The latter may be optional.

Deanna Brown Thomas and Yamma Brown Lumar claim they coauthored some of Browns most famous works when they were aged three and six. Thomas and Lumar are Brown’s daughters.

Although I’m not familiar with the details of the case, circumstantial evidence suggests that the women’s argument has some merit. When I was younger, I disliked Brown’s music because it was so simple and repetitive. Now that I’m older, I like Brown’s music because it’s so simple and repetitive, the kind of music a three-year old or a six-year old might compose.

I regularly steal the work of young children and claim it as my own with impunity. But then I’m not famous, nor do I have children who might remember their early compositions. That’s why I feel just a little bit sorry for James Brown, on principle. If you can’t steal from your own children, why create them in the first place?

When I got to the pub, I told Trevor about my sighting and asked him whether Alert State Bikini Black Special was a good thing or a bad thing.

“You idiot!” Trevor exclaimed. “That’s a live artillery range!”

“Didn’t look very live to me,” I replied. “Nothing there but empty buildings and cows.”

“The cows are the targets,” Trevor said. “Where do you think the paras get their shredded beef from?”

I never did find out what Alert State Bikini Black Special meant.

(Pause for stifled yawn.)

I thought the building was very similar to other structures designed to serve the art and culture industry. I saw an overpriced hip coffee shop, an overpriced chic cafe, an overpriced trendy restaurant, and an underlit gift shop. In addition, the venue also showed lots of work by a single artist who would appear to have enjoyed lots of methamphetamine back in the hippy days. Tens of thousands of words in cramped, tiny handwriting might possibly have worked in a large book, but I didn’t find that the pages and pages and pages and pages of almost unreadable notes provided a rewarding gallery experience.

As I was leaving, I happened to run into one of the institution’s directors. He went on at great length about how wonderful the new seventy-million dollar building was. (That, of course, is his job description.) He was particularly proud of what he described as “the multidimensional integrated visitor experience.”

I was more than a little skeptical, since all I’d seen was a typical exhibit of two-dimensional works on walls, three-dimensional objects on floors, and a few computer monitors.

“I think I may have missed the integrated multidimensional stuff,” I admitted. “What did it look like?”

“Did you see the video screens in the cafe and coffee shop?” the administrator asked.

“No,” I replied. “High prices ruin my appetite.”

“Too bad,” he said. “They’re doing a brilliant job promoting the gift shop merchandising program. And we pipe the kitchen smells into the gift shop to drive the customer base to the other profit centers. That’s really what the multidimensional integrated visitor experience is all about, isn’t it?”

I was in no position to argue.

And then David left the true love of his life and their small child and ran off with the great love of his life. Soon after that, he was smote—no other word will do—with a great tragedy. But that’s another story.

We agreed that it’s only a matter of time until David meets the absolute
love of his life and abandons the great love of his life. And so on.

Sooty suggested that David may have discovered the hierarchy of loves: real, true, great, absolute, penultimate, overwhelming, and so on. We discussed Sooty’s proposition for a while, and finally arrived at a much simpler explanation for David’s behavior.

David is a cad and a bounder.

The Above Stone is the Door Lintel of the House where the First Lord Armstrong was born, and indicates the site occupied by the House.
1904