Archer's Goon: Chapter 2
A LEGO tribute to a fun and original YA novel
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Welcome to our LEGO re-enactment of Diana Wynne Jones’s awesome and highly original novel Archer’s Goon. My eight-year-old son and I did this a couple of years ago. To learn more about why we did this, take a look at this newsletter. Luckily, we took some photos, which I wanted to share! Along with the photos, I’ve included some excerpts from the text.
If you haven’t read the story, none of this will make much sense! But, if you haven’t read the story, you shouldn’t be here anyway - you should be heading to your local bookstore to get a copy of Archer’s Goon!
Start here with Chapter 1. Or, read on:
Chapter 2
The chapter starts with Howard’s dad, Quentin Sykes, explaining to his family that he’s been sending two thousand words’ worth of nonsense writing to a local bureaucrat called Mr. Mountjoy, every three months for the last thirteen years, as an exercise that (he believed) was meant to help him beat his writer’s block.
“I always write really idiotic things that nobody would want to publish. Most of them aren’t even finished. You can’t get much in to four pages. I’ll tell you - last year I sent Mountjoy a solemn discussion about what to do if rabbits suddenly started eating meat.”
“This time it was about old ladies rioting in Corn Street.”
”What do you do about that?” Awful asked, bringing Quentin a slopping mug of weak grey tea.
”Dodge their handbags,” said Quentin. “Thanks.”
In the novel, Quentin is often wearing “a red and black checked overcoat.” It’s described like this:
Quentin’s coat was a perfect eyesore. Quentin loved that coat. He had worn it from ever since Howard could first remember. Everyone else in the family hated it. Catriona called it the Tramp’s Coat.
We didn’t have any Lego that exactly matched this description, but we thought that the red checked shirt we had, was close enough.
Back to Chapter 2. Howard learns that the reason the Goon has been hanging out at his house, is to find out what has become of the two thousand words Quentin writes every three months. Quentin sends them to Mr. Mountjoy at the Town Hall, but it seems the words have been ending up with the mysterious Archer - and this time they haven’t been received.
“But wait a minute,” Catriona said, frowning. “If you’ve been sending Mountjoy stuff for thirteen years, and he’s been passing it on to this Archer, then Archer must have masses of it by now. What does he do with it?”
Quentin writes a new batch of two thousand words for Archer and gives them to the Goon, but the Goon returns the next day to say that the words are no good.
“Are you going to make trouble for Dad today?” Howard asked.
“Maybe,” said the Goon.
”In that case,” said Howard as a sort of experiment, “we’ll go somewhere else…. Let’s see Mr Mountjoy,” said Howard, not really meaning it.
”All right,” the Goon said equably.
Howard and the Goon head to the Town Hall, where the Goon pushes his way through all the levels of security until they find themselves in Mr. Mountjoy’s office.
“Why do you really make my father send you two thousand words every three months?” said Howard.
Mr. Mountjoy smiled. “I don’t make him do it, young man. It’s just a friendly device I thought of to keep him from drying up again.”
But under pressure from the Goon, Mr. Mountjoy admits there is more going on.
“I’ve no idea what Archer wants with the blessed words!” he said peevishly. “I don’t even know if it’s Archer I send them to. All I’ve ever heard is his voice on the telephone. It could be any of them.”
”Any of who?” Howard said, mystified.
”Any of the seven people who really run this town,” said Mr. Mountjoy. “Archer’s one. The others are Dillian, Venturus, Torquil, Erskine and - what are their names? Oh, yes. Hathaway and Shine. They’re all brothers.”
Howard leaves the Town Hall with more questions than answers.
*We put a little surveillance camera on the wall of Mr. Mountjoy’s office, for reasons that will become clear, later on…
To be continued…