Chapter two starts as a welcome diversion from the horrors depicted so vividly in the first.

Here we have Genouille's wet nurse Jeanne Bussie (what a glorious name for a woman of her profession exuding the "scent of milk and cheesy wool") returning the baby to Father Terrier claiming "he has pumped me dry down to the bones" and "I've lost ten pounds and been eating like I was three women".

But it is only after the Priest (another essential Gothic ingredient) offers her substantially more money to continue to nourish the child only to be continually rebuffed is the truth revealed "He is possessed by the devil!" Why? Because "He doesn't smell at all".

The resulting exchange between the two is a delight. When Father Terrier demands that she explain exactly what a baby should smell like the best she could initially come up with is "He smells good". When pressed further she delivers an evocative reply;

"Their feet for instance, they smell like a smooth warm stone - or no, more like curds ... Or like butter, like fresh butter, that's is exactly. They smell like fresh butter. And their bodies smell like ... like a pancake that's been soaked in milk. And their heads, up on top, at the back of the head, where the hair makes a cowlick" ... "there, right there, is where they smell best of all. It smells like caramel, it smells so sweet, so wonderful, Father, you have no idea!"

And indeed he doesn't, what Catholic priest would? Even we fathers of children typically only have a comparatively dull awareness. But ask most mothers and see what you get.

Cont...

Cont...

For me this is classic Houyhnhnm/Yahoo fare. Unless something can be empirically described for Father Terrier it doesn't exist and Ms Bessie is forced to enter that territory in order for him to understand, whereas it would be an undescribed but completely understood universal truth among her profession, and shall I say most mothers.

He is prodded into her world by her smell, the thought of which lingers so much that after several pages of dry theological musings from him we get the following;

"For a monment he allowed himself the fantastic thought that he was the father of the child. He had not become a monk, but rather a normal citizen, an upstanding craftsman perhaps, had taken a wife, a warm wife fragrant with milk and wool, and had produced a son with her and he was here rocking him here on his own knees."

The heady aroma of Ms Bessie had seeped around the intellectual and theological constructions and revealed the life denying nature of the priesthood.

But in many ways the intelligentsia hold the keys to the written word. They might wax lyrically about the 'nectar of the Gods', writing long column inches about the pleasures of the aroma and taste of particular varieties, yet I would wager, nary a drop can hold a candle to the anticipation and taste of an ice cold beer placed in front of a man who has spent a long, hard, hot and dusty day on the tools, or shearing sheep, or ... Damn those commercials work just a little too well. But you get my drift. Or even the pleasures of a weekly McDonalds meal for a struggling family.

It begs the question, if given the choice, would one wish for the life of a Houynynym over a Yahoo? That of Father Terrier over Ms Bessie?

Dear csteele,

What did the young Lexi think of the original Little Red Riding Hood
tale? From memory she was probably relieved when the wolf
got it. As for the Roald Dahl version - that she would have
found funny more than "gothic." Tragedy is fairly easy to
define, and we will all respond in much the same way for
example to King Lear's plight, but humour is much harder to
pin down and far more subjective (like my Billy Crystal joke),
so that what appears initially funny to one may seem silly
or objectionable or totally unfunny to another.

Little wonder then that we are sometimes perplexed or dowright
irriated by children's responses to humour when individual
differences are aggravated by factors like age, or emotional
or intellectual development. The more we examine humour, in fact,
the more it turns out to be a slippery, elusive,
dark-sided and, at close quarters,
not even very attractive or funny. And yet we make a
great mistake if we underestimate it, for though we may be
exalted by our experience of tragedy, we survive and develop as
individuals because of our experience of humour.

Dear Lexi,

Nicely put.

The perplexity can work the other way. My daughter worked so hard to understand humour when she was younger. It was like the code of adults that needed cracking. My sister relates an occasion when my daughter burst into tears at her reaction to a joke her niece had told her.

My nephew had us all in stitches at a family gathering a couple of Christmas' ago with a series of jokes that didn't make any sense since they were a jumble of whatever came into his head. Yet he had the delivery down pat, raising his voice at the punch line etc.

I'm afraid my family's sense of humour is baffling to outsiders and even partners of many years standing are regularly bewildered. What hope do our children have. One of our favourite games is a fast paced variety of word association that requires the acceptance of total changes in direction. All answers are to be given within three seconds and inventiveness is highly regarded. To top it off repetition of any word offered through the entire session is forbidden.

This thus afflicted mind found more to tickle my fancy in the name Billy Crystal than the rest of your excellent joke. This puts me in the UOG bracket I know but the thought of the swagman with a set of crystal glasses or the Queen drinking tea from a billy, or even a straight out crystal billy my nudged my funny bone. Total absurdity I know.

I do think tragedy and humour are cut from the same cloth and I don't think it is an accident Jewish people produce some of the most masterful comedians going. Billy Crystal is one of them.

Dear csteele,

I'm impressed - and your family sounds awesome.

I also thought that laughter is a reflex. Tickle children under
their feet and they will start to laugh. Shine a light on their
eyes and they will automatically blink. The difference between
the two responses is that laughter, as Koestler points out in
"The Act of Creation, is a "luxury reflex," one that appears to
have no fuction except to get rid of
"excitations which have become redundant,
which can not be consummated in any purposeful manner."
That is why people will occasionally break into totally
inappropriate laughter during a film or play -
it is a way of releasing and dispersing tension.
Similarly, if we read alound,
"In the dark, dark forest there was a dark, dark house ..."
tension builds up and up until we reach the climax ... "and in
that dark, dark box there was a ...GHOST," and pent-up
apprehension and shock escape in laughter.

We're invariably surprised into laughter, surprised because we
have been logically led to expect one conclusion and receive
instead another, that belongs to a different train of logic.

I'm so pleased that you explained about Billy Crystal. And of
course I totally agree with you about him and Jewish comedians
in general. Who was it who said, "Laugh and the world laughs
with you, cry and they pay to watch." ;-)

Dear Lexi,

The word association game is simple and a lot of fun. Usually played as last man standing. It can be hilarious.

It is surprising how much kids get into it. For adults a shot glass filled with a suitable alcoholic fluid in the middle of the table can spice things up nicely.

Remember it is all done on the phonetics.

A typical 60 seconds might go something like this.

Fish, chip, computer, key, dock, lamb, escape, great, carrot, vomit, projectile, cannon, bible, (now my family might put in 'merry-go-round' here as it is something you would be giddy-on and most would pick up on it, but not if kids or the uninitiated were playing), genesis, Cadbury, cow, pat, Rick, hay etc etc.

Words must only relate to the one that immediately preceded it so chocolate after cow would be inadmissible and result in disqualification. Rounds longer than about 5 minutes go to 2 second intervals. The time keeper moves his hand up and down each second extending a finger each time. Disputes are settled by the majority.

If we are all on the ball it can get a lot more complex than the example above since the best way to win is to throw the next person off by an inspired tangent.

Puns are given reverence well past their due. Did you remember the name of the original writer of "The Killer Joke" I linked to earlier in the thread? It was Mr Ernest Scribbler. Classic.

They'd have found my post on the Hilter salute a bit more amusing than others did, which should reveal how strange we are, but then again we don't have as much time for comedy that belittles, even if the joke teller is the object of the ridicule.

That is probably our only saving grace.