I was riding through the desert on a horse with no name. This was asking for trouble, and sure enough, after passing plants and birds and rocks and things and sand and hills and rings we arrived at a Horse Registration Station. A cowpoke in a poncho bid us to stop, so I pulled on the reins and patted my horse on its horsey head.

“Before you go any further I must register your horse,” said the cowpoke.

“Register away!” I said, blithely I hoped. I had practised blitheness of speech at drama school, but only now did I understand the yawning gulf between strutting upon the stage and negotiating the real world of deserts and Horse Registration Stations manned by enponchoed cowpokes.

“First I will need the name of your horse,” he said.

“And what will you need second?” I asked, playing for time.

“Second I will need any aliases or pseudonyms by which your horse is known.”

I wondered what would happen if I cried “Yippee-ky-oh-ky-ay!” and dug my spurs into the horse’s horsey flanks and galloped away, leaving the cowpoke in a trail of dust.

“Don’t get any funny ideas about galloping off on an unregistered horse,” said the cowpoke, adding “You won’t get far” with an air of menace. I am unusually alert to threats of menace, by dint of hard experience, and I do not mean merely stage menace as met with in certain plays by certain dramatists. No. I mean real menace in the real world of plants and birds and rocks and things and sand and hills and rings.

For one wild moment I considered lying, plucking a name for my nameless horse from within the dark ignorant recesses of my cranial integuments. But the cowpoke again forestalled me. Was he a clairvoyant cowpoke?

“And don’t just make up a name,” he warned, “I will know if you are lying, and by the martyred sinews of Saint Blodwyst, you will not want to suffer the consequences of trying to pull the wool over my eyes.”

I did not doubt him. He spoke with the kind of effortless authority of a character I had once played, to no little acclaim, in a stage production of something or other by one of the Norwegian playwrights.

I had little option but to blurt out the truth.

“My horse has no name,” I blurted.

The cowpoke did not react immediately. Then he fixed me with a gaze that would have chilled the blood were we not broiling in the heat of the desert. He looked at me, and then he looked at the horse. He rummaged in his poncho. He hummed a snatch of light opera, Il Ingrazziatiniatoni-apoppiapippi, I think. Then he took from within his poncho a pebble, and with sudden and devastating accuracy threw it up into the sky and clonked a bird, which plummeted to earth stone dead at his feet.

“Each time a nameless horse tries to pass this Station,” he said, “A bird must die. So it is written. Learn that lesson well, stranger. Now turn around and do not return.”

“Where is it written?” I asked.

But the cowpoke had taken from within his poncho a shovel, and was busy burying the bird in the desert sand.

I turned my horse about, dug in my spurs, and we galloped away, back whence we had come, all the way across the desert, all the way back to the eastern seaboard and the theatre on the pier at Point Punctilio, where the tattered posters were still just about legible, the posters that advertised our critically-panned performance of The Tragedy of Trubshaw, about a lone rider, and his horse, a horse with no name.

My more astute readers will be aware that I have, for many years, immersed myself in the world of gangsta rap. Indeed, only the other day Ice-T popped round for a cup of (non-iced) tea and we had a long and frank discussion about all sorts of gangsta rappy topics. I am of course completely au fait with the argot, so much so that even Ice himself had difficulty understanding me.

I mention this as a preamble to my news that I have been commissioned by an academic press to edit a book of essays exploring the crucial influence, in the development of gangsta rap, of fotherington-tomas. I think we all know that the St Custard’s pupil who is uterly wet and a sissy is the presiding spirit of gangsta rap, the role model whose example Ice-T and all the other rappers, whose names escape me for the moment, strive to emulate.

Submissions for the book are welcome, and please bear in mind that you will be forgiven if your essay contains any uncouth words.

My childhood hero, Foofy The Clown, had a very special talent. He was able to translate the braying of donkeys. That is, when Foofy overheard the braying of a donkey, he could – at the drop of a hat – render it into intelligible human speech, and sometimes, it has to be said, into unintelligible human speech. Well, let us be honest, more often than not into unintelligible human speech. In fact, the more I think about it, casting my mind back across all those shattered years to my childhood, I find it hard to recall a single instance of Foofy making anything other than unintelligible blatherings whenever he claimed to be translating the braying of donkeys. I am racking my brains and searching my memory banks with a powerful torch, or even a Klieg light, but to no avail.

It is possible that I misremember exactly what Foofy the Clown was doing when he was burbling and grunting, spittle drooling from his red-painted lips. Or were they painted blue? In any case, it may be that he never announced that he was translating the brays of donkeys. I could be mixing him up with a different hero of my childhood. And in all honesty I do not remember ever seeing Foofy in the company of a donkey. I used to see donkeys on the beach at Squalor-on-Sea, and at a farmyard, whereas I only ever saw Foofy The Clown when I was taken to the circus, and I was only taken to the circus once, because my mother was allergic to trapeze artists and sawdust. Her skin came out in blotches and she suffered from debilitating brain spasms.

I think, then, that it must have been my father, home from war in the tropics, who took me to the circus that time. I do remember, vividly, that he abandoned me there, in the vicinity of bears. My father was forgetful, rather than malicious. I think he had witnessed things in the tropics that unhinged him. The bears were in a cage, so I was not in immediate peril. It was only when Foofy The Clown came skittering along, garish and motley, and grinned at me horribly while rattling a bunch of bear-cage keys in my face, that I piddled in my pants from terror.

And I ran. I ran and ran, away from the circus until I reached the farmyard, and the donkeys. And the donkeys brayed, and I was safe from harm.

The other day we looked at the practice of lugging a pail for many many miles o’er the fields. I ought to have said o’er the fields and hills. Lugging a pail up and down hills is, of course, more strenuous that lugging it over comparatively flat fields, but one should not shy away from such exertion. It is character-building, if exhausting.

The hills were not the only thing I failed to mention earlier. I did not say with what the pail was filled, although I was careful to note that it was filled, via a tap, from a vat, implying that the contents of the pail was liquid in form. I also neglected to say anything whatsoever about where the pail was being lugged to, across those fields (and, as of today, hills). Obviously, were you the lugger of the pail, you would want to know where you were going, and to be able to identify your destination so that you knew you had reached it, when you reached it.

My failure to mention these significant matters is in some ways akin to a piece of prose that begins, and proceeds, without any clear idea of its eventual ending. The danger there is that the passage of prose might just peter out, fruitlessly and pointlessly, thus frustrating the reader and laying the writer open to charges of rigmarole and fol-de-rol. Some writers would not bat an eyelid to be so accused, but some would, and they might even weep or quake, or weep and quake. If you have ever seen a weeping and quaking writer you will know what an awful spectacle it presents, one you will want to banish from your mind as quickly as possible.

We need not bother our heads about the frustrated reader, however, because they are two a penny. Readers become frustrated all the time, by all sorts of infelicities and annoyances and crimes committed by writers. But the frustrated reader is always in a position to toss aside, contemptuously, the frustrating reading matter, and to read something else, or not to read anything at all, for a while. Let us shed no tears, then, for the reader, who can pick and choose among literally millions of things to read, or probably billions, the lucky pups.

In our analogy the reader is lugging a pail o’er the fields and hills without any clear idea where they are going. Well, quite frankly, who gives a damn where they are going? They have picked up the pail and they are lugging it, with all their strength, panting and perspiring, close to collapse, but pressing on, ever on, with no end in sight, because that is how it is, in the world of belles-lettres pail lugging, daddy-o.

Let us imagine you install a tap on the side of a vat. You will then be able to transfer the contents of the vat, bit by bit, into a pail, a pail which you can then lug, panting and perspiring, for many many miles o’er the fields. What better way to spend a Tuesday afternoon as winter approaches?

In Ponga, you can recognise the satraps because they wear plumed hats. Or so I am told. In Gooma, by contrast, the hats of the satraps are unplumed, and look like any other hats sported by a million other Goomans. The satraps can be distinguished by their tattoos. Pongan satraps eschew tattooing, which is reserved for their shamen, but there are no shamen in Gooma. If one flies over the mountains into Gaar, one finds that the satraps wear plumed hats and sport tattoos, and that the chief method of adverting to their satrapdom is their habit of always carrying a bundle of tally sticks. The shamen of Gaar have both plumed hats and tattoos, but they do not carry tally sticks. They tie their hair in complex stylised knots.

This much I have learned, and am grateful to have learned, from a fascinating periodical entitled Satraps And Shamen Of Ponga And Gooma And Gaar. It is published on the first Thursday of each month, and is packed with articles and photographs and quizzes and competitions. Since I picked up a copy at a newsagent’s in an esplanade on a mezzanine level at an airport a short while ago it has become my absolute favourite periodical ever, even though I had no previous interest in either satraps or shamen, whether they were from Ponga or Gooma or Gaar or any other country you care to mention. I have been won over by the magazine’s excellence in all particulars, but mostly by its vividness. It is the most vivid of periodicals, more vivid even than the Reader’s Digest.

In Ponga, the satraps hold councils at which are discussed important meteorological issues. The Pongan shamen consider the weather to fall within their purview, and this can lead to clashes between satraps and shamen. Such clashes are conducted at a strictly verbal level, and give rise to some fascinating linguistic quirks. Because there are no shamen in Gooma, the Gooman satraps have the weather all to themselves and face no clashes. In Gaar, the shamen tie their hair in complex stylised knots.

I have said that Gaar is on the other side of the mountains from Ponga and Gooma, but I have yet to learn what these mountains are called, or indeed where they are. Vivid as the periodical is, I have to say that it is unforthcoming on matters geographical, and that is an understatement. I have been toying with the idea of writing a letter to the editor suggesting that a future issue might include some maps. When I was a little chap I had a passion for maps, just like the narrator of Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness. I am no longer a little chap at all, but I would like to see maps, colourful ones, of Ponga and Gooma and Gaar. They would make the periodical even more vivid than it already is.

In Ponga, the satraps have dominion over the birds of the air, or at least they act as if they do. They devise many laws to which the birds of the air are subject. Flightless birds fall within the remit of the shamen of Ponga. They do not create laws, but they consider flightless birds to be sacred, and count them, often. The satraps count the birds of the air also, with different purposes in mind. In Gooma, all known birds are poultry. In Gaar, the satraps carry tally sticks and the shamen tie their hair in complex stylised knots.

I stumbled upon my first copy of the periodical in that newsagent’s in an esplanade on a mezzanine level at an airport quite by accident. I was due to board a flight to a remote prison island, where I had been asked to sluice out the convicts’ brains with an exciting and dangerous new fluid. I had a few minutes to spare before my flight and went to pick up the latest Reader’s Digest. Repair work was being done to the newsagent’s frontage, so I had to squeeze in through a side panel, thus entering a part of the shop I would normally not have explored. Most of the racks here were stacked with fruit pastilles and pastry snacks, and I have no need of these things, for when travelling I always bring my own food. A single copy of the September issue of Satraps And Shamen Of Ponga And Gooma And Gaar lay atop a tinderbox on the floor next to a display of packets of jammy teardrops. I picked it up out of curiosity and was struck by its vividness.

In Ponga, the satraps have a counting system of astonishing complexity. It is possible that their brains are wired in a way unique to them. The shamen count as you or I would count, although as you would expect they use different words for numbers. The satraps do not even use words when they count. Nor do the satraps in Gooma, but that is because they do not count at all. The Gooman satraps pipe and hum in place of counting. They manufacture spikes and nails and do a lot of purposeless hammering. In Gaar, the satraps carry tally sticks.

The publishers do not make a binder available in which to keep copies of their vivid periodical, and this is another matter I planned to raise in my letter to the editor recommending the inclusion of colourful maps. I am extremely keen on binders for periodicals, whether or not they are vivid. It is true that I have quite a number of loose unbound periodicals in my collection, and that pains me. I numb the pain with prayer, for that is what the Bishop of Southwark told me to do. When some of the more promising convicts had had their brains sluiced with my exciting and dangerous new fluid, I set them a project to make binders for my unbound periodicals, including Satraps And Shamen Of Ponga And Gooma And Gaar. They made an excellent fist of it, with limited resources, and I like to think that the sluicing had much to do with that.

In Ponga, the satraps make regular changes to the plumes in their hats according to the phases of the moon. The shamen take no notice of the moon, for they owe fealty to the sun. In Gooma the satraps believe that the health of their poultry is dependent upon the stars. In Gaar, the satraps carry tally sticks and the shamen tie their hair in complex stylised knots. I have counted all my binders, and I am carrying a tally stick, and later today, after I have watched the news bulletin and weather forecast on television, and had a little chat with the Bishop of Southwark, I am going to tie my hair in complex stylised knots.

This piece first appeared in June 2007.