Once upon a time Penelope Queen of Ithaca was writing
her memoirs, only because this was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away
she wrote her memoirs by means of a tapestry.
Unfortunately, her husband Odysseus King of Ithaca had
been away from home for the past twenty years.
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It was rather like in the Railway Children. Daddy was
away somewhere, but no one said where as it was a long time ago too and English
people kept a stiff upper lip about daddy being somewhere unmentionable until
daddy returned at the end.
While Odysseus was away someone in the bar with the barmaid
called Lynne or to her close friends Lynnie or else depending on
self-identification in the valley of the ton of corn which was harvested each year,
Penelope had to ward off each day suitors who wanted to be the next King of
Ithaca.
If you only pick me to be your husband Ithaca will be
free from Attica, but don’t worry when we cross on the bridge, I will build to
Attica all we will have to do is show our wax tablet and they will let us across
no bother at all.
But Penelope didn’t much care for the duties that
would go with becoming the third wife of the present First Suitor of the Ithacans,
nor did she like the idea of any of the other plausible candidates so each
night after she had sewn her memoirs, she found herself unpicking the stiches.
Next year I will marry you she said to the man who hummed
so loudly you just wanted to be safely away from hearing him, but I have to
finish my tapestry first.
So, Penelope would work all day on her memoirs, and
she remembered all of the time when she had been Queen of Ithaca and all her
triumphs.
But then she remembered how closely she had been
involved with Odysseus and his methods of obtaining drachmas with which to
fight the battle against Attica.
No, it wasn’t just that the First Suitor couldn’t see
the tapestry, it wasn’t just the Second Suitor that couldn’t see the tapestry,
above all it was the Head Loo that must never ever see the tapestry, otherwise
she too would depending on how she identified end up in Lynnie’s bar or else
the valley of the ton of corn.
Fortunately, this being Ithaca the head of the Head Loo
had given Penelope warning not merely about the suitors but also about the immanence
of the arrival of a tented city outside the palace.
It had been embarrassing of course that Penelope’s
favourite sedan chair which acted as her mobile home when she travelled round
Ithaca had been discovered at the home of Anticlea but thank goodness she had
put everything else down the Head Loo.
But what to do about the tapestry given that Penelope
had been paid 75,000 drachmas by the god Pan and there were supposed to be three
more instalments after that.
She thought of having two tapestries one that she
would unpick every night to keep the Hummer’s lusts at bay and one to give to
the god Pan, but every time she sewed something she realised that she couldn’t
keep it at all lest she need to write a fifth amendment before any of the
previous four.
But poor Penelope then not only had taken the 600,000 drachmas
to fight a battle against the Atticans that had never taken place, she had also
taken signed up to get 300,000 drachmas from the god Pan for a tapestry she
could not deliver.
Meanwhile she watched each day as the useless Hummer,
hummed and hawed and kept making a mess of everything in Ithica so that each
day the chances of freedom from Attica became less and less.
Penelope needed a new strategy
Then Penelope shall lay
both her hands on the head of the live Odysseus and confess over it all the
iniquities of the people of Ithaca, and all their transgressions, all their
sins, putting them on the head of Odysseus, and sending him away into the bar of
Lynnie by means of someone designated for the task. Odysseus shall bear on himself
all their iniquities to the bar of Lynnie; and Odysseus shall be left in the
bar of Lynnie.
Penelope next announced that she was going to divorce
Odysseus as she could not bear the shame of his iniquity to the people of
Ithaca and his failure to build either a bridge to Attica or a ferry that might
demonstrate how easy it was to travel between the two while having different currencies.
Penelope was now free to publish her memories which she
dedicated to Thomas Bowlder.
She then began her own Odyssey which took her from Ithaca
to the island of Lesbos where she spent lazy afternoons listening to Sapho’s lyre
and thought not one little bit of Odysseus who had justly been punished for
being a liar.
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