I'm off later this month to Wales to help my mate of nearly 60 years, Clive, celebrate his 75th birthday, and was rummaging about in some old files and papers looking for stuff with which to mortally embarass him, when I came upon the following. I have no idea of where or when or why I wrote it, and indeed no memory of having done so, although stylistically it can only have been me.

Anyways, here,  with spelling, punctuation and paragraphing copied from the original, it is

Dear Sir

Do not discard this letter! I suspect that, after your recent access to FORTUNE, as one of the Lucky Winners in the Lottery of Life, several parsons have attempted to sway you with tales (exaggerated ruderies, a cluster of hyperbollocks) of their insipid misFORTUNES (I see that you understand me perfectly) in a transparent (vitreous in its limpidity) and possibly criminal (limp in its virtuousness) attempt to mendaciously deprive you of some of that FORTUNE you now, so deservedly, enjoy.

I am not one of these wretches, fallen on hard times, mewing brats queuing at the breast, house repossessed, and always a sick infant, or dying grandparent (sole support), or crippled spouse (worked hard all his life and cruelly treated after the Accident) in need of Urgent Medical Attention. "Hah!" I say, and again, "Hah!", for surely a seed so sickly needs annihilation more than rehabilitation. Let the buggers die. Such letters anyway always written by cheroot-stained hombres w/eyeshades (green) and rolled shirtsleeves (grey) working in offices w/green-painted windows and dustmotes dancin in the rays where the paint has chipped, a blue grey swirl of fug ribboning in and out the bright corridors of dust (largest constituent of which by the by is sloughed-off cells of skin, human detritus - which, by the way, is the way I would charitably describe these epistolateers of which I speak, scum that floated in off a Pecos wind, men with more motion than morals, you know of whom I speak) and the only sound the sucking of cheroots, the rasping of ill-used pulmonary bags, and the scritch scritch scritch of fevered quills

Sir, you have received such missives, I know it, for these Vultures in (approximated) human shape are quick in the lowness of their cunning and conning ("Look for knowledge in the cunny and the coney" - Malaclypse the Malaclypse) of the daily rags (detestable yellow stew-rags - you know them of whom I speak,Sir, you with your ever-readiness to plunge your hand up to the armpit in the sewers of life in order to retrieve the priceless pearl of truth!) for the names and - too horrible to relate! - sometimes even addresses of those who, like yourself, have a change of luck, a fall of wind (from the back of Lorelei)(as it were), an increase, Sir, in their Standing in the World. I see you understand me perfectly.

I know, Sir, that in your commendable indifference to the suffering of others you will not have been swayed by this army of grasping idlers, for you, Sir (how I tremble even to write your name) are made of more tumid stuff. You are an oak, Sir, nay a veritable telegraph pole in the rectitude of your stance, the unforgiving nature of your rigid roundness.

No Sir, you are fortunus intacta, as the Latins would say (for I am not without learning), and you remain adamantine in your belief that It is most definitely not Your Round in the Saloon Bar of Life, and that the importunate rabble can look elsewhere for their Pork Scratchings.This is as it should be. For if you were (if I may permit myself the familiarity) to unburden, to disburse yourself at these seedy promptings, ask yourself , please, how you would feel when from the azure comes a plea, a plaint of such poignant piquancy that your heart (the fine that discriminating organ) haemorrhages, your eye's o'erflood and all your hair falls out, greying as it wafts to the rug; your face all over-harrowed you stagger sobbing to the place wherein lies your SUBSTANCE. In you plunge your hand, only to close around vacuity. For you have spent your SUBSTANCE on Poltroons and Lack-willies and now there is none left, no soupçon of CHEER, no morsel of moolah with which to assuage the MOST TERRIBLE ILL-FORTUNE EVER TO COME YOUR WAY.

Nay, Sir, you, You are not like that. In you, hand and mind and ears are closed in perfect accord, your door locked and blinded, while on your knob dangles the legend 'Out to Lunch'. Let them wheedle, let them whinge and whemmle and whiff: you, Sir (the very pronoun is eye-blasting in its effulgence) are hanging on to you ha'penny (one speaks metaphorcically) against that day when real ILL-FORTUNE tenderises your teakiness.

Sir, that day has arrived. 

Others, Sir, talk of their lives of woe. He, Sir, the wretch on whose behalf I speak, has had not a hint of happiness in a bunch of incarnations. His children are as numerous as seed-spilling starry skies of sand; all demand daily ambrosiacal indulgences, suck leechily of his material substance and rarely make their own beds. despite his prodigious paternity He has never known the joys of coupling, being parthenogenically inclined in the throes of absent-mindedness. This is just as well, as his private parts were lost in a left luggage office soon after the last uprising.

He has been cursed with countless commercially uncommutable genii for dazzling doodads. Forced to preposterous prostitution by an unbending muse he totters the scummy streets, wading lead-legged through Kentucky fried Detritus (boxes greased, discarded, showing the hated Red and White), looking for work beneath interestingly wrinkled bits of orange peel, shouting with the winos "AZUM BAZUM GAR. Focken FockenGerawanayoud'vere. Grssplt," all the while composing inheadfully plans for world Scrabble domination and black book disposals; his most ambitious wish to be a guest on TV Talk Shows, to have Jim Fix It for him. Fear is the only thing of which he is not afraid. Truly he is man of a thousand disgraces. If he ever found the Yellow Brick Road he would trip and graze his knee then limp out of town cringing under the assault of stone-throwing munchkins all breaking his windows and insisting he wears trousers.

Sometimes he stomps the jagged streets, resurgent bile knifing his gullet, the redness and the anger all upon him. 'D Klein is a Fool' is painted on the outer wall of a pub; he goes in; all around him a hissing and a bubbling. Either they don't like him in here or he's walked into a laundry by mistake. He walks up to the bar (or maybe a trouser press, the steam has opaqued his windows) and inquires, "Kashmir Czech?"    "Heave a prawn," replied the moustachioed muchacho, "dyed inner punker. Wasser pissword?"   "Wider jerrycan. Neigh till dawn" (golden naturally)  "Piss, friend" - well you see how it is with this chap, what he has to contend with - and the many-faced density of his aethyreal comminutions. Words fail (Boy, do they).      ()

Sometime stumble the sodium streets, that old starry dinosaur of night we all heard so much about, but mostly he just sits, waiting for epiphany or maybe for the phone to ring. sometimes the phone does ring, in the middle of a sentence, a clarion-call, sweet trill beckoning him to the hall - perchance a long-lost pal? Mayhap a happy happenstance? Actually though an intrusion of confusion from the past; wouldn't lay down then, won't lay down now. Bugger Porlock.

It may appear that I am straying from the point. Either that or you're going cross-eyed with boredom.
He always saw the dark side of things.He was born in an eclipse.
A man walked into a bar. He said "ouch". It was an iron bar.

But, Sir - I may call you that, may I? "Your Effulgence," though truer title in a descriptive vane, troubles my turbid typing skills - I digress. My recounting of this recondite wretch's trials and tribulations has broken my spirit, sent me pell-mell fleeing into ludicrous flummery.   Ichabod! "Redemption resides in rock & Roll" quoteth a passing hipster, but his beret sags and his sax is lax. "Come blow your horn, the walls of Jericho precipitate. Come plague and pox and tumbling tomfoolery, break break dance on this rumbling rock!" Sir, his turbulence confounds my very mind!

John Dory is a Fish!

Soft now, Sir, do not take alarm. The passion is past, the night - the enveloping night that hisses past my window as I type here, alone, my heart afire with mission - has stolen on. I have taken a draught, my mind is clear now, mine again. The man rambles in his mind as well as my own. that is the simple truth. He slips the foetors that bind him in the garden of rememberants, and goes abroad in that intricate place, a place where lurk pigwidgeons and poltergeists, banshees and bugaboos, goblins and hobs. Incubi and succubi dance widdershins in the basement and flibbertigibbets flit feather-duster through the corridors. All is mist and momishness, yet heedlessly he goes, his kitbag packed with troubles and this idiotic grin, this rustic rictus defacing his gob, and he rattles the handles of dust-caked doors. Buried treasure is his measure but the locks, yielding to his incompetence vouchsafe only graily glimpses, evanescent. Some yield teeming terrors, others inconsequence, but most give on to other doors. And yet there is treasure, there, as surely as precious jewels scintillate in the skulls of toads. Yet, harassed by FORTUNE, larruped by luck, this fellow, this pitiful plaything of the Immortals, will never find the heart of the lotus without a map. He needs to quit this hither and yoning, stop paddling in the miasmatic gooze. He needs stour boots and a stout heart, a conscience for a compass. The footpaths must be lighted and he needs a faithful companion. That, Sir, is where you and your FORTUNE come in. You see, sir, I have the honour to be the representative here on Earth for the Guide Dogs for the Mind Association.

"'You can't B Sirius,' I hear you say, 'Is God to be found in Godalming?' Well, I, madam - I may call you madam, I hope, it's all the same to us - need jaw support too. Yes, my mouse dropped open when I heard the news. I, Frankly - that's my name by the way - I found the whole concept of external aeternal alternate othernesses interacting with temporal bozos of the citizen kind to help them relocate their locos, be consumed in fire and come up smelling of ash and roses (a tasty trick in my book [Bradshaws Railway Almanac 1938]) a bit difficult to swallow. This was no way to treat Toledo. Nah, I thought, this spiritual redemption jive was a crock, and I was Cap'n Hook. But then I discovered Guide Dogs for the Mind, and now I hope I can Lick it Good."

Well, Sir, now that you've heard from Frankly himself, and I hope his plea has plucked at your purse-strings. There he stands, on the edge of tomorrow: hope, a battered bird, only now fluttering and trembling in his heart, expecting to fly – Can you, Sir, I say can you forbear for one moment from stomping this avian avatar of aspirance with your hand-tooled kangaroo-skin boots back into the oblivion which such yearning in the face of the real richly deserves, and allow me touch your tenderest place, just outside your heart in your inside jacket pocket the last time I lunched, to partake of your most cherished substance within, to fondle your spondulicks, molest your moolah, caress your cash, covet your coppers and nuzzle your notes, lick your lucre and ’andle your ackers, get brazen with your brass and waspish with your wampum, coy with your coins and sexy with shekels; yess oh yess yess.

Yours without wax

Urizen Heep

Guide Dogs for the Mind
c/o A:A:
Sirian Bdg
Great Godalmighty
Surrey