B. S. Johnson:

A JOYFUL DISSERTATION UPON THE BELLS POND ROAD
with

NUMEROUS CHOICE ANACHRONISMS

SELECTED INAPPOSITE DIGRESSIONS OF ENORMOUSCONSEQUENCE

IT is natural to speculate upon the identity of the posited, alleged or implied Mr. Ball, his Pond, and his Road; for these things are of perennial interest to teachers, learners, parasites, poets, readers, writers, coneycatchers, moneylosers, and round pigs in squalid holes generally. Who was he, then, the aptly-named Mr. Ball, that he should have first a Pond and then a Road named after him? For it must surely have been in that order, a Pond and then a Road, not a Road and then a Pond.
Recent research reveals him to have been a gentleman of the Ca.roline period, and that he delighted to exercise his creative facility freely in spelling his name Bal, Balle, Bul, Bull, Bulle, Bule, Bolle and Bole at various times during his life; that he was a man of goodly parts though somehow lesser than the sum of those parts; a faithful and regular worshipper at goatish masses; pretender to the throne of Bali; free in his acquaintance, loose in his crotch and constipated in his habits; possessed of a truly remarkable weasand, blue garters, and crossed feet; a great admirer of ecclesiastical monumental brasses and lapidary crusaders; of Albigensian leanings; having one wife, whom he loved for her faults, for no man loves a perfect woman; particular in the manner of cleansing his podex; accustomed to shaking himself thrice, ritually, after urination; a great devotee of backgammon for he had chosen to be born into the Caroline period, enormous trouble having been gone to over his selection of suitabIe in every way parents; having himself singular issue as well, a sickly infant named Jeremy but called Bubbleguts by way of reference to his habit of puking up his fodder continually together with relatively small portions of his intestine (small and large, both), his alimentary canal, and other internal organs whose function could loosely be described as digestive, to the slight annoyance of his parents (Mr. and Mrs. Ball) who one day went so far as to measure the child's intake and his output, both liquid and solid, anal and oral, and discovered to their not inconsiderable delight that the latter exceeded the former by no less than 68.483%, to go to no more than three decimal places; the child, however, could demonstrably be seen to thrive.
But: his father, Mr. Ball of the first part lest we forget, a gentleman of few vices and all of the virtues, including not to say embracing levity lechery malfeasance and suchlike, especially suchlike towards which he manifested a great partiality, was troubled, oh mightily, one day whilst reading (reading being perhaps the best way he knew of sending yet another dreary day about its awesome business) an edifying and illuminated octavo work on a new disease but lately come out of the New World, in the forenoon by a pain in an indelicate-to-mention locale, as a primary result of which he could not accomplish the well-known process of elimination with his usual felicity.
—D Aoctor bhall se been sy me, said Mr. Ball, a disciple of Marrowsky, that splendidly logical linguistical cipher in which the initial letters of contiguous words are, to their undoubted embellishment, transposed; and also given upon occasion to inversion, a delightful trait consequent ultimately upon his having been born feet first, entering upon the world so to speak somewhat apprehensively, putting the big toe out first in an endeavour to decide whether or not to, though in truth it was merely a little big toe for so are all those of by the grace of God infants compared with big (adult) big toes unless they be mutatives, which is not so after all very unlikely; this to his wife, who, being possessed of a fine tongue and almost adequate control of of it, replied:
—Yes.
The reader will be no doubt intrigued to learn that this word comprised no less than one-half of Mrs. Ball's vocabulary; and frustrated to learn further that he is not to be informed of the word which formed the other moiety.

* * *

The Doctor cocked a diagnostic little finger.
—Haemorrhoids or piles, he said.
—Che thoice then to ye mou gre aiving? said Mr. Ball.
—You joke, said the Doctor. Cool them by immersion in water. Then they shrink.
—Jou yoke, said Mr. Ball. That when Ihould s io, dn b aucket dll aay song lquat?
—Yours the method, said the Doctor, who thought, Humour the nutcase, and whose name can be Dr. Scrumeluse if you like, since he does not appear any more.

* * *

First Mr. Ball tried lustrations applied with a flannel; then with a sponge; then with a douche; and finally with a small polished brass garden syringe; but even treatment with this latter, accurately aligned and carefully discharged, had effected no noticeable improvement after two weeks; indeed, it might almost be said to have worsened the situation, since the strain of the contorted position necessary for its proper deployment resulted in muscular pains of no mean severity.
Mr. Ball next experimented with submerging the affected parts in water contained in various types of vessel; to wit, saucepans, frying pans, mugs, saucers, soup-plates, the large stone erections so unselfishly provided by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association, jars, buckets, bottles, eggcups (Ostrich), glasses, bowls, commodes, hats (with an impermeability factor greater than 93%), dogdishes, scale measures, pressure cookers, small reservoirs, the bells of suitably large wind instruments, drawers, lightbowls, wastepaper bins, oildrums, smelting ladles, dredger buckets, mechanical excavator scoops, paint kettles, and many others too numerous to mention.
The use of all these failed to improve Ca.roline Mr. Ball's condition; but one day the sensible solution to his problem came to him most suddenly. The main cause of the inefficiency of the other methods was the stagnant state the water assumed after a very short interval: it was imperative to have running water, so Mr. Ball cunningly diverted (by means of trenches) the stream of the Fleet, which, for the purposes of this narrative, flowed closely by, so that it ran though a shallow pond which he built in his back garden. Preparing for all eventualities, he also installed a Distant Early Warning System to give him time to apprehend the approach of any predatory pike over five pounds in weight. Briefly, this system worked like this: any pike over five pounds (Mr. Ball calculated that he ran no serious risk from the teeth of lesser pike) would, several yards upstream, be forced to disturb, in penetrating, a mesh grill which was connected by thread to a subtle bell not two feet from Mr. Ball's right ear; thus warned, the patient could surface the parts undergoing treatment by means of a simple pulley and sling arrangement.
Mr. Ball would daily indulge in this treatment for perhaps four hours, usually in the mornings. Whilst so doing, he would engage his mind with speculations on possible solutions to problems like:
(1) Do the villagers of Unterammergau feel inferior to those of Oberammergau?
(2) Was Blake a Romantic?
(3) Where does winter go in the flytime?
(4.) Assuming an evolutionary continuum stretching from an amoeba on the one side and man on the other, at what stage was it decided that reproduction should require two differentiated elements (male and female), which adumbrated sex in the amoeba decided upon the dichotomy, and could further developments towards a multíplicity of elements be anticipated?
(5) How could he wish his neighbour so ill as to love him as himself?
(6) What was the incidence of lesbianism in Persian harems?
(7) Where was Jesus Christ between the ages of twelve and twenty-nine, and what was he doing?
(8) How was it possible, after aeons of evolutionary research and development, that there was a distinct proneness to pustules at the extremity of the human gut?
One day, whilst actively working towards a reasonably accurate answer to number (6) above, Mr. Ball received a visit from the new Vicar.
—I look after this district for God, the Reverend Vinyl introduced himself.
—Vot nery well, said Mr. Ball.
—I beg your pardon! said the Reverend Vinyl.
—N'm iot wery vell, said Mr. Ball.
—A man cannot live by bed alone, explained the Reverend Vinyl, noting the evidence for Sloth implied by Mr. Ball's posture.
—T'm irying ao tlleviate d aistressing condition, said Mr. Ball.
—Every man needs a hobby, excused the Reverend Vinyl, but this morning I've just dropped in for a sweet natter about the notverymuch.
—Oh, said Mr. Ball, who regretted that Marrowsky did not give scope to the monosyllabic grunter.
—We are all Mixed Herbs in God's Mess of Pottage . . . began the Reverend Vinyl, only to be interrupted by the advent of the uniparous Mrs. Ball come to inspect the shrinkage, as she always did with her elevenses.
—Yes, said Mrs. Ball.
—Give with the reechy kisses, missus, said the Reverend Vinyl, and, God wot, a scene of atrocious carnage might have ensued but for the timely tinkling of Mr. Ball's bell announcing the imminent onslaught of a mean freshwater shark. Whereupon that gallant gentleman operated the pulley arrangement and hoisted himself clear of the predator's element; to first the alarm (since he imagined himself about to be assaulted for his frowardness) and then the mystification (for he had never observed a similar piece of apparatus either in or out of action) of the Reverend Vinyl. Mr. Ball explained the mechanism and its function in palliating his painful parts.
—There is a destiny that shapes our ends rough, said the Reverend Vinyl, demonstrating for the second time his knowledge of Hamlet, Mystify Your Friends. But this seems a very cumbrous and complicated method of containing the water. Have you not put it in some other sort of vessel? For instance, there are saucepans, frying pans, mugs, saucers, soup-plates, the large stone erections so unselfishly provided by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association, jars, buckets, bottles, eggcups (Ostrich), glasses, coconut halfshells, bowls, commodes, hats (with an impermeability factor greater than 93%), dogdishes, scale measures, pressure cookers, small reservoirs, the bells of suitably large wind instruments, drawers, light bowls, wastepaper baskets, oildrums, smelting ladles, dredger buckets, mechanical excavator scoops, paint kettles, and many others too numerous to mention.
—Yes, said Mr. Ball.
—Yes, said Mrs. Ball.
—Ah well, said the Reverend Vinyl, You're human like the rest of them, I suppose. But my beknighted brother, the good Sir Maritan, who lives at Whipps Cross, once cured. . . .
—Whipps Cross? said Mr. Ball, abandoning Marrowsky in the celerity with which he perceived an occasion upon which he thought to be witty, Sounds like a stage direction in a play written by an anti-catholic Irishman.
—My brother, went on the Reverend Vinyl very firmly, Was once cured of a most distressing pustular facial condition by kneeling with his face downwards in a bogland area not so very far from here.
—Acne Marshes, said Mr. Ball, again sacrificing Marrowsky. Mrs. Ball sat down on the ground, saying YES and her other word to herself, still trying to see which was better and so refine her vocabulary. In her floral pattern hessian smock she resembled, to the Reverend Vinyl, an understufl'ed loosecovered horsehair sofa. But there, he always was commonplace in his comparisons.
Mr. Ball regarded the behaviour of his wife before a stranger with distaste; she, he thought, will certainly not have SINEVILLAQUE on her tomb at my expense.
The Reverend Vinyl perceived that it was time to go.
—God bless you, he intoned.
—Why should He start now? said Mr. Ball.

* * *

There are several theories about how the accident which named our Pond, and thereby our Road, happened. Some will have it that a superquick pike was through the grille and had performed his grisly office before Mr. Ball had had time to lift himself clear; others swear that a pike, originally under five pounds, grew big enough over the weeks to tackle the enticing objects he saw daily dangled before his eyes; yet others are persuaded that Mr. Ball made a tragically fatal error either in the size of the pike which he imagined could do him harm or in the estimate he made of the velocity of such a fish through water; and finally, but more fancifully, there are those who suspect that Mrs. Ball, the Reverend Vinyl, or some unknown malicious person, introduced a pike (or perhaps a small alligator or other voracious beast) surreptitiously into Mr. Ball's Pond.
The cause is open to doubt, but the result is open to none; from about this date the records of the Hackney and Islington Festal Choir note a Mr. Bull as their leading counter-tenor.
The numerical extent of Mr. Ball's losses, however, must at this remove in History remain forever an enigma. For, the Road in question running through two boroughs, the signwriters employed by the Hackney Council spell it with the apostrophe before the s, and those receiving their stipends from that of the Borough of Islington, after the s. The compilers of the best maps, and those local people ignorantly thought to be ignorant, know very well that to take sides is to invite ridicule and therefore spell it ungraced by the apostrophe in any position.