Dip into The A to Z of Alfie Zeller to find: Petty Officer Sam Zeller, who swam the Channel long before Captain Webb, in a straight line, without body grease in search of escargots; Pierre, who invented Chicken Marengo and was promoted to corporal by Napoleon; Alicia Zeller, who ran the séances at which Arthur Conan Doyle saw fairies. Meet Trooper Zeller, who survived the Charge of the Light Brigade, or would have done, if he’d been there; Zeb Zeller, whose diaries made those of Sam Pepys read like the tedious account of bowel movements which they mostly are; Herman Zeller, who put Franz Kafka on to surrealism; the Zeller who was defenestrated in Prague and fell into a rose bush; and finally meet the Zeller who, although a staunch Royalist, fought in the Parliamentary ranks at Naseby.It is all explained somewhere and Alfie does not spare the details. If short of a few, he admits to perhaps having made them up. What, he argues, is a slightly dubious fact, if it gets in the way of the truth?
You will spend a lot longer dead than you did alive, but what is death? What is the state of ‘deadness’ like and how do you find out? Would a seance be better than an ouija board? Does the British Library have a book on the subject or with its skill in killing people, does the War Office have a pamphlet? Would a priest have the answer and if so what denomination? If the Forth Bridge is a long way away in Scotland, cold, wet, windy and hard to climb, why is it so popular with jumpers? I have written a letter to God, what address should I put on it? How do you connect with your ‘Jewish side’ if you don’t have one and will drinking malt whiskey with an unorthodox rabbi help? And why is the frog at the bottom of Eric’s tankard called Clarence?
These and a host of other questions beset Miles Short, an aging man still rankling at the heartless parents who gave him his unfortunate first name and followed it up by calling his brother Weebit. The pursuit of an answer takes him down devious paths and to a somewhat undetermined outcome.
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