IN FOG EVERYTHING IS THE GHOST OF ITSELF...SO IT IS.
alas poor Scrooge I knew him a fellow of infinite jest
a lover of all things Christmas
why he wouldn't say boo to a ghost
the kindest caringest loving loan shark in all of this here dreary town
kept me going through hard times even though my life
was only rust & dus rust & dust
"People mutht be amuthed!"
he'd always say in that Sleary way
wot happened to the old geezer
why there is not a body doesn't know dat
ended up Marshallsea Debtor's prison along with old John Dickens.
ya know Charlie's father
for want of an unpaid baker's bill a good man was lost
to his self drove him mad it did so it did
now that Marley on the other hand 'ard as nails....
*
HARD TIMES was at one stage possibly going to be RUST AND DUST. And of course it is Mr. Sleary in HARD TIMES who professes: "People mutht be amuthed!" Dickens' dad John was the one who was sent to Marshallsea for not paying his baker's bill. Scrooge going to the light side of course will be the ruin of him as a money lender 'cos he has become just too too nice and let's everyone off! Marley instead of being dead...'dead as a doornail" is very much alive and horrible to boot.
As well as being as "myriadminded' as Coleridge proposes to be and as humorous as could possibly be...old Charlie just wrote beautiful English! I always remember the section with great affection of how the house came to find itself in the street it was in in A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
As I do of the beautiful section in OUR MUTUAL FRIEND when in talking a bit about...mist Chapter 57 if ya wanna look it up.
"The moon had gone down, and a mist crept along the banks of the river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water was the ghost of water."
That sticks in my head as pure poetry and whatever the story is what I really really remember!
You can now see how and why my title is concocted as I wanted to pay homage to those words and to get a chance to knock around with Charlie and his cast of characters.
"They were gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide and seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again."