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“We are trying to fight 21st century crime – ASB, drug-dealing, binge-drinking, organised crime – with 19th century methods, as if we still lived in the time of Dickens. The whole of our system starts from the proposition that its duty is to protect the innocent from being wrongly convicted…”

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ:

ISAMBARD XAVIER BLAIR, ESQ … An Ancestor

CHARLES JOHN HUFFAM DICKENS … A Poor Scribbler

SCENE 1

DICKENS is sitting on a bench, writing furiously in a notebook, and muttering quietly to himself.

DICKENS: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness… it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity… it was a little bit “whoor”, and a little bit “whaeey”, a little bit swsh-swsh-”… No, no, no!

DICKENS throws his pen down in frustration.

Come on, Dickens, that’s really not the thing. Focus, now…

Enter BLAIR, stage right – a tall, tanned gentleman with a rictus grin, suspiciously tight skin around the forehead, and a messianic gleam in his eye.

BLAIR: Ho! Ho there, scribe! Would you be so good to take down some notes for me? I have a bold new proposition – a vision for our society – which I have formulated on my excursions throughout the land, from the gentlemen’s clubs of the Strand to the fish-pots of Billingsgate.

DICKENS: I am intrigued! Pray, continue.
(more…)