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Monday, August 01, 2011

Very Old Joke (Return of Keats and Chapman, cont.)

















Keats had been feeling under the weather, and Chapman decided what his friend needed to restore his spirits was a spot of camping in the Glen of Imaal. But it was the middle of December and Keats had never cared for this form of recreation. Along he traipsed in a foul mood as Chapman went from shop to shop in search of equipment and supplies. Only when it became apparent how prohibitively expensive the equipment was did Keats’s spirits begin to pick up. Perhaps the trip might be avoided after all. But as they approached what would have been their final port of call, Chapman yelped triumphantly at the sight of a large poster inscribed ‘Sale’. All camping equipment had been reduced by fifty per cent! ‘Now is the winter of our discount tents’, groaned Keats.

2 comments:

George S said...

Is that Trotsky right?

puthwuth said...

Trotsky was of course a great friend of Keats and Chapman's, and used to rent a room in Cabra from a friend of the brother's sister in law, that time he was working on the railways. More seriously though, there is a chain of fish and chip shops in Dublin called Beshoff's whose founder, Ivan Beshoff, did know Trotsky and Lenin, and was on the Battleship Potemkin in 1905.