Scroopism

Another one of those embarrassing ailments forensically listed, or at least embalmed, by the Guild of Barber-Surgeons in their indispensable medical manual Household Medicine, Hair-Care and Simple Surgery. The principle underlying Scroopism is very simple. On Roundworld, we have concepts like bowdlerism and Grundyism to describe a state of mind where the sufferer is compelled, either socially or pathologically, to excise anything that could remotely be thought offensive or bawdy from otherwise blameless works of art or cultural icons. This frame of mind leads either to figleaves on statues or else to a Shakespeare folio which is so severely edited for tone that it loses most of the qualities that made it a work of art in the first place. On the Discworld, you get selfless toilers after purity of mind like Mrs Anaglypta Huggs, whose work in rendering the bawdier Hogswatch carols clean enough to be sung by children is renowned everywhere.

Mr Male Infant Scroop was the complete opposite. In his 84 years, he scrooped a remarkable number of literary classics and other writings hitherto thought clean enough for a High Vestigial Virgin to read. His gravestone, in the cemetery of Small Gods, may only be viewed by prior appointment, an arrangement which gives Leggy the sexton time to get the brown paper off it and stand guard, to warn away unmarried women and small children.

Scroop's finest hour came in employment as a proofreader for Goatberger's publishing house. Miss Epytheme Slaybell's masterwork Thoughts From a Country Garden was a best-seller that won quite a lot of literary awards. None of which were to do with Best Memoir From An Elderly Spinster. She was acclaimed for some very imaginative passages and its bold and controversial stance on the subject of primroses.