Douglas Lindsay

“I'm reading Molière, if you must know.' 'Jings. That French pish! What are you reading yon for? Have you got nothing better to do with your time? On ne meurt qu'une fois, et c'est pour si longtemps, eh? Absolute shite, so it is. Absolute shite.' 'If you must know, I just happen to like the sub-Hudibrastic lineage of the prose. So much better than his Scottish or English contemporaries.' James Strachan finally sat up in bed. Wide awake. Aware of the wind piling the snow against the side of the house; he ignored it. 'Hudibrastic? You mean his writing employs a burlesque cacophonous octosyllabic couplet with extravagant rhymes?' 'Aye.' 'Away and stick your heid in a bucket of sludge, Mary Strachan. Molière did no such thing.' 'He did so!' 'You know fine well he didn't. You just wanted to say Hudibrastic.' 'I did not.' James”
― Douglas Lindsay, The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt

“The men of the shop were discussing the great issues of the day. They’d done Brexit, they’d covered Russian interference in western politics, they’d stuck a foot in the toxic mud of the decline of the UK’s foreign policy into moral repugnance, they’d trawled through the septic wasteland of the narcissistic infantilism of Donald Trump, they’d cast a doleful eye over the concentration camps and the genocide of the Uighurs, they’d buried their heads in the sands of the desertification of planet earth, they’d planted a flag in the other habitable worlds of the galaxy, and now they were talking about bagels.”
― Douglas Lindsay, Curse Of The Clown