There is tons to read in our prefab. Encased inside richly-layered dark red embossed covers are a Book Of Hobbies, eight encyclopaedic Books Of Knowledge, a Concise Oxford Dictionary ("written in 1917 before my brother's death " says its eerie preface), and three volumes of The Bricklayer which the old man has been itching to trowel through. These books convey the same sense of gravitas that you find in the study of the Silk-Farr's Italian-style villa. "When you walk into some prefabs", says Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic, "you find yourself wondering if you have entered a side entrance of the Bodleian Library!"
Other not so literary cargo you find scattered across our prefab deck includes some I-Spy booklets; a biography of General Rommel; and a fitness training guide compiled by a top Australian coach. ("Mix different types of breakfast cereal together and go running on sand dunes!" is his best tip). There are copies of magazines like Woman's Own, Woman, Tit-Bits, and Reveille. A booklet by Charles Atlas on his famed dynamic tension technique (seven stone weaklings who have sand kicked in their faces would give anything to get hold of a copy). Three Biggles books, and a crime detective thriller with a garish cover called I'll Say She Does!
Resting on top of our wooden Van Gogh-style stool is a copy of Encounter, a high-powered journal of ideas carrying a special issue on 'The God That Failed'. ('Tubby' Lard went into one of his sulky moods after he borrowed it after thinking it was a manual on the best places to meet girls).
According to Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic Encounter would have folded up years ago if it had not been for the undercover payments it receives from the American Government's Central Intelligence Agency. "This piece of 'soft power' has more propaganda value than the combined forces of the Red Army Choir and the Bolshoi Ballet. It punches more Cold War weight than the Reader's Digest! and beats V.I. Lenin's Speeches at Party Congresses (1918-1922) for a pulsating read."
One of the most flicked through magazines here is The Ring. This sells so many copies it does not need undercover payments from anyone. An issue from 1959 is packed with coverage of Floyd Patterson's defeat by Ingemar Johansson in the world heavyweight championship. It also carries a short report on an amazing young boxer called Cassius Clay. Try and avoid making the big mistake of mixing up The Ring boxing magazine with Wagner's Ring opera which Adolf Schicklgruber and his Nazi gangster pals used to rave on about. (As for Wagner's music Mark Twain was on to something when he said it "is better than it sounds.")
Poetry has always been big on this prefab estate, and T.S.Eliot's The Love Song of J. Afred Prufrock was once all the rage. After coming across Eliot's Selected Poems and the piece on 'Bubank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a cigar' we all had second thoughts. Books and poems can be weapons of murder and some are best kept hidden away on the coalhouse floor.