The Scotch Family Grillparzer - An Introduction

...find themselves washed up on a desert island. They have no recollection how they got there. Sylvia, the ageing Matriarch, lies on the beach all day stroking a pair of worn tap dancing shoes. The abundance of sand makes tap dancing impossible, which is just as well considering she suffers from advanced osteoporosis in her left leg. Her eldest son, Sigmund, has strung a length of vine, like a washing line, between two trees and spends his time drying out sheets of tracing paper, which he packs neatly in a leather suitcase every evening. Every morning he wakes to find this suitcase bobbing in the surf. Sigmund has delusions of musicianship - his ambition is to play the comb professionally. Unfortunately, he spends so much time drying out tracing paper that he has yet to fashion a comb out of the driftwood which litters the beach. The middle son, Wilbur, wanders the island incessantly while clutching a tubular metal bed-head. More - much more - about him later. Grant, at twenty-five the baby of the family, is the only Grillparzer to realise that their situation is a mere figment of someone's imagination, even though he is aware that they as people are very real. He sits all day at the fire, which he managed to light by rubbing two sticks together, thinking of ways to come into contact with whoever put them in this position.