On Wearing Flippers to a Charity Dinner-Dance

Make of this what you will, but those are not necessarily the bananas you came in with. Now I know a person of your perspicacity and sellotape-wielding skills is not one to pooh-pooh an offer of a short sequence of tango lessons on your nearest bowling green, but let me ask you just this: when was the last time you wore flippers to a charity dinner-dance in aid of Peruvian underarm deodorant fetishists?

See, only last Tuesday, as it happens. Therefore one does have to ask if you are making the fullest use of your library card as possible during these rather straightened times, especially when there is so much about the care and upkeep of gerbils that you have never known. This is despite all those summers you spent out on the great Luton prairies rounding up the huge herds of gerbils that roam wild and free just off the main road on the outskirts of that most romantic of cities.

Still, once upon a time you were young, slim and not too scary-looking to the less discerning of the opposite sex who did not find themselves suddenly confronting you down a solitary dark alley, so you danced until dawn, or at least nearly half-past nine, if there was nothing good on the telly that night.

Oh, how we all remember that night you danced along the cliff edge as the sun sank slowly into the sea, and how suddenly you realised there was no longer any cliff edge underneath you, and – moments later – how we all heard that one single splash from far below.