Of Parsnips and Poplars

Inside the alien mind

Caisleán Deas meets the author who wants everyone to know what it takes to be a McNicoll

What comes to mind when I say the word parsnip? Of course, right now you’re thinking “David Lloyd George”, and naturally you’re right. So perhaps it is useful insight into the strange and unfamiliar world of the McNicoll brain to understand that in that same situation, any McNicoll would immediately think poplar. This is the departure point for Of Parsnips and Poplars by sewage-treatment-engineer-turned-author Ann Icecastle, a tome that is set to become the seminal work on the inner workings of the McNicoll psyche, and indeed on insanity in general.

Reading the first two chapters feels rather like disappearing down Alice’s rabbit-hole and finding oneself dancing in your own kitchen, while singing into a pepper-grinder. There’s simply no other way to describe the strange, trippy experience of a first encounter with this alien mindset. I catch up with Ann on a balcony of her sumptuous holiday retreat in Nice. “Castle” would be pushing it, but clearly her profession of reworking large quantities of unusable sludge for human consumption has been lucrative. Apparently her time as a sewage engineer was profitable too.

As if afraid of losing the reader with the shock tactics of the first two chapters, the book takes on a more structured approach thereafter. Particularly notable is Chapter 4: “Rules of Engagement” which details the parameters for conversational engagement between McNicolls. A simple chart explains that all conversations must be conducted on one of two levels, or preferably both – robust engagement with the current world, or utter drivel. McNicolls are known to have built a family hierarchy based on their perceived ability to switch between the two seamlessly, for which Icecastle coins the term gibberarchy. Additionally, conversations must excel either in being sarcastically rude to the other person, or in being royally basted in dry and deadpan humour. Failure to understand this has led to numerous family friends being semi-permanently scared of senior McNicolls.

The middle chapters turn to the fine and tricky art of trying to understand a McNicoll. Over a sunny game of chess on the terrace, I ask Icecastle whether this is ever a realistic possibility for a non-McNicoll, or even an in-law. She opens with the King’s gambit. Key to interpretation, she contends, is the understanding that many of the tropes present in your average McNicoll family dialogue reference events that have long been forgotten. Very few McNicolls can even remember where a given phrase originated, yet they are all convinced that because they decided it was funny thirty years ago, it must still be so today. I advance my Queen’s pawn, and the theory that perhaps these conversational artefacts have evolved as some kind of shibboleth, to determine belonging.

"to see this as a joke, must surely be the product of a twisted collective genius alien to the rest of humanity"

This, apparently, is the same conclusion that Icecastle draws from the source material. She highlights the example of grumplig, a quasi-German word intended to differentiate McNicolls from non-McNicolls in the event of an epic sulk. Her argument is so articulate and engaging that she successfully distracts me from the game, and captures my queen. Nice. Castle takes bishop and checkmate.

The game over, Ann and I stroll down to the river for a spot of fishing, while she explains to me the finer points of McNicoll wind-ups, several examples of which are explored and psychoanalysed in her book. From the serenity of the riverbank, she relates how the idyllic setting provided the stimulus for her decision to write Of Parsnips and Poplars in the first place. She was, apparently, sitting in this very spot and scrolling through social media, when she saw a video of a prank involving a fake shark. The video was shot in a beautiful former quarry in North Oxford, now a lake, and from reading the comments under the post she determined that this jape was only the evolution of a long-running gag about large aquatic life living in the lake. The epiphany was when she realised that to make such a scenic location an object of terror, and worse still to see this as a joke, must surely be the product of a twisted collective genius alien to the rest of humanity.

Her line snags as she relates this; she reels it in and launches it out again carelessly – a nice cast. Letting the line, and her imagination, run free, she elaborates on a theory with which she closes her book. “Conspiracy theorists are always looking to the Illuminati, Reptilians and chemtrails”, she says with a look of delighted horror on her face, “but what if the real truth is simply that the whole world is being manipulated by the crazed, verging on criminally-insane, McNicoll family? Doesn’t that sound like a more plausible reason for the Bermuda Triangle, 1960s architecture, and socks never staying paired?

Of Parsnips and Poplars by Ann Icecastle is published by Saturday Haddock Imprints (£32.99) and is available from the McNicopedia Bookstore.