CATACHRESIS

Our Northern Correspondent; the illustrious and much feted Finn McEskimo; that pillar of the Greens and maybe the pinkoes too; husband and helpmeet to the divinely musical Mrs McEskimo; raiser of childers; tearer down of idols and the idle, reaches a turning point in his mortal life soon - and it is one from which he cannot turn. A man with fire in his veins and a rumble in his tummy Finn rode in on a snow black charger from the coldest, most inhospitable northern reaches of Europe, where winter lasts all day and all day lasts all year. He swept up the fair maid who he would have to wife and carried her off to glory and joy but all of this was many childers ago and now he stares down the barrel of a .40 magnum. Some two score years have allbut slipped behinder him and by Biblical rote and reckoning a mere score and ten more remain to his lease. Piffle and balderdash! say we of the halfhundred club - a club we use to beat and berate all and sunday. That silky sinuous demon oldpa thyme does not have an expiration date written onto a one of his leases - no thing could be farther father from the true, they are all aclaused for whatever perpetuity we can muscle and rustle up though should we rustle up a horse or sheep or three then woe betide us for the tide of woe will engulf us sure as eggs are chicken babies. One word to those with birthdays looming over close event horizons - buggerage! Why use two when one will do? The pension scheme at the Lavender Way for peripatetic contributors is non-contributory but mean saving that for the ringmaster in chief The Laz, and his divine eternal creature comforts alone are assured. We fully intend to wring more years from his ears and his tongue and will not hear of an early bath for the dirty devil before he makes two thirds the mark of the beast on the scribblings of the Way.

"Life begins at forty" old crumbly fools once would intone but what apart from nonsense could we hope from those obsessed with the passing of the waters and the stools of life into Chronos' perfect timekeeping mechanism. The slop pail and the soil closet await those so inclined. Rather look up and forward for having eyes in the back of our heads is not natures way - we face forward because that is where we are going. Reverse glancing is, like reverse perambulation, uncomfortable, uncomforting, unnatural, incommoding, inelegant, counter-intuitive and downright, damnably awkward. Life begins only when you take it by the scruff of its scrawny, wrinkled, scrotum like neck and shake it into your shape. If you haven't so shook it by the time you've pushed 40 good years behinder you then it's not a bad time to start but you'd have wasted so much of it already were you to wait so long. Grab life by the balls (and scrotum - either one) and make of it what you will. Anything else is a betrayal of the force itself and, light saber or not, without the force what odds against a good outcome?

In honour of our Finns impending half life running out we crew are packing up the Lavender Way roadshow and decampning. The big tent is defenstrate, rolling begins tomorrow. We are off on the road to the party. Invited or not, welcome or not, we are taking our cheery words and thought and bringing them in person to our gallant Gawain of the Ice Floes where he is to celbrate his his story. But, and it is a big but we will go bearing gifts, well one! Professors Shem and Shaun, in consultation with the academic board of this fine establishment of education have decide to award the young swain from the sward an honorary doctorate. Ermine is in order and if we can find some on our travails ermine there shall be for Dr. Finn McEskimo - Professor Emeritus of Non-Indo-European Babbel at the Poundemonioum Circus, PhD.