Free Rancid Pansies by James Hamilton-Paterson

liberating. Overnight it made her the darling of the sort of people who have darlings, starting with herself. The only thing one can’t blame her for is writing under a pen name, since my agentFrankie has assured me the name on her passport is Wendy Marsupial. I now dread to imagine what the attraction is between Marta and this ‘doyenne of transgressive literature’ ( London Review of Books ).
    This news that Marta is writing an opera casts an immediate pall of doubt over my own nascent plans. Blast her! Why should her project have the least influence over mine? Especially as I assume any libretto by Sue Donimus will involve distasteful and even fashionably gross scenes onstage, whereas my own ideas are jelling fertilely around the timeless dramatic themes of love, heroism and grief. Yet at Marta’s casual announcement I feel enthusiasm for my own grand project beginning to wilt. Does this mean I have unconsciously been hoping that Marta might write the music to mine? Might I actually have wanted to lay myself open to an artistic partnership with this increasingly successful musical frump?
    But now the frump breaks into my uneasy speculations with news from Le Roccie. It seems the Italian authorities are viewing the remains of my poor house – which they laughably claim they are guarding from looters – as a potential source of pollution. They cite cooking gas cylinders that will corrode, oil and fuel leaking from my half-buried Toyota Ass Vein and a ruptured septic tank as endangering the environment and the town’s artesian water supplies. Also, the Corpo Forestale dello Stato are considering taking out an action against me for fly-tipping, would you believe, on the grounds that my protracted absence indicates ‘the intention permanently to abandon, in a protected area of the rural patrimony, unsorted debris and refuse contrary to environmental statutes currently in force’. Marta is reading this from a note she took to make sure I get the full majesty of the phraseology. I particularly love ‘unsorted’. The implication that I might be prosecuted less rigorously had I taken the trouble to separate the ruins of my house into categories as for the correct rubbish bins – paper, glass, iron, non-ferrous metals, organic waste and the rest of it – is the final ludicrous straw, given Italy’s generally cavalier way with rubbish.
    And here’s another strange thing. After my initial relief at being freed from the burdens of home ownership and personal possessions, these very things start to make a case for themselves at the back of my mind, like an exasperating lone councilman who at the last moment makes the trenchant objection that stops a motion going through on the nod. My recent experiences as a guest at Crendlesham Hall are no doubt contributing to the suddenly alluring prospect of once again having a space of my own
to
m
yself : one in which county deadbeats and jokesters in fancy dress don’t come to dinner, disgrace themselves, and lead to my being interrogated by policemen as though I were Dr Crippen or Graham Young. And for the first time since the awful night of my fiftieth birthday party, I actively begin to miss certain items buried beneath the collapsed hardcore littering a far-off mountainside. One such item is my independence.
    In short, it’s back to Italy for Gerald Samper just as soon as I can book a flight.

Adrian 2
    email from Dr Adrian Jestico ([email protected])
to Dr Penny Barbisant ([email protected])
    It sounds to me as if your data are fine. The chromosome set changes correspond nicely to the reported pollutant bioaccumulation . Good work. I agree the phosphorus readings are odd. You say they’ve eliminated industrial sources/outfall within range of the site. But have you considered a wreck? It’s going back a bit, but I remember hearing that quite a tonnage of US merchant shipping was sunk off the New England coast by German U-boats in WW2 and I bet it wasn’t all accurately