'Alice in Wonderland'

“If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.”

Alice.

“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). “Now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!” (for when she looked down at her feet they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off). “Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I’m sure I shan’t be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you: you must manage the best way you can—but I must be kind to them,” thought Alice, “or perhaps they won’t walk the way I want to go! Let me see. I’ll give them a new pair of boots every Christmas.”

And she went on planning to herself how she would manage it. “They must go by the carrier,” she thought; and how funny it’ll seem, sending presents to one’s own feet! And how odd the directions will look!

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), published on 4 July 1865.

Generally referred to as a classic of literature, Lewis Carroll has been held up as giant among authors for his brilliant stories.

Quite rightly so, too, of course. His tales entertain as much now as ever they did when they were originally published. There is no doubt that you will have enjoyed reading these quotes from his ‘Alice in Wonderland’ story as much as I did. There is, equally, little doubt that your children and grandchildren will enjoy them.

They are still making films of those stories using special effects that are, at this time superlative. Perhaps in the light of future developments they will look less entrancing but they will satisfy us for now.

So why did I open this ‘Blog’ with these illustrious words?

Because his English is dire. Read through them and see how many grammatical errors you can find. I count nine and those without the deliberate error of the ‘made-up’ words at the start.

A short while ago I listed some things that, we are told, writers should never do. Kurt Vonnegut said that semi-colons are dreadful things and it is generally accepted that you should never start a sentence with ‘and’.

Lewis Carroll gets away with it. Why?

Because, for all his failings as a writer of English, he was a magnificent storyteller. He uses words as tools to paint verbal pictures in our heads. More importantly, he describes things so that children will ‘see’ them in their mind’s eyes.

Naturally, language develops. The way things were written down in 1865 are not the way things are written now. I might refer you to the indomitable, but racist, Rudyard Kipling in this respect; magnificent stories written in the style of his period.

This brings you to my second point.

This is the ‘curiouser and curiouser’ part. It is a little fragment of what goes on in a writer’s head

Some years ago—possibly around ten of them, I had a story in my head that refused to go away. It was a stupid story involving the insular and xenophobic relations that the average British citizen has with their Continental neighbours.

Ultimately the only way that I could exorcise this string of words from my head was to write them down.

A few days at the computer feverishly pounding at the keys saw the story completed.

It was, in my view, rubbish. It was, in my view, just a ‘phantasmagorical’ plethora of gibber that was now, with any luck, removed from my head.

Wife saw it. Because I am computer illiterate my wife is required to come and extricate me from any problems that I get myself into with this electronic enemy.

Wife read the story and laughed.

“This is wonderful,” quoth she.

“Is ******g ***t,” I quoth back.

She sent it off. It is now on ‘Amazon’ in an unedited, unproofed state and is one of the more popular stories in the collection.

This is how ‘The Hags of Teeb’ came about.

There is nothing stranger than people.

“Curiouser and curiouser.”