Most buffers are not squelchy, but some are, some are. I am thinking, in particular, of the buffers in the submerged portion at the end of the line at Pointy Town. They are not just squelchy buffers, they are very squelchy buffers, at times exceedingly so, Adding to their squelchiness is the fact that the approach to the buffers, for several hundred plodes, is equipped, at regular intervals, with baffles, of both metal and sponge. The baffles first appear in the unsubmerged portion of the line but continue in the submerged portion until we are within spitting distance of the squelchy buffers themselves. Not that we would actually spit, for that would contravene the by-laws, unsurprisingly.

The poet-in-residence at Pointy Town Terminus, Dennis Beerpint, has recently published an anthology entitled Shall I compare thee to a squelchy buffer?, the answer to which would appear to be “no, I would rather you didn’t” (see Canto XXVII in the collection). Beerpint spent many long hours perched on a camping-stool, half-submerged, close by the squelchy buffers, smoking his pipe and jotting down his matchless poetic aperçus with a propelling pencil in a notepad. Curiously, he had nothing whatsoever to say about the metal and sponge baffles, although it is possible he is saving them for a second anthology which, like the first, will be available at the Pointy Town Terminus Kiosk.

Hoplites often disport themselves near the squelchy buffers, in historical reenactment tableaux vivants, but they do not hop.

Occasionally, it has been remarked that prose will simply peter out.