I have often asked myself if I was born to boogie. Born to mewl and puke, yes. To scratch and gobble and preen, most certainly. And in the end, to kick the bucket, and feed the worms, or, wedged in my final box, ignited, to blaze in glory. But inbetweentimes, must I, can I, boogie? Was it writ in the stars, spread out across the firmament in their particular alignment at the moment of my birth, that I should boogie?

Once, on a Wednesday I recall, I studied and studied a chart of those stars, but I learned nothing. Partly that was because I did not really know what I ought to be looking for, partly because the chart had been dropped in a puddle and was smudged. I gazed at it for hours on that Wednesday, hoping for enlightenment of a boogie-related kind, but eventually I gave up and crumpled the chart in my fist and tossed it into a dustbin.

I was told, also on a Wednesday, but a different Wednesday, that to properly boogie one had to wear a boogie-hat and a shirt with boogie-cuffs and a pair of boogie shoes. But the person who told me this was unreliable, in matters boogie at any rate, for he had never, to the best of my knowledge, himself boogied. He just spouted off about boogie, one of those boogie-spouters who were so tiresomely prevalent at one time. Some people feel nostalgic for that time, of course, even weep when they think of it, but not me. I couldn’t give a monkey’s.

It was another person who told me, and not on a Wednesday this time, but a Sunday, that if I wanted to witness proper boogie I should make a beeline for the monkey house. Apparently, monkeys boogie better than any other creature on earth. They truly were born to boogie. I am not sure this is the truth. I hoped to study a chart, not dissimilar to the chart o’ stars, but a chart of monkeys, one that had not been dropped into a puddle and smudged, but try as I might I could not get my mittens on one. The whole monkey boogie business is still up in the air as far as I am concerned. And I cannot quiz the person who told me to get me hence to the monkey house, for in a quite unrelated development, he was found hanging from a bridge over an important river, his pockets weighted with stones. They said he had boogie in his eyes at the last, but what in heaven’s name that might mean I have no idea.

It has been pointed out to me, more than once, that had I been born to boogie I would have boogied by now. Well, frustum dustum, as they say, that is a persuasive point. If I started to boogie today, or next week, or in whatever years are left to me, would there not be something forced and artificial about my boogie, a knowingness that would be fatal to the boogie itself? Thereagain, some have posited the idea of the past-it boogie, or the creaking wizened boogie, as not uncommon variations on the classic boogie, which I suppose might be defined as the boogie practised by monkeys, if indeed monkeys do actually boogie, and I was not being lied to, yet again.

I shall retrieve that smudged star-chart from the dustbin, and hop it down to the monkey house, and perhaps, perhaps, things will become clear to me, at least in terms of boogie.