Literature / Ordinary Time

...“Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” - Ephesians v, 16...

‘... Stylish, witty, original, and beautifully written, speaking splendidly of Old England. In short, bloody marvellous’: Peter Maughan, author of ''Under the Apple Boughs'' and of the “Batch Magna Chronicle” (''The Cuckoos of Batch Magna; Sir Humphrey of Batch Hall; The Batch Magna Caper; Clouds in a Summer Sky;'' and ''The Ghost of Artemus Strange'').

Or, to the Duke of Taunton, bloody cheek and damned impertinence.

Either way, this is the British novel published, at last, after much delay excused in the Afterword, in 2020 by GMW Wemyss: the fifth in the Village Tales series, narrating the events of most of 2017 in the Woolfonts, the Downlands, and the Vale. And beyond.

The Ripped from the Headlines bits in Ordinary Time inevitably – 2017 having been 2017 – concentrate upon the snap General Election, the haplessness of Mrs May, the inability of Mr Corbyn to score against an open goal, Brexit, and the year’s various terror attacks, including the Manchester Arena bombing at the Ariana Grande concert. But the physical storms of the year, including Storms Doris, Ophelia, and Brian, perhaps matter more, to farmers … and to archaeologists, who find unexpected remains uncovered by storms.

There’s an intelligence and counter-intelligence inquiry (and a contact with Israeli intelligence ^note  actually Aman and Haman and Saudi intelligence, and a Belated Entry gazetting of the Duke’s actual rank with hints of what he’s been up to as a purportedly shelved Army Reserve officer); a murder in the West Midlands in which Canon Paddick’s two oldest friends feature as the victim and the accused; crises of faith; a Becket-style showdown between Church and State.... The fallout from the cock-ups of Ye Little Hills Like Lambs continues; as do the canal project, the Great Vale Dig, and the plans for the new school in the Downlands, with those parishes’ ongoing integration into the Combined Benefice.

But at the end of the day, what matters are scholarship, sanctity, love, and the land: births and baptisms, marriage engagements, several marriages (as trailed in the preceding book, the Duke to Professor the Baroness Lacy; his former sister-in-law Connie to Sir Giles Trulock; and Sher’s sister Ameena to Tariq ), a few funerals, farrowing and lambing and shearing and harvest, mercy and justice – and cricket; for, as ever in the Woolfonts, in times ordinary and extraordinary alike, in the deep continuity of England, “pigs and parishes, saints, scholars, and sheep, go on forever”, “all things begin and end in Albion’s ancient Druid rocky shore”, and “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” “Everything is much older than we think.”

The semper reformanda, ever-evolving character sheet for the series is here. New significant characters introduced in this volume or made so since a previous reference in the series include Emma Seaton MRCVS (“not the novelist”); Jack Fothergill, great-grandnephew of Hugo Mallerstang’s old WWII batman, valet at Hellgill Hall (and Mr Yeates is now there in wintry Westmorland on extended loan to Lord Mallerstang, buttling away); the Black British officers Colonel Robbie Gant ^note  whose insistence that there’s no “r” in “Gant” as “he’s not a bloody Scotsman” dowered him with Army bye-name of “No-Arse Gant” and Major Gar “Lefty” Lewis; Jack Proffitt; Mr Justice Collingridge; Sher Mirza’s sisters Noor and Ameena, Ameena’s fiance Tariq Ali Khan Alvi Baig, his parents Sohail and Gulrukh, and Dr Amla their imam Oop North; Lady Manningham-Buller, in a Real-Person Cameo; Kevin Bagnall; Gerry Douty and Anne Custis; Gemma Douty; old Mrs Lacy, Millicent Lacy’s mother; and Mr and Mrs Westgate and their small son Andrew.Appearing also, at Fête and Penelope Keith; and, for a bit of smithing, Alec Steele. And there are Royals at a few weddings, as Strictly Private Occasions.

Locations are Wiltshire, mostly; Town; the West Midlands; Westmorland and, briefly, Cheshire (and Alderley Edge); Perthshire; and, a new entry, the Hebridean Isle of Avard.

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The tropes common to the series are being listed on that page. Additionally, Ordinary Time provides especially notable or specific examples of:

Tropes A to F

• Actually, I Am Him: It’s unwise to complain of the Duke’s presence – he having Done Majorly Awesome Things in Afghanistan and becoming known as The Red Wolf, from a Pastho proverb – at a British Asian wedding when the ground of the complaint is that The Red Wolf did Majorly Awesome Things in Afghanistan to one’s co-religionists. He’ll inevitably be, in the panto sense, right behind one. With the bride’s father; her uncle the Nawab; and the groom’s father standing grimly beside him.
• Adjective Animal Alehouse: Played with. The pub in Woolfont Magna is of course the Blue Boar (from one of the supporters in the ducal arms); other locals may (the Red Cow) or may not (the Old Bridge; the Woolpack) fit the bill; but the Duke is determined that the new canal-side pubs shan’t be, and that that the revived pub for the Downlands’ center of settlement shall be the "Chalk Horse" .
• Adventurer Archaeologist: Averted militantly. Try that on with Millicent Lacy-now-Taunton or Prof. Den Farnaby, you’ll be lucky to escape with your head. Some of the juniors at the Dig are rather too near to learning that the hard way.
• All Girls Like Ponies: The Duke’s niece is aging into a newer sense of the trope: with the Hon. Gwen (and Lady Agatha), she’s becoming a fixture of the Turf. As an owner-to-be. Which is reflected in her birthday gifts... Never applied, to Sir Giles’ relief, to Emma Seaton MRCVS, his new junior: she’s an ovine specialist, leaving him free to continue as an equine specialist, which is what he got his K for.
• Almighty Mom: Edmond’s mum, Teddy’s mum, Betty Stamford, Mary Paddick, Emily Mirza.... Tragically averted with Millicent’s mother, who is nowadays sunk into the uttermost depths of Alzheimer’s Syndrome.
• Arcadia: Red in tooth and claw, layer upon layer since the Mesolithic or earlier, and all being slowly dug up.
• Arc Words: “Ordinary time(s),” in both the ecclesiastical and the common or garden sense; and, with it, variations of the landscape-and-economic-historian W. G. Hoskins’ maxim, “Everything is much older than we think;” X or Y secular thing passes, but “pigs and parishes, saints, scholars, and sheep, go on forever;” Blakes’ “the I am of the Oaks of Albion” and “All things begin and end in Albion’s ancient Druid rocky shore;” and Dame Julian’s “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Played with. Edmond believes this to be almost (if that) universally true. So do a lot of the juniors at the Dig. The Duke regards his contemporary peers as average for a subset of the general population, but commonly dim to the point of idiocy; his view of his ancestors, however, Malets, Clares, Pelhams, Plantagenets, Stuarts, and all, is richly cynical.
• Asian Store-Owner: Discussed mockingly by Sher’s father, when the Duke enlists him in a spot of intelligence work:
  “You were, as I recall, a spice and tea merchant, an East India Provisions wholesaler who, had y’ removed t’ Town, should have been the glory of a restored Mincin’ Lane and an ornament of the Worshipful Company of Grocers.”
  “No, Charles, I’m simply the British Asian who runs the corner shop. Of course you recall correctly: among the interests in which our holding company invested were firms which were considerable importers of spices and of tea. As you perfectly well know, and, as I expect, of which you have all our financials going back a decade. It’s allowed my brother-in-law ^note the Nawab to keep his pomp and state.”
• Author Avatar: The Duke and the Duchess, looking idly over another character’s library and mostly approving his taste, see that the authors represented include even that “odd little chap, Wemyss;” and the “Advance Praise” section for the book begins with a highly commendatory blurb from the very real British novelist Peter Maughan and then proceeds to reactions from In-Universe figures, including, “We must all pray for Mr Wemyss. – The Revd Canon Noel Paddick SSC.”
• Badass Israeli: Rasan Levy of IDF military intelligence, whose NOC is as a demi-monde, celebrity purveyor of studio-produced gay porno. As the Duke notes,
  “… it struck me that, in your sort of business, y’ ’ve such untrammelled opportunities for findin’ things out, particularly once you’re grown big and grand enough to be sellin’ things for somethin’ other than cash down. When a business such as yours ceases to run on a ‘no names, no pack-drill’ footin’.... [snip]
  “… I reflect on the possibility – the utility, shall we say – of organisational records reflectin’, inter alia, the porno-watchin’ and -purchasin’ habits of, oh, closeted, lad-fancyin’ Labour MPs, Hamas members of the Palestinians’ “wee pretendy parliament”, US Congressmen, GU / GRU colonels, Daesh commanders, radical imams, ayatollahs on the Guardian Council in Tehran, Tory backbenchers, Turkish ministers of state, a senior aide to a member of the PRC’s Foreign Affairs Leadin’ Group, a Very Senior Russian Official, and some three or four Qatari princelin’s. [snip]
  “Surprisin’ how many of the foreign adversaries of the realm, and domestic terrorists as well, are shameful, shameless lad-fanciers; and so desperately so as to give their own names and addresses and payment details to a dirty website....”
• Badass Preacher: There’s hardly a single religious figure in the series who isn’t (not even the C of E’s Bishop Chubb and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clifton). This book adds a new one: Dr Amla, the South-African-born Maliki imam in Leeds, equally ready to lecture the Nawab and Mr Ali Khan Alvi Baig both.
• Battle Butler: As always, the Duke’s butler, Viney – “Mister” Viney to you, unless you’re the Duke or his family – and indeed all the staff at Wolfdown House; the Downlands farmer Alec Parham, descendant of old knights who held of and under the ducal forefathers, who is made Chief Steward and Master Forester of the old Honour (in addition to everything else, the Duke retains the old feudal, manorial rights as "Lord of the Downs" and can indeed make such appointments, cf. the Real Life Lord of Bowland / "Lord of the Fells'', ostensibly to supervise a census of ancient yews, and in fact to Keep An Eye On Things and report dirty dealings; and Lord Mallerstang’s valet, Jack Fothergill, late sergeant, King’s Own Royal Border Regiment, (nowadays the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment (King’s, Lancashire and Border)). The Duke doesn’t deal in contrived coincidences: he appears when, where, and as needed because he hasn’t servants so much as he has a private intelligence network.
• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Several, including, in a sense, West Midlands Police; the Chief Constable and the Police and Crime Commissioner in Wilts; and the Crown Prosecution Service, among ’em. HM Revenue & Customs, on the other hand, have only themselves to blame.
• Benevolent Boss: His Grace. Of course. Yet more obviously, the clergy. Exaggerated – ''... loud as you can make it go / Play until your speakers blow'' – with Professor the Baroness Lacy and Professor Farnaby, for the archaeology dig.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Rule Number One in the Woolfonts, particularly with the clergy; it is now extended to the Downland parishes and into the Vale adjoining. And West Midlands Police and all of Whitehall are being given a crash course in it, too. (The Duke’s at his deadliest when he does not bellow and roar, but instead gets all quietly menacing.)
• Big Fancy House: Yet another new entry in an already long list: Caisteal an Acarsaid, “Anchorage House,” on Avard; also, The McCammond’s town house in Oban and (mentioned) his seat at An Caisteal, on the Isle of Hinba; and, unasked, the Duke spends time before his wedding making certain all his other properties are up to scratch and moving tapestries and Old Masters about to make the future Duchess more comfortable.
• Bookends: Engagements to engagements, Ordinary Time I to Ordinary Time II. And the Weather Report Opening is mirrored in the closing passages, too. So’s the teasing foreshadowing about the as yet un-dug and un-surveyed landscape of the little River Rushlight.
• Boy Band: The Fonts, of course, with added ducal foundation-shifting bass; Hetty’s obsession; and, in the ducal opinion, in cameo, McFly.
• Brick Joke: Six books, five full novels, in, the explanation of the otherwise twee toponym, Honey Coombe: that it was land temporarily given to the real and appalling royal toady Huna the Moneyer, by the useless / "King Edwy'' and got back by the Duke’s ancestors from the next king, Edgar the Peaceful: is finally given. In a footnote.
• Bullying a Dragon: In Flashback, the previous duke – the current Duke’s father, that Old Brigadier – seemed to be doing so in the ’60s when, on leave, after learning that a young officer, as well as SAS' David Stirling, had been fleeced at some gambling hells, he demanded – and got – a meeting with the Mob behind them, including the Krays. Turns out the then duke was the bigger dragon, and they’d been mugging the wrong monsters. He got an agreement that certain people were off limits; got restitution made; gave them targeted, detailed, highly personal analyses of just why and how they were scum, and dared them to resent it; and walked away, tossing them as a luck-penny a golden guinea from the reign of his ancestor James II, remarking that if one has ancestors one may as well honor them.
  Attempting to take on the current Duke also counts, though few people survive to profit by the lesson. The Nawab attributes this to the Duke’s having had the father he had.
• Burns Nicht: Haggis, Scottish Country Dancing, and all. Leaving Sher with an irritating itch to compose some variations on Scots airs.
• Bury Your Gays: The Duke’s cynical assessment of West Midland Police’s handling of the murder of their own Sgt Ste Trantor and their decision to charge Davy Evans without much investigation.
• Call to Adventure: Married or not, now, the Duke rings it up, having adventure on speed-dial. And Jack Proffitt jumps to answer the call when the Duke rings him up.
• Car Porn: The Tidnock classic Rolls (and the Tidnock Hilux for that matter, painted in livery colors and with the ducal crest on the door); Lord Mallerstang’s classic Bentley; the ducal fleet of liveried Bristol motorcars; and two of Rupert’s 21st birthday gifts, a classic Bristol at Hellgill and a Bristol Bullet at Wolfdown.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Still going strong. Even if Rupe and Jamie are aging out towards Hunk-dom, Hetty’s boyfriend Mark Grampound is joining the ranks; and then there are the younger guests at the ducal wedding....
• The Chains of Commanding: Worn lightly but irritably by the Duke, who resents being shackled to a desk. Canon Paddick, naturally, finds his yoke easy and his burdens, light.
• The Chessmaster: The Duke regards He Grace, and the Nawab, as being this; they reciprocate the compliment. Edmond is suspicious of all of them. The ISI’s Wg Cdr Iqbal believes himself to be one.
• Children's Literature: Not the book, but the impromptu tea-time stories (of “Small Julian and his sister Tullia, Who Was Smaller Yet, and Accordingly Much The More Fierce,” adopted corporately by a fictional Oxbridge college) which the Duke gets into the habit of telling once a month to all the sprogs in the District, at Wolfdown.
• Clear Their Name: What the Duke intends for the accused in the West Midlands murder, for several reasons.
• Cool Uncle: The Duke, and Her Grace as a Cool Aunt, both to their actual relations and otherwise; the ancient Lord Mallerstang; the Canon (and Sher), to his niece and ward; and Lady Agatha to everyone.
• Day in the Life: Edmond foolishly thinks the Duke spends all day playing God and lording it over everyone. The Duke tells him to show up unannounced on any weekday he likes, and shadow him for day. Edmond, after a very detailed grueling day, returns home late, utterly shattered … and still convinced that the Duke spends all day playing God and lording it over everyone, and Where Does He Find the Time?
• Depraved Bisexual: What Sher mistakenly fears he’ll be seen as, unjustly. Sometimes what the Duke is tempted to think of his late brother, not because of the bisexuality but because of the late Lord Crispin’s nigh-sociopathic selfishness.
• Depraved Homosexual: What the Duke suspects the ninth duke should have been had he not died young in the Great War: the potential depravity being, not hysterics and scandals, but, far worse, ruining the estates.
• Doorstopper: In print, it had to be broken into two volumes due to physical constraints; the e-book is the Ominibus Edition. The same occurred earlier in the series with Evensong.
• Eagleland: As expected, mixed and nuanced examples, as Dr. Sproat-Sabri is balanced by Gerry Douty’s new fiancee, Anne Custis, the FFV daughter of an American general officer in joining the ranks alongside Ms Anderson-Harris and Lt. Travis Bolling Martinez-Henderson III.
• Ensemble Cast: Scores of them. If there’s a hero, well, Canon Paddick’ll tell you who it is, and he’s not really an on-page character; and don’t be misled into thinking anyone is the protagonist, least of all the Duke. If there is one, it’s the land as a whole.
• Epistolary Novel: In parts. Not least in the run-up to the ducal wedding, when the older ladies of the Family write back and forth about it in a homage to the opening of Busman’s Honeymoon.
• Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: The pipe-and-drum flashmob at the ducal wedding; and in Sher’s mind after Burns’ Nicht as he tries to resist the itch to compose a Scottish Suite.
• Evil Jesuit: Averted; the juniors at the Dig are confused, some of them, about Tudor history.
• Fictional Document: Charters, Feet of Fines, manorial rolls, Victorian-era County directories.... Sometimes, it’s fictional entries amidst straight quotations from the actual documents.
• Footnote Fever: From the Anglican rubrics to “Anglo-Saxon” place-names … there are almost fifty footnotes.

Tropes G to Zed

• Gossipy Hens: Lady Agatha, Flora the dowager Countess of Freuchie, Lady Apwyn, the Hon. Miss Alys Meredith, Lady Landrake, Lady Avenwater, Lady Snodland, and for that matter Sir Gregory Athelney and the nice-but-dim the Hon. Giles Geers-Gamage. Mrs Viney, at Wolfdown, agrees with Her Grace that the ducal couple naturally take up all the local gossip, with little left for the rest of the Great and Good unless it involves romance; and it’s pointed out that the middle classes, who’d normally retail most of the gossip, are nowadays either too busy for it, or don’t hear it because they haven’t the servants a Jane Marple had. Still, it exists, there are hens, and Wolfdown and the Rectory must (and do) monitor it before someone gets hurt.
• Guile Hero: That Most High, Potent, and Noble Prince, His Grace the Duke of Taunton KG GCB GCVO KBE MiD TD PC JP DL, Marquess of Templecombe, Earl Fitzwarren, Earl of Dilton, Viscount and Baron Malet, Baron Daubeny, Baron Chard, Baron Beechbourne, Baron Marden and Widham, Commander of Clan Stewart of Camserney, Teàrlach Diùc, Mac mhic Raibeart Prionnsa Stiubhaird na Chamserney, late Major the Intelligence Corps, Fellow of All Souls, now gazetted by Belated Entry as a Staff Colonel, Army Reserve, seconded to the Ministry of Defence.
• Happily Married: Their Graces, now; Tariq and Ameena. Connie and Giles are … getting there. The Duke reflects that this is what ordinary life is meant to be in … er, ordinary times.
• The Hero: The Duke may be very nearly an ace, but if there were a hero, it might well be the Canon. But there isn’t one – unless it’s Britain herself.
• Historical In-Joke: Innumerable. This is in many ways a novel about history, historians, historiography, archaeology, archaeologists, and the past, after all: with Decided Views, by the scholarly characters, on such controversies as whether there really was an Anglo-Saxon invasion-and-population-replacement.
• Honorary Uncle: The Duke, to everyone, whether they like it or not, and to adventure-uncle / accommodating pawnbroker levels to the desperate.
• Hurricane of Puns: Hurricane season of them, mostly academic and many of them multilingual, from Sher’s wisely suppressed one about aunties and in-laws and puppets, to the Duke’s duel of puns with Professor Farnaby on bear-worship.
• Iron Lady: The only exceptions – Millicent; the deceptively fluffy Gemma Douty – are where what the silk is hiding, is steel. Otherwise, it’s more iron than the Industrial Revolution ever saw.
• Interclass Friendship: Their Graces make this their trademark; and it’s reciprocate, mostly.
• Is That Cute Kid Yours?: Sher and the Canon keep getting this when out with the Canon’s niece and ward. Deputy Headmaster Sher Mirza is increasingly unamused.
• Jerkass: Some of the Trendies, and very much the junior archaeologist Aubrey Leland.
• Jurisdiction Friction: West Midlands Police are treating the murder up there as routine, and think they have a bird in the hand with their suspect. The Duke, as an old Int Corps officer, disagrees; and when he’s made Vice Chairman of a Commission of Inquiry into terrorism links … well.
• Little Professor Dialog: Andrew Westgate. Teddy worries about Pip in this regard; Canon Paddick points out that he’s the son of a novelist mother and a rural-essayist gran, who had to grow up fast, so it’s hardly indicative of Pip’s possibly being on the spectrum.
• Manipulative Bastard: The Duke is designated and admired as such by the Nawab, and so designated but not admired by Edmond. His Grace’ll take it: it’s tactically useful.
• Mission Control: What the Duke is reduced to being (though not resigned to being) in the murder case.
• Mugging the Monster: Really, it’s best to let sleeping Dukes alone. The man’s half [1]’s dragon, half honey-badger.
• My Beloved Smother: Connie is not best pleased that her children – even Hetty, now – are no longer even tolerating-with-amusement her habit of this. And gets called out on it: including by Canon Paddick when she attempts to warn him against conducting any marriages – of her adult children, no less – without her approval. He points out that she hasn’t the right or the power to meddle.
• Non-Idle Rich: Their Graces, and TH the Nawab and the Begum, and Sher’s parents, too. Just how non-idle the Duke is leaves Edmond shattered (see the “Day In the Life” entry, above).
• Oh, Crap!: Universal reaction to finding one’s having got crosswise with the Nawab; the Duke; or, God help you, Her Grace the Duchess. Earth-toned trousers are advised.
• Parental Bonus: Throughout the Julian-and-Tullia snippets; The Breener’s abortive attempt at telling bedtime stories to the twins; Pip’s confronting Teddy about the dads’ getting amorous in the kitchen; and Pip’s and AJ’s resentment of fruits at breakfast, and Teddy’s explanation of how he gets Edmond to go along: “sports nutrition.”
• Perfect Poison: Played with. The actual murder doesn’t involve poison at all. The framing / fitting-up of the accused involves cumulative doses of a deliriant, either nutmeg overdose as such or to hide the taste of a purer hallucinogenic derived from myristicin and/or elemicin.
• Pretty Boy: By the castful, and added to in this as in every installment. And even in their thirties, Sher and Teddy alike are holding on that title.
• Public Domain Artifact: Archaeologically, yes, plenty, including a Ptolemy I gold stater from God-knows-how-it-got-there.
• Punny Name: Subverted and lampshaded, as to toponyms and the ducal reflection that some families in the peerage really ought to know better in christening children who may get such a name if a peerage falls in.
• Rare Money: A unique coin from the reign of Ptolemy I Soter in Egypt, just after the death of, as the Duke calls him, Wee Eck McPhillip of Macedon.
• Rotating Protagonist: A consequence of there not really being one.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Sadly, the Duchess’ mum, who’s in the last, non-verbal stages of Alzheimer’s.
• Scenery Porn: Hardcore. But not, in a novel about history, archaeology, and The Land Itself, gratuitous.
• Scrapbook Story: In part, when the historical documents come out.
• Second Love: Connie with Sir Giles – if she gets over herself and defrosts; chastely and celibately, Sher and Canon Noel; and Miss Petty and Sir Tom.
• Selective Enforcement: What snaps Sher for a time, when the Duke mildly suggests he not sing anything too sexy at the Village Concert, even though Teddy and Edmond can’t be stopped from doing so.
• ShakespearianActor: Averted: That old West End stager Dame Edith Rice expressly dislikes Serious Theat-ah and “all that wordy Shaw” and was happiest doing panto and rep. (It didn’t stop her being the most famous Mrs Malaprop and Lady Teazle of her generation.)
• Story Within A Story The bits we get of the Duke’s tales for children – and teens and parents, listening along – about Julian-and-Tullia, and the Maguire Twins’ bedtime stories … once the Hon. Gwen had intervened on hearing The Breener, having begun with “Once upon a time,” proceed to the moocow, Betty Byrne, and baby tuckoo.
• Small Reference Pools: Averted and inverted, from the Honey Coombe brick joke to historiography, archaeology (including geophysical surveys, sondages, LIDAR, and field walks), and toxicology.
• Steam Never Dies: The Woolfonts & Chickmarsh Railway is going great guns; the Duke … Has Further Plans; and he muses to visiting scholars that he’d still have a working railway in the event of black-out apocalypse.
• Suddenly Shouting: Sher, when he cracks. The Duke, being a basso profundo, doesn’t shout: he booms.
• Those Two Guys: The competitive-carriage-driving milkmen, Jemmy Dally and Ernie Bellin.
• Title Drop: A phrase from the ecclesiastical Kalendar, so the book itself is not quite a ''literary'' allusion title this time.
• World of No Grandparents: The history of many families over the centuries, and particularly after 1918 and 1945, as is made achingly clear; and the Duke lampshades this in speaking of families with a tradition of service in HM Forces.
• Writer's Block: Sher suffers Composer's Block from this in his attempts to write his own Enigma Variations: the block being his adored Canon Paddick. It’s a factor in his later brief breakdown.