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,