Monday, 19 October

Cranium,

As our old drinking companion Stingeton "Grampy" Cornpopper was wont to say, "I'll hunt you down and kill you, the lot of you." To which we would continue to make terrific fun of his name and lineage until we fell about laughing and in some less portune cases, soiling ourselves.  (Of course, when I say "we" I do not include you and I.) I bring this up for the simple reason that Gunderberg has informed me of old Gramps Corny's passing, some five-and-a-half years sgo.

Why, pray tell, did we call him "Gramps"? As I recall he was near enough our age, although our constant razzing did perhaps age him a bit prematurely. A lad of nineteen should not have a posture akin to the curly bit atop a shepherd's staff. -- But no matter. The news (old though it be) put me in a reflective mood, and I spent a good several hours staring into a mirror (again attempting to view my 'third eye' -- decades have I been pursuing this vision, and all I have to show for it are a series of blinding headaches, and no end of seven-year stretches of so-called 'bad luck'), brooding over how many of our contemporaries have relocated beyond the veil.

Do you recall Morton Halverger? Olaf "Stickleback" Pike? Jimson Bleader? Never before or since had Old Frogger a team like that. And now, the remaining half of that season's trophy, with whatever is legible of their names, is all the evidence left that such giants once walked the earth. And Gaspar Heidegger... it was your self who informed me of his untimely demise, and his means of departure still gives me chills. What was it again?

Seamly Gerschal, who once threatened to have me bodily removed from the Club if I did not renounce my belief that man would never fly under his own power. I meant simply, under Seamly's power; although he outweighed me by a good twenty stone, I was, and still am, of the opinion that those spindly ankles of his could never have held up under the pedaling needed to generate sufficient power to lift even the smallest human adult male to sufficient altitude to fit even the weakest definition of 'flight'. Now we shall never know; poor slothful Gerschal was crushed under an onrushing glacier last season.

Jergen Mahoney, Arbie Floman, P. Androcles Weinstein, Snert McGee... even Thibault Rationalizer, who Bernard "Stately" Holmes assures me is well and truly snuffed even though I continue my correspondence with him. He has I dare say become rather listless in his prose; death shall get the best of us all eh? Although when I am as deceased as he, I hope to continue authoring with as much verve.

Let me know if I have missed any of our late friends, so I may have flowers and indecent suggestions sent to their widows post-haste, as would have been their wish, one and all, I am sure.

I send this to you without any certitude on my part that have returned from your latest journeys to prats unknown. Daredemon that I am, I can do no other!

Excelsior!

Hatsoff du Larry

Letter the Current