Category Archives: Arts

Arts, Drama

Whodunnit: The Missing Murderer

LATERAL THINKING DRAMA

Issue No. 8 in the Whodunnit crime series. Tap into your inner detective by explaining the thinking of Inspector Parnacki in this case of the Missing Murderer?

INSPECTOR Parnacki strolled around the large parking area, puffing on his pipe. The object of his annoyance, a small, tattered truck, was parked towards the middle of the parking space.

. Previously Whodunnit: The Captive

“It doesn’t make sense, Inspector.” Damon Olivers was the night clerk from a small grocery that looked onto the parking lot.

Keeping his irritation well disguised, Parnacki turned back to the man. “You’re sure about the order of events?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Talk me through it one more time, would you?”

Olivers nodded. “I was doing the evening sweep and general tidy-up. It’s usually quiet at this time, so that’s when I get to sweep the floors, stock the shelves, throw out anything that’s gone bad or past its sell-by date, and so on. I was down by the flour, trying to clean up a small spill from one of the bags. I heard a huge bang, and everything rattled. Clouds of flour drifted down, which made me curse, I can tell you.”

“I’m sure,” said Parnacki.

“Almost immediately, I heard whistles. I went up to the front of the shop and saw a huge cloud of smoke, with the truck in the middle of it. The door to Berrits, the tailor’s shop, was swinging closed. I saw a couple of police officers running. There were shots from Berrits. I could hear them through the walls. One of the officers pulled out a gun and returned fire. Then everything was chaos for a while. Lots of shouting, and shooting, and whistles. I was on the floor behind the counter by then. I expect you know the rest from your men.”

“Indeed I do. And you’re confident that there’s no back exit from Berrits?”

“Definitely not. All our units are the same. Big shop area, small back room, tiny rest room. Nothing else. The only way in or out is through the shop. Well, unless you break a wall down, I suppose.”

Inspector Parnacki shook his head. “Everything appears intact.”

“So does this mean whoever did this has got away?”

“Thank you for your time, Mr Olivers. You’ve been very helpful.”

Olivers nodded, with a wry grin. “I’ll be in the shop tidying for another half an hour if you need me, inspector. Good luck.”

Parnacki left the grocery and made his way over to the truck. Officer Christopher Coleridge watched him approach. He had been the first man on the scene, and still looked shaky.

“Hello again, inspector,” Coleridge said.

“Good evening, Officer Coleridge. I know it’s tiresome but would you summarise events for me one last time?”

“I heard an explosion and came running. Lee was with me, and I could hear that another patrol was close by. I recognised the truck as a mobile banking vehicle, and assumed the blast was someone trying to blow the safe, so I readied my pistol. As I approached the truck, shots were fired from the third unit in the row of shops. I returned fire. Several other officers arrived and provided assistance. When it became clear there was no more gunfire coming from the unit, we stopped shooting and called for the weapon to be thrown out. There was no response and after several minutes I went into the shop, calling for the gunman to lie flat as I advanced. A pistol was on the floor near the front window, and the driver of the truck was lying on the floor at the back of the room, handcuffed and facing away from the door. He had been shot through the back of the head. There was no sign of the murderer. We searched absolutely everywhere.”

“And there’s no way the murderer could have come out of the front door in the confusion?”

“No, sir. I had my eyes on that door the whole time from the first shot until the moment we went in.”

Parnacki nodded. “I am quite sure you did, officer. Thank you. I suspect I know where he is.”

Where is the gunman?

CLASSIC CRIME

A Shot In The Dark by Lynne Truss: Raven Books £12.99

Short narrative:

The Keystone Cops might learn a thing or two from Lynne Truss. Her 1950s Brighton has a constabulary run by the brainless inspector Steine (pronounced Steen), who turns a blind eye to crime while composing radio homilies on the law and the citizen.

Steine has an ambitious sidekick who finds all the clues, but not necessarily in the right order. His confidant is the tea lady, who seems to know more about the local mafia than the whole force put together.

Into this mad medley springs Constable Twitten, a college boy set on making his name by nailing the killer of an obnoxious theatre critic, in town to savage the latest kitchen sink drama.

Everything that can go wrong does go wrong in a farce that gathers hilarious pace with every page.

More Marx Brothers than Agatha Christie, this is crime fiction turned on its head – a giddy spell of sheer delight.

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Arts, Books, Britain, First World War

Biographical Book Review: Reverend Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy

WOODBINE WILLIE

Selfless: The Reverend Studdert Kennedy

Intro: The Army chaplain who handed out almost a million cigarettes as WWI troops lay dying

AMID the carnage of the trenches, the Reverend Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, offered spiritual and practical succour to injured and dying troops.

And at a time when an estimated 96 per cent of soldiers smoked, one of the ways the clergyman helped them was to hand out cigarettes.

The British Army chaplain’s generosity in giving Woodbine to men on the front line to boost morale earned him the sobriquet of “Woodbine Willie”.

Official records also show that he regularly ventured – unarmed – into No Man’s Land, often under heavy machine gun and artillery fire, to give dying troops one last cigarette.

Clutching his Bible for protection, the “Battlefield Saint” would whisper the Lord’s Prayer and hold their hands until the end.

Reverend Kennedy’s selfless bravery during the First World War, particularly at the Battle of Messines, earned him a Military Cross.

Now his biographer has calculated that he spent most of his wartime wages handing out nearly one million cigarettes to Allied troops, returning home virtually penniless.

Dr Linda Parker said he sacrificed his family’s financial future to safeguard the emotional wellbeing of the men in his care.

“Studdert Kennedy was one of the First World War’s true heroes – a courageous and selfless Christian who gave away everything he had for the benefit of others,” she said.

“With the exception of his family’s annual living expenses, he spent the rest of his salary – his family’s entire income, really – on the men he took under his spiritual wing. He did, in almost complete certainty, spend virtually everything he owned. He filled his backpack with Woodbines, Bibles and a great deal of love.”

Book Cover: A Seeker After Truths by Dr Linda Parker

Troops were issued with two ounces of cheap rolling tobacco with their rations, but supply was irregular. Woodbines, which were strong and unfiltered, were not widely available on the Western Front and were like gold dust in the trenches.

Dr Parker – the author of A Seeker After Truths: The Life and Times of G A Studdert Kennedy (‘Woodbine Willie’) 1883–1929 – estimates he gave away 864,980 cigarettes at his own expense. She reached the figure by calculating the total number of men Studdert Kennedy is likely to have met between December 1915 and September 1918, the smoking rate among troops at the time, and his propensity to offer one or more cigarettes to “every man he met”.

She believes that over the course of nearly three years, he spent the equivalent of £43,249 in today’s money – every spare penny of his Army’s salary. This is based on a packet of five Woodbines costing 1d, which equals 25p today. His grandson, the Reverend Canon Andrew Studdert-Kennedy, team rector in Marlborough, Wiltshire, and an honorary chaplain to the Queen, agrees with Dr Parker’s findings.

“Anecdotes about my grandfather’s generosity are part of the annals,” he said. “My grandmother allegedly came home one day to find him dragging their mattress downstairs to give to someone in need, and another time he gave his coat away.

“I’ve no doubt whatsoever that he did everything within his financial means to help those men on the front line.”

Before the war, Studdert Kennedy served as a vicar in a poor parish in Worcester. When war was declared against Germany he enlisted as a temporary chaplain.

In December 1915, he was stationed at a railway station in Rouen, France, where he held communion with the troops, wrote letters for the illiterate, and prayed with young soldiers. When they left for the front line, he gave them copies of the New Testament and, to the 96 per cent of soldiers who smoked, one or more Woodbines.

News of Studdert Kennedy’s kindness and generosity spread, and by early 1916 he was known as “Woodbine Willie”.

His fame spread further when he was sent to the trenches of the Somme, Ypres and Messines. He routinely prayed with dying soldiers and was awarded the Military Cross after running through “murderous machine gun fire” at Messines Bridge to deliver morphine to men screaming in agony in No Man’s Land. He was gassed at the Battle of the Canal du Nord in 1918 and sent home on sick leave.

After the Great War, Studdert Kennedy became a pacifist, social reformer, author and poet. He was also made personal chaplain to King George V. When he died in 1929 aged 45, ex-servicemen sent a wreath with a packet of Woodbines at the centre to his funeral in Worcester.

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Arts, Literature, Philosophy, Poetry

The Stoic: ‘Steady’ or ‘Unsteady’

CLARITY

THIS article incorporates a poem dedicated by my friend Jan Smith from Liverpool. You will find the poem, entitled “Be Kind”, roughly at the mid-point of this entry. I thank Jan for allowing me to use and share her work on my site. She can be found on Twitter: @JanSmithNL

IF YOU WANT TO BE STEADY

“The essence of good is a certain kind of reasoned choice; just as the essence of evil is another kind. What about externals, then? They are only the raw material for our reasoned choice, which finds its own good or evil in working with them. How will it find the good? Not by marveling at the material! For if judgments about the material that are straight makes our choices good, but if those judgments are twisted, our choices turn bad.” – Epictetus, Discourses, 1.29.1–3

THE Stoics seek steadiness, stability, and tranquility – traits most of us aspire to but seem to experience only fleetingly. How do they accomplish this elusive goal? How does one embody eustatheia (the word Arrian once used to describe this teaching of Epictetus)?

Well, it’s not luck. It’s not by eliminating outside influences or running away to quiet and solitude. Instead, it’s about filtering the outside world through the straightener of our judgment. That’s what our reason can do – it can take the crooked, confusing, and overwhelming nature of external events and make them orderly.

However, if our judgments are crooked because we don’t apply reason, then everything that follows will be crooked, and we will lose our ability to steady ourselves in the chaos and rush of life. If you want to be steady, if you want clarity, proper judgment is the best way.

IF YOU WANT TO BE UNSTEADY

“For if a person shifts their caution to their own reasoned choices and the acts of those choices, they will at the same time gain the will to avoid, but if they shift their caution away from their own reasoned choices to things not under their control, seeking to avoid what is controlled by others, they will then be agitated, fearful, and unstable.” – Epictetus, Discourses, 2.1.12

THE image of the Zen philosopher is the monk up in the green, quiet hills, or in a beautiful temple on some rocky cliff. The Stoics are the antithesis of this idea. Instead, they are the man in the marketplace, the senator in the Forum, the brave wife waiting for her soldier to return from battle, the sculptor busy in her studio. Still, the Stoic is equally at peace.

Epictetus is reminding you that serenity and stability are results of your choices and judgment, not your environment. If you seek to avoid all disruptions to tranquility – other people, external events, stress – you will never be successful. Your problems will follow you wherever you run and hide. But if you seek to avoid the harmful and disruptive judgments that cause those problems, then you will be stable and steady whatever and wherever you happen to be.

Creative Writing

See also:

. The Stoic: The Power of a Mantra

. The Stoic: Be Ruthless To The Things That Don’t Matter

. The Stoic: Control & Choice

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