Man’s world
Joe Bennett gets boxed in (or should that be bracketed in?) by fan mail.
Attentive and retentive readers (which is all of you, of course) (how’s that for a sycophantic opening and, while we’re at it, how’s that for an early double (no, treble!) bracket?) will recall that some months ago when we were beset with winter (snow drifts as deep as a man is tall, birds falling frozen from the sky, the sun at noon peeping over the horizon for half a watery hour etc) I made a nesting box.
(And yes, before you bother to write in, it was a nesting box for birds. I am hardly likely to make one for bears or lizards, am I (though now that I’ve mentioned it a nesting box for bears in Lyttelton would be a curiosity, something for us to discuss on the long winter nights when the snow drifts are as deep as a man is tall and when we dare not step outside for fear of the hail of frozen birds coming down like grape shot (whatever grape shot might be, though I am confident that its origin is not – disappointingly in the context of this magazine – viticultural.))?)
Anyway, since I wrote about that nesting box (and no, I am not going to apologise for the mass of brackets. Readers of this prestigious magazine are (as already established) both attentive and retentive, so a string of brackets serves only to enliven things, acting on the mind as yoga does on the musculature, stretching it, testing it and rendering it rubbery and by doing so helping to fend off the spectre of fell Dr Alzheimer and his wicked germs) I have been besieged by queries (and don’t we all enjoy a bit of that?). The queries have differed in form but not in nature.
“Joe,” went a typical query, “I am second to none in my admiration for your ability to introduce brackets into an opening sentence (Is there a record, by the way, for the earliest ever bracket? Can we look forward to a column of yours that actually starts with a bracket?) but your column about making a nesting box (for birds) left me with a burning query. I waited to put my burning query till the snow that was as deep as a man is tall (and a man around here is a lot taller than in Lyttelton) had melted and the frozen birds had ceased to clatter on the roof. And then I waited till the spring had caused the land to burst from the brackets of dormancy (I thought that metaphor might tickle you (though in a non-threatening way, naturally)). I even waited until the main clause of summer has peaked at its verb and had begun its decline towards the inevitability of autumn (so many bulbous pears, so many cleft and downy peaches tumbling from the laden branches and smacking the land with such a thud that my dog has withdrawn to the garage with fruit-induced shellshock.). But now the time has come and the burning query shall be (as all queries, burning or otherwise, eventually are) put. Did birds nest in your nesting box? Regards Anne At tent iv en retentive reader .” “Dear Anne,” I replied, “thank you for both your questions. No, no birds nested in my nesting box. As for your introductory bracket query, I consulted with experts in the field (though we came indoors when it was raining) and we agreed that in order for a column to begin with a bracket it would be necessary for the previous month’s column to end mid-”