Breakfast with Mycroft
FEATHERED FRIEND FOUND TARRED
Swindon's mysterious seabird asphalt-smotherer has struck again, the victim this time a stormy petrel found in an alleyway off Commercial Road. The unnamed bird was discovered yesterday covered in a thick glutinous coating that forensic scientists later confirmed as crude oil. This is the seventh such attack in less than a week and Swindon police are beginning to take notice. 'This has been the seventh attack in less than a week,' declared a Swindon policeman this morning, 'and we are beginning to take notice.' The inexplicable seabird-tarrer has so far not been seen but an expert from the NSPB told the police yesterday that the suspect would probably have a displacement of 280,000 tons, be covered in rust and floundering on a nearby rock, Despite numerous searches by police in the area, a suspect of this description has not yet been found.
Article in the Swindon Daily Eyestrain, 18 July 1988
It was the following morning. I was sitting at the kitchen table staring at my ring finger and the complete absence of a wedding band. Mum walked in wrapped in a dressing gown and with her hair in curlers, fed DH82, let Alan out of the broom cupboard where we had to keep him these days and pushed the delinquent dodo outside with a mop. He made an angry plinking noise, then attacked the boot-scraper.
'What's wrong, sweetheart?'
'It's Landen.'
'Who?'
'My husband. He was reactualised last night but only for about two hours.'
'My poor darling! That must be very awkward.'
'Awkward? Extremely. I climbed naked into bed with Mr and Mrs Parke-Laine.'
My mother went ashen and dropped a saucer.
'Did they recognise you?'
'I don't think so.'
'Thank the GSD for that!' she gasped, greatly relieved. Being embarrassed in public was something she cared to avoid more than anything else, and having a daughter climbing into bed with patrons of the Swindon Toast League was probably the biggest faux pas she could think of.
'Good morning, pet,' said Mycroft, shuffling into the kitchen and sitting down at the breakfast table. He was my extraordinarily brilliant inventor uncle, and apparently had just returned from the 1988 Mad Scientists Conference, or MadCon '88 as it was known.
'Uncle,' I said, probably with less enthusiasm than I should have mustered, 'how good to see you again!'
'And you, my dear,' he said kindly. 'Back for good?'
'I'm not sure,' I replied, thinking about Landen. 'Aunt Polly well?'
'In the very best of health. We've been to MadCon – I was given a lifetime achievement award for something but for the life of me I can't think what, or why.'
It was a typically Mycroft statement. Despite his undoubted brilliance, he never thought he was doing anything particularly clever or useful – he just liked to tinker with ideas. It was his Prose Portal invention which had got me inside books in the first place. He had set up home in the Sherlock Holmes canon to escape Goliath but had remained stuck there until I rescued him about a year ago.
'Did Goliath ever bother you again?' I asked. 'After you came back, I mean?'
'They tried,' he replied softly, 'but they didn't get anything from me.'
'You wouldn't tell them anything?'
'No. It was better than that. I couldn't. You see, I can't remember a single thing about any of the inventions they wanted me to talk about.'
'How is that possible?'
'Well,' replied Mycroft, taking a sip of tea, 'I'm not sure, but logically speaking I must have invented a memory erasure device or something and used it selectively on myself and Polly – what we call the Big Blank. It's the only possible explanation.'
'So you can't remember how the Prose Portal actually works?'
'The
what?'