Please note that the distance between the aerodrome and the zoo is very great. It is recommended that you wear a pair of stout hiking boots. When disembarking from the aeroplane, beware of propellers! Try to remain unruffled when presenting your bags for inspection at the customs shed. May the Lord have mercy on your soul.

Oops! I forgot to mention that before landing, be sure to pluck the hairs from your chinny chin chin. The regime has grave suspicions about men with beards, and not with reason. The King has spoken, and that is enough.

There are twenty-four points of interest between the aerodrome and the zoo, and I wish I could say that they were arranged alphabetically. In a better-ordered Kingdom, they would be. Alas, the designation of the points of interest fell to a Ministry stuffed with illiterates, rough brutes for the most part, but those who found favour with the King through mighty feats of arms. That is why there is a martial aspect to over half the points of interest, meaning that they may not be everybody’s cup of tea. There will be enforced stops, however, en route.

At each point of interest along the way you will find a kiosk where refreshments may be obtained. Be warned that prices are subject to galloping inflation, so anything I told you now would almost certainly be out of date by the time you embark upon the holiday of a lifetime.

It is, sadly, impossible to get from the aerodrome to the zoo without having to make a crossing of the harsh and inhospitable glinka. Everything you have heard about the glinka is true. You will need some kind of protective clothing against the wind. There are creatures in the wind, you will hear the sound of mandolins, and you will want to cling to your darling, for wild is the wind. If your darling is not accompanying you, more’s the pity.

You will need a pre-stamped ticket to enter the zoo, if you are not torn apart by wolves before you get there. The sentries are chosen for their acuity of vision, and can spot a counterfeit ticket at fifty paces, so do not even think of trying to bluff your way through the magnificent iron gates with a forgery. To labour the point, you will see heads on spikes, their eyes pecked out by birds, all around the perimeter.

No holiday would be complete without a sprint around the perimeter of the zoo, incidentally. You may wish to replace your stout hiking boots with a pair of plimsolls. The King’s Marshals will be on hand to harry you and hector you, with their pointy lances and their guttural shrieks.

The King’s cartographers are working hard on an approved route back from the zoo to the aerodrome. Thus far they have not come up with an officially sanctioned itinerary, so there are several holding camps, with rudimentary ersatz-canvas tents and barbed wire in place next to the bog on the far side of the zoo.

There is a phrase I recall from my childhood, regularly used by my mother when I – dippy and dreamy – was getting ready for school in the mornings.

“One of dese days,” she would say, in her Flemish accent, “You will go out widout your own head.”

Pish!, I thought, That is alarmist talk!

But then one winter’s morning my mother’s prediction came true. I set off for school in the wind and snow, having left my head snoozing on the pillow. I suspect the people I passed in the street must have been astonished at the sight of a boy without a head, but I cannot say for sure, because of course I was completely unaware of them. My ears and eyes, lodged as they were in my head, were warm and snug and still abed.

So familiar was I with the route to school, along the lane and past the duckpond and the fireworks factory and through the tunnel under the motorway and then along the canal towpath and past the aerodrome and the vinegar works, that I had no need of my head to get me there. It was only when I sat down at my desk in the classroom that things went awry.

In those days, you see, we were taught such piffle as reading and writing and arithmetic and Latin and history, so my not having a head sent the teachers into a kerfuffle. I’m told there was some kind of emergency meeting in the staffroom – a fug of pipe-smoke then, of course – and I was put in isolation in the sickroom while they worked out what to do. How much more enlightened would things be today! Head or no head, I am sure there would be no attempt to exclude me from the diversity and self-esteem lessons. Indeed, my headless presence would be seen as a benefit, both to myself and to my fellow pupils, and to the teachers themselves. In fact, I would probably get a prize, just for not having a head. On the rare occasions prizes were dished out in those far off days, they were invariably book tokens, and I would certainly not have got one for not having a head. Now, I could expect something useful like a new app for my iPap, or a voucher for Pizza Kabin.

But back then I was kept locked in the sickroom, excluded and with my self esteem crushed, all because I’d come to school without my head. I would like to say that I sat there reflecting ruefully that my mother had been right all along, but any reflection, rueful or otherwise, wasn’t possible without my head, resting happily on the pillow back home.

What happened was that the school called in a local doctor, who made a snap diagnosis after looking at me for about three seconds. He didn’t even use his stethoscope. Puffing on his pipe, he informed the headmaster in a grave doctorly voice that I showed all the symptoms of not having a head, and the best treatment was brisk exercise in the open air. So they sent me running round and round the athletics track all day, until the bell rang at home time. I got a ticking off from the gym teacher, to which I was thankfully oblivious, and then I was pointed in the direction of the canal towpath and told not to forget my head again or there would be ramifications. Yes, they used to use long words like “ramifications” even with headless tinies! What a different world it was.

I trudged home in the wind and snow, went up to my bedroom, plopped my head back on to my neck, and sat down to warm myself in front of the gas fire. How could it be, I wondered, that the school was even open in such inclement weather?

Soon it was time for tea. We had sausages and mash. It was only as I sat down at the table and tucked my serviette under my chin that I realised I’d put my head on back to front.

“Ah, Mr Blake. So glad you could make it. Do come in.”

The man ushering William Blake into his opulent townhouse was a natural philosopher, an alchemist, and the owner of a splendid private menagerie.

“I had better make sure you are the right Mr Blake,” he gabbled as he steered Blake into the lobby, “You are the poet and engraver and angel-spotter and occasional nudist?”

William Blake nodded in affirmation.

“Good, good,” said his host, “Let us go then, you and I. Come into the garden, Maud, ha ha!, to quote a pair of poems yet unwritten.”

Blake’s eyes boggled as he entered the garden at the back of the townhouse. It was a teeming profusion of vegetation, wild and uncultivated.

“It is like a forest,” he said.

“It is not like a forest, Mr Blake. It is a forest!” said the other, and when he spoke, from somewhere in the garden came the howling of monkeys and the cawing of strange exotic birds.

“But this is what I have brought you to see, Mr Blake,” and he pointed towards a great stone slab surrounded by choking weeds, upon which was heaped a pile of kindling.

“If, Mr Blake, you are thinking that it looks like a funeral pyre, you are correct. But we must wait for nightfall. Come, let us repair to the gazebo and drink lemonade.”

And as William Blake drank from a pewter tankard of lemonade in the gazebo, his companion told him a startling thing.

“In the course of my alchemical researches, Mr Blake, I had occasion to discover an elixir, of potable gold and several other ingredients, the drinking of which, unlike this lemonade, has conferred upon me eternal youth. I cannot die. I am immortal!”

Blake could only gawp. The sun sank below the horizon.

“At last it is night time!” said his host, “Come, let us return to the great stone slab! My assistant, Mungo, should be waiting for us there.”

As indeed he was, a shrivelled and hunchbacked monstrosity with one mad eye. Blake noticed that he was holding a length of chain, the other end of which was concealed in the shrubbery.

“The time has come!” cried the alchemist, “Pull, Mungo!”

With inhuman strength, Mungo tugged at the chain, and Blake saw to his horror and amazement a tiger, dragged from its lair in the lupins and hollyhocks and petty spurge. The hunchback somehow managed to pull the tiger up on to the pyre, and once it was there he shortened the chain and bolted it to the slab.

“Excellent work, Mungo,” said the alchemist, “Now go to the gazebo and have a refreshing drink of lemonade, then come back with the Swan Vestas.”

Mungo lurched off, and as he did so, the alchemist turned again to William Blake, who was still gawping.

“Do you notice something curious about that tiger, Mr Blake? Look carefully. Do you see? It is entirely symmetrical. In one of my experiments I set out to breed symmetrical cats, big and small. I am convinced that the sight of such creatures will strike fear into those who observe them. Well? Are you fearful, Mr Blake?”

He was. Such was his terror that William Blake ran screaming from the garden, back through the opulent townhouse.

“Wait, Mr Blake, wait!” cried the alchemist, “You will miss the burning of the symmetrical tiger, the culmination of my madcap schemes!”

But William Blake had fled, wandering thro’ each charter’d street, near where the charter’d Thames does flow.