I hope that everybody who puts on a red nose todau will find that it has become their real nose when they come to take it off.

I must not have these nasty thoughts: but how can I help it when they keep slipping unbidden into my mind? Only yesterday, I sat in my garden, concentrating hard, with brows creased over my eyes, literally willing all cars with red dingdongs on their radiator grills, by some cosmic mischance, being on the same motorway system nose to tail, the clown driving at the head of the convoy suddenly braking and creating the biggest snarl-up in the world that even those who compile that Irish Stout book concerned with world records would not believe their eyes when they saw the results of the eventual concertina shunt slowly crocodiling up and down the length of Lesser Britain.

But as soon as I had the thought, I regretted it. I've a heart of gold really, if not a nose of red.

[My next campaign is ridding the world of traffic cones. Chimneys with a sense of humour will have to come later, when I'll likely strip 'em bare of aerials...]


(published 'Eavesdropper' 1989)