Monday, September the 20th, 2010

back to: title, date or indexes

hear this 

E

Our alphabetic postage experiment continues with E, which in this case stands for Embargo

I have decided to place an embargo on this postage. It is, or was going to be, about the cargo of a barge. It was a large barge, freighted with spectacularly interesting cargo, magnificent in both quantity and quality, on an impossibly extensive canal system, beginning at Tack and terminating at Bluff. But I have told you too much already, bearing in mind my embargo.

The reason for the embargo could be termed “quaint,” I suppose, were one to be seeking a descriptive. To describe the nature of the embargo is not, necessarily, to justify it, and I am aware that some readers may wish to have it so justified. “Oi,” they will be braying, gobs wide and knuckles dragging along the ground, “What do you think you're up to, mister, putting an embargo on a Hooting Yard postage?” At least that is the kind of thing they might bray if they could string a sentence together. Be assured I am referring only to a tiny minority of my readers, the ones who gather, on Monday evenings, in the shabby annexe just down the lane from the eerie mysterious barn at Scroonhoonpooge Farmyard, there to squat on stools in mysterious eerie candlelight and to read my prose aloud to each other. As it happens, the annexe is on the banks of the canal, so the large barge with its tremendous cargo either will pass by or has already done so, at the time of the gathering, in the autumnal dusk. I can appreciate that they will fume and fret, wondering what in the name of heaven I would have had to say about it, in fact, have said about it, or rather written about it, but then, quaintly, embargoed. But I am not about to reverse my quaint decision. To do so would catapult me into muddy waters, from which I might not emerge. Even if I did emerge, I would be stained with mud, perhaps forever. “You could go to the launderette!” my Monday dusk readers might shout, voices raised in a collective whinge.

But ah, launderette begins with L, and we have six postages to post before we get that far. I am taking this alphabet seriously.