Peace on Sol III (1965)

Goodwill to Mellow Fen

from

Walt & Madeleine Willis

This Christmas, as always, you are invited to visit Irish Fandom at home. You follow the familiar road to Oblique House, hub of the Wheels of IF for 18 years, climb the steps through the strangely tidy front garden, pause in momentary puzzlement at the eerie radiance emanating from the base of the cherry tree, and ring the front door bell. The door is opened by a white-haired old lady whose face is not familiar from any convention photograph.

"You must be The Hypothetical Observer," she says. "Mr. Willis told me you'd be here at Christmas. He left a message, written into the contract of sale. Excuse me."

So saying, she donned a shawl, picked up a bundle of faggots and quavered:

"Go East, Young Fan, and far

Beyond the Sacred Tower

To the grey house by the sea.

Where six roads end

And warrens wend

To Strathclyde, Donaghadee."

Thanking the aged crone, you get back into your Hypothetical Car and follow the signposts to Donaghadee, passing on your way the Tower of the Enchanted Duplicator (known on mundane maps as Scrabo) and the hamlet of Six Road Ends. In half an hour you have reached the rockbound coast of the Irish Sea. You turn left and through two big grey gateposts, and park behind George Charters' new blue and white Austin Cambridge. In the big front room Irish Fandom is looking at the storm-tossed sea and the distant coast of Scotland. Come in out of the cold and join us . . .

JAMES: You know, everything here is in Cinemascope and Technicolour.
MADELINE: Yes, it's definitely a high-budget production. Thank goodness the garden is big enough to hide from the bill-collectors in.
WALT: Fortunately, we know we're going to be rich and famous.
GEORGE: How did you find that out? By Walter-divining?
WALT: No. I examined the catrails in the dog's dinner for signs, and saw my name in lights.
MADELINE: Another of his shoddy gag stories.
BOB: I can fortell the future too. I know your going to serve us pastries with whipped cream and chocolate for supper.
MADELINE: I know I shouldn't say this, but how?
BOB: I'm an eclairvoyant.
GEORGE: I don't believe in clairvoyance myself. There's no future in it.
MADELINE: He may be able to see the future, but not the pastry. They're meringues.
SADIE: He's got no come-back to that.

BOB: No, they can't be boomeringues.
WALT: I know he wasn't going to let you gateau way with that. Well, that's the future taken care of. What about the presents?
BOB: Presents? Sure we don't give each other presents for Christmas, just the stimulus of our intellectual conversation.
MADELINE: Where can we change it?
WALT: It's just that our friends may not have heard from us for so long and we want them to know we're thinking about them. Presents make the heart grow fonder.
PEGGY: You mean you haven't been writing to anyone?
WALT: Oh I've written dozens of letters, its just that they may not have been delivered yet on account of my current difficulties. I think I'll have to try and throw the bottles further out to sea.
MADELINE: He's boycotting the Post Office until they surrender his copy of Candy. We couldn't even get the next Hyphen out because it won't fit into the Pepsi bottles Ted White left behind. He refused to try.
GEORGE: They were decline bottles.
WALT: Yes, they were too small for the great spirit of Hyphen. Visiting fans should drink djinn.
GEORGE: As a bottle-scarred veteran, I see your point. But they'll be too small for presents too.
WALT: I'm going to use the wine bottles left by Bloch and Elly and Ella, for small gifts like a little lit-up Christmas pig for Carol Carr, and for Pete a condensed version of the book about the man who left the big city to live on a small island, Half Noon and a Halfpenny, and for Terry an autographed picture of the Donaghadee lighthouse.
MADELINE: Of course we'll be able to send bigger presents when we get all the kegs of rum emptied.
BOB: It was a great idea to put that light in the attic window for the Busbies. I wonder who keeps leaving that stuff on our shores?
WALT: What shores?
BOB: Thanks, Walt. I'll have another tot of rum.
GEORGE: I don't wish to know that.
WALT: What do you wish to know?
GEORGE: Well, for one thing, how you're going to get this Christmas card delivered in time.
WALT: By airmail, of course, just as soon as I can catch 67 seagulls. They'll wind their way across the sea like stormy petrels (or in the case of those proceedings westwards, stormy gasolines) wishing all our friends a very

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Walt & Madeline Willis, Strathclyde, Warren Rd., Donaghadee, N. Ireland
Christmas 1965. An MROCCM Publication

---

(data entry by Melanie Herz)