved the complete abandonment of his own personality – and indeed his own preferences in terms of architecture and alcoholic consumption.    He claims that, in keeping with the description by Lambshead, he has become simultaneously megalomaniac and bland.   

I’m told that many major celebrities turned up to the official opening of the new building, and many speeches were made.  Sadly however at that moment of Campbell-Griffin’s greatest triumph it was erroneously announced that the great man was dead.   Sky Sports stated that “Time stood still for a couple of seconds,” while Ben Bradshaw commented that, “I think longevity and long lived success is something that most artists would die for.”  Palab Ghosh on Radio 5 added that his death “marked a breakthrough which has yet to change the world in ways that we don’t yet know about.”    I suspect that is true.  

Tony Attwood

 

PS: Meanwhile we are still in business in Corby, writing direct mail, supplying mailing lists, receiving and posting out orders, all that sort of thing.   To find out more call 01536 399 000.  Or try www.hamilton-house.com      No horseman will call.  

PPS: *According to Colemanballs (pub: Private Eye) Ms Rantzen did indeed say this, although I am not convinced she was actually in the Bollard at the time.  But you never know.