Bardell's Gremlins

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 539, 21 October 1949, Page 8

Bardell's Gremlins

Written for "The Listener" \

by

F. L.

COMBS

ARDELL, who is not my friend but a privileged bore who infests my leisure hours, is convinced that he has a personal gremlin. The last time he dropped in, the ostensible reason was to borrow a stamp. I hunted up one that

Nad been thriltily removed from an unsent letter (containing a birthday cheque to a female cousin). It was gum-

less and there was no gum in the gum bottle. We tried some aged paste and it spread a‘dark stain through to the face of the stamp. Bardell raising his hands to heaven said this was the last straw. He had started out to stamp his letter with two stamps in-hand. One had vanished heaven knew where. He, Bardell, was firmly convinced that it’ had been spirited away. The other he had = left lying on the table while he went to answer the ‘phone. When he returned his youngest, Rupert, had been vainly attempting to affix the stamp and had licked the gum off, Somewhat impatiently Bardell pounced on the stamp and half tore it in two. By the time that, by the aid of.gum, he got the stathp attached to the envelope it was so battle-scarred that it looked like an attempt to defraud the post office. After searching in vain | for the other stamp he had come on to me. I hunted round and found in my wife’s purse a penny stamp and two halfpennies, all rather the worse for the dumb forgetfulmess that haunts the corners of purses, and we fixed up a reasonably transmissible letter. Bardell thanked me profusely and, although I did find him a trial, I genuinely sympathised with him, for I know what a harassing business it is to get a friendly letter despatched in most homes. We sat by the gas fire and talked of sundry matters. His foot getting over hot, he took off his left boot to ease a corn and there adhering firm and fast to the sole was the missing stamp! All Bardell could do was ‘to register comic despair. Before leaving he gave me the letter to post, as I daily pass the G,.P.O. on my way to work. Two days later he met me in the Royal after office hours for a couple. When we loosened up he started to joke dbout the stamp incident, and ended by saying, "But after all we got the confounded letter away, didn’t we?" I, too, had been joking, but in a split second I registered intense inward discomfort, For I remembered that in my breast pocket as he joked so amicably was Bardell’s still unposted letter. I did . not mention the fact as there are limits to what a gremlin-dogged man can bear. UT Bardell’s case seemed worth investigating, and I determined to try ie counterpart of psycho-analytic

methods. ‘This was easy as he is even less reluctant than most human beings to talk about himself. I induced Bardell to lie down on the couch in his front room, placed a bottle of tonic on a small table between us and got him to agree to level pegging. Then I locked the door. Such an action in my

house causes intense suspicion, a suspicion which I have’ never yet succeeded in dissipating, Then I started in

on Bardell, trying to keep the facts in chronological order, viz. Boyhood (1) His family had had many removals. In every new home they went to there was a clothes line over the only spot convenient for cutting stove wood. In the end he had become case-hardened to the way in which the axes, catching on these lines, had recoiled on his forehead. He attributed a permanent bump over the right temple to these gremlinlocated lines. > (2) Always when he was in urgent need of getting to school on time (as, for instance, after three "lates" running) his bootlace had broken or been purloined by a brother in a-,similar predicament, (3) His school cap became notorious for planting itself-this in days when no boy however otherwise disreputable would dream of flouting the decencies by not wearing a cap. (4) There was always an unduly large number of sticks with knots in them in the cord-wood delivered over the back fence-gremlin matai, surely. (5) He had failed at three inspections through getting a hard arithmetic card when his next neighbours were dealt easy ones. Even today he registers resentment at the phrase "To be kept clean and-re-turned to the- inspector," or anything of the kind on paste-board of any kind. BUT enough of these juvenilia which, I admit, to those who have doubts about gremlins will read like trivia. When we went on to the misfortunes of his youth, Bardell spoke first of the trouble he had had with neckwear which always delayed him when, dressed in something like taste, he had a date to keep. "If it wasn’t the tie," he said, "it was the confounded back stud. I have at times, had to go out with a paper clip rasping the back of my neck-only to find three back studs in the cuffs of my pants next morning. Try to tell me that isn’t gremlins." But his worst misfortune was to fall in love with an identical twin, a beautiful but giddy young creature’ whose sister, of course, was exactly the same. Being in the coquettish stage they thought it sport to take turn and turn (continued on next page)

about with him and this foolishness resulted in his going to the altar with the wrong one. ‘How so?" I asked him. His answer as recorded in my notes is "They became confused, too." The ordeals of youth, though much joked about, are often no joking matter. Gremlins, if there are such beings, can intensify them. Once in church Bardell had sat on a spot, the only one, where a hot summer sun had shone on a patch of newly varnished seat. To his horror he found that he could not stand with the rest of the congregation when’ enjoined by the rubric to do so. The verger, at first irate, but afterwards co-operative, had released him after service, but his inexplicably irreverent conduct did him much harm in the hamlet where he then lived. On another occasion he had joined in a water picnic, and undertaken in a light pleasure boat the transport of two women, both of them buxom. The tide was going out and the reach of the river they were in abounded in shallows which were to be the cause of his miseries. He followed the guiding boat but did not allow for the fact that, owing to his passengers, he was three inches deeper down at the stern than anyone else. The result was ignominious-a sticking fast on a mudbank, under a battery of titters. "Why," asked Bardell from the

couch, "should both of those eleven-stoners have | got into my boat?" | As a man married ts. an identical twin, Bardell has had the upsets that might be expected. Identical twins. are two souls with but a single thought if ever such there were and between the two Bardell is hopelessly outmanoeuvred. "Middle-aged and a plain beast of burden" (Doctor Hadfield), he has made all the great surrenders, but clings to minor comforts. His gremlin has therefore fallen back upon petty irritations as: Item: The _ shower over the bath has started to leak at the rate of one

colossal drop per minute and Bardell always gets this. drop smack in the middle of the back when taking a hot bath. Item: His spectacle cases are planted on him (he has three) and often he has to go to work with his glasses in an envelope. Once, becoming vindictive, he spent half a day looking for a case and at last found one "peeping slyly out" (his own distraught words) from the underside of a clump of Sweet William. Item: He hurled a rock at a trespassing cat. He had‘ hurled hundreds before and always missed. This one hit and now he is haunted by an advertisement for a pure bred Manx, £3 reward for anyone, etc., etc. He buried the cat and the neighbour’s dog dug it up till he put it down three feet with a worn out galvanised tub over it. Now his wife wants the tub for ferns and is making peevish inquiries. Item: . . . But at this point there came a firm knock on the door. When it was opened, as it had to be, Mrs. B. said, \"Now, just what are you two up to?" It would have been useless to evoke the gremlin. Such excuses strike the unimaginative as childish. So I said, "We were discussing the percentages of income usually granted as alimony." Then I left for home; it was quite time. But if I were Bardell.I would move heaven and earth to placate the gremlin. OS 9 ene