I suppose the first thing you’re wondering is “Why ‘Killed in a smiling accident’?” And if you’re not wondering, you should be. Unless you know already, but that’s cheating.

M’colleague and I are huge fans of Fry and Laurie, particularly their sketch show “A Bit of Fry and Laurie” (you’ll have to imagine the hand gestures accompanying those quotes), inheriting from there such features as calling m’colleague “m’colleague”. The brainstorming process for coming up with the title of this bloglective thus consisted largely of working through their series, pausing roughly every seventeen seconds to pick up a random line and go “that’d make a good title”.

During The Department, a sort of Le Carre/Len Deighton pastiche, with the action transposed from exotic Eastern European locales to the Slough area, the following lines occur:

“Welsh passport, hotel reservation at the Welcome Break, Low Wycombe, all in the name of one Lewis Potter.”
“And the real Lewis Potter?”
“A chartered prostitute from Hereford. Killed two years ago in a smiling accident.”

And that was it. We had the name. Unfortunately someone had beaten us to “Welcome Break, Low Wycombe”, so we had to settle for “Killed in a smiling accident”.

About Zoso About Melmoth

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;

When the meadows laugh with lively green,
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene;
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing ‘Ha ha he!’

When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread:
Come live, and be merry, and join with me,
To sing the sweet chorus of ‘Ha ha he!’