I have always pondered what an experience it would have been to claim, casually over a tankard of Port, back at my fave, Yorkshire pub, The Gargoyle's Daughter, in my twee, riparian village of Notting-on-Scythe, “Yeah, cool. I was at this amazing party last week, in London. Yeah? Shakespeare was there. No, I didn’t get to talk to him, actually. But I saw him, yeah. Cool. Had loads of people around him. Dinna wannna bother him, yeah? He was hanging out by the wooden glove-forms, writing bits of dirty sonnet for some of the guests. Crazy, I tell you. Cool. Yeah, okay cool.”
Well, that never happened, not to Moi anyhoo. History is chock-a-block with visionaries we, today, will ne’er get to meet: Socrates, Didier, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Ben Frankin, Th. Jefferson, Mozart, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Walt Disney, Jane Austen, Coco Chanel, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Marie Antoinette (yes), Tim Burton and, natch, Stan Lee. So, I have to ask the universe, What the heck?! More precisely, what the heck, Stan Lee’s handlers?