unforum

[myf]

A better trip today - went to High Wycombe, and found a copy of Wind In The Willows. Photos are in the Flickr group. If you've got photos of any of the other books, and have put them on Flickr, please add them to the group (mine are also on the map so it's easy to see what was where).

This copy was a thick hardback (the original one we found was a thinner paperback version). The text on the back appeared to be the same as on the others. The passage inside refers to Tristram Shandy:

"A mixture of beer and lemonade
This gent enriches my tale:
His narrative styles
And wordsmithing wiles
Mean my Fffiasco cannot fffail."

There was a second page with text on, in four different paragraphs:

"...always straying off and getting lost, and turning up again; he's so adventurous. But no harm ever happens to him..."

"...hasn't learned to swim very well yet, and I can see he's thinking of the weir. There's a lot of water coming down still, considering the time of the year, and the place always had a fascination for the child..."

"...wakes to find itself alone and laid in a strange place, and searches corners and cupboards, and runs from room to room, despair growing silently in its heart..."

"...fully up by now, and hot on them, birds sang lustily and without restraint, and flowers smiled and nodded from either bank, but somehow...with less of richness and blaze of colour than they seemed to remember seeing quite recently somewhere..."

All four passages are indeed from Wind In The Willows.

[Canzonett]

Great work! But again: What are we supposed to deduce from this? (I am probably not supposed to deduce anything, not being a UK-resident etc etc)

I want more input.
Do you think the silence in June's and Amy's weblogs might indicate that something is amiss?

[Etta]

myf- Congrats on your find. Which section was it shelved under??

June emailed me yesterday evening (no new information), so she's still out there somewhere. Or at least she was yesterday.

I agree that there must be something we're supposed to learn from these books. Why else would we be looking for them? But I don't know what.

Off to Whitby in the morning...

[Jaybird]

I emailed Amy about finding Gullivers a few days ago, and no reply yet. Worrying...

[myf]

Ooops, I thought I'd posted where it was, but obviously not. It was on a shelf labelled "Fairy Tales and Classics" in the kids section.

I'm going to email Amy with my recent progress, so hopefully someone will hear something soon.

[Sarah B]

Right, anyone who has asked to be added to the spreadsheet should now have been done so. Anyone who would still like to be added, send me a pm.

I do have pictures of Alice in Cheltenham, but haven't managed to upload them yet. As soon as I do I'll get them on the flickr group.

I've heard no more from June recently. Hmm. Hope she's ok!

[Canzonett]

The only new trace has been left by our mysterious Niebla on the Fforde Fforum yesterday:

[Out and About JC]

Idle Hour, Leeds - Two Books Found!

[Canzonett]

Slavetrader, that Ffforde ...

Hm, I guess something fishy is going on with Amy's blog. The date of the last entry is given as "Saturday, 7 July 2007" - which corresponds to the title of the last entry in June's blog ("7th July 2007") but seems quite impossible from a chronological point of view.

PS
How can anyone write such relatively good verses and such rotten prose? An indication that fffake Ffforde originally belongs in poetry?

[Out and About]

[Sarah B]

More emphasis on page 49! How odd. Just a thought; is it page 49 which these verses are appearing on in the books? It's a bit far for me to go back to Cheltenham to check!

And is it just me, or does Niebla's writing seem to be getting less coherent as time goes by?

As to the blogs, June's blog is written on the 2nd, about the 7th. So I don't see a problem there. What does interest me is the talk of Peter and Wendy. Sound familiar to Peter Pan, anyone? Also, June is feeling a little fuzzy... she's not a book character too, is she? Who is being slowly deleted?

I have no ideas who Fforde really is, unless I'm supposed to take the Peter and Wendy thing and deduce that he is, in fact, Captain Hook.

In the Ffordian universe, there are people who can make you forget who they were, mnemomorphs (I can't spell it, lol) like Aornis Hades. Perhaps this is another of the Hades family who is doing this?

[echidna]

[Canzonett]

[Etta]

The Man Who Was Thursday Found!

[Jaybird]

I agree with the aboves, Ffforde is getting more and more incomprehensible, like the longer he's away from the book the less sane he becomes.

Also, yikes, he's been in Verbal contact with June, and we've been warned about that by Havvy, no?