Dry as a Cuckoo

The Curious Incident of the Clot in the Deerstalker

This week, I read the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Priory School”, which I must have read dozens of times, but somehow, I’d never noticed this before. Holmes and Watson are on a boggy moor. They’ve found a bicycle track they want to follow. See if anything strikes you about what happens next.

“Astounding, Holmes! Of course! Because the bicycle was heading away from the school, the front wheel preceded the back wheel! First class!”

“Elementary.”

“Whereas if the bicycle had been heading towards the school, the back wheel would have come first!”

“Precisely, my dear- what? No! No, not at all.”

“But I thought you said- “

“I said nothing of the kind. Naturally in either case the front wheel would come first. That is what ‘front’ means.”

“Oh. And the back wheel would come after?”

“Yes!”

“And therefore… would overlap the track of the front wheel? In either case?”

“… … …yes.”

“Oh. Then… forgive my dull-wittedness, my dear fellow, but then how did you deduce the direction of travel? …Holmes? Where are you going? I only want you to explain it to me! Holmes, come back! Holmes!”

Just as I thought! Observe, Watson, the rear wheel is quite distinctly anterior to the front wheel! I am a very good detective.”

News and Ads

1. Book / Puzzle / Thing!

The main news is that my hard-to-categorise puzzle / murder mystery / box of postcards The Researcher’s First Murder is now available to buy!

Not quite as available as I would like, as unexplained shipping difficulties (at least, they haven’t been explained to me) mean that delivery of some of the pre-ordered copies was delayed. I’ve very sorry if that happened to you - I’m told they should all have arrived by now. If yours hasn’t, please contact support@unbound.com .

Otherwise, it is available from Amazon, the chains Daunt, Blackwells, Waterstones and Forbidden Planet; direct from the publisher and - if I may make a serving suggestion - from your local independent bookshop. If they don’t have it, and a pleasing number of them do, they’ll order it for you.

Anyway, wherever you get it from - supposing, of course, that you do - I hope you find it enjoyable and infuriating, in unequal measure.

2. Event in London tomorrow!

Of course another way to get it, should you be free and in the area, is to come along to the talk, Q and A, and book signing I’m doing at Foyles Charing Cross Road tomorrow (Thursday 5th September), where you can not only buy it, but hear me bang on about it for an hour beforehand, and afterwards watch as I deface it before your very eyes! I’m not a born salesman.

3. Show in Cambridge in October!

But why must everything always be in London, you may ask. Well, everything must not, I may reply. For instance, I’ll be doing my live two-person sketch show, John Finnemore Among Other, at the Cambridge Junction on 22nd October. As with the last time I did it, in Ludlow, I will be joined by one of the cast of Souvenir Programme. The best one. Frankly, the only good one. You know which one I mean. (Though curiously, it won’t be the same best one who did Ludlow…)

Teaching the Swiss to ski.

Now, I never expected to be the first person to have noticed the Holmes bicycle nonsense, and a good thing too, because I’m really, really not. A quick search will show you that people have been mocking this steadily for the past 120 years. And they started early: this is from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s autobiography “Memories and Adventures”:

There are some questions concerned with particular stories which turn up periodically from every quarter of the globe. In "The Adventure of the Priory School" Holmes remarks in his offhand way that by looking at a bicycle track on a damp moor one can say which way it was heading. I had so many remonstrances upon this point, varying from pity to anger, that I took out my bicycle and tried. I had imagined that the observations of the way in which the track of the hind wheel overlaid the track of the front one when the machine was not running dead straight would show the direction. I found that my correspondents were right and I was wrong, for this would be the same whichever way the cycle was moving.

No shit, Sherlock. Anyway, while looking that up, I noticed this remarkable claim in the preface:

I have tried my hand at very many sports, including boxing, cricket, billiards, motoring, football, aeronautics and skiing, having been the first to introduce the latter for long journeys into Switzerland.

…I beg your pardon, Sir Arthur? You… you taught the Swiss to ski?

I read that, and imagined I’d have all sorts of fun pointing out that he didn't. But the thing is, when you look into it… it turns out he sort of did. I mean, not all by himself, and not literally the first, but authorities such as the International Skiing History Association do seem to agree that, to my astonishment, skiing was only introduced to Switzerland towards the end of the nineteenth century, by upper-class British tourists who had learnt it in Norway. Such as this cheery pair:

Arthur and Louisa Conan Doyle, having the last laugh.

Oh, and he also got an innocent man acquitted of murder, and bowled out W.G. Grace in first class cricket. It’s just a shame about those fairies.

Performance Notations from piano scores by Eric Satie

Assez lent, si vous le voulez bien

Rather slow, if it's alright with you.

Plein de subtilité, si vous m'en croyez

Very subtle, if you believe me.

Apparent

Show off

Sec comme un coucou

Dry as a cuckoo

Peu saignant

Slightly bloody

Les danseurs reçoivent chacun un coup de sabre qui leur fend la tête

Each of the dancers is hit with a sabre which splits his head open.

Sketch Book