In Foff lay patches of glue strewn higgledy. Tarps billowed in a gale that was never a zephyr. There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. Crack out the canisters of Strontium 90.

So, at any rate, says weedy poet Dennis Beerpint in his new book, Gibberish From An Unalloyed Nitwit. Interviewed by a scribbler next to a filbert hedge, the poet was at pains to punctuate his prattle with words beginning with P. But the scribbler’s tape recorder malfunctioned, so all record of what Beerpint said is lost, as lost as a flea in a jerrycan.

What we might want to know is where Foff lies, and whether there are fleas there. On the other hand, armed with an early morning pint of milk and a copy of The Daily Hammer Of Christ, we might prefer to stroll out to where the steamrollers wheeze in the dawn light, as milky as the milk in our carton, and sing wassailing songs of long ago penned by intoxicated German Fafnirs.

Beerpint’s bucket did not have a hole in it. In Foff, it rested on a shelf in his shed. His shed was precisely twenty times the size of his head. That is how you measure sheds, and huts, and cabins, and kiosks. Look at them all lined up, ordered by size, in multiples of Beerpint head measurement. Now watch as they are flattened by steamrollers.

Now dip your fingers in those patches of glue. It is glue that will hold things together.