I am often asked what it was like to be borp. For example, I may be leaning insouciantly against a mantelpiece at a swish sophisticated cocktail party when a fellow-guest will approach me, sometimes in a wheelchair, and say: “I’m told you were borp. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me about that, would you?” Or I may be queueing in the post office to buy a postage stamp or two, when the person behind me, sometimes on crutches, will tap me on the shoulder and say: “I could tell by looking at the back of your head that you were borp. What was it like?” Every so often, I am asked in writing, usually in a crabbed and barely legible hand.

I wish I could say that I try to give a full and frank answer. I wish I could say I responded, at least, politely. But I do not.

My usual tactic is to gibber like unto a monkey, toss my not so golden locks, what’s left of them, and execute a little pirouette. I then remove from my blazer pocket a crucifix, kiss it, and set it on fire with my Ignitofab lighter.

As Perkins run through with a rapier, so Himmelfarb bewildered in the gloaming. There are things fit only for the ears of those who dwell in Cretin Town. Was it Browning who wrote about “the bough of cherries some officious fool / Broke in the orchard”? There are no fools in my orchard any longer. I sent them packing, one by one, from Thursday through to the following Monday, yes, even on the Lord’s Day I chased a fool from my orchard, by dint of borp.

Wish me Godspeed, and count the circle of toads, for borp is borp and shall ever be as never be in witlessness and pox.