With a flourish, Our Hero disconnected the batteries and withdrew the trackpin from the foaming blue brine. Sleek penny-coloured copper gleamed down its thigh-like flanks, the poor man's goldfinger.

Oh no it didn't. It wasn't there at all. It was the other end, the old nail, that was coppery: the trackpin had entirely dissolved. Behind me, the Blinco Male Voice Titter Choir went from the Titter Courteous into the Titter Direct, and I remembered the wise words of the Manual of Lateral Afterthinking¹, telling me to use trackpins at both electrodes so that I didn't need to misremember which way electrolysis works. Well: the Ceremony of the Laying of the Last Spike, to be held at the completion of the line between the Galapagos (on the left) and Little Canary (on the right), timed to take place almost on the same day as Mrs Thatcher did not, thank goodness, become the first person to walk under the Channel, at which we would cer e moniously hammer in a copperplated model of the golden spike used in more affluent proto types, would have to be postponed. The Massed Male Titters had a point. While I syn thesized ferrous sulphate, a substance of little use about the house, they had equipped the model rail way with a hut containing a ringing telephone. We have every hope that now the first regular services will be established in the foreseeable future.

Together we all hired a car and drove east over the bottom of Spain on our last visit, starting in Seville. Spain will hire you two kinds of cars, Too Large and Too Small. Unfortunately Seville has likewise only two kinds of street, Too Big (five or six lanes of hurtling teeth) and Too Small (five or six deep in merrymaking people, and about an inch wider than the car). The hotels are deep in the latter, and as the night grew later and our hotel grew no more ap parent we found that our car was being relentlessly pursued by the local dustcarts: at each stop to enquire, the dustmen's shouts grew more incomprehensible and their body language less so. This corner of Spain is recommended, but not to our friends. But we liked Cordoba, where we happened to get the Very Last Parking Space In Cordoba because it was their fiesta day ... no-one had let that slip until we arrived. Everything except the fiesta was closed except the amazing mezquita, an orange grove of Moorish pillars knifed by a baroque cathedral in serted brusquely between the ribs. Thence to hills, across Andalusia and through smaller and smaller towns, hotels with old-fashioned central courts where flower pots blazed drily be tween wicker chairs, and at last down into sturdy old friend Aguilas to see Thos's father. We took him a CB set to help keep in touch with neighbours, and strung up wires for passion flowers: storms had earlier broken down the garden wall and washed away the car (and, alas, the tortoise), but he was rebuilding redoubled defences. In the autumn Martin went alone, and spent a glorious week of self-indulgent nature photography with Thos.'s father - the ideal collaborator for such a project.

The Proceedings of the Artistic Year, chez Blinco, must report big developments. Bands?! Have we seen bands? Randolph Silage Pit and the Exploding Hamster made their debut, as did The Parkies, The Proletarian Sponges, and Doctor BigBoots and the Heavy Metal Detectors. (Did I mention that they all wear Doc Marten's? 'These boots rush in where rhinos fear to tread'.) There was even a short period when Owen didn't have a band at all (feasts among our neigh bours, oxen roasted whole at Wapping, etc). To the inexpert eye the line-up looks very similar each time, and anyway at that volume who cares. Folk-rock for Martin, all of us folk-rocking away to the strains of Bluebell Polka and Dingley Regatta ("Billy & Mary / Had a canary / But they ate it for tea ..."). Judicious combination of various electrical bits and pieces makes it possible for an insupportable volume of sound to come out of one accordion, except the one into which Our Hero drilled the cable hole in the wind box by mistake: world's first accordion to be played with a cork in the side. Prize goes to Jo, an alto who's found her forte, Blue Riband Publicist to the Choir of Angels, who managed to sell 120% of the tickets for that little Christmas number the Messiah and is not helping with this letter because she's out trying to part the odd 20% from their tickets again (Stop press: now only 16 excess tickets in circulation in addition to the 496 there are meant to be, I am now therefore free to make editorial comments, as well as celebrating with a well-earned glass of wine. Ed.) ... while the Male Voice Titter Choir looks sternly unamused whenever it can control itself. Nothing so grand for Hero here, unless maybe you'd count a rather fetching little 4 mm scale French-style dove-cot for the railway?

A legacy, that, of T's ten days happy biking through hot hilly France. Cycling for Softies. Not so soft; all the N. American groups we met had luggage vans, &endash; VANS! &endash; and tour leaders, and who knows what. Aghast to hear that us 'Softies' were given a map and a wave and expected to do the rest on our own. Returned with enough photos of sunflowers to keep us warm all win ter. But nothing else: the great thing about bikes is that you don't buy souvenirs. Though a charming woman did offer to post me the grandfather clock I was admiring, if I was sure I couldn't carry it on the bike ... Favourite memory: after slogging up a huge hill came to a village with no bar (how do they live?) and no shops. Your Venerable Hero appalled. Would thirst, heat stroke, or exhaustion kill him first? But taken by delightful chatty woman on proud tour of every building in her village, then she and husband gave me beer.

Later Jo and I cycled through Norfolk ... punted, almost, by comparison. And found a secret path, feet only, through summer-high grasses, little wooden bridges over lily-glass brooks, from the quietest corner of one old by-wayed village to the corner of another: and found, too, that the ferry we saw on the map wouldn't take us over the Broads at Horning because it didn't exist any more. So many boats you could almost walk right over. Ever thumbed a lift over a river? Quite fun &endash; 3 people and 2 fully-laden bikes in a rowing boat.

Any other news? Ah yes, those space-filling curves of infinite weight and subtlety, les chats, they have a discovery to communicate to all their friends. Get your owners to keep the bath mat in the bidet, my dear. Warm, snug and no accordions!

But I mustn't forget. Time for a word from our sponsors, who wish it to be known that Jo's monograph on screening mothers-to-be, 'Calming or Harming?', has achieved best-seller status in 15 countries. You too can order it. CD, anyone? And better still: those of our friends unlucky enough to receive this in time, will be able to order tickets to see that stun ning satire of modern times Granny Get Your Gun, this year's children's panto, starring Martin as Billy the, er, Goat. Martin is wholly uncomplimentary about this bag of corn but the oppor tunities open to 13-yr-old Thespians are too thin to be picky. Personally I quite look forward to the scene where the two stage horses have a dance, but I do admit that M's dream of playing Dogberry to sell-out houses has more appeal.

And the other thing I mustn't forget is Owen's Annual Review of Comics and Light Fiction. This year, Terry Pratchett rides high, and higher still is Viz. That's a lefty subversive femi nist?!? comic and if I describe it closely it might be illegal, so the Editorial Board, the Male Voice Titter Choir, Dr Boots and the Ven. himself, plus les chats of course, wish you Ye Usual Compliments and lots of luck in the next year.

¹This manual, consisting entirely of postscripts, is the very first book that I shall write in the after-life.