by author of THE LEGEND OF JIMMY GOLLIHUE

Surging with the hot, sensual blood-pressure of another incisive stab of punditry, Jonathan moved toward the washing machine (a brand-new Spellmaster from the United States, complete with a voltage converter that enabled it to run on the British-flavoured 220V, always smoother and more refined than the American counterpart, thought Jonathan), lifted the lid, and peered inside.

Wrapped round the inner drum of the American machine (which Jonathan had long preferred over the more commonly-available front-loading machines, which he'd always found had forced him to hunker painfully thus stretching his knees, or to kneel as he would before a literary lion, or to sit in a half-lotus position in front of the machine as though about to stack his notes in chapter piles, as he had been wont to do previous to the advent of the modern word processor,which enabled Jonathan to carry an entire office around with him in the form of a notebook computer, so convenient he could prance confidently into the Waterstone's bookshop cafe, his full writerly arsenal just a few keystrokes away) was the waterlogged carcass of a nude man.

The face stared up at Jonathan from the drum of the top-loading washer, but the staring face was unseeing though full of accusation (and what a strange miracle that the man's old-fashioned mustache wax has perfectly preserved the delicate, manly handlebar curves of his masculine mustachio! gushed Jonathan within, as he wondered where he'd left the oil for the chainsaw (both of which, chainsaw and oil, he'd had to order special from a lumberjack's journal, to which he subscribed).