Yesterday I came upon two phrases, the one spoken and the other written. I overheard a reference to “a small nice pig”, and I read the words “mysterious East German sausages”. Given that the pig was “nice”, I can only hope that it did not end up as a constituent part of the sausages.

The contexts of both phrases need not concern us, and in any case I shall soon forget them, given the parlous state of my memory. Ideally, I would construct texts around both the small nice pig and the mysterious East German sausages, use them as springboards for flights of invention, embed them within sweeping paragraphs of majestic prose. One day, one day . . .

For the time being, rather than scribbling them in a jotting pad, I decided to share them with you lot, by giving them a postage of their own, which will also act as an aide memoire. You will encounter them both again, of that there is little doubt.