Saturday Pomes & Words, 20/04/2024
A Ghost
The last Pomes & Words is here.
Just to show that I am not always serious or ranty (I did a ranty post then deleted it) and I do have a certain kind of humour, I hereby present you with the following short supernatural sketch (it’s about 300 words).
This is also from my aforementioned Juvenilia, and is entitled ‘A Ghost’. So this would’ve been written about thirty years’ ago when I was at University in London in the early 1990s. Whether it was written during a philosophy lecture (I did that a lot) or in the bar after the philosophy lecture (I also did that a lot), my memory doesn’t register that information. I would imagine, however, that it was quite likely prompted by Bishop Berkeley and his stone (‘I refute it thus’ – I’ve always loved that line). The sketch is, then, as much about taking the piss out of the aristocracy as it is out of pompous pontificating academics.
I claim no originality here, but I do claim impertinent mischief. I really like this one, I think it’s funny, and I hope you enjoy it too.
As usual, please feel free to like it or not, and maybe
I couldn’t wait till tomorrow’s Sunday thing, by the way, so maybe think of this as a double-feature.
Oh, and you’ll notice I’ve kept the pretentious lower case vs. upper case eyes. What that symbolises or indicates I will leave entirely up to you…
A Ghost
i was in a stately home.
Have you ever seen a ghost i asked no he said never you lie my good man i replied but he kept on with his insistence and insisted that he had never, in his sixty-four years of potential life, never seen the merest sign of a ghost. I have never, in my sixty-four years of life, seen the merest sign of a ghost he insisted you mock me i said I do not he said nor would I ever insult your wisdom so you think they are the figments of deluded minds i furthered yes he said that is the only explanation so you do agree that, from the point of view of a deluded mind they do exist? Certainly he said but your mind is sound i suppose of course he said my mind is sound, in my sixty-four years of life my sanity has never come under the merest question of sanity. You lie i said you lie I do not! he insisted i was making him angry now good i thought you lie my good man for you have seen a ghost, everyone i have encountered has seen a ghost but you are lying he said for I have not seen a ghost – I fear I have unwittingly become the exception to your spurious rule, you have a deluded mind he said. And now it was i who became angry it is you who are deluded i said for you have unwittingly become the continuing proof for my rule that everyone i have ever met has encountered a ghost in their meagre spurious existence and with that i furiously left the room, through the wall, just to the left of the mantelpiece, beneath the portrait of his great grandfather, William.
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