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A Little Background
He was not the sort of man you'd call Fobbo.
He just didn't take to it, like pouring water off a duck's back.
Actually, the experience of calling him Fobbo was a lot like attempting to pour water down a duck's back: it usually involved the duck-holding party coming to a deep and abiding knowledge that a duck's bite does, in fact, hurt a lot more than you think it would. And this is assuming you think being bitten by a duck wouldn't be all that great, in the first place.
He was Fob. Fob Jones. A nondescript sort of guy, which makes it rather difficult to say much more about him without injuring the meaning of the word 'nondescript.' But don't we all, when asked to describe ourselves, think of ourselves as fairly nondescript?
Well, maybe if we're surprised, and have just woken up and have rolled over in the bed to come face to face with a television camera and a local news anchor saying, "Good morning, [Your Name Here], how would you describe yourself?" Then we definitely would probably say nondescript. (And you'd be surprised how often this happens, when you're an author. Man, it's not a good scene, sometimes.)
Fob was a tallish sort of height, and his greying and disappearing hair was more a symptom of him having the natural worries a guy has around a certain age (or at certain ages), perception, you know. As tall as he was, it wasn't like people were looking down on the top of his head all that often to see whether or not his own references to thinning and greying hair were true or whether he was just being congenially self-deprecating.
He was the sort of man you'd be glad to have on your side in a fight.
Of course, people have this sort of mistaken impression of tallish people being good to have on their side in fights, when most tallish people just want to sit down, read a book, maybe have a snooze, watch some television, and rarely are all that keen to spend all their time fighting on various people's sides.
Fob was all right to actually have on your side in a fight, but he complained a fair amount about it, so much so you wound up reconsidering, next time you were in a fight.
You had to admit he had a pretty good right hook sort of thing, though.
And his, well, the woman he hung around with a lot, was quite attractive. Not that you'd say that, for fear of being in a fight not on his side.
Fob also seemed to know a hell of a lot of clowns, for an inspector in the police force.
disclaimer:
This is just a little bit of background on Fob Jones, the central character in the novel Curious, a novel, for those of you who hate having to go through all the tedium of reading the background on someone when you're just trying to get settled in and read your novel without having to go and, like, meet people. I mean, if you'd wanted to do that you'd be out and about, not sitting in your apartment, reading about something or other.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), the book also has a bit of an introduction to Fob (almost makes you glad you didn't have to pay for this content, doesn't it?), so those people who like being introduced to people in the middle of books they're reading will also be quite happy with Curious.
It's like having your cake and eating it, too! People who like intros, well, they get their intro, both in the book, and here! Double the intros! Man, don't you wish you were paying for this!
Those who don't, well, to be honest, the bit in the book is short enough that you could skip over it and not really miss a thing, while the one here will just sit around patiently, and you can sleep easily, knowing that, if you really, really need to, you can read a little more about this Fob guy that keeps popping up in the book. And it's on the internet, so if you're really one of those antisocial types there's probably something you can get interested in by searching off Google or something and there goes the rest of your day, just like that!
As a lot of you know, from last week, I'm back, been shipped out of my lovely comfortable apartment on Vernon Hill in Worcester (heya to the Miss Worcester Diner crew) and back into the UK, London, specifically, while the head man takes a bit of time off.
I'll be in the office, sort of running things, taking in the sights, hanging out, trying to finish Sleep(s) on Chickens (no, I still haven't finished it yet, and yes, my publishers are what some have termed very annoyed, and yes, I'm still hoping to have it done someday. In the meantime, I'm in London, filling in for your favourite and mine, while he takes a break. Or does whatever it is he's doing. No one rightly knows, to be honest.
At any rate, I'm William Murphy, and this is still Sane Magazine.
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