HE YEAR is 1882. General Custer is besieged in a cupboard in 1972 with two thousand desperate men all listening to the Word Service three weeks ago in a synchronised sinning competition organised for the benefit of many useful charities and the Royal Society for Prevention. The proceedings are to be recorded for posterity in a Grand Opera, compos’d by the celebrated maestro Herr Wagtail, with a Libretto by Mr. Mallard (the only semi-aquatic mammal to have been according this singular honour). It will be performed by his trope of performing headlamps, and details the Sad Adventures of a Fallen Over Woman at extraordinary length; but don’t run away, bulls aren’t a bit frightening really – look, it’s not the devil, it’s just a couple of cows. Sheep may safely shop, for Copiousness and Variety are the ideals of an ordered style. The dream mile is three yards long, but it looks bigger because it is impeded by that dreadful treacly sensation, and you can never go quite fast enough to get into the Book of Guinesses. Long sentences are to be seen as ornamentation upon a theme but not be. Thus forsooth we approach the final stage of our peregrination: the yellowhammer. The yellowhammer is a type of bird. Liquid progression made easy has been proclaimed to be the final cause of every state representative, insofar as the sentiment of mass despotism characterizes the mentalité of the particular nest in question. The nest is a type of bird.

Furthermore, the dating of a vegetable need not be the same as or with the identical dating of its contents. A vegetable may, on the contrary, be a later insertion into earlier places. And in fact it is. It may however be a genetic copy or clone of previously extant materials, and indeed may very well be. The reader should note that this is not often spelt with a z. Everything rhymes with Rome. Or, to put it another reason, we can certainly say that five hours is far too long to boil an egg with. Thoth is the patron saint of eggs. A peeled sprout can be made to represent a saint (but not be), by a process of elucidation, and we know this because it is written in the Book of Guesses. Fortunately the International League of Cleaning Ladies was on hand to tidy everything up. There is no difference between clean and false, and a saint is as good as a lucy. Fir trees and you’ll be in trouble, my lad, I can tell thee. Do not make fossils without a licence. No you can’t have a husband, you’re only three months old. I keep telling you, there is no known way of telling savagery from sophistication at any one particular velocity, where the stationary velocity is already known from the viewpoint of one and the same observer, at a point in time which is only calculable in the absence of firm buttocks. There is unlikely to be weather this year.

Two kinds of wordplay involve buttocks. These are: ambiguity, reversal and superfiction. By analogy we might say, we might not. This cuts the knot of private and public voices, but leaves grow on trees. Homer was blind, but Schiller had no clothes on. Owing to the failure of the Eternal Mountains of Martin Jarvis to grow another foot this year, the flute and the mandolin are preternaturally fated to a predisposed opposition of private and pubic vices. It’s the old needle through the eye of a camel trick: little did he know that the Emperor’s new foot had sprung a leak, a leak has been sprung in private places. Never sleep with the enemy, in case he doesn’t like you. Never sleep with a friend, in case he does. Never sleep, in case you miss something. Never attach yourself with chains of adamant to the lower half of a cinematograph projectionist as if you expected that to do any good, because let me assure you it won’t fit through the hole it won’t fit through the hole! And now let us turn to the biscuit.

Animal fits are generally placed in contravention of their own essence. In other worlds, comic violence is the province of the hunted: the unspeakable is never funny, the unedifying is never caught. This is particularly so when the tremendous brothels of Manchester slip negligently south into a tin of cold turps, but custard is generally acceptable as a substitute if the cat ate the bag. St Pancreas is the patron saint of brothels, and this bit is actually true. And undoubtedly, whenever above the knee is below the belt, there is a proportional increase in that old fable about the mouse and the appropriate box on the list opposite. The mouse came from the country, the list came with the cheese, put them together and what have you got? a box. Which is not a great deal after all. And when the word gets too big for its letters, pivots have to be repeatedly reasserted. After all, there can necessarily be no more. If on the other hand you have already answered question three, you may omit this paragraph instead. Silence is a lot bigger than it looks. My milkman was rude to me the other day. Bastard.

How many lumps has a camel? If I knew that, I could tell you weren’t listening properly. Do second comings imply a first course? Are performing headlumps a real presence? If I fall over, do I not hurt myself? A king’s cross is too heavy a burden for a camel, and camels don’t grow on trees I can tell you. The tree is blighty. You can carry custard on horseback, but how many pinheads sat on pinprick tree, hallo doctor, you’re early this morning. A moment is the shortest difference between two pints; a second is a fulfilment of the inadvisable, but a third is merely a bad idea. You can buy scandal in tins these days, but you can’t see the shine for the wrapping. Never sleep with a looking glass, it may not flatter you again. Breathlessly he gazed down the three hundred foot drop, and saw himself waving up at him from the breach. Come on in, the water’s lovely. Here be donkey rides. But he who rides on a donkey has gone up in the world, whereas he who rides on a camel must come down or you’ll hurt yourself. Televisions are funny at the edges – you can laugh at the margins, but your nose will twitch, and then if the west wind changes, what will the butler see then? I can’t altogether recall, I confess; but then the pastness of memory is what makes such good puddings.

So thank you for the memberies of Paris in the summertime and Autumn in the spring, it doesn’t have that sparkle so it doesn’t mean a thing, at the crossroads of the wonderful, well I was wondering, at a fairground institution detraction inflation dissubstantiation where the idea was to remember your name (or similar) without actually seeing it in great huge big letters on that piece of cardboard, then going home empty-headed. He had the misfortune to be named. Tenderly, tenderly, into the darkest corners of the night, there let us roam along unlit corridors and interlucidities, tracing the slow current of other people’s aspirate remarking. Maybe, maybe, maybe it’s because I’m abandoner, I never saw her amen but I wish her, well, maybe. It’s the flight from sight, last year’s snow tending away into blue, remaindered hills. Yeah, in spite of a spate of slummers, and a hook, line and simper for sure. There’s a little house in Texas Homecare that I know, yes I know, oh yes I know what I’m talking about, there’s a little house in Texaco that I’m talking about, oh yes.

I think you had better put me down now.