My fellow Democrats, my fellow Americans, I am here to say yes. Yes. Yes, I will serve you and yes I accept the candidacy for the President of the United States of America.

I believe in many things and the things that I believe in are many. There are so many things that we can all believe in and our beliefs can be numerous. We can all have many beliefs, if we believe that we can have them.

Let nobody tell you that it is going to be easy. Nothing is easy, not even pealing an apple or attaching a synthesiser to the end of a trumpet. Nothing is easy and at the same time it is easy to do nothing. My fellow Democrats, my fellow Americans, we cannot sit back and do nothing, that would be the easy option, even though, at times, doing nothing is hard. We must sit up and take the hard decisions that make doing nothing easy and at the same time make doing something easy too.

I believe in change and hope and I will offer as President of the United States of America both change and hope. My fellow Democrats, my fellow Americans, we cannot have change unless we have hope and we cannot have hope, unless we have change. I believe we can change our hopes so that hope and change combine and live like a puppy in a New England beach house.

Hope. Hope. What is hope? Hope is the power to change America and with this hope we can hope that change will come and with change will come further hope for more change and once the change is made then we will have change and hope and hope and change.

We need to build a new coalition that believes in hope and change, so that no child in America is left behind by hopes that do not include their own hopes and changes that do not include their own changes. That is why, today, I pledge that in the first one hundred day of my Presidency, I will recruit twenty thousand more teachers so that every child in America can enjoy the hope that is membership of a local Jasper Club. Let there be no more places where there is not a Jasper Club.

I look at my own hands and see fingers, thumbs and palms. I look into the hands of the future and I see technological fingers, thumbs and palms. We must prepare for this new tomorrow by looking into the future and seeing that the past is part of the future and the future is part of the past. Without this we cannot build the new change that comes from hope.

My fellow Americans, my fellow Democrats, I look into the eyes of kitten and I see such energy. That is why I will send thirty thousand kittens to Iraq so we can stop this war.

John McCain talks of kittens and puppies, but he cannot see the puppy or the kitten as I see it. I have a view that takes the kitten and the puppy and offers them new hope by changing every kitten into a new biofuel kitten so that we no longer have to rely on the Middle East for kittens and falcons.

My fellow Democrats, my fellow Americans, I stand before you today in the Milwaukee SkyDome and say this: I AM READY TO SERVE AMERICA.

there was a lake, with a tired elf that lived close by. The trousers of the elf were made of moss and he had borrowed his apple hat from Sir Brian of Motton Hoxwhyte of Ole. They were, nevertheless, good trousers.

So it came to pass that the elf found himself in front of the local magistrate, accused of stealing twistle from a gospher. Now, and then, when the old balcony falls upon a misfired rocket or a bolt of fresh jospering smee climbs into the bulb, we see the oily dew. And then, as now, the unicorns cried and we ate fresh kippers for tea.

Good night.

I love my little parsnips.

Yes, all of you.

You bloody tinkers.

Hektor (aka. the wizard of sleeve).

more from Mr Buxton.

Jasper, what day is it?

They are excellently silly. From Mr Adam Buxton, a silly genius.

sign language, silly:

songs of praise, silly:

more of praise songs, silly:

there is much more where that came from, but I am tired and, well, I cannot be bothered this evening. I was meant to tidy up the bookshelves in the library but that still has not been done. Mrs H gets back next week and I fear that all I will have to show for two months of stay-at-home working daddy will be a bag of creased clothes and a new sausage dog called "The Marvelous Fipps". So, to this, I bid you goodnight. [Hektor exits, stage left].

I was going to write a blog play today but it seems that most of the characters blog less and less frequently, rather like me, for that matter. Where, for instance, is the twittering man of Landersonpike?, or the funny faced lunatic (not Brad, I know you are there, you rascal)?

Thankfully, there is the constant Olde Nyke, who verily splashes my gills with his good water, Subbz to and Mr Juzzzy to make up the compliment. I also would like to mention Avrillo in this interlude, who is, I contend, a fine lady who I would like to meet and say hello to. Likewise, the Bod that is Egg must be said in the face to face Hello at some point, likewise RTB and the merry RedleaderDaggersStratocaster who, I fear, will liken me to a bag of crisps. Emsbabee and the Cult leader could surely recruit some more falcons to drink coolade in Changleybiscuits, I think, and then this perhaps could spur them on.

I would like to meet you all, if you may. Perhaps a Warsaw blog meet? See wizzair or bmibaby or easyjet for that matter. Ryanair with its faulty planes does not fly to my city, thank fuck.

Toodle pip.

Hektor

THIS short poem, found, as it was, inside a harp, is dedicated to one of our own who at this great import deserveth kind roulettes of verse to flavour his good fortune and bid him safe passage in his wonderful pastime in the beringletted wonder of love!

We set sail upon a Friday night,
the moon as pale as rice,
Danced slowly round my finger ends
Like parsley flavoured mice.
A toad looked up my silhouette,
And solemnly proclaimed:
"to have said parsley flavoured mouse
doth boast my fruit, most brave!"

We turned the boat (the sacred Mouse),
behind the comb of dust.
And dolphins foamed and kissed our eyes,
Like a marionette's bonéd lust.
Kind answer token from the side,
looked out onto the roof,
That mild mannered duck beside,
Betrayed my golden hoof.

And thus and thus, we tended well,
and Clive cooked chickens too!
A bolder older onyx shell
Redoubled sconéd tempestuous shoe.
With all and cat shaped calamity,
Shaking the tree like wolves,
We sat upon the deck that night
and marked chestnuts with our gloves.

***

As I sat, festooned in mirror piped cladding and pebbledash wallpaper falcons, the doorbell appeared out of nowhere and introduced my next guest. I rubbed my magic lantern and turned the volume of the book to a reasonable level (somewhere between four and four and a half). Cardinal Richelieu stood in front of me, his elegant brown paws and long nose betraying the roaming house martins that wandered beneath his tunic, and began to take notes as we watched the books turn into flags, then into mice and then, back again, into books.

***

Estelle and I had waited for years for this moment. I had grown tall, my broad shoulders forming a frame within which the trombones could sit most days and play golf. Estelle lay to one side of the bed and began stroking a bowl of freshly picked owls. We charged our glasses and gave toast to merry old Colin, who had been our tutor and guidance counsellor through the past decade. Naturally, we began to unfold the wonder that is Fermat's second to last theorem and laughed like honest geese on seeing the trees side with March in its war with April.

***

Moving apace through the twilight infested city, I stood abroad and looked into the small wooden beaker that had come to rest itself beside me. The beaker's handle was quivering in the wind and it looked to me that that beaker had travelled a long way since morning. Nightfall betrayed the palpable sense of marzipan on my lips, I gazed in wonder as the rooftops melted into the fresh chestnuts like professorial disguises sink lowly into the railway stations of the afternoon.

***

The number on the side of the stapler read "four-two-seven-one-five-nine-one-eight" and I deduced that it must be some form of encryption device. Raising my hand in the air, I heard the slow whistle of one thousand printers sing out like fresh gardens mown by burley men with no necks. Traversing the pony infested market square, I set forth for the Royal Way and then, onward, to Jerusalem Avenue. Passing Charles De Gaulle, I doffed my cap (as one does) and set off in the direction of home.

It seems, my dear fellows, that the hour of lunch approaches and my tummy fair rumbles like a faulty washing machine.

Found, this morning in my Kenny Dalglish ice sculpture was this missive written in the winds of time, when cloaks cavorted with ladies and spoons were made of unicorns' tears. I share it with you now.

Hello to you all.

I told you 'bout the Walrus and me man. You know that we're as close as can be man.

Today I am finely balanced between the rock of spring and the hard place of winter. It is a crack that I shall hereafter refer to as "sprinter".

The interpretation section of my post dispensed with, what news shall I proffer you my little Dalmatians? Well, I give you this week news in three parts.

PART THE FIRST (the sober part)

It has been my duty in recent days to shovel encyclopaedias into a furnace in order to make enough heat for the puppies that sit beside the puddles on our roof. The snow, you see, is melting at a ferocious pace and the place fair stinks of riddled bartleitude and fangletyne. Fandango, I hear you cry. Yea, no less than Fandango have I been putting about in most of this abandonment.

In the old days the city was frozen with ice and cold. White everywhere and the temperatures were low (minus ten or fifteen from time to time). Ache. The cold did make me ache. The increasing temperature has not only left puddles on roof, pavement and road but also much sickness in the air. Last week I contracted a dose: nothing painful, but all the same a fair quantity of general unpleasantness and melancholy. I was consigned to a waking slumber for most of the weekend. Oh calamity!

PART THE SECOND (an interesting tale of sweat)

Apart from their obsession with the Pope and World War II, the Polish media are currently obsessed with obsession itself and, in particular, one man's obsession with the sweat of Lech Walesa.

You see, for many Poles, Mr Walesa is a much appreciated and loved man: delivering them from the yolk of Communism and transforming a society into a Hamburger filled pleasure dome of free markets, economic liberalism, showgirls and party boys.

"Tell us of the sweat", I hear you ask. Well, in 1982 when Walesa was imprisoned during martial law, a prison guard, known only as Josef L., collected some of Walesa's sweat and put it into a tea cup and fell asleep.

In the morning, the sweat had gone, but the teacup remained and, contained within the tea cup, was a picture of a horse, a jack-in-a-box, and a big eyed man. Some say this was a miracle containing the following signs:

(1) THE HORSE: according to legend, when Poland is free a horse will come and bid the country to sing a great tribute to a lost pie under an oak tree.

(2) THE JACK-IN-A-BOX: according to another legend, if a jack-in-a-box is sighted near a horse, Poland's freedom is not far off.

(3) THE BIG EYED MAN: according to the stories of St. Tadeusz, a big eyed man negates the need to sing the aforementioned tribute to the lost pie and, instead, implores the discoverer of the big eyed man to collect the sweat of the man within which the image was contained.

As you can imagine, Josef L. was excited by the vision he was lucky enough to see and has collected Walesian sweat from that day onward.

The story has just reached the newspapers because Josef L. is currently applying for an EU grant to flood part of Luxembourg in order to keep his ever growing collection. We are off to Gdansk this weekend to see, and swim in, the Sweat sea of Lech Walesa.

I shall report on its healing qualities when I return.

PART THE THIRD (my vain glory and the tube of Turkish babble that confounded the critic)

It is time that this reached a conclusion and for my part, I have fulfilled the criteria for email set by me the other day when rambling upon a hillock in northern Cumbria, the criteria are:

(a) pomp;

(b) circumference;

(c) a guest apple; and

(d) friction.

You have all my time and admiration. I fill hours fashioning your likenesses out of wool.

May the fruits of my labours reach you soon sometime and find you in a spirit of openness and reparation.

Good day and, peng the perdwerdel.

Kind retorts,

Suntanned tattoo, cobweb looks out.
Rifle eagle sings in morning light.
Parsnips wade into view,
and Bunsen burner tiger bites.

For in the fortune whisper's mood,
there beats a tambourine.
My mushroom pasture slaps a wolf,
and arctic favours trade in wine.

Hello Moon Kittens!

It has been a long time since I wrapped my passport in this intertwined sandwich and I must confess, my life has been the poorer for it. Well, now I am here. Evidently, one might say. Perhaps, on the other hand, I am not here and am simply tidying up whilst combing the beach for treasures and this epistle is being crafted in my own imagine.

From the side of the pavement (or sidewalk, as the Americans might say (I add that in case any American fellows stumble upon this letter late at night and are confused by my idiom)), the nun carved a diagonal path toward me, I quickened my pace and moved to the right, anticipating this movement, the nun also moved to her left, now pressure and time were eating into this dance, I moved left, she moved to her right, we were almost upon each other, I resolved to take one last action, I remained still as she, the nun, sailed past (I use this term to convey movement, rather than suggesting that she had, in a split second, changed her bicycle for a boat and that the location had been changed from Warsaw to a lake, perhaps, in or near to Olsztyn) and gave me a most handsome wink in the process. How then was my joy bursting as I retraced my steps in my mind. Imperilled by a nun, saved by a nun!

I see that things are heating up in the Caucuses. It makes one wonder when things will quieten down for a moment. Many years ago, a man stopped by my caravan and told me "they cannot have two eyes and see the things that become from old owls." I have never thought about that until now. I think that Steven Segal also said something similar "in life, as in war, there are two things to remember: love and chance. Love can kill a man if he fails to take chances, chance can bring love if the void of war is filled." How wise, Steven, how wise.

Leaving you this week on a note of positive cartography, I announce the happy arrival of a public holiday on Friday and, therefore, a longer weekend.

Kind refraine.

Hektor.

Below is a map:

----------------
----------------]][[{{{{{{}}}}}}}___________________---------------

we trace an apple through the sky of limitless opportunity.

Tomorrow, there will be an exciting report about how Hektor was almost knocked over by a cycling nun last week.

Kind regard.

Please return your books to the library on the seventh floor.

The space shuttle launch will take place on Wednesday, rather than Thursday as was advertised last week.

Martin is the new Kenneth.

The bus will collect you all tomorrow morning at 5.00 am, please bring a sandwich and a pair of socks. You will return home on Sunday during the evening.

A duck was stolen from the Harlequin's office last week.