The Book of Memories

This nostalgic tale is set in summertime southern England in the Isle of Wight in the 1950’s.bThe main character is the tubby little Mr Nobody who, through dabbling with the devilish arts, is cursed with a memory of no more than half-an-hour In an attempt to counter his memory loss he has been told to record everything in a notebook - his Book of Memories - but is constantly forgetting to do so. His poor wife, driven to despair and with a newborn babe abandons him and flees to the Isle of Wight where she meets the saddest man ever, Joey the Clown. The unlikely couple soon fall in love, which eventually gives Joey the power to perform true magic.
Meanwhile Mr Nobody with his limited memory, is getting into endless trouble. He assaults a policeman, wrecks a steam train, deep-fries a teddy bear, and ends up in court in front of a wizened old judge. Fortunately the intervention of the Professor (the name given to the person who operates a Punch and Judy Show),saves him from his plight.

At the same time the forces of evil appear: De’Vil is an erudite vindictive man so sinister (the word in Latin means left) that he has two left hands and two left feet. De’Vil has two brutal henchmen - Ballbag and Fartcatcher - and an oafish brute named Justin, restrained under a length of chain.

Mr Nobody sets of in pursuit of his wife, regularly getting sidetracked. and witnesses the typical seaside attractions of those days; a man being shot from a cannon, a showman with his loud hailer, an escapologist, a high-diver, and so on. He also meets an aging blonde movie starlet with a terrible stutter, who takes him back to her flat (where there is a stuttering parrot she taught to speak). Discerning that she has no stutter when acting in front of the camera he draws a pencil sketch of a camera on a tripod which, when held in front of her, cures her of her speech impediment. She offers him a special reward, but by the time she has prepared herself, Mr Nobody has once again wandered off.

In the centre of the island he discovers a scrawny man who inhabits burrows in a vast earth mound so fertile that everything grows in superabundance. Within the rich soil lie dinosaurs, so perfectly preserved that many are still in their death throes. The man believes he owns everything in the world as he had taught himself to forget everything else he does not have..
In the meantime De’Vil and his men are hot on his track. They capture the Blonde and the scrawny man (losing one of their number to a crocodile-like dinosaur that awakes violently from its dying slumbers) and locate their quarry though magical ‘Thinking Ink’ which, when poured onto a flat surface, pools into the written answer to any question (but responds arrogantly if expected to guess).
They finally capture Mr Nobody and torture him ruthlessly in an attempt to obtain the Book of Memories, for the memory-destroying verse it contains. De’Vil’s intention is to publish the verse so that everyone has just a 30-minute memory in order that he can freely commit crimes that will almost immediately be forgotten, whilst judges and policeman lie abed wondering where they should be and while every law goes forgotten.
The final showdown ensues in various challenges - an aerial battle over WWI trenches, a decidedly-unfair boxing match, a car race around the island and so on - but finally the Professor has to admit defeat, handing the Book of Memories to De’Vil. But he, in gaining access to the magical verse, has been tricked himself and unwittingly destroys his own memory.

The story ends…