Shellfish Forever

One linguistic trend with which we are all familiar is using the names of animals to describe something else with the same characteristics. A sweet person is called a pussycat and a bad person a dog. Someone who is very crafty is called a snake and someone with very outdated ideas is called a dinosaur. It is a useful shorthand. But some of the decisions that have been made in this process are plainly absurd and ripe for review.

Many years ago Mr. Quincy Augustus De Vere Lancelot William Shakespeare Bogroll lived in the same house as myself. Never heard of him? That is because he is the world's worst poet. His productions so outrage the public taste that they and he are carefully locked away. But as with all artists his work could be divided into periods depending on its date of composition or other characteristics. Stravinsky had his Neoclassical Period and Picasso his Blue Period. When Bogroll had written around seventy verses he too felt the need for categorisation. He declared that his work of a few months earlier was his 'Crustacean Period'. Why not? But for some reason society refused to accept this. The same culture that can talk of a 'bull in a china shop' and a 'cuckoo in the nest' was unable to accept the notion of a Crustacean Period. His verses were bad enough but using the term crustacean to describe them put him beyond the pale.

We are supposed to conclude one of two things. Either that there is something inherently wrong with describing something as crustacean but not with describing it as something else connected with the animal kingdom. Or that the public is simply not used to things being called crustacean and fears the unknown. As each animal is equally inferior to humans surely the latter is true. But what else apart from the verse of Bogroll could be described as crustacean? What characteristics can be invoked by applying the name 'crustacean' to a person or object?

Crustaceans are hard on the outside and soft on the inside. They are also strange shapes and unusual colours. It would therefore be reasonable to describe the East End of London as the Crustacean Area. Hard men in the streets of Whitechapel would be known by nicknames such as "Lobster" and "Prawn". If Lobster was murdered by fellow gangsters it would be Lobster Pate. If Prawn murdered someone they would be made into Prawn Cocktail. They would all drive vintage Abarth cars and sell oysters in the markets to support their other rackets. The local economy would benefit from crustacean related tourism such as visits to murder sites and local community centres would be named after the shellfish native to the community they served. The Bangladeshi Crab Centre would be a thing of beauty. This rebranding as the Crustacean Area would certainly make the term acceptable to everyone. But what would it tell us about the verse of Bogroll? Would the acceptance of the term Crustacean be enough to ensure that his verse of a certain period was automatically given this title?

Crustacean verse would have to be impenetrable on sight with its meaning only reached after the greatest difficulty. It would be strange to look at or contemplate and best approached when it is cut into little pieces and covered with something more acceptable. Exactly! No longer will crustaceans be omitted from the canon of meaningful animal based usages. They have found their calling. The verse of Bogroll was indeed purely crustacean in character and without any reference at all to the East End of London we can extrapolate the figurative meaning of crustacean from there.

Here for the first time in the public print is a sample of Crustacean Period verse. Judge for yourself whether it meets the criteria.

"Now I shall speak of burning dogs -
Hereward the Wake might enter the question
As he often does
And a mint pie will come by and by.
Mashed-out tomatoes will go bubbly
Crashed-out planes will wreck the wreckage
Soapiness is a kind of tart.
My best friend was once a plain smock
Grown ornate in a field of concrete.
I wish my hand wouldn't throb so,
I want to grip time itself with it,
Turn inclined planes into wet shirts,
I wish that dog would stop doing that, it's disgusting."

Clearly no right thinking person could disagree that crustacean has finally found its true meaning. Crustacean rap music anyone?