Welcome to the first of this term¡¯s staff-graduate seminars. Regrettably, our advertised speaker, Doctor G. R. Clinker, is unable to deliver his paper on global communications because of maintenance work on the Leeds-Doncaster line. But I¡¯m delighted that Doctor Q. T. Rinstead of the department of things at the University of Uttoxeter has agreed to act as his replacement.

Doctor Rinstead¡¯s work on things is well known. His new book, Relatively Small Things , will be published later this year by Harcourt, Brace and Ratchet and promises to be as definitive a work as his earlier volumes Big Things and Medium-Sized Things .

In his presentation, Doctor Rinstead will suggest some ways in which the eclectic nature of his specialism might be remedied by a General Theory of Things . Doctor Rinstead...

Thank you, Professor Lapping. I hope that those of you who are familiar with this area of study will forgive some background detail.

Although one can trace an interest in things back to pre-Socratic times, it is generally agreed that the contemporary approach was initiated by Pierre Busillard in his classic 1970s text Les Choses . Busillard¡¯s starting point was, of course, the famous quotation: ¡°There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.¡±

What intrigued Busillard and the Quelque Chose group that formed around him was the failure of critics to inquire into the precise nature of the ¡°more things¡± instanced by Hamlet.

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Busillard¡¯s approach was subsequently adopted by Doctor K. D. Gillespie in his celebrated study of the evanescence of things, Things Ain¡¯t What They Used to Be and further developed in Gordon Dingbat¡¯s controversial evolutionary approach to the topic, Things Can Only Get Better .

Yes, Professor Lapping...

Only a small point, Doctor Rinstead, but several members of the group appear to have left early, and we now seem to be the only people left in the room. I wonder, therefore, if we might wind up the formal part of this seminar and adjourn to the bar to continue the discussion.

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Certainly. Will it be all right if I bring my things with me?