Doctor Who_ The Romans - Donald Cotton [15]
I would also, as you can imagine, like a word or two with the Doctor, whose inane eccentricities have heaped these inconveniences upon us.
I remain - or at least such bits of me do as have been neglected by the Denizens of the Deep - your vilely abused, Ian Chesterton, B.Sc.
DOCUMENT XIII
First Selection of Jottings from Nero’s Scrapbook
An Ode to Barbara
Fair Barbara! When with fluent pen
I write a poem once again
In praise of Barbara, ( Good! ) I wish her trisyllabic name
Were Doris, Ann, Irene, or Jane
Or even Martha, ( ? )
So that my lost
And tempest-tossed ( Excellent!!! ) Unhappy Muse could flout the frost
And storm and form of
( What? There must be a word.. Anapaest? Perhaps... must look it up)
And enter harbour ( Oh, the tyranny of rhyme! ) As though embalmed within my arms
Like pigeons perched in potted palms ( Where? ) Upon the Costa Brava! ( Of course!!! ) Not bad! No, not bad at all, really! I bet Ovid couldn’t have written that! All a question of imagery really. Damn! Wait
- I am not entirely sure whether the Costa Brava is part of my Empire at the moment. Bother! If it isn’t I shall have to send some general or other to capture it at once, as I do not intend to alter a rhyme so perfectly suited to the delicacy of the sentiments I wish to express; nor, of course, could I ever tolerate the bestowing of such immortality upon a location not under my Imperial aegis.
( Note for future reference ‘Aegis’ would rhyme well with
‘Bognor Regis’, but I cannot remember if I have invaded Britain recently. I must look at the coloured map on the bathroom wall. If not, then perhaps ‘sieges’ would serve as an alternative; or is it too obvious?) Oh, but how can I be expected to remember anything, when I am in the grip of such an ecstatic passion as that which inflames my bosom at the time of writing?
( Is it passion, or have I been poisoned again by some ill-wisher? The symptoms of love and arsenic are in many respects identical, and never susceptible of easy analysis.
The loss of appetite, the dull coat, and the palpitations.
The general listlessness... yes, I must consult my toxicologist, Locusta, when I’ve got a moment. She is sure to know; and with her for a friend one hardly needs an enema. Good joke that! Must try it on Juvenal at my forthcoming symposium of the Arts - and if he doesn’t laugh, the fellow’s for it! Ask him how his Juvenilia’s coming along - he hates that!)
But returning to the inflammation of the pectoral region (see above), I am reasonably sure that it must be love this time; for seldom in a life devoted to the gratification of my base desires and unbridled lusts have I met so sensual-seeming a seductress as the slave-girl, Barbara. And what is more, I dare to hope that the feeling is mutual; for why otherwise should she have greeted my first attempt to embrace her with such a provocative scream? Or indeed, crowned me with a tea-tray, the fiery-tempered little rogue?
Oh, how I admire a woman of spirit! It makes their eventual conquest so much more agreeable, and their subsequent death so satisfactory all round.
In fact, that is what first attracted me to my present wife, Poppea - although so long ago that it now seems unreal. Must be all of twelve months, I suppose, since I first resolved to make her mine. She had a certain shark-infested beauty in those days, and I used to call her
‘Poppy’. Well, I still do, of course, but not with much enthusiasm. No, she seems to have gone soft, and devotes herself entirely to good works. She’s always ready to put up a Praetorian guard who’s forgotten the curfew. In fact, I have even known her to visit the barracks at all hours of the night, just to see if there might be any young recruit feeling the cold.
This sort of thing is getting her a good, albeit, short-name; and it must stop before my own authority is undermined. She is becoming altogether too popular