The top part of Pridmore turned into painted iron and glass

Having re-read my way through all three-and-a-bit books about the Bastable siblings, I couldn't resist moving on to some of E. Nesbit's more magical (and brilliantly silly) children's stories - particularly her significant 1901 work, "The Cockatoucan". It's significant because of the nursemaid you can see in the centre of this picture. Her name? Pridmore!

Pridmore is a fairly uncommon name, an exclusively working-class one, and one that's historically been limited to the north and midlands areas. So when it comes to Victorian fiction (and for that matter modern-day fiction too), you'll never see a central character named Pridmore. You might, if you're very lucky, find the name applied to a servant... but even then, this one story by the great E. Nesbit seems to be the only time that's ever happened in history!

I don't know where Nesbit (the E stands for Edith, but she was always credited as E. so I feel I should just call her that) got the name from - this story, like all the stories back then, is set in London, where Pridmores were and still are vanishingly rare. Maybe she encountered a distant relative of mine, somehow!

She might not have really liked this relative, mind you. Pridmore in this story is a disagreeably strict kind of nursemaid, and the magical bird (which causes strange things to happen whenever it laughs) turns her into an Automatic Nagging Machine.

For before her eyes she saw an awful change taking place in Pridmore.

In an instant all that was left of the original Pridmore were the boots

and the hem of her skirt—the top part of her had changed into painted

iron and glass, and even as Matilda looked the bit of skirt that was

left got flat and hard and square. The two feet turned into four feet,

and they were iron feet, and there was no more Pridmore.

 

“Oh, my poor child,” said the King, “your maid has turned into an

Automatic Machine.”

 

It was too true. The maid had turned into a machine such as those which

you see in a railway station—greedy, grasping things which take your

pennies and give you next to nothing in chocolate and no change.

 

But there was no chocolate to be seen through the glass of the machine

that once had been Pridmore. Only little rolls of paper.

 

The King silently handed some pennies to Matilda. She dropped one into

the machine and pulled out the little drawer. There was a scroll of

paper. Matilda opened it and read—

 

“Don’t be tiresome.”

 

She tried again. This time it was—

 

“If you don’t give over I’ll tell your Ma first thing when she comes

home.”

 

The next was—

 

“Go along with you do—always worrying;” so then Matilda knew.

 

“Yes,” said the King sadly, “I fear there’s no doubt about it. Your

maid has turned into an Automatic Nagging Machine. Never mind, my

dear, she’ll be all right to-morrow.”

 

“I like her best like this, thank you,” said Matilda quickly. “I

needn’t put in any more pennies, you see.”

 

“Oh, we mustn’t be unkind and neglectful,” said the King gently, and he

dropped in a penny. He got—

 

“You tiresome boy, you. Leave me be this minute.”

 

Pridmore saves the day in the end. The only way to undo all the Cockatoucan's magic (which also included turning the King into a villa-residence, replete with every modern improvement, and the Prime Minister into a comic opera) is to make him laugh on the wrong side of his mouth, and Pridmore gladly obliges. "It was a terrible sight to witness, and the sound of that wrong-sided laughter was horrible to hear." I think we should all follow this shining example!

Krakoa, east of Java

 I'm trying not to spend money recklessly at the moment, after a year of mostly being idly and deliberately unemployed and also surprisingly physically active for the TV cameras. So when I say I've bought 95 comics over the last couple of weekends you'll probably just nod and say "Yes, that's consistent with your usual behaviour when you haven't got enough money and are trying not to spend it recklessly." But when I explain that they were very reasonably priced comics by the standards of American superhero comics generally, and that I was entirely justified in buying them because certain other comics are extremely good, you'll entirely forgive and heartily applaud my splurging, I'm sure!

You see, I may have mentioned before that we're in one of those rare eras when X-Men comics are great, just at the moment. Ever since the epic House of X / Powers of X series starting in July 2019, the mutants of the Marvel universe, good and bad alike, have all been living on Krakoa the sentient island in the Pacific, and generally lording it over the non-mutant humans in a new kind of way. And yes, according to this map in the first issue, Krakoa (unlike Krakatoa) actually is located somewhere to the east of Java.

Anyway, the location isn't important - the mutants now have access to a system of magic gates that can teleport them all over the world and beyond. Also, they have the ability to resurrect the dead. All of this was established by that original twelve-issue series and it felt like one of those cases where the comics would write a great story setting up the status quo, spend a couple of months failing to tell any readable stories in it, then tear everything down again in the next epic.

But one way or another, even though the first batch of comics spinning off the new set-up were unexceptional and then the pandemic stopped them altogether for a little while, the basic Krakoa premise really had legs, and they kept on producing stories set within it. And now, there are some totally awesome stories being told! The new epic that's just starting, "Sins of Sinister", I would have just dismissed as one of those 'spend a couple of months telling alternate-reality stories and then press the reset button implausibly at the end' things, except that this time the plot mechanism by which things will be reset has been spelt out clearly in advance and plays an integral part in the story, so that somehow makes me a lot more eager to read it.

And before that even started, the real masterpiece was "Immortal X-Men", which ties all the other comics in the range together and makes it all feel like a cohesive universe with a cast of hundreds all actively involved in one big, sprawling, fascinating adventure! Seriously, go out and read at least the last year's worth of X-Men comics, if you can find them.

Which brings me back to my splurging. See, Worlds Apart, the comic shop in Birmingham, was selling off its leftover comics (95p each or 10 for £5!), and I couldn't resist picking up a big pile of early Krakoa-era comics. Actually, 81 of them, over a couple of days, because I miscounted one pile and thought it was a multiple of ten, but well worth it! And then I went to a comics fair and got 14 more of the things from a 75p box for another tenner. But even though fifty pounds still sounds like quite a lot to spend on a pile of comics I just described as unexceptional, when you sit down and read proper old-fashioned paper comics (if you hadn't followed the trends in comic-reading, you might be thrilled to know you can get them digitally nowadays) all at once, you notice all the best parts. Even the ones that were widely dismissed as awful are really quite compelling, in my humble opinion!

I'm going to have to get a complete Krakoa collection now. Maybe after I've controlled my spending for a bit longer. Or at least not until I next see a big box with 'sale' written on it.