Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Dear Maud,

At present, I am quite taken by buses. Why? Hop on and I’ll explain.

Consider Noah. (Yes, the Bible is back!) If this man – ‘perfect in his generations’ – was not a zoologist, then he ought to have been. Imagine: he had two of every animal lodged in his ambit.

I’m no zoologist either, Maud, but I do have an unholy fascination with the human kind. Hence my recourse to buses. For what are these ungainly craft if not earthbound arks?

God said it himself: ‘Two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark.’

Location, location, location. I situate myself at the back, Maud, where the wild things are. Not within reach, mind you, just within earshot. There I overhear conversations that make my eaves drop – too many, alas, to repeat here and now. (Then there are the censors.)

Even so, one anecdote sticks in my ribs. We had just passed, of all things, a limousine. ‘Fuggin’ Freddo,’ said a pickled old prune. ‘Every time he gets out [of the clink], he cruises around in a fuggin’ limo, wavin’ at the pigs.’

Vernacular, schmernacular!

Her insight is apposite, Maud, as is Noah, who begot three sons, one of them meaty. For Christmas, which lingers, was animated by two beasts: duck (Dougal, no less) and pig. The first is tiny (though rising faster than the Flood), while the second began broader than a caveman’s club.

Thus, Maud, am I cured of ham.

Fare enough!

Yours etc.

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