Wherein we discover the precise day of Mr. Shrikeweed's nativity with some observations on the nature of time, the civilizing effect of pocket handkerchiefs, and the universal truth that there is no day in all the year as likely to visit misery upon a gentleman than the occasion of his birthday

It was with a degree of mathematical regularity wholly lacking in those lands and in those times wherein the blessings of the timepiece were as alien to the general proceedings as an elephant is to a masquerade ball, that the eleventh of Hamis always precisely followed the tenth day of that supremely damp and rainy month. Possibly in barbarian lands, wherein one might travel for days uncounted without the sight of so much as a single pocket handkerchief let alone the more necessary accouterments of civilization, time is less well regulated and the tenth day of a given month might be directly followed by the seventh, or the ninetieth, or for that matter the greenth. Time, in such a country, might be a wholly wild and carefree beast cavorting hither and yon and arraigning itself in the most singular and remarkable ways. However, in Anaxas -- where pocket handkerchiefs gather in great shoals for purposes which, we must freely admit, are perfectly unknown to us, and the detritus of the civilized life appears to lounge about in even the most out of the way back allies -- time is uniformly regular and the eleventh is always preceded by the tenth and itself is always found to proceed the twelfth. A rather remarkable state of affairs really, when one bothers to apply the various mental facilities to the phenomenon, but it is a thing that is hardly ever done these days.

In the great universities and centers of learning there are no quiet and dusty hallways in the depths of obscure departments wherein scholars of the domestication of time write their potentially revelatory and fascinating papers. No academic journals currently exist, or ever have according to the fairly fragmentary documentary evidence available from the papers of half a hundred publishing houses, wholly dedicated to the debates, theories, and roiling controversies which might have existed had this not been a sadly neglected branch of study. More curious still is the fact that although academics devoted to the study of the domestication of time are rarer than a hatcher on a seaside holiday, there are an alarming number of practical ladies and gentlemen who spend their days in the making and designing of the very devices which measure and -- according to a currently non-existing theory -- dispense, time. Why there should be this strange and heavy bias so strongly in favor of the practical side of affairs remains a mystery, though we have speculated that it may simply have to do with the fact that for many the very act of thinking overmuch about time has a distressing tendency to reduce the brain to a material resembling nothing so much as a elderly pudding of doubtful edibility.

One gentleman who was engaged in very pointedly not thinking in any way about the remarkable regularity of the calendar was Mr. Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed. Indeed the aforesaid gentleman was fully committed to a rigorous program of complete denial. He had very carefully secreted every calendar in his rooms at number 17 Albatross Lane into various out of the way localities; one had been placed with great care behind the bust of an antique gentleman of mature years, who may or may not have been a philosopher, that glowered down on Shrikeweed from a small shelf above the door. Another had been relocated to a disused drawer of the desk, and the third had been lodged in a very haphazard way between two members of a collection of still unread books.

Had Mr. Shrikeweed kept a servant, something that was highly impractical for a man who lived in such comparatively small apartments, he no doubt would have had this hypothetical retainer clear away the offensive items. However, as he did not, the disposal of the calendars was an activity that he himself was required to perform. This necessitated a half-hour's work standing on various chairs and caused Shrikeweed, who was not accustomed to taking much elevated exercise, to become more than a little fearful that he might fall and damage himself. Worse still, that he might damage the furniture.

The reason for these extraordinary exertions upon the part of the archivist was his very real desire to not be reminded in anyway as to what the day was in the futile hope that by doing so the eleventh day of Hamis might pass by without stopping to notice him. It had never worked before, but the ritual of denial was an old one and very difficult to give up. For several days, Shrikeweed had bought no newspapers, visited no news agents, did not go to his bank, or to any of the other establishments whose business it was to know the time and day. His watch he had dispatched to Mr. Ixbridge to have it cleaned and recalibrated and he was getting on quite well without the mechanical contrivance. His own habits were so regular that a watch was almost more of an affectation rather than a useful tool. He had even gone to the very limit of extreme behavior and had been avoiding the postman. To further bring confusion upon this unsuspecting carrier of letters, Shrikeweed had contrived to seal his letterbox with sealing wax and string which would have necessitated either the use of flame to melt, or the application of a crowbar to pry loose. Knowing full well that postmen are unlikely to carry either item about their person he felt himself moderately secure in dissuading the mail.

Yet despite all this caution, the dreaded letter still arrived. A cream colored envelope of ordinary size with the address of Mr. Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed written in a distressingly familiar hand was stationed on the small round table just inside his door. How it had contrived to get itself into that spot he had no way of knowing, but he suspected nefarious work on the part of the landlady, Mrs. Turlingby, or one of her relentless attendants. One of these personages, no doubt with the letter in one hand and a feather duster griped with military grimness in the other, had unlocked the outer door and deposited this unwanted communication. A casual glance about the apartment only served to further convince Shrikeweed as to the likelihood of this deviousness, for the furniture bore unmistakable signs of having been dusted with the manic ferocity with characterized the landlady and her minions.

It was with a due sense of reservation and dread that Shrikeweed took hold of the letter, applied a letter opener to the wax seal and withdrew the contents. The letter contained therein was not long, and its here reproduced fatefully for the benefit of our readers.


From the desk of Mr. H.B. Shrikeweed Esq.
The ninth day of Hamis 2712


My Dear Fellow,

I hope this letter finds you well and in tolerably good spirits, though between ourselves I know how much you dread this time of year. As the ever-faithful executor of the imperatives of your esteemed mother, I write to you on her behalf to inform you that your presence is both requested and required at your ancestral home for the celebratory dinner in honor of the commencement of your existence.

And for myself I beg to inform you that your mother in is fine spirits and should you fail in your duty to attend, possibly by suddenly developing an overpowering desire to view the cliffs of Gior, the consequences both for yourself and those of us who are required to continue living with your mother will be of the most dire and terrible sort. So I implore you, my dear fellow, to think of myself and your brother as the day approaches and to attend if only out if kindness to those who bear you only good-natured ill will and jovial animosity.


I remain, your dispassionate father,

Horace Barnaby Shrikeweed


Shrikeweed looked at the letter again and laughed inwardly to himself. He supposed he must have nearly a half a dozen exactly similar letters stowed neatly away in his own personal archive. Why his father did not simply write "My Dear Fellow, Same letter as last year. Yours etc. H.B. Shrikeweed" and leave off the wasting of ink was something of a mystery. But for whatever reason here again was an identical letter to all the previous ones, and there was now very little Shrikeweed could do but compose a reply and consign himself to yet another nominally festive dinner.

He consulted the letter again, to make sure of its date of writing and found that, indeed, it had been written on the ninth. As no dire consequences in the form of a small, fiery tempered and equally fiery haired woman of a certain nondescript age had been visited upon him it was no doubt not the dreaded eleventh itself. Cogitating on these facts, he was forced to come to the inevitable conclusion that today was the tenth of Hamis, the fabled eve of his recurring doom.

Shrikeweed's dislike of the celebration of the day of his birth was not rooted in the all to common unease with aging. Indeed Shrikeweed himself had always found the notion of progressing on in years to be something that was both desirable and unavoidable and therefore nothing to worry about. What was being twenty-nine to a man who all his life had felt as though he should have been born as a man in his late thirties? No, his distaste for these festive celebrations largely stemmed from his deep seated dislike of being convivial on command.

The idea that good humor and conviviality was controlled by some species of valve which a man might open at will and allow the necessary quantity of good humor to flood one's person simply made no sense to him. True, he could be convivial and jocose when the mood stuck him, and as for facetiousness and moderate wit well these were as natural to him as mountain climbing is to the more industrious sort of goat, but actual good humor was not something quite at home in the Shrikeweedian heart. It might visit for a time, possibly enjoying a picturesque view of the left ventricle or whatever it is emotions do when they visit a gentleman's sanguinary pump, but it always moved on in comparatively short order. When that happened, Shrikeweed was left feeling terrifically awkward and would find himself lapsing into long monologues about the history of filing cabinets or what he considered to be highly amusing anecdotes concerning minor errors in important documents. Conversations of that kind generally met with universal disapprobation or, at the very best, the kind of polite confusion that one reserves for the more socially acceptable sort of madman. So it was quite understandable as to why Shrikeweed disliked enforced conviviality, and there was no occasion in all the year as likely to require such behavior than the occasion of a birthday.

Even now, his mind could envision exactly what the forthcoming festivities would entail. There would be the inevitable toasts, the various courses of dishes -- all learning heavily towards the fish and other aquatic delicacies in honor or the man of the hour -- the company of various and sundry family members, the increasingly dismal progression of yet more food, the very serious and altogether forced discussion of what fun everyone was having, and the giving of gifts which Shrikeweed never wanted on account of having no where to put anything above the size of a cravat pin anywhere in his rooms. He had mentioned this fact the year after he had taken his current rooms and, for the following several years, had been the victim of a well-meaning flood of these articles. True, many of the pins he received were fine specimens of the pin-makers art and he wore them frequently, but now even an item so small as a cravat pin was beginning to be too large for his domicile.

He sighed, rose to his feet, and went into the narrow little room that served as his study. There he seated himself at his desk, procured pen and paper and ink from several drawers and alcoves and wrote, much to his own astonishment, and letter of reply:

From the Desk of Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed
The tenth day of Hamis 2712


Dear Sir,

In reply to your letter of the ninth instant, I wish to inform you that I will discharge my filial duties as required with all apparent good will and as much satisfaction as I can possibly muster. My duties archival being somewhat light at present, I shall present myself at the aforementioned ancestral abode in the early evening, provided that the conveyance which I will be obliged to take does not lead to my untimely demise.

I remain sir, yours etc.

Basil Ambrose Shrikeweed

The letter concluded, Shrikeweed sealed it, addressed the envelope and made all the other preparations a fastidious gentleman makes when he is about to post a letter. When he arrived at his letter box he found he had some difficulty in opening it. He pulled the handle and received no response. He pushed it and was rewarded with exactly the same immobility. Then he glared at it significantly. Nothing continued to happen. This perplexed him for only a moment as he recalled his earlier ministrations to the box. Upon the recollection he smiled, At least, he considered, no postman not possessed of truly legendary strength could have opened this. Smiling still. he returned to his rooms. There he abstracted his new and considerably more efficient umbrella from the blue and white umbrella stand by his door, and set out in the indifferent weather towards the nearest postal establishment.

On several occasions, while on this gloomy errand, he considered the possibility of his letter being stolen by a passing urchin or a wave of water thrown up by a passing cab drowning the letter and rendering it illegible. Neither of these occurrences, nor any other out of the way thing, transpired and he reached his destination only slightly dampened. The letter was duly posted, with transaction being officiated by the most ancient female Shrikeweed had ever seen or ever hoped to see again, and following that Shrikeweed departed.

He stood there in the street for a moment, the rain cascading modestly down his umbrella, and considered what he should do now. He had made his reply, it was even now on its way, and there was nothing at all to which he could reasonably look forward. No, that was not strictly true; he could always adjourn to the Pendulum and proceed to beat Wainscoting at billiards time and time again. He smiled at this thought and without further ado, struck out in the direction of that most excellent establishment.