And lastly, Ozzy, whose mention will be no surprise to my readers. Although slowing up in the stick-fetching department, he still shows enthusiasm for walkies to a dog half his age, and whose companionship I value beyond that of many humans.
Jasper Fforde,
February 2020
Footnotes
Speed Librarying
1. The script looks like ‘scuffed mud’, the sort of marks you get in the back porch after inclement weather. The Rabbity alphabet, incidentally, has only six letters: N, I, R, H, U and F.
2. As a cost-cutting measure the old card system was reintroduced to Herefordshire libraries. Each user has a cardboard wallet held by the library, into which the card contained in a pocket on each book is placed. The book then has a stamp for its due return date, as has the card held by the library. The user wallets are stored in a large indexing system. It’s a lot more simple than it sounds.
Toast & TwoLegsGood
3. The blueprint for the way in which the rabbit had become anthropomorphised was generally agreed to be along Beatrix Potter lines. Why this was so it was impossible to say, but it was a look and a feel and a tone which the rabbit fully embraced.
4. Ross-on-Wye, the third-largest town in Herefordshire.
5. Those with a fear/mistrust/dislike of rabbits, but I figure you guessed that.
6. They often cited Macquarie Island, which is worth a read on Wikipedia, if you’ve got a few minutes.
7. Nothing was ever manufactured with components smaller than a marble. Dexterity could be challenging without opposable thumbs.
Spotters & Spotting
8. The algorithm was occasionally tweaked depending on whether arrest and conviction targets were being met.
9. The closest thing to a war amongst rabbits. The high point of the hostilities was Anton Von Hercule’s fourteen-hour ‘less than polite’ rant in July 1987, which was met by a barrage of sarcasm that is still talked about today, usually in hushed tones.
10. Your guess is as good as mine on this one.
11. Rabbits were quite big into Gilbert and Sullivan operas, despite not having good singing voices. Few, if any, would even attempt The Mikado.
12. The most popular (and politically active) daily newspaper for rabbits. There is no online edition, and copies are banned off-colony owing to the ink ‘falling short of industry standards’.
Fudds and Flopsies
13. ‘John Flopsy’ was the generic term to describe an unidentified rabbit, similar to ‘John Doe’ for humans. The female equivalent, logically enough, was ‘Jane Flopsy’. The long-term usage of the word made ‘Flopsy’ slang for a rabbit of a criminal tendency, or often, any rabbit at all.
14. Her spiritual name was actually ‘B’uuntii’ but she was known by everyone, rabbits included, as ‘Bunty’. The closest translation of her name would be ‘I can see clearly now’, which is also the first line of the rabbit’s anthem and a Johnny Nash single, although it is not thought the two are related.
15. Rabbit slang for a ‘smoking gun’, ‘dead cert’ or ‘done deal’.
Ross & Rabbits
16. Given that rabbits can reproduce at age three with a potential litter of eight as many as six times a year, even a modest wastage figure of fifteen per cent would suggest their numbers could surpass those of humans in the UK in as little as four years.
17. People from Yorkshire do this.
18. It’s very good, and now operates a book lease-back agreement with rabbits, to whom owning something that you might use once every six or seven years seemed a little pointless.
19. A term used between pro-rabbit humans to describe rabbits. Although a positive term, it could also mean the opposite. Context is everything.
Griswold & Gossip
20. Most notably, he played Ugarte in Casablanca. One of the now-forgotten stars of the silver screen.
21. Rabbits are good at languages as they are at much else – the average IQ of a rabbit is about twenty per cent higher than that of humans, an indication that the Event may have been partly satirical in nature.
Next Sunday, Next Door
22. I didn’t know that then; I found out later. The actual car is now part of the Event Museum near Rhayader. Coincidentally, it was the civilian model of the car that Jake and Elwood Blues drove.
23. See Chapter 6 of Dr Sam Ingram’s landmark work Below-waist Costume, Modesty, and the Bipedal Post-Event Rabbit.
24. Mainly about carrots and fruitcake and his favourite Beatle, but Franklin was only young at the time. Interviewed later, he told reporters that he should have said something more measured and erudite.
25. Rough translation of first line: Your warren is my burrow / your burrow is my warren / veg we share / together for warmth / carrot Ho! / carrot Hah!
26. One should never underestimate the recuperating properties of a favourite variety of carrot.
Searching in vain & Shopping in town
27. Not counting the ears. Rabbits are measured to the space on the top of the head between their ears. As a curious aside, ears are exactly one third body height, irrespective of age. No one knows why.
28. Not that any actually wanted to be bunny girls. It was more the principle of the matter.
29. Unlike humans, rabbits can become pregnant almost any time they choose. High reproduction rates can often be an engine of swift evolutionary change, and may account for forty per cent of all mammals today belonging to the rodent/rabbit family.
Senior Group Leader
30. ‘Overcome evil with good’.