Monday, 16 June

Meddlesome:

I am in the thrall of great apology for not responding to yours of the previous but I have my reasons -- none of them good. I am in a terrible state of sloth it would seem. The simplest tasks now require herculean efforts that eat up days in packets of three and four. I started this letter before breakfast and am only now getting up a head of steam and rounding out the first paragraph and here is faithful Molesworth ringing the dinner bell!

You have made an excellent point about the demise of the previous generation of transport modes. One big blow and away they all went. Have you read O. R. Sprigget's alarming tract on the Titanic's famed unscheduled change of course? At $42.95 it's a bit pricey for a 70-page hand-written screed, but it packs a wallop. Sprigget's main contention (this in line with your way of thinking although much more specific -- he names names!) is that the ice berg that undid the great behemoth was driven into the path of the ship!!! Sprigget builds his case from notes found in the archives in the Russian town of Murmansk. There he discovered the log of a fishing boat called The Hunter which saw the very same ice berg the previous day in a position some two hundred miles from where it bashed the Titanic. How could this be? Well, if an engine and sails were applied to the body it could be moved along at great speed. (This self same idea was patented in World War Two -- you may look it up.)

But who would want to sink the Titanic (and with it the future of sea borne travel)? Why none other than the Wright Brothers themselves posits friend Sprigget. Foreseeing the future of air travel and the possibility that many might not freely give up the deck chair/salon at sea experience, they used their alarming ingenuity to motivate the big cube. (They also paid off the German U-Boat captain to sink the Lusitania -- but that is the gutstuffing of another Sprigget tract: "In League With the Hun.")

So you see, for once we are in complete agreement on something other than the perfect roundness of Ms. Daisy Fletcher's rear protuberances. Perhaps we can use this meeting of the minds as a stepping stone to better self-understanding and the eventual return of all clothes mutually lent.

Yours in brief,

Jock

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