We are five friends, one day we came out of a house one after the other, first one came and placed himself beside the gate, then the second came, or rather he glided through the gate like a little ball of quicksilver, and placed himself near the first one, then came the third, then the fourth, then the fifth. We were like a five-sided die. Most dice have six sides, or faces, I think, but we were like one of those five-sided dice you used to be able to buy at Mr Fatso’s Unseemly Joke Shop. There is an old canard that a five-sided die is a geometric impossibility. Well, try telling that to Mr Fatso. He will spit on your shoes and push one of his novelty spiders up your nose.

We did not come out of the house voluntarily. We were turfed out, one by one, by its paterfamilias. Several hours earlier, shortly after the risen sun brought a blush of golden loveliness to the burgeoning day (Dinsey), we had barged into the house purporting to proselytise. We claimed to be Adepts of the Order of Sibodnedwab, an esoteric order devoted to esoterica, spiritual perfection, and robbery. On the pretext of converting the occupants to our cause, we hoped to snaffle items such as kettles, cushions, and coathangers.

They were a – very wholesome – family of four, Pa and Ma and Little Gus and Little Gertrude. We kept them entranced by chalking an esoteric design upon the carpet, babbling incoherent yet strangely compelling gibberish, and summoning, from a plume of smoke, the jewel-encrusted toad god Alf. Everything was going swimmingly until one of us – I won’t say who – got carried away and pushed one of Mr Fatso’s novelty spiders up Little Gus’s nose. His Pa became enraged. He was wholesome but also a champion wrestler, as big and broad as a big broad bear – see Colour Plate XIV in Snit’s Picture Book Of Bears. That will give you an idea of who we were dealing with.

Or not dealing with. One by one, Pa picked us up by the scruff of the neck and hoicked us out of the house. We came away with nothing. Now we are gathered at the gate, the five of us, like a five-sided die, wondering what to do next.

“Let us repair to an ice cream parlour!” cries Ringo. I ought to explain that we are each named after a Beatle. That means four of us have fixed names, while the fifth is known variously as Stu or Brian or George (the other one) or Mal or Yoko, depending upon which lengthy and pointless bit of conjecture gleaned from a half-century’s-worth of so-called rock journalism is uppermost in our minds at any one time.

Usually we like to engage in lengthy and pointless arguments, particularly when it is Ringo calling the shots, but this morning we all agree that ice cream sounds like a capital idea. After all, was it not Perkins who wrote “a choc ice is always a consolation”?

So off we toddle, the five of us, towards the nearest ice cream parlour, as the hands of the clock creep inexorably towards that position where they are both pointing in an identical, decisive vertical. There is a name for that precise alignment. You can look it up in Hodgepang’s The Positions Of Clock-Hands And Their Implications.

As we pass a splurge of binsey poplars, one of us – I won’t say who – looks back and sees, springing along the lane in pursuit, the jewel-encrusted toad god Alf. He is such a nuisance! Years ago, we hired him from Mr Fatso’s Unseemly Joke Shop, thinking he would add a dash of panache to our Order of Sibodnedwab capers. And he did, but he never leaves us alone, when for example we want to go and eat choc ices. We stopped paying Mr Fatso his rental fee long ago, but the toad god still follows us about. Is he a toad god or a toad demon? No matter how he pouts his lips we push him away with our elbows, but however much we push him away, back he comes.

The first sentence, and the last, were translated from the German by Tania and James Stern. Everything in between was not.