If you are in the vicinity of a riverbank, and you see two otters, this is known as Double Otters. Mark your little dun cardboard slip accordingly, in pencil, and take it to the kiosk. The man at the kiosk – argumentative, boisterous, catarrh-riddled, dismal, eggy (as in the Beatles’ song), flip, gaunt, horrible, ill, jaded, knock-knee’d, lascivious, mordant – will exchange your slip for a prize, usually a biro or a balloon.

He is a fallen man. When you are not looking, he will blub into a napkin.

Bim cut his chops with chocks. But Bam bamboozled Bim. Bim fought back with flex. Bam unleashed his flocks.

What are we to make of this? That Bim was holy, and Bam was not? Or quite the reverse? But wherein does holiness reside? We know it does not reside in holes, the holes, for example, in Bim’s socks. There were no holes in Bam’s socks, for he was a darner. Or it might be that Bam went sockless. Either way, we know that Bim had never set eyes on a darning-needle, not even the Darning-Needle of Doom.

The Darning-Needle of Doom is the one that pierced Bam’s soul. At its prick, he heard a bell toll. It tolled for Bam, but it did not toll for Bim. Bim was on his uppers. He drooled into a cup. It was a tin cup he won in a wrestling match. His opponent? Bam.

Oh, Bim and Bam. They are inseparable. When Bim looks in a mirror, he sees Bam. When Bam looks in the same mirror, having snatched it from Bim, he sees Bam too. Of course he does! You nitwits! What else would Bam see in a mirror but himself, reflected?

Why then does Bim see Bam in the mirror? Perhaps it is the angle he holds it at. Bim is ignorant of the great mysteries of geometry. But so is Bam. Bam had no schooling to speak of, nor can he speak, for he is mute. Bim babbles.

Bim and Bam the flowerpot men, raucous as crows, yellow as custard. They preen in the sunlight dappling the hideous hills of Hoon. They are gits and they know it. It is time you knew it too, and now you do.