“Not good,” I replied slowly. “I can’t dissuade an assassin from trying to kill me; Hamlet isn’t safe here, but I can’t send him back; and if I don’t get Swindon to win the SuperHoop, then the world will end. Goliath somehow duped me into forgiving them, I have my own stalker, and also have to figure out how to get the banned books I should be hunting for SO-14 out of the country. And Landen’s still not back.”

“Really?” she said, not having listened to me at all. “I think I’ve got a plan how we can deal with that annoying offspring of Pickwick’s.”

“Lethal injection?”

“Not funny. No, my friend Mrs. Beatty knows a dodo whisperer who can work wonders with unruly dodos.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Not at all.”

“I’ll try anything, I suppose. I can’t understand why he’s so difficult—Pickers is a real sweetheart.”

We fell silent for a moment.

“Mum?” I said at last.

“Yes?”

“What do you think of Herr Bismarck?”

“Otto? Well, most people remember him for his ‘blood and iron’ rhetoric, unification arguments, and the wars—but few give him credit for devising the first social security system in Europe.”

“No, I mean . . . that is to say . . . you wouldn’t—”

At that moment we heard some oaths and a slammed door. After a few thumps and bumps, Hamlet burst into the living room, stopped, composed himself, rubbed his forehead, looked heavenwards, sighed deeply and then said:

“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!”1

“Is everything all right?” I asked

“Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d his canon ’gainst self-slaughter!” 2

“I’ll make a cup of tea,” said my mother, who had an instinct for these sorts of things. “Would you like a slice of Battenberg, Mr. Hamlet?”

“O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable—yes, please—seem to me all the uses of this world!”3

She nodded and moved off.

“What’s up?” I asked Emma, who had entered with Hamlet, as he strutted around the living room, beating his head in frustration and grief.

“Well, we went to see Hamlet at the Alhambra.”

“Crumbs!” I muttered. “It . . . er . . . didn’t go down too well, I take it?”

“Well,” reflected Emma, as Hamlet continued his histrionics around the living room, “the play was okay apart from Hamlet shouting out a couple of times that Polonius wasn’t meant to be funny and Laertes wasn’t remotely handsome. The management weren’t particularly put out—there were at least twelve Hamlets in the audience, and they all had something to say about it.”

“Fie on’t! Ah, fie!” continued Hamlet. “ ’Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely—!”4