from THE GRIMM’S GARDENS CHRONICLE

                                               There was great excitement yesterday evening in 
                                           Much Biding as the historic market town where once 
                                           King Edward the First, the Hammer of the Scots, wept 
                                           for his dead bride the fair Edwina (sic, Ed.), welcomed 
                                           a production of that ever-popular programme Many 
                                           Questions Any Answers live from the Great (and 
                                           horseshoe hung)  Hall of the Wakeman’s Gables. The 
                                           event was chaired by Mr Roger Rogerson, a person of 
                                           noted personal personality, while the celebrity panel 
                                           was comprised of Honarius Honorium, acting co-
                                           ordinator of The Ghost Machine Board, who, it was 
                                           hoped, would have much of interest to recount of his 
                                           adventures whilst (so recently) lost in a waste-paper 
                                           bin; Mr Dentigerous Alume-allotment, the controvesial 
                                           and red-bearded horticulturist and philumenist; the 
                                           feminist and fashion editor, Ms Rosie Thingadawn; 
                                           and, sensationally, making her first public appearance 
                                           since her death, veiled in a discreet blank space, the late 
                                           WPC Wendy Grimbold, newly appointed head of 
                                           intelligence services.
                                                  Mr Rogerson opened the entertainment by 
                                           remarking on the timeless and homely (so gently 
                                           weighed with thatch) attraction of (to name it in full) 
                                           Much Biding Little Consequence and reminded the 
                                           audience that it was in this very hall, a little over a 
                                           century ago, that this great institution (the programme) 
                                           had first been performed, on the then technology of (he 
                                           pronounced it with historical emphasis) ray-dee-oh. 
                                           Without further ado, he introduced panelists to 
                                           audience (as above) and audience to panelists ( a 
                                           muttered phrase with his back turned to the crowd).  He 
                                           then requested, nay, called upon, the First Questioner.

       
                 THE FIRST QUESTION

    Mr Wilf Sly, of Little Biggin, asked if there was any 
truth in the much-touted rumour of the impending 
installation of a new Economic Drive in the Central 
Machinery. Speaking the mind of the Company, 
Honarious Honorium assured the audience that no such 
plan was in hand, that if there were such an intention 
the convention of an extra-ordinary general meeting 
would be required, that all the 12 principal shareholders 
would be away on holiday during August and that 
installation of such equipment would involve a 
considerable sum of external capital and a consequent 
reduction in public service power points in Company 
Booths, thereby greatly reducing that joy of every 
ghost-machinist, the national pastime, the use of do-it-
yourself.
     Ms Thingadawn, speaking metaphorically, veiled 
her thoughts in some remarkable comparisons, 
scintillating as the night’s lights, and, dazzling the 
audience with the electric brilliance of her likenesses, 
concluded by insisting that every woman should have 
one. And a new day was to come.
     Red-bearded Dentigerous took issue with that. And 
this. And something else again. It was time, he 
perorated, to light the fuse, and fill our gardens with red 
blooms. Like ignitions. It was time, he insisted, to burn 
away the dross, the excess, the animal fat, and re-
charge the landscape with a crimson spring. It was 
time, he declared, for change.
     WPC Grimbold was unavailable for comment, for 
reasons of security and a certain personal mortality.
       The audience applauded with professional timing 
and enthusiasm and Mr Rogerson was pleased to have 
settled Mr Sly on that one.


                                                                                                      QUESTIONABLE TOO

                                                                                                  Despite some curious semi-audible interjections from 
                                                                                               Mr Sly, who was courteously ejected by welcoming 
                                                                                               machines, Roger Rogerson glided unperturbed, his 
                                                                                               teeth, invisible to the listener, gleaming, to the next 
                                                                                               question and questioner. Junius Oppchurch, of Little 
                                                                                               Wanting, had anxieties about Company Artistic Policy 
                                                                                               - were planning committees obtaining the maximum 
                                                                                               returns on indentured labour and was there a direction 
                                                                                               post post-modernism?
                                                                                                   Excited, aroused, Ms Thingadawn displayed a 
                                                                                               sumptuous portfolio of imaginative transformations, all, 
                                                                                               she emphasised, like traditional handicrafts, produced 
                                                                                               remarkably cheaply in the poor quarters of Third World 
                                                                                               ghost machines, so liberating the choosing power of the 
                                                                                               home consumer and aiding less developed foreign 
                                                                                               spectres. She particularly recommended the rainbow 
                                                                                               coloured magic of Latin American ghost realities, 
                                                                                               where the vivid hues of tropical luxuriance were hewed 
                                                                                               to the drive of European machines. Dentigerous 
                                                                                               Alume-allotment begged pardon both to differ and for 
                                                                                               his ignorance here, but, while he was no expert on 
                                                                                               modern art, for him art lay in nature, he did know there 
                                                                                               were limits to resources and surely the stockpiled 
                                                                                               museum pieces in Spare Part warehouses could be 
                                                                                               converted for use in new machines?
                                                                                                  Honarius Honorium saw merit on both sides but was 
                                                                                               quietly insistent on the need for artistic rationalisation 
                                                                                               and narrative economies. The Board, he confided, was 
                                                                                               awaiting a report on Future Artistic Licensing. The 
                                                                                               urbane Roger Rogerson, remarking that he was aware 
                                                                                               of WPC Grimbold’s sensitivities on the subject of 
                                                                                               future developments, excused her the question and 
                                                                                               smiled at the rising of marshalled applause.


                 BEYOND ANY QUESTION

   For our final question, continued the stylish presenter, 
we have Mrs Agnus Deus of Whychmead. Mrs Deus, 
who is (I believe) chair of her local do-it-yourself 
society, has a question about the Ghost Machine in the 
garden. Here he smiled at the red-bearded horticulturist.
   His smile was, for once, misplaced in its faith as, 
floating some seven feet above her seat, the pallid Mrs 
Deus explained that, as a result of a severe fatality with 
a temporal feedback, she had no practical use for her 
intended question and wanted to know instead whether 
or not there was a life after death. This, she added, 
would help her greatly in the matter of her own 
(questionable) existence. A deathly silence chilled the 
hall. Power-consumption on the ghost-grid soared in 
the rush for heat. Hastily, the presenter began to remind 
the audience that the time-honoured Metaphysical 
Policy did not allow such debates when the expunged 
Wendy Grimbold, hissing like an antique record, 
deepened to a further shade of emptiness, and, before 
the multitude, - Personally speaking, no - , blank space 
declared.
   Confusion ran breathless among the crowd, paradox 
turned this way and that. Honarius Honorium, shouting 
above the heads of tumult, told how he (a former 
Company Chairman) had been forced to revise his 
(previous) sceptical materialism when he (torn to 
shreds by The Author) had experienced a (for him) 
religious experience and that we should all await Friar 
Economicus’s forthcoming sermon, when, overcharged 
with latent meanings, the ghost-drive failed and the 
hall, the audience and the panel were submerged by the 
darkness and failure of power.



from The Ghost Machine - David Bircumshaw