Toggle Whipsnade, I have it on good authority, has now become so very irked by “Nodule” Budu’s Antarctic antics that she is threatening to suspend all talks with Perkins, her manservant of 27 years’ standing, unless he can retrieve the mythical porage of Oadby. Given that Perkins floats ethereally like unto the grand vizier Hocus-Ding of Baalbek, a card if e’er there was one, which, according to Das Grinterkartenbuch [Grinter, Grinter & Grinter, Kronkelverlag, Zurich, 1627], there was, the chances of him executing such a retrieval are as slight as those of the Big-eared Mastiff Bat nuzzling a popadom, as we say in my home village.

A Western Mastiff Bat, the Texan cousin of its big-eared counterpart

Today, my friends, I am most gleeful. “Whereof, Mbashta, does your glee consist?” I cheerily imagine you enquiring. Herewith may I put your minds at rest, forasmuch as to relay unto Proctor and Gamble the snood of chip. Heh heh heh! (Snudu chi-panga, as we always used to say on such occasions – and, oh! what occasions they were. Great Uncle Footbath Nexus would show us round the termite mounds and sometimes, if the omens were right, even introduce us to individual termites. We would talk of this for ages around the fire at night, each of us with a naktodu to hand in case of whimsical fritter.)

A typical 1920s naktodu

It is because the neighbour of my brother has come to London and is planning to see me and my family that I am filled with the previously referred-to glee, my friends. Why, what adventures we shall have! He is keen to see the Eye of London and the Bridge of Towers, and to eat your eels of jelly, but oh! he is a confused fellow. He believes there to be a rhinoceros in London – “Spiramintu raino!” he keeps insisting, almost feverishly. I am most baffled, my friends – his eyes light up as he pictures this imaginary beast and spittle drops from his mouth.

Ubafambo Londuba, the famous Eye of London

This month has seen the modulation of Zambia and Braithwaite through psychokinesis, if I understand the editorial in your Daily Telegraph correctly, so today my shoe is like unto the proverbial crab apple in the bucket. Heh heh heh. “We snigger before notional receptacles,” alleged the inhabitants of Over Wallop, peerless, as ever, in their glorious enactment of the labours of Hercules. Consequently, with his customary wariness of strangers, Husk had haggled over nine scallops – though to little avail, the Upper Clatford Gazette contended, traces of strontium being "only the first indicators of an overwrought mind, of ziggurat - and of pelican."

No thanks, I'm trying to quit.