To Help

I go to the section where the magazines about books live. I ooze hope. The American ones - Onslaught, Paragraph, The Wagon - twitch their corners and rustle their edges. The English ones - Mmmhmm, Apt, The Brow - stare at my mouth and sniff. I take all six to the counter and ask the fragrant young waltzer which one will make me feel like its purchase is a small part of what I should be doing with my life. Halfway through the sentence she puts one hand on my collar and the other on the back of my head and says it's all on the internet, everything is on the internet, if it doesn't light up it's not worth looking at, get out, get out of my area.

Refinery

Thank you for applying for the position of Incidence Participant / Smooth Running Officer / Facilitation Enabler. Your warped and howling brains did not, on this occasion, after careful consideration, etc. The questions you answered less correctly than was desirable were: If a man tells you he's just eaten a kingfisher, who do you phone first? What demographic has the highest incidence of scurvy? And which mediocrities do you say you admire in order to reduce the chance of being thought of as pretentious?
Your details have been passed to the Ministry of Explosions, who will be in touch shortly.

I Can Explain

I got trapped in a well and Sarah's arms fell off and also there were some manufacturing/delivery undesirables so we've whacked the jackanory back to Christmas 2015 yes 2015, to ensure its readiness and frightening dominance, a lot like when Nasty Ways was on dubplate for eighteen months and when they finally let people buy it Dillinja became prime minister for a week which is why everything is fine now, and if you don't remember this it's because either you were too far away or you had the wrong ears. It's not too late.