Tuesday, July the 6th, 2004
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I said to Smotter: “When that wagtail flew past my head, I did not know it was a wagtail. I thought it may have been a pipit, for I know very little about birds.” Spookily, at the very instant the words were out of my mouth, Smotter boarded a bus which took him far, far away, so crushing any hopes I had of improving my ornithological knowledge that morning. The number of the bus that Smotter caught had mystic significance, so I made a note of it on one of my bits of paper. My pockets are full of them. Every year, on Savonarola's birthday, I empty out from my coats and jackets all the accumulated scraps, stack them into a pile, randomly ordered, and type up my jottings verbatim. I have usually forgotten the context and import of most of my notes, so I have about as much idea as the readers of my annual Pocketsbook [sic] what it all means. In the early days, I separated each piece with an ellipsis, but at some point—possibly around the time of Lynnette “Squeaky” Fromme's assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford, I cannot be precise—I just ran one note headlong into another. Hence there are passages such as the month of Frumentor possible pills for unknown disorders what is in the garden of the parsonage and why oo nooky (anag) printer's devil Gerard Manley Hopkins mesmerised a duck two sausage recipes and so on. Thus do I wring sense from a baleful planet.