(Phantasmagorical) Astrarium Compendium , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - Roland Langdale Mark

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149 pages

English

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Gulliver has never travelled outside Devon. He only knows his antique emporium, filled with dusty old grandfather clocks, brass telescopes and antique globes from the 17th century among other things. Dreaming of maps that lead to national treasures, he longs to go on an adventure. Then one day, in an attempt to save Beagle, his pet Labrador, Gulliver finds himself swept away into the sea. On waking up, he discovers he has fallen back in time, into the miniature world of one of his antique globes. Suddenly, his life is turned upside down and he is mixed up in a land where giant ships in bottles are scattered across the sea and land, nothing makes sense and time no longer exists. On a quest to find the Last Book Shop in the World, his only hope of returning home, Gulliver meets a cast of colourful and charismatic characters including Old Father Time, Hans Christian Andersen, Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Francis Drake and his Golden Hinde. But will he ever find this elusive shop, and does he in fact want to go back to his old life?The (Phantasmagorical) Astrarium Compendiumis a fantastical tale set in the parallel world of Old Devon. Combining poetic prose with humour, action and a good helping of nonsense, Mark Roland Langdale's new novel will appeal to fans of science fiction and fantasy stories like Doctor Who and Alice in Wonderland.

Sujets

Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)

Fantasy

Informations

Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	19 décembre 2018
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781784628925
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

THE (PHANTASMAGORICAL) ASTRARIUM COMPENDIUM
Mark Roland Langdale

Copyright © 2015 Mark Roland Langdale
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador ®
9 Priory Business Park,
Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,
Leicestershire. LE8 0RX
Tel: (+44) 116 279 2299
Fax: (+44) 116 279 2277
Email: books@troubador.co.uk
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Cover designed by Naomi Green, Troubador Publishing
ISBN 978 1784628 925
Matador ® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

Thanks to Ben Smith.

I dedicate this book to my nephew,
Able Seaman Fraser Valentine-Langdale, good on you, shipmate.

In memory of my Great Uncle Len who fought in the Great War.
Contents

Cover

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

Epilogue

Other fantastical books:
Prologue

Time & Tide
Now you may find the tale I’m about to tell you hard to swallow (unlike the whale who found Jonah remarkably easier to swallow), in fact you might well find this tale taller than the mast of a tall ship. You might be inclined not to believe a single word that is written down upon the pages before your eyes. There is no doubt you will have to suspend your doubts and disbeliefs and be open to your wildest imaginings for it is true, very little will prepare you for the journey you are about to embark upon. And as long as you do not suffer from either sea or airsickness I’m sure you will survive!
So let us take a sharp intake of breath and drop anchor before we push the boat of our imagination out as far as we may dare. Now is not the time for cold feet or faint hearts… now is the time for every man Jack, and Jill of you to do your duty for queen and country, after all, time waits for no man or woman.
Hoist the mainsail and splice whatever needs splicing and, with the aid of a good compass, some passable charts, a spyglass and a map of both the oceans and the stars let’s set sail for the Sea of Imagination… and Godspeed to you all.
1

National Treasures
Gulliver stood in his antiques emporium imagining a national treasure had just walked into his shop looking for some lost antiquity or other which may be hidden there. Hidden in between the large dusty old grandfather clocks, the brass telescopes, antique globes from the seventeenth century, which hadn’t put Australia on the map, as back then it was known as New Holland of which the island of Van Diemen’s Land was within spitting distance. Gulliver had a smaller antique globe in his shop which when opened revealed a map of the heavens.
Gulliver also possessed a children’s vintage Chad Valley globe made of tin the like of which his father owned as a child. There was even a small green and black metallic globe atlas which when opened revealed a lighter, although it didn’t work, like a lot of old antiques. I’m afraid I can’t shed any further light onto why this was the case other than to say that like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the owner was a heavy cigar smoker. However, the word ‘antique’ didn’t stretch to the antiquarian timekeeper Old Father Time whose body clock was still ticking over very nicely if you please!
Hidden amongst the layers of dust which, if the particles could have been separated would have told you how long they had been lying there, were the following: sextants, compasses, microscopes, ships logs, astrolabes, weather barometers, oars, an old diving helmet, maps which may lead to national treasures or not (although my guess however uneducated would be not!), naval sailors’ uniforms, ships in bottles, both large and small.
Then there were antiquarian books which hadn’t been opened since the dawn of time by the looks of them and never mind about the musty smell that they omitted, which most people did! Various almanacs could be found in the antiques emporium if you had the mindset of an explorer or an old gamehunter to hunt them out. These almanacs told you the times of the tides forty years ago and the latitudes and longitudes of the northern hemisphere (very useful I must say if you have a time machine at your disposal!).
Gulliver had several early copies of the famous journal Mercurius Politicus Gelesen which kept you informed of what was going on in the revolution of timepieces in the seventeenth century. This was a period in time in which the well-to-do even had their own personal clockmakers, and the owners of these precious timepieces which marked the passing of time were known as guardians. However, once again what good these journals were to anybody but the guardian of time himself, Old Father Time, or the antique presenters of Antiques Roadshow, I’d be hard pressed to tell you. If you did have such an interest then you would probably be hard pressed to listen to my less-than-compendious explanation, needing an old ear trumpet to do so.
Large conch shells were scattered in amongst these priceless antiquities (or should that be antiques?) that as yet had not being labelled with a price tag. The conch shells scattered in what to the untrained eye seemed to be somewhat of a random fashion would have driven anybody suffering from OCD. crazy. Customers would come into the antiques emporium, pick up a large conch shell then put it to their ear and say they could hear the sea. Gulliver said the shells were from Tahiti which meant it wasn’t the sea they were hearing but the ocean. Gulliver imagined if a seashell fell from the heavens and you put it up to your ear you would be able to hear the cosmological oceans, he knew this wasn’t logical but he just liked the imagery of such a fantastical happening.
In the emporium sat several large, oak ships’ wheels which were best steered clear of, as the price tag on them would have told you had you the misfortune to come across them. Barrels which were big enough for a man with a spare tyre or two to fit comfortably into, in fact big enough to climb into and rush headlong over the Niagara Falls if you so desired. Just for the record Gulliver did not desire this as he was not the adventurous type despite his name suggesting the contrary.
Clocks of all shapes and sizes ticked incessantly as if talking to one another. Included in these timepieces was a thirty-hour brass dial lozenge-shaped wall clock, an iron wall clock in black and gold from the Netherlands, maker unknown, and a reproduction of the Gothic-looking astrarium, an astronomical clock made by Giovanni de’ Dondi in 1348. A golden lantern clock made by Fromanteel in 1650 hung from one wall; this clock was well known for its preciseness, with its glass dome and ornate fittings. Roman numerals were written upon the face of the clock, and long chain-like pendulums hung down like golden beads of frozen water trapped in time. This particular clock was later to be fitted with an anchor escapement pendulum beating the second, a clock which in its day was seen not only as a timepiece but a status symbol. Gulliver thought some of these clocks were like works of art, or that’s the spiel he gave the customer when they wanted to see one in working order!
Gulliver had lost count of the various different carriage clocks he owned, however, a small unique miniature gold clock in the shape of an old diving helmet stood out amongst this sea of chronometers despite its size. Gulliver had so many fob watches on display you would have thought they had been swept up onto the sands of time, and Gulliver had simply gone down to St Mary’s Bay in Brixham, Devon, and picked them off the sand like seashells.
One of these many clocks was of the grandfather variety, which Gulliver’s grandfather had left to him in his will. An old moon dial and a compendium clock were also hidden somewhere in the shop like hidden treasure and if you looked hard enough I’m sure you would have found them, eventually! The compendium clock had four faces, which was better than some of the two-faced dealers Gulliver came in contact with. Encased within one of its faces was a large fob watch which you could take out of its casing; another face housed a weather barometer and another a calendar. And the final face housed a thermometer which told Gulliver what his blood pressure was rising to as the customer with the annoying laugh and shallow pockets, continued to waste his valuable time haggling over a broken timepiece that most people wouldn’t have given the time of day!
Amongst all these ancient timepieces stood a new timepiece, called Midnight Planetarium Poetic Complication made by Van Cleef & Arpels, which in part, to Gulliver’s mind, seemed to be based on the Antikythera Mechanism. The watch featured six planets, each represented a precious stone that orbit in real time around the ‘sun’ in the centre of the dial. One may well wonder like Alice in Wonderland, how Gulliver could afford this expensive chronometer, well wonder no more because it was as fake as a fake Rolex!
With all these timepieces incessantly ticking away was it any wonder that at times they wound Gulliver up!? It seemed no sooner had he wound the last timepiece up that he had to start all over again, a procedure not unlike that in Victorian London with the gas lamps. But in truth on a slow day this gave him something to do and stopped the shop feeling like a graveyard.
Thanks to all the antique programmes that were now on te