DOG HELP ME

I’ve never much taken to fish on any tangential meaning- you’d be a fool not to understand why I am not a fan of cunnilingus, though the word itself always seems to exert an element of moist charm or alarm. I like words that insinuate themselves into the psyche and take a while to dissipate like a bad smell. One of my longest standing female friends has this favourite phrase- house-guests like fish go off after three days. An instinctive disser of history I have always argued that our distant yesterdays could be brought to life if we finally got to grip with how our revered yesterdays actually stank. We shy away from this because we suspect correctly that they were rank. It becomes part of the complex tapestry of lies that we teach to our unsuspecting offspring. King Henry VIII smelled putrid, far higher than a pole-cat, that is a fact. However, it is all relative, because so did everyone else- except that person holding one of the highest offices in the land at the time ‘The King’s Arse Wiper’. Proud he may have been, rich even, but he would have reeked of the monarch’s shit.

One of my favourite books which, as usual, was made into a less than satisfactory film is the olfactoraly magnificent ‘Perfume’ by Patrick Susskind. The hero is born in a fish market, grows to fillet fish for a living but eventually becomes the finest perfumer in the whole of France- albeit one with a murderous obsession. Read it. It will educate your nose and more besides.

I recall some televisual feast based on the life of the playwright Marlowe- an alleged spy and predatory homosexual, a contemporary of Shakespeare. There was a scene where he had taken lodgings at an inn. It was usual to share rooms with strangers. He tries his luck and as luck would have it... It was screened after 10pm. I couldn’t help thinking then- as he was obviously giving head to the young man, what the ambient odour might have been. Was it predominantly parmesan or smoked kipper? This was not me being in any way perverse. This was me aching to get inside history- genital warts and all.

I know the court of wife-killing Henry was frightfully cold. Dutch master paintings of the period show the Thames frozen over and supporting fayres and red hot braziers roasting chestnuts. Indeed one Christmas the whole of his court left Hampton court on horseback and in horse-drawn carriages to return to London along the frozen river. This was the age of the cod-piece. I’d always pondered why the word cod. It was a decorative cricketer’s box that exaggerated the size of one’s very smelly cock. It was big enough to contain a pomander- a spiced dried orange spiked with cloves. Festive. Yum. Did the fashion come about one wonders because the extreme cold reduced the size of men’s flaccid dicks to the size of the smallest button mushroom- a not very approachable button mushroom.

My after-thought is this- all you wishful, wistful time travellers beware.