Towards the beginning of her novel Excellent Women Barbara
Pym recounts a telephone conversation of more than passing relevance to our
meeting today.
I dialled the number fearfully and heard it ring. ‘Hello, hello, who is
that?’ a querulous elderly woman's voice answered. I was completely taken
aback, but before I could speak the voice went on, ‘If it's Miss Jessop I
can only hope you are ringing up to apologize’. I stammered out an
explanation. I was not Miss Jessop. Was Mr Everard Bone there? ‘My son is at
a meeting of the Prehistoric Society’, said the voice. ‘Oh, I see. I'm so
sorry to have bothered you’, I said. ‘People are always bothering me — I
never wanted to have the telephone put in at all’.
After a further apology I hung up the receiver shaken and mystified but at
the same time relieved. Everard Bone was at a meeting of the Prehistoric
Society. It sounded like a joke. (1952, 29–30)
Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen, if this is a typical reaction to the
Prehistoric Society, then on 23 February we become a fifty-year-old joke! If
we allow for the history of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, then we
reach well and truly back into the days of the Music Hall joke.