Dear Friends: Have you ever had a dream?

No, no, not a night-time dream of fancy or glee. A fond wish to see something or somewhere unusual and fantastical? Well, I have! And that place is the MOON. When I was just a lad of 8 or 9, my dear old mummy took me to see a simply marvelous picture called Le voyage dans la lune* at the local theatre. My words, did I EVER enjoy that picture! My favorite portion, you see was that of the MOON. Ever since seeing that stirring film, it has been a life-long desire to picnic with a good friend upon the surface of that pocky surface, even… dare I say?… nibble on it’s crusty/cheesy surface.

I would spend hours as a lad gazing up at the MOON, sometimes wasting many hours which SHOULD have been devoted to studying Latin drawing her rounded edges on my slate. Quite the red knuckles and bottoms had I after the nuns caught on to that little diversion, I tell you! But time takes a young man’s fancy and turns it into so much dust in the wind, or so they say, and the dream of one day picnicking on La LUNE’s surface evaporated from my frontbrain as I matured through a difficult adolescence.

Then, when I was about 23 years of age, laying in a ditch one night in Belgium under a cloud of mustard gas**, I looked up at that beautiful globe above me and knew in my bones that I’d make it there one day. Many bayonetings and quite a few misunderstandings with the authorities about “just who exactly owned the villa,” I’ve come to fulfill my dream. This time next week, your fair friend GB will dine with his good-friend (and maybe more!), Ms. Hibiscus T. Porridge… on the MOON!

* This is French for “Fantastical Picnics Upon the Moon”

** What they do not tell you is that mustard gas is NOT a delicious, airbourne treat. It is quite foul, and causes gangrene of the testes – something of which *I* never recovered from!

From:

Pliny (the Younger)
LXVII Oysterbath Way
Lower Triumphia
BCBG81

Do please release my hendecasyllables from their promise – they were guarantors to our friends for the apperance of your work, and every day brings in some new request and demand; so they now run the risk of being served with a writ to produce it. I know I am very slow to publish my own work, but you overdo even my doubts and hesitations. So bestir yourself, or else beware lest I drag those books out of you by the fury of my iambics, since my hendcasyllables failed to entice them with honeyed words! The work is already finished and perfect; revision will not give them further polish but only dull its freshness.

Please let me see your name published and hear that my friend’s books are being copied, read and sold. In view of our warm friendship, it is only fair that you should let me have the same pleasure from you as you enjoy in me.

Perturbed,

Pliny (the Younger)

Perturbed,

Pliny (the Younger)

My DEAR Pliny,

I’d rather appreciate if you refrain from sending these “helpful reminders” re: my memoirs. It is already quite difficult to produce a work of Quality and Substance with my rotten editor breathing down my neck (foul woman, quite unplesant and crass!), so I’d thank you to keep your trips of guilt and whimsy to yourself, thank you very much!

Adieu!

GB

P.S. Bridge on Tuesday? You bring the crusty loaves, this time!