I must apologise for the dearth of decisive prose at Hooting Yard over the last while. At first I attributed the absence of fizzing sparks in my cranium to my becoming enwrapped in M P Shiel, but I am beginning to think there is another cause. My mind is haunted, haunted I tell you!, by the image of those friendly porpoises pushing octogenarian surfboard man Dick Van Dyke safely to shore from his imperilment upon the sea. Is there any other subject worthy of the attentions of the writer of today? I think not. But then, how to treat, in mere prose, an incident that seems to me more and more numinous and mythic?

No doubt I will shake off this sluggishness and return to the fray, but right now I feel hampered by my sheer inability to do justice to The Greatest Story Ever Told.