wytchcroft

Oh the cheek of it, the rude impertinence

To ask of me here

Demanding of me here

Who am I

Here?

Don’t give it out, no indication

Don’t write it down

• I never had the inclination

Don’t scratch or mar

• Who would dare deface

The past that’s somehow been misplaced

And lost inside the navigation

Concepts of ‘Englishness’ bothered Gerry, bothered him in the same way as blurred patches in his peripheral vision, the kind that didn’t go away but, however much he wiped his specs, just sort of smeared out on the edges, to the side or below. The same annoyance as a paper cut. Paper cuts always come with the jeering promise that, no matter what you do, sooner or later (in fact just sooner), you will be forced by the generally malign nature of things to use the wounded finger and repeatedly so. With a pair of specs it would be email, bills, files and forms from work, a laughing commuter thrusting out the funny pages of a daily paper – or else road-signs, bus stops, unexpected waving friends, yapping dogs, darting cats or footballs out of nowhere, billboard adverts, lurching cars at T-junctions, attractive women, all would remorselessly have to be looked at through the smear. Gerry disliked having to turn his head and he disliked having to deliberately look down or to the sides – and he hated flicking through pieces of paper, whether this was an innate thing, a natural quirk, or a borderline phobic reaction to 30-plus years of dirty glasses and sore fingers, Gerry wasn’t sure.

If the brain, as so often claimed, is but a large muscle, then, Gerry supposed, the mind was but a red edged finger in a dodgy pair of specs.

Or something. Anyway, yes, Concepts of –

.
And now we present this year’s exciting episode of Voyage to Wherever!

Strap in and belt up as our heroes, Captain James ‘Torch’ Beam, Lummy and Titch prepare for blast off.
Can they solve the mystery of the disappearing think tank? Do we care?
Are we supposed to believe that anyone even noticed? Find out now!