Harry Turner's Footnotes to Fandom
FOOTNOTES TO FANDOM #29    | FOOTNOTES Page | Obituary Page |

 

DEAR LISA...
WHEN IS THE NEXT ISSUE OF ZIMRI DUE?
 

An interim report from the one-time Zimri Art Editor

It is one of those scorching inactive weekends. Inhabitants and visitors sprawl out in the garden at 54 Manley Road, sipping cool drinks and engaging in desultory conversation. For one brief moment the subject of the next issue of Zimri is raised, dropped, and melts away like everything else in that lost red-hot summer.

I drop in on Lisa while she's busy preparing a Madras curry to an ancient and secret recipe.
- I was thinking about Zimri only the other day, she confides, wiping away a tear as she chops the onions.
I try to be helpful.
- If you leave onions in the fridge and freeze the essential oils then your eyes won't water when you start chopping.
- Gee, thanks for the good news, she wept, and lay off those sultanas... if you eat any more there'll be none left for the curry.
I take the hint and retire from the kitchen.
The curry is such a great success that Zimri is forgotten.

The keen breeze whispers the dried leaves along the footpath as .I walk up to the house. Lisa opens the door for me and promptly dashes back upstairs to the warmth of the flat.
We huddle round the fire, toast crumpets, and chat. A passing reference to Zimri evokes a brief snort.
- Too bloody cold even to think about it. . .

Comes a calm Saturday afternoon when the watery spring sunshine creeps timidly through the window and spreads cautiously across the floor. We are careful not to walk on its brittle radiance.
- Had a letter from Harry Bell, I venture.
- Oh yes?
- He asks when you hope to get around to Zimri...
- Soon, real soon, she promises earnestly.

- Another postal increase...we really ought to try and get out Zimri before it starts!
- I was sorting out the stuff in the folder only yesterday to see what's fit to publish, but I just can't put down this volume of Emily Dickenson's poems. I'll definitely do some editing next week. By the way, what's all this fuss about Illuminatus?

- How're you getting on with those three volumes of Illuminatus then?
- Slowly, slowly. I keep losing track of what it's all about and have to go back to the beginning again; but I'm up to page 50.
I do some mental arithmetic. Fifty pages in three weeks and 764 pages to go...jeez...that could mean another 45 weeks before she's finished!
- Any advance on Zimri, I counter.
- I told you I'm up to page 50.
- I said Zimri, not Illuminatus.
- Oh...

HARRY TURNER
****************

from The New Gwent Review No. 3, Easter 1981,
edited by Bryn Fortney & Lisa Conesa


FOOTNOTES TO FANDOM #29
a series of occasional pieces published by the Septuagenarian Fans Association
 

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