The Pot Boy Meditates on the Tea Cosy

Nobody has asked me for a smidge of advice in months—aside from the Alabamian Maid, who asked me for hat advice. Mine was sterling, as she would attest. This lack of interest from the lovelorn, the irate, and the generally upset is rather heartbreaking to a Pot Boy and would-be Palace Advice Columnist. So I shall offer some advice, gratis: for first-rate mental health, be sure to frequently slap a tea cosy on your head.

Wearing a tea cosy on the head is a harmless, pleasant little activity. I am surprised to find how many of my acquaintance have sported a tea cosy. It lends most a sort of Comic Bishop appearance. A scullery maid with the cosy set at a rakish angle is irresistible. Small children like to don a cosy, grab a poker, and strike a martial attitude.

There’s a Billy Connolly quote that deserves to be a pop-up, I see it so often: “Never trust a man who, when left alone with a tea cosy, doesn’t try it on.” Although a comedian, he must have some wisdom, because I find that there’s truth in that line. Is it his, or did he pilfer it from some statesman or oracle, I wonder?

It occurs to me that if Attorney Clendon—remember him?—had worn a tea cosy on his head while reading that Bilge Karasu novel, Night, he might not have vanished into the shadows. Perhaps he will, feeling about in the dark, find his fingers closing on a cosy. Perhaps it will serve as a sort of domestic life preserver and buoy him up.

Many claim that the cosy that is used as an occasional, spur-of-the-moment garment must be one of those hand-knitted or crocheted cosies that look like woollen hats. This is entirely false. The proper tea cosy attire is the traditional ‘dome’ cosy.

On my head is a grand dome cosy in orange, with blue and red polkadots. The interior is stained and ringed, and looks rather like cloth once stuffed in a mummy’s cranial cavity. In it I am grand and playful, ancient and boyish, wise and silly, an answerer of questions too deep for my understanding.

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Update: How satisfying to immediately get a question about proper attire, and another on peahens! I look forward to more questions, and when I have a sufficiency, I shall scrub the pots in great meditative circles and then reply.

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Paean to The Long Grass Books, no. 3: Bilge Karasu's Night

A note found on the floor of the chamber belonging to Attorney Clendon. The good man is missing, and much nameless havoc is feared.

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Night slowly comes on. Descends. Already it has begun filling the hollows. Once these are full and it empties onto the plain, everything will turn gray. For a while no light will go on, in the hollows or out beyond. The glow on the hills will seem for a time to suffice; then the hills too will sink into darkness.

Some weeks ago I read a very interesting book by Bilge Karasu, translated by Guneli Gun. I took many careful, tedious notes, as I was trained to do. Unlike my fellows in the comment trade, I was not confused by the separate characters, nor by the way they began to blur and dance and re-configure. I noted with scrupulous attention the place where a second character began to be identified by the letter N. I kept the triple strand of character separated, I followed each to his lair through a labyrinth with monsters. I suffered trial, love, intricate wanderings, violence, metamorphosis, paradox, and reversals. I came face to face—or face to faces—with the Author. The book with its twists and turns stood bared to light in my mind, and I was satisfied with my understanding.

The book seemed to me a worthwhile journey, and though it lacked—because of its surreal, intellectual windings—a certain heart, I found it satisfying. Perhaps, you may say, it is because I am myself a compendium of dry dust from law books, crumbling writs, and shadows of events that do not belong to me. In some moods, I find myself so.

Yesterday evening something strange happened.

I picked up the book; it held a bookmark made from a folded shadow. When I looked closer, I saw that gloom had gathered into letters, and it seemed to me that it was a warrant for my arrest. When I looked again, the letters were gone, and the events of the book had fallen into darkness.

At 2:00 a.m., I woke to see three people standing around my nightstand. They were spooning more darkness into the pages with tarnished silver spoons. The substance flowed like honey into an extractor, spilling down the legs of the nightstand and onto the valuable Turkish carpet on the floor. I cried out in surprise and felt a sudden jabbing pain in my arm, as though a knife blade had swept its length. The three faces lifted only slowly and then fused into a single face: I recognized the suffering, intelligent face of the late Bilge Karasu in a flash of light. Then a cloud swept over the moon, and all was lost in shadow.

I write this by a thin starlight. The darkness has almost reached the steps, and I hear the distant tread of a party of soldiers . . .

--Athanasius Clendon

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