Oddly, I can find no Wikipedia entry for the Blötzmann Dots. Odd, because they are without question the most important dots of the past one hundred years. They are, of course, odd in themselves. Blötzmann always referred to them as his “odd dots”, leaving it to the wider world to dub them with his own name. Blötzmann was by no means a modest man, but he had his moments of diffidence, and the act of dot nomenclature was one of them.

Blötzmann is thought to have named the dots after Dot Tint, bluestocking sister of the noted mezzotintist Rex Tint. In a particularly hectic twentieth-century year, Blötzmann and Dot had a fling, and it was when they were holed up in a love-nest in one of Ruskin’s favourite Swiss villages that Blötzmann, one snowbound wintry weekend, first conceived of the dots that would bring him fame.

It is possible that the dots are not mentioned by the Wikipedia for security reasons. After all, it is their military applications that have changed the world. These were not foreseen by Blötzmann, who is on record as stating that, initially at least, he considered the dots of most benefit to gardening enthusiasts, potters, and hikers. It may have been Dot Tint herself who, recognising the dots’ versatility, sent a sketch of them to a bigwig at a top secret intelligence facility. In interviews later in life, she denied having done so, and it is perhaps one for the historians to winkle out, now that Blötzmann, Dot Tint, and indeed the military bigwig are all doornail dead and have long since fed the worms in their respective burial grounds.

Fig pot scamp. Jar pig bin. Hoop rag prune. Dust! Dust! Shrimp tag flap. Pod grease lawn. Championship grub. Dust bag nitwit. Kettle flail gust. Gas and gas and gas. Leopardskin hat. Dim dim bulb. Awful flies. Shredded wheat. And Miss Jessel opts for Special K. What will rotate? Is there a pin? Corks in the bath and the flagstones a-crumbled. Vim vim vim! Water on the brain. Shovels in the hallway. Give me my slop. Hot boiled soup. Worms in the muck. Spin pop glug. Football results. Forty-nine nil. Arnold Bax. Triumph of the will. Ski slope smudge. Everything a blur. Wool snagged in hoist. Ducks. Fops. Gravy. Stand at ease. Go to seed. Into the cake. Glum but electric. Soil and sand. Gummed-up snippers. Bowls. Wells. Pips. Eight-eight cranks in a cold church hall. Let them be put away into sheds. They sign their names all Miliband. Goats may bray when their tails are yanked. Often I have seen the squibs. The candles and the firelights. The dicky bow and the wolverine. The musset and the pamplemousse. Stow me away on a frightful ship. Where, where is the Gropius pit? The eyes of Donald Pleasance. The crisp man’s plod. Up boot Fulke jab! Up parp bung jack! Venn and pie chart. Map o’ Holland. Custard and vaseline. Inscape offshore. Head gone wry. Mark of the beast. Padding, padding, pink forlorn. All grotesque on Tom’s bonce. The fruit sectioned. The scales torn away. Jutland, that was it. Paste horn coathanger. Lip stripe bloom. O vile, vile, popsicle madder. Comes to a crunch. Spills out in glory. A daughter with a limp. A simpleton and his pebble. Yeast will out. Saws will saw. Stumbling in the glitter. Mocking the harpies. They said he had no shoes. They said he had no socks. They stole into the corridor with blisters and the baize. Dance a hoo-cha. Lop lop lop! Go to the ghost now. It has a phantom hob. Sock on the jaw. Ice in the veins. You know how to whistle, don’t you? No. Never could. Never did. Never never never. Cross my heart. It’s like a pin-cushion. Bold and fat and loud and beating, beating, beating. Hear it thump. Like God. With his trident. And his burlap bag o’lard. On his mountain top. With his mighty beard. Screeching. Like an owl. Unobserved. Unseen. Except by the light of the lamp. It was a Tilly Tilly Tilly Tilly Tilly lamp. Smashed into a thousand pieces. Count them one by one. Into the Ark. Under the bridge. Sinking. Forty fathoms deep. The deep blue sea where squids cavort. And monsters dwell. I know, because I dwell there too.

It was suggested to me, by a suburban shaman, that I should display upon my person, as part of my rig, the plumage of hoopoes. That this had not previously occurred to me was no doubt due to a distinct lack of shamanic advice in my life up to that point. I would go so far as to say that I had actively pooh-poohed manifestations of the mystic, whether in the form of shamen, wizards, magicians or the blind seer whose tent was erected by the side of a mountain path which passed by my chalet.

It was through this seer that I was put in touch with a fellow who kept a flock of hoopoes in an iron cage, and who let me pluck their feathers in return for a small consideration. Once I had the sack of feathers safely home, I took great pains attaching them to my cardigan. I used cow gum and safety pins, and by the time I was done, scarcely a glimpse of wool was visible beneath the hoopoe plumage. I donned the cardigan and awaited enlightenment.

The shaman had not been specific with regard to the esoteric hullaballoo I would experience, so I did not know what to expect. I stood in my kitchenette, and boiled a kettle, and made a cup of tea, all the while concentrating my mental energies upon any perceptible changes of insight into the spiritual realms. These realms were, of course, the ones of which until now I had doubted the very existence. I sat on my stool to drink my cup of tea. It tasted the same as usual, just as the feel of the stool was no different to any of the thousands of times I had sat upon it in the past. I began to think that the suburban shaman had taken me for a fool.

Then, having drained my cup, I went out, along the mountain path and down into the village. It was the day of the goose market, which draws crowds from the hinterland. Now I began to understand the significance of the hoopoe-feathered cardigan, for all eyes were upon me, wide and bright, staring in surprise. A slight yet persistent mountain breeze ruffled the plumage, so that, as one witness was later to put it, my torso appeared to be mystically vibrating, while my head and limbs remained still.

And still I was, for I took up a position in the village square, between the goose-pens and the cement statue of Ringo Starr, and I stood there, for hours, for days, so that the villagers and the visitors from outlying parts were transfixed by my presence, their eyes gaping, their mouths hanging open, their goose business forgotten.