"Robert Rankin - Knees Up Mother Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rankin Robert)

TITLE: Knees Up Mother Earth
AUTHOR: Robert Rankin
PUBLISHER: Gollancz
COPYRIGHT: ┬й2004
ISBN: 0 575 07315 2
ABEB Version: 3.0
Created: 2004/9/26 @ 20:48


An mdf Scan & Proofread.




Knees Up Mother Earth

Robert Rankin

For
Jo Fletcher
With love and laughs


1
It was only yesterday and the weather, it seemed, was good.
Mahatma Campbell put his best foot forward.
This foot, the left, was bandaged somewhat about the second toe and
encased within an argyle sock, darned at the heel by the mother who loved
him. Foot and bandage, sock and what-have-you lurked within a boot of the
seven-league persuasion.
On his right foot the Campbell wore a slipper.
The knees of the Campbell were naked, as indeed were his arms. The loins,
trunk and chest of him were clothed respectively in a kilt with ample sporran
and a vest with room for improvement. The face of the Campbell was redly
bearded, the head of him heavily turbaned.
Had he not been so unevenly shod, the Campbell would most certainly
have strode, but given the inequilibrium of his footwear, this was an
impossibility. And so Mahatma Campbell limped. And as he limped, he sang a
song of lochs and byres and bonny banks and braes. And when his memory
failed him, he whistled the refrain.
Mahatma Campbell limped the streets of Brentford.
The time was six-fifteen of the early morning clock, the day was a
Wednesday, bright and sunny, but with that ever-present fear of precipitation
the Campbell had come to live with.
The month was that nippy one known as November.
Mahatma Campbell limped along Moby Dick Terrace, Victorian artisansтАЩ
cottages sheltering beneath slate roofs to the left and to the right of him, a
post box to his rear, a pub rejoicing in the name The Four Horsemen in the
near distance before him. Clipped box hedges confined fussy front gardens,
hanging baskets of Babylon hung and a tomcat snored on a windowsill. And