Another dispatch from our man in Ulm:

I am still in Ulm. I may be here for the foreseeable future. Yesterday I told you that I was stricken, after lunch, by jellybrain and cork-in-the-ears. My symptoms have abated not one whit. I am not entirely sure what a whit is. Perhaps it is related to a squib which, you might have noticed, in your reading over the years, is invariably described as damp. I have never come across a squib that was moist, or wet, or soaking wet, or drenched, let alone one that was dry, or bone dry. No, a squib is always damp. Can the same be said for the whit?

You might be waiting for me to apologise for digressing, impatient as you must be to hear of the latest doings in Ulm. But apologise I will not. I have much else to contend with, such as my medical condition(s) and that gas leak (still not fixed). Added to which, there has been a bittern storm over the city, the sky is almost black with bitterns, and I have had to light a candle to see by. Then there is the question of whits and squibs, and the revelation that not a single gazebo in Ulm is owned by a beekeeper, at least not legally. There may be squatters, off the grid.

So I think it is plain that being your man in Ulm is no picnic. I cannot remember when last I went on a picnic. This is made all the more galling when one thinks how easily available are sausages so suitable for picnics. Instead I must eat these sausages indoors, or at best at a table on a pavement outside a café. Would it count as a picnic, I wonder, if I spread a blanket on the pavement, a few feet away from the table, and sprawled there, eating my sausages? I think I would be liable to arrest, as a pavement nuisance.

That is all I have time to babble on about today, from Ulm. Some might describe this dispatch as a damp squib. If so, don’t blame me. Blame the bitterns, whose stormy appearance in the sky over Ulm has blotted out the sun, and made us all a little more prone to gloomy thoughts. The pig in his sty is a happier fellow.

Over and out, your man in Ulm.