I went to sea in a fishing smack, and I dangled a net over the side, and I caught, among minnows and weed, a cod. Then I steered for shore. At the quayside, I hurried to my chalet and I slapped the cod on my tabletop and, with great savagery, I gutted it with my bare hands, exposing its innards. I took the liver over to the draining-board, where I had ready a glass jar into the neck of which I’d stuck a funnel. I squeezed and squeezed the liver until my fists ached, until every last drop of oil had dripped down the funnel into the jar. Then I threw the funnel away and took a big iron spoon, and I poured oil out of the jar onto the spoon and inserted the spoon in my mouth and I drank the oil greedily, desperately, gurglingly.

And that, my syphilitic friends, is how I preserve my health, and why I can gambol ‘cross the greensward with the zip and vim of a monkey, when the fancy takes me.